Josh Smith - a great honest post

Dave_Mc

guitarfishbay said:

CDs will be dead within a decade, or close to.

Kids don't have anything to play them on, a large amount of computers and laptops don't even have CD drives, my mates courtesy car doesn't even have a CD player in it and that'll probably end up being a thing going forward.

CDs aren't a solution to musician earnings for the future, digital could play a part but it's not looking likely that recordings will have much value going forward, beyond allowing hardcore fans to pay a higher price via choice. The low price high volume sales approach won't work if most of the audience ends up streaming instead

Yeah probably. He was (and I agree) just making the point that some people might buy CDs at a reasonable price, and that would net them a lot more money than streaming. Saying, "People won't buy CDs" when they're too expensive might be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Granted- they still might not be cheap enough to compete with streaming (I don't stream, so I'm probably speaking from a position of ignorance).

Plus I mean they said vinyl was dead years ago. They have vinyl in supermarkets now.

shaunm said:

Dave_Mc said:

shaunm said:

UnclePsychosis said:

Streaming services make money for the labels but not for any of the musicians (except for the global megastars). 

If you want to support a band or artists you have to buy their cds, merchandise and gig tickets. Streaming income is so small it might as well not exist. 

The problem for artists now is that streaming sites offer a bloody great deal to the consumer. There is also pretty much an entire generation who have got used to the idea that you either download stuff for free or you get unlimited streams for £10 a month. It's going to be very hard to convince those people to start paying £10 a cd. 

Very true, it won't change now. Let's face it we were getting ripped off in HMV and the like for years. I remember paying £18 in the late 90's for the Band of Gypsys album. 

There is a happy medium though. £5/8 for an album isn't a lot of money. If I like the artist then I should support them.

Bingo, agreed 100%. I remember paying money for CDs in HMV and the like at about the same time that I'd cringe at now for being too expensive, let alone with almost 20 years of inflation. According to the bank of England calculator (which only goes up to 2016, so it'd actually be a little more than this), £20 (and I did pay that, and even a bit more, for a few albums) in 1998 is £32.30 today. £32 for a CD?

£5, though, would be fine. In fact I just bought a couple of CDs where I paid that (slightly more actually).

Want to buy another? Ha

lol

HarrySeven

Chalky said:

Josh Smith has the usual naive view that simply being good at something means you can earn money from it.  Simply not true.

Youtube is overloaded with plenty of people who are very good at things but who can't make much money from it.

Josh also sounds like he thinks he Should make money from his playing and that he Deserves to, and that life is being Unfair.  If he thinks like that then he's a twat.

Wisdom duly awarded.

Danny1969

Every time I see Buddy Wittington something else has been cut from the band to keep the touring cost down, no keyboard player, then different bass player ........ and Buddy is an unbelievable player who also writes cool witty songs. If that guy ain't making much playing the Blues then I doubt anyone else can these days

Selling music these days is hard, touring original material pays a pittance. Even on a fairly big festival the pay can be dire. 
Thankfully though there's still a good earn for the covers whores like myself

PonchoGreg

I think the comparison with someone like, say, John Mayer is apt (bearing in mind the yuuuge element of luck inherent to success in life in general, and probably even more so in art).

Both are really, really proficient at playing the guitar, and especially the blues. Mayer was massively influenced by SRV as a teen, he could have easily spent the rest of his life/career playing in that style, convincingly. Would he have had the success he's had by starting with straight blues covers and/or original material but based on the old 12-bar, "woke up this morning" formula?

Hell no. He started with touchy-feely acoustic songwriter stuff, although one could argue the guitar work behind it was always solid and there were flashes of "hmm, that guy is good" in there. Whether you like that stuff or not, it was catchy and it did catch on. That enabled him to, later, indulge in the bluesman fantasy with the JM Trio. That was awesome and guitar geeks always pined for more after that, but he didn't do more and for good reason in my opinion. Instead he went on to release what I assume is his most successful record to date, Continuum. That's defiantly not blues-focused, instead blending a bunch of genres, and I would argue that was him at the peak of his guitar-playing powers. No cliche blues stuff (bar one track and that was more of a Fleetwood Mac hommage), no endless solos, just catchy riffs, tasteful licks and arrangements, etc. But all based around songs.

Which brings us right back to the "guitar heroes" of yesteryear - once the initial awesomeness of hearing a new twist on the blues, played faster and with more distortion by white dudes, wore off, I'd say the subsequent stars worked their guitar magic in a wider context. Even the more recent revival of minimalist blues-based stuff like the White Stripes or Black Keys took it somewhere different to the old-school stuff.

Anyway, massive roundabout way of saying I'm not surprised people would struggle to make a living playing vanilla blues in this day and age, even at a mind-boggingly proficient level. Bearing in mind I love classic blues stuff and it's most of what I play

Teetonetal

I always recall the Andertons interview with Jack Garrett where he binned his first record as it was a boring blues affair. Went away came out with something new and has been a huge success. 

You can only reinvent a wheel so many times.