Why is this myth still rampant among musicians

mitchiemasha said:
Huh!!! if your music is good, that's why people start talking about you.
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So you've never talked to someone about music you hate? Music that shocked you? Some specific line in a lyric or some concept or something else. No you obviously only talk about music when you like it, that would be the only reason ever /sarcasm

mitchiemasha said:
Obviously people have to talk about you in order for other people to discover you, lol!!!
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You say that as though I havnt been saying that for the entire thread and had resistance for it.
 
Desire Inspires said:
I have zero songs on Youtube and generate royalties every quarter. Youtube does not pay for music. I go to where the money is, not to where the popularity is. I am not popular or internet famous. Youtube is useless to me. I focus on music licensing. The people that want my music use it and I get royalties as a result. Nothing complicated about that formula at all.
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Yeah we get it you dislike YouTube, how has that got anything to do with this thread?

So popularity doesn't matter? If you're making a decent amount of money you're popular within the segment of people you licence your music to I.e. you make them talk amongst themselves about you.
 
mitchiemasha said:
if you make good music... It will sell. It might not sell as much as you want as there is more (like you say) to be a big seller but, it will sell.
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That's true but I want people to recognise the fact that the reason you make any money in music is provoking people to talk about your music.

Let's say you post music to whatever platform online where ultimately you want to sell it, if no one talks about it the total views you could get without any promotion would be the total number that stumble on it randomly which would be pretty low, maybe a couple hundred in about a year?

With promotion you put in money to get, lets say about 10,000 page views and out of those 10,000 maybe anywhere from 10-100 people buy. You would make a loss unless the initial 10,000 shared your music and the views multiplied.

The only way to make money in a scenario where no one talks about your music is by putting in leg work and getting lucky with people willing to promote your music for free. In which case it would just be trading time for money and after the promotion and initial revenue you would be stuck in the same position.

That being said its impossible to make music that has zero reason to share it. That doesn't mean you shouldn't recognise that being the main factor in any success.
 
Prime example: ALS research, everyone would agree this is a good charity? It was completely under funded compared to others until the ice bucket challenge went viral and people started talking about it.

Good does not equal monetary success
 
Olie said:
So you've never talked to someone about music you hate? Music that shocked you? Some specific line in a lyric or some concept or something else. No you obviously only talk about music when you like it, that would be the only reason ever /sarcasm
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That is a very good point, lets expand. Theirs a few more points it brings up...

1. This hugely 'popular' music that sucks will still be of an extreme high quality.
2. Lots of people, if we think about it, actually get enjoyment out of hating. Hitting up old Bieber records, etc just to remind themselves how bad it is... Again, the quality in production is still leagues ahead of many of our abilities.

You say that as though I havnt been saying that for the entire thread and had resistance for it.
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I hadn't noticed that was the point being resisted. I personally was only resisting the impossible to make money part.

If someone is good and they can't make money, they either don't want to or their not using their noggin right. Many don't want the hyper fame, the huge price tag of work load that comes with maintaining it etc. They prefer it as a hobby and like what ever their day job may be. it comes to whether we are talking about talented musicians or producers. Some guys just want to jam on their day off, they could be uber talented but could they record a pro quality, high quality track, mix and master it... NO! Could they afford that... Possibly but a label is only willing to pay the bills for someone who they know and trust to fulfil the contract, someone who is willing to sacrifice every last thing they have in maintaining the 'hype train' in order to know everyones bills will be paid, these guys have wages to pay too. It's not evil, its right!

This guy could quite easily quit his day job and work in music, with out fame but theirs a good chance his hours will be all messed up, he won't make as much and be over worked, it will be bad, especially with all the temptations readily available.


I wouldn't believe any one was arguing against the importance of promotion and marketing... However a lot of the time it can happen naturally, it just evolves through the network of friends you develop. Also someone willing to put their own funds savings into a project, shines brightly to others looking to invest in an artist/producer etc. It shows this guy is willing and wont become a wasted effort. The music industry is for a special breed and it will chew up, spit out the best of men, women too.
 
Its not a myth that if you make good music it will sell. The people who think its a myth cant understand that they are not the only ones that can determine what good is. Music doesn't have to create a deep emotional experience or be an intricate work of art to be good. I certainly doesn't have to fit in one persons small box of what is considered good. It only has to be appreciate by someone.. If many people appreciate it then it sells to many people.
 
I think a common misconception is equating the music with its marketing:

The quality of the music can be argued into subjectivity. Any qualitative argument would need quantitative qualifiers (it would need to be measurable).

The quality of the music's marketing can be quantified. For marketing quality, we use things like: reach, interest, spread, distribution, and sales.

I think, that the easiest way to qualify music is by the artist's intentions. If the artist was successful in fulfilling his intentions, then his art can at least be deemed "successful."
 
shelyksit said:
Its not a myth that if you make good music it will sell. The people who think its a myth cant understand that they are not the only ones that can determine what good is. Music doesn't have to create a deep emotional experience or be an intricate work of art to be good. I certainly doesn't have to fit in one persons small box of what is considered good. It only has to be appreciate by someone.. If many people appreciate it then it sells to many people.
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Imagine if every person who stumbled across your music highly appreciated it but never spoke about it to a soul, would your music sell?

Perhaps to the miniscule amount of people who had the money, dont steal music and happened to stumble across it... So 10 people a year?
 
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SonicAddict said:
I think a common misconception is equating the music with its marketing:

The quality of the music can be argued into subjectivity. Any qualitative argument would need quantitative qualifiers (it would need to be measurable).

The quality of the music's marketing can be quantified. For marketing quality, we use things like: reach, interest, spread, distribution, and sales.

I think, that the easiest way to qualify music is by the artist's intentions. If the artist was successful in fulfilling his intentions, then his art can at least be deemed "successful."
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That's personal success vs financial.

I'm talking about financial, its easy enough to reach personal success.
 
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Desire Inspires said:
​All I know is that the best music is the music that is popular. It is popular because it is good and it is good because it is popular. No other way to see it, say nas.
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terrible way of thinking, pop music now factors to the lowest common denominator a lot it is empty and shallow and i don't understand how you can't see that
 
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EnigmaticHipster said:
terrible way of thinking, pop music now factors to the lowest common denominator a lot it is empty and shallow and i don't understand how you can't see that
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But who are you to determine that the millions of people that enjoy popular music are the lowest common denominator? Are you really making value-based judgements about people based on the music that they listen to?
 
EnigmaticHipster said:
terrible way of thinking, pop music now factors to the lowest common denominator a lot it is empty and shallow and i don't understand how you can't see that
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People said this a lot many years ago, they might of been slightly right... Today no. At least not in the UK. Being a DJ what I can tell you is most, nearly all the songs that end up high charting are huge in the bars and pubs first. People don't just like this sh!t because they are force fed it.

Yes a lot of marketing and prep goes into timing the promo and general release but often off the first play one can tell this is going to do well. If people haven't heard it yet and loving it that speaks loudly. Especially the WTF is this reactions, 30 seconds later, loving it!!!

Taste is relative, subjective and who is anyone to tell everyone else it is their taste that is bad.
 
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This is a logical fallacy.

Music that sells is of high quality does not equal if you make quality music it will sell.



Crows are black and they fly does not mean that if something is black and flies it is a crow.
 
mitchiemasha said:
it will sell, it just might not sell in quantity. Unless of course the artist isn't selling it in the first place.
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What other way can music sell apart from in quantity exactly? I'll mention this point again, I've heard music that has clearly been made well in any objective way I could measure it that had literally 100 views on YouTube. That equates to about zero sales.
 
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