@CGHound,
@Bill from November Sound ... I think the modern 'music business' is an interesting topic to discuss.
Although I could say that I feel musicians have probably always struggled to earn a living throughout history in the 'business' of making and performing music, i.e. making a living from performing as against doing it for worship, pleasure and celebration.
Nowadays many people are passive consumers not active performers even if your performance was standing around a piano or singing in a church., it was more a participatory thing not so long ago.
Before 1878 when the first sound recordings were made there were mechanical means of producing recognisable tunes, musical boxes et al, but before then of course there was sheet music. According to Wikipedia ...
Music publishing did not begin on a large scale until the mid-15th century, when mechanical techniques for printing music were first developed. The earliest example, a set of liturgical chants, dates from about 1465, shortly after the Gutenberg Bible. Prior to this time, music had to be copied out by hand. This was a very labour-intensive and time-consuming process, so it was first undertaken only by monks and priests seeking to preserve sacred music for the church. The few collections of secular music that are extant were commissioned and owned by wealthy noblemen. Examples include the Squarcialupi Codex of Italian Trecento music and the Chantilly Codex of French Ars subtilior music. Hand copying persisted long after the invention of printing and music was widely disseminated in manuscript form well into the 18th century, both in personal copying and scribal publication.
All of this relates to the preservation of melodies, tunes and thoughts in lyrics, for learning, study and performance by others to an audience. Maybe even for a degree of immortality to some degree as in all recorded history.
When you read about Turlough O'Carolan ...
Turlough O'Carolan, also called Terence Carolan (born 1670, near Nobber, County Meath, Ireland, died March 25th, 1738, Alderford, County Roscommon), one of the last Irish harpist-composers and the only one whose songs survive in both words and music in significant number (about 220 of provable provenance are extant with an uncounted number apocryphally attributed).
The son of an iron founder, O'Carolan became blind from smallpox at the age of 18. He was befriended by a Mrs. MacDermott-Roe, the wife of his father's employer, who apprenticed him to a harper and supported him for the three years of his training,then gave him money, a guide, and a horse.As an itinerant harper, he travelled widely in Ireland. Although never considered a master performer, he was highly regarded as a
composer of songs and improvised verse. His tunes appeared widely in 18th-century collections.
you realise that the recording of music in printed form was quite often to do with the patronage of rich patrons, apparently he composed tunes for both protestant and catholic patrons. "Carolan bridges the gap between continental art music on the one hand, and the Gaelic harp and folk music on the other. At his best he wrote music that is distinctively Irish, yet has an international flavour as well."
Was O'Carolan the Elvis of his time, the poor boy made good? I guess many of the earlier harpers and musicians of the time were as good if not possibly better but maybe things like being blind focussed his desire to make music and maybe he was in the right pace at the right time?
Anyway, history aside, as technology has advanced, and the reproduction and storage of sound has got better, we are nowadays able to hear music as was performed at any time in written musical history and we can even make a guess at ancient music like that from the Seikilos epitaph.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seikilos_epitaphNowadays, music has truly become much more of a commodity, to be bought and sold and with that has come all sorts of practices designed to enrich some and therefore deny others. Scarcity at one time meant music was special. Many on here can probably remember purchasing music, browsing the record shops, the thrill of the new album or single. The advent of world-wide simple distribution has made music more mundane, less special to many peoples ears. "Well it's just music isn't it"
Another side-effect of music as a unit is that if a certain stylistic pattern seems to do well then obviously the desire is to make more of it to capitalise on the popularity and generate more money.
Just like other artistic endeavours, a value is placed on making music to generate an income as opposed to making music as a shared activity or personal entertainment. It has moved beyond learning, study, celebration and even entertainment and become a unit.
When music is reduced in this way then the consumer comes to expect there to be negligible cost to listen to anything they want. The model of patronage to support artists from the past has largely collapsed, in part because of the the success in allowing anybody to easily create it. The number of artists alone nowadays is huge. Potentially great for the consumer, but a headache for the artist who wants a career as a result of their efforts.
I suppose my point in this long ramble is that we are at a point in time where supply of 'the unit' has become the overriding factor in our part of the world. Ownership of the product to supply is more important than the art itself. The music business has truly become the music supply business. It has become a utility company piping into the world of the consumer the sounds it thinks people want to hear.
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June 19, 2016, 23:11:07