Why (not) pay for music?

Posted on by hukl

Introduction

For over a decade now the music industry is struggling. I don’t think that there is a single reason for that, but the rise of the internet certainly had the biggest impact on that negative trend in recent times.

In the 21st century it is easier than ever to copy vast amounts of data around the globe while preserving its quality.

Compared to the physical world, where it would take ages to copy hundreds of Tapes or CDs, copying the same amount of information digitally just takes a few minutes. Or as Cory Doctorow put it in this talk: »Copying data will only get easier«.

And because music is “freely” available, 24/7 around the world through the internet, a lot of people don’t even consider paying for music anymore.

The music industry is quick at putting the blame on filesharing. Others would say that its the fault of the music industry who failed, even after many years, to understand the internet and its users. They would constantly try to make it harder to copy music by using DRM and other defensive technologies rather than accepting the digital reality and trying to make it as easy as possible to listen, share and pay for music everywhere at any time.

They are still trying to apply the same business model of physical copies to a world where you can create a new virtual instance of your product instantly.

If anything, they should be happy about the digital age, rather than trying to fight it.

But of course its not that easy. Lets take a look at how the music industry actually works.

Music Industry, what is it good for?

The way it used to work was this: Employees of the record labels would constantly look for new promising artists – promising to produce and sell hit records. Then they would do basically the same thing that investors do for start-up companies, invest money without knowing whether they will get it back.

They would invest money so the artist can focus on the music, pay the rent, can buy decent gear, rent a proper rehearsal room, get into a good recording studio for the first single or album, organize a tour, organize radio airplay time, get them into festivals maybe even shoot a music video. In essence they would invest to improve and promote the artists so that eventually he/she/them will become so popular that people will buy enough CDs to make up for the initial investment plus additional profits.

You can guess that this kind of investment can easily grow to tens or hundreds thousands of dollars if you think about the salaries of the people doing the actual work inside the record label, plus the gear, plus production costs in a studio, making the physical records and distributing them etc etc.

Just like with other investments there is a huge risk involved. As a rough estimate lets say 9 out of 10 artists never get successful enough to recoup the investment and only 1 out of 10 is successful enough to pay for the losses of the nine others, plus its own investment costs and some extra profit.

Obviously the record labels would love to have more hits and they try everything they can to make it happen by deciding which single is going to be released first or arguing with the artist about whether the music is conforming enough with the taste of the »mainstream«.

Many customers have a more naive view on this whole operation. When they go into a store and buy a CD there is this romantic idea that most of the money will end up with the artist and that you could make a decent living just by selling a couple of thousand CDs. In reality however most of the money goes to all the middle men and women who are between the customer in the record store and the artist. The record label will keep most of the revenue until the initial investment is balanced. From a CD that sells for 10$ the artist might only get a few cents, if any.

In a good record deal for a new band the label will get about 85% of all the revenue. The artist will have to pay back all the expenses and production costs from the remaining 15% before the artist will get any money in their pockets.

With all this in mind you can imagine that even if you are quite successful after signing a record label deal, its likely that you end up with just a regular job afterwards. Bands like the Beatles, Stones, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Queen or artists like Bob Dylan, David Bowie, Billy Holliday, Janis Joplin or Madonna – these are actually super rare and extreme exceptions.

So signing a deal with record label does not mean that you’ve made it. You have to work really hard and you also need a good amount of luck to survive.

In the end you get to work with professionals, you are getting paid for making music, you will burn lots of money and you’re giving up some control over the creative process and also about copy and distribution rights of your own work.

Although that might sound a bit negative it can be quite fun and it is exactly what made all those big bands and artists so famous. It is just worth knowing that theses artists also pay for so many more commercially unsuccessful artists which may have made this one record which you hold so dear and which became the soundtrack of your life.

Another essential piece of the grand picture is the way music was primarily distributed. Television and radio were the two main channels for promoting new music.

A band from a small town would have a really hard time to reach more people with their music. If you’re unknown its hard to get into venues because people just would not pay to see you.

