Making Music For 2014

For my last blog I wanted to focus on something near to my heart and will have a serious effect on my future employment, or lack of.

Music as well as film are going through serious growing pains. From the very beginning of the internet, people have found ways to use this new tool to steal/share music and films. As you might imagine, this has a detrimental effect on the creation of new music and funding of new projects in both music and film. Luckily for film, there is still a strong movie going audience that brings millions of dollars to studios by watching the movie in the theater. The problem is music doesn't have that sort of pull anymore.

Unfortunately for the music industry, most people don't need/want a physical copy of their music anymore. All they want is a file with song on it and that's it. Now don't get me wrong, I don't hold much sympathy for the industry, it dug its own grave years ago, but my point remains, that for the artists left in the money grabbing frenzy of the industry, making it anywhere in this business has just become exponentially more difficult.

Now, this grim scene does have a few rays of sunshine showing through. With the constant flow of new technology making it easier and more affordable for musicians to produce themselves, leaving the large record companies with a second problem to consider.

With this new found power musicians have moved to alternative distribution methods to get their product to the public. Websites like bandcamp.com and soundcloud.com are a few of the free sites that allow musicians to create their own hub for sales of digital as well as physical music formats, t-shirts, and whatever else they can slap together. This level of independence is huge for musicians who don't want to get trapped by the "loan sharks" in suits.

I believe this movement towards independent music creation has the ability for you as a musician or as a music lover to grow and support acts with the assurance that you are giving your money directly to the person who needs it.

As someone who aspires to create and produce music for a living, this new development in music is scary, but very inspiring. The power to build your own brand has been given back to the artist and I think can only prove beneficial for music as a whole.

I don't mean to get sappy and preachy. This is just something that I feel can only grow with time and through people spreading the word. So as someone who seeks to benefit from this new wave, I feel like I should take some part in trying get the message out to anyone who will turn their iPod down for a minute.