Selling Music

Selling Music

It takes a certain kind of arrogance to write music for others - after all, if I write it, one must listen to it, right? That's somewhat of a non-issue for the art, since the (true) musician writes for his pleasure above all others' pleasure. But in today's society where it's almost an exasperation to pay a whole U.S. dollar to download a song instantly, it's safe to say no one actually cares about what I write.

That's a shame, too, because selling music is less of an exercise in profiteering and more of an exercise on sharing an expensive hobby. I rarely record my music anymore. Why? Because I would never be able to sell it. It's hardly a source of income. Should I write a whole album of 10 tracks, record every instrument myself, edit the songs myself, mix the songs myself, and produce the tracks myself, it would take me around 200 hours of work on my (most current) limited hardware, which consists of the following:

• PC with Linux Multimedia Studio, Jokosher audio software, and Audacity audio software
  
• M-Audio FastTrack USB recording interface
• 12-track Peavey Unity series stereo mixer with phantom power
• Soundtech S20 125-watt powered mixer and dual speaker cabinet PA system
• Yamaha DGX505 digital keyboard
• 1985 Ibanez Proline 1440PL solidbody electric guitar
• 2010 Epiphone Les Paul Special SC solidbody electric guitar
• Dean Performer E acoustic-electric guitar
• Crate V18 18-watt Class-A tube combo amplifier
• Peavey Vypyr 15 15-watt solid state practice amplifier
• Roland Micro Cube 2-watt battery-powered COSM-equipped amplifier
• Variety of cables, microphones, and adapters

This isn't cheap. In order to cover the cost of all this, I'd have to sell the album at a reasonable ten bucks and sell around three hundred copies just to cover the equipment costs - and forget the time spent creating such a project.

This is a lot of work, and while I've wanted to record an album for quite some time, I've determined never to record a song until it's absolutely ready for it. When I do, I want it to be of the highest quality and released as cheaply as possible (there are already independent record labels that release all their music freely for download).

But the point is this: recording music is not a cheap, whimsical affair. There's work - even hard, physical work - in getting the job done. This is just from the perspective of a guy who owns an anemic half-studio that can really only record a decent podcast. For those that do this for a living, the studio may have hundreds upon hundreds of instruments and amplifiers and pedals and microphones littering a small, cramped, hot room. It could take hours - even days - to set up the equipment properly to get an accurate recording. Beyond that, there's time spent slaving under the monitors, tweaking settings here and modifying sound waves there. Even after an artist or group can play something nearly flawlessly live, there is much preparation and work to be done in an expensive studio to turn it into the radio-friendly track everyone is hooked on.

Think twice about music piracy. Respect the music you love and pay for it. Besides, that 3-minute-long track you did not want to spend a dollar for probably took 10 hours to write and arrange and 20 more to record and produce, to the tune of over 50,000 bucks in a high-end studio. It's the least you can do.