Instead you would try to get a record deal because they have a huge promotion network with all the radio and tv stations, sometimes on a global scale. If you send a demo tape to a label and they decide to sign you, what you really get is a massive multiplication of exposure beyond what you could ever achieve yourself in a reasonable amount of time.

For a long time radio and tv were the primary source for people to discover new music. If a regional radio station plays your song, thousands of people will listen to it. This kind of immediate exposure is almost priceless and I think that this is really the biggest benefit of signing a deal with a record label.

Now back to the present

These days the reality is different. Record labels still sign artists and invest a lot of money to promote them but if people like something, they just download it for free from the internet. End of the story … at least in the one of the music industry. Still this is happening. Its not a myth. People download music (among other things) for free if they can. Not all, but a significant amount.

Some won’t even download it illegally, instead they will just listen to music through streaming services like Spotify which are free to a certain extend and which yield so little profit to the labels or the artists that it is almost like downloading it for free. Maybe this will improve over time but right now its just a drop of water on a hot stone.

There are also a lot of people buying music online. In fact digital is the only growing division at any record label but compared to the good old CD times it is still on a much lower level and does not yield enough money to compensate for the declining CD sales.

Even though most labels tried to cut back the production costs they still take a huge risk when they sign a new artist to ever get the money back. As a result the label deals now try to squeeze as much money out of the artist as possible by taking revenue shared of all the artists commercial activity.

Just as a reference you can expect that a new band today has production costs around 60.000 Euro for their first album on an “indie” label. With the current market it is almost impossible to get that money back if the album is not a huge success.

As an artist you are basically on your own, now more then ever.

Everybody in the industry, the labels, the promoters, the radio and tv stations, even though they get paid to help you, are to afraid to take any risks. They will still take your money though.

The only solution the labels came up with on their own is to criminalize the listener and potential customers by restricting the access to the music and to sue people for ridiculous amounts of money.

What is the solution then?

Independence. Take as much control over your work as possible and do as much as you can on your own.

Why? Because nobody in the world cares more about your music than you do!

The biggest cost for the label is the production and the promotion of your music – these days however you can do most of it on your own.

Step 0

Make music. Depending on how many people like it you can get really far on your own if you follow those advices instead of waiting for the record label magic to happen.

Step 1

Educate yourself. Buy books about recording and mixing music. By now there are so many great books available from professional producers which will give you enough knowledge to create good recordings on your own. When you are rehearsing you are also practicing your recording and production skills. Don’t wait for anybody to come and do the job for you. Do it yourself.

Look on youtube for tutorials, how to’s, tips and tricks from experienced people. It is all out there.

Yes you will need some money for equipment and yes you will need to invest a lot of time but if you’d sign a record label deal now it would take months if not years until your record is out and you’d waste a lot of time thinking »Oh I have a record deal and people are paid to take care of my stuff« when in fact these people rarely do anything in your interest. Over time you may spend 3.000 or 5.000€ or $ for various recording gear but it is not wasted. You get to keep the gear and the experience you gained along the way.

Step 2

Don’t wait for a record deal to sell your music. A lot of artists are afraid to put out their music on their website or on bandcamp because if the get a chance for a record deal the labels won’t like that. Do the opposite! Embrace the internet, put your music out if you feel like it. If you made something great and you want to share it with the world now then do it.

Don’t even care to get on streaming platforms in the beginning. They are all more or less under the control of the labels and you would be the luckiest person in the world if you can buy a box of beer from the revenues after a year or two.

Why? Lets say you pay 10$ for Spotify and you only listen to one artist for a whole month then Rihanna, Lady Gaga and Beyonce and all the other super stars will get 99.999999% of your 10$. Its because all the money, be it advertisement or subscriptions is thrown in a huge bucket and divided by play count. Its a system where you need to be big already to profit. Otherwise it will take you a looooong loooong time to get even one single dollar out of this model.

Step 3

Communicate with your fans. Have a blog, a website or a facebook page where people can follow what you are doing. Let them comment on your work and reply to feedback that you get. Make videos about yourself. Give people on the internet a way to get to know you and to relate to you. This is crucial if you want earn their support. Be good, be yourself and be honest.

Step 4

Provide multiple ways to support you financially. Put your music on bandcamp or similar platforms for a reasonable price and always allow to pay more. Don’t ask for it and don’t beg for it. Just enable people who love what you do and who want to support you to do so. Also offer a way to give you money that is not necessarily related to a release. If you have your own blog or website make use of services like paypal, flattr and centup but don’t push it on people – just provide channels for people who want to support you.

Step 5

Promote yourself. Don’t rely on other people to do that. For example you could use facebook ads to show people who like similar bands information about your music. You can try it out for really small money and you will point more people to your work. Show it to friends and fans and make it easy for them to share it via all kinds of social networks to their friends. Ask people kindly to listen to your stuff and share it, retweet it, like it or even promote it if they like it. Sending an email, writing a facebook or blog post is free.

Try to play on small festivals, play on open stages, play for friends, play on the street – get as much exposure on your own. In the beginning you can’t play clubs until you pay everybody off including the audience. So start small. If people like what they hear the will tell other people about it.

Step 6

Think for yourself and don’t just follow blindly these advices. Think about what you can do what the labels can’t do or are afraid to do.

Step 7

Talk about all this with people around you and help others get start by sharing your experience.

All those steps won’t help you of course if you don’t music which at least some people like other than that you’ll be much better off this way. Also realize that this is not a recipe for instant success. It will still take a long time to call yourself successful but you gain much from it.

If 3 people buy a song for 1$ each you will have made 3$ more than a signed artist after selling 1000 downloads on iTunes

Why pay for music?

Lastly, why should anyone pay for music? To support the artist in the most direct way possible. Give money to the artists you like so they can buy equipment and other essential things they need to make music. Give them money so they can make more music for you and are able to stay independant from the music industry.

Recommended Literature

Request for Feedback

It took me a while to write all of this down and I probably forgot to mention some things and made mistakes along the way. Please let me know if you have any feedback, suggestions for improvement, additional literature or spelling corrections.

Orange Micro Terror

Posted on by hukl

Last christmas I bought an Orange Micro Terror. First of all I always wanted to have an Orange amp and second of all I read and watched quite a lot of really positive reviews on the web. Best of all it is super affordable. Its been a source of constant joy for the last couple of months and I think for this kind of money you can hardly get any tube amp that is more awesome. You can even hook it up to a 4×12″ speaker cab! You won’t get clean tones in this scenario anymore but its definitely loud enough to play through a band rehearsal thanks to the 20W transistor output stage.

There is only one potential problem and that is the external power supply which is cheap china hardware. Mine induced a static hum into the amp which was super annoying. I wrote Orange an email and they’ve sent me a replacement unit free of charge which fixed the problem.

Eventhough I’m still quite an amateur on the guitar I made a short demonstration video attempting to show how versatile and good sounding this little metal box really is. It was also a good opportunity to test whether I could do similar gear review videos with my current setup. First conclusion: iPhone video autofocus is tricky – made the whole thing a bit blurry.

Demo of Orange Micro Terror through self made Cabinet from hukl on Vimeo.

The audio was not post processed. In the end I’m adding in the delay pedal.

As always I’m happy about any meaningful feedback.

The equipment:

How to record your band (rehearsal)

Posted on by hukl

It doesn’t matter whether you are just a bunch of people jamming together on a somewhat regular schedule or if you are in an ambitious band project, recording yourself will help to improve and motivate you. With recordings of your rehearsal sessions you can review the mistakes or the awesome parts you’ve played. You keep track on your progress over time because you have previous recordings as point of reference. You’re also able to create your own jam tracks for practicing at home and on the fly you might just as well create your first demos which can open all kinds of doors for you or your band.

Many books or instructors tell you to record yourself but you have to do it at least once until you really understand why. Some might say that they don’t want to record themselves because they think they are not good enough yet and they will feel embaressed and make peoples ears bleed. Do it anyway! Listening to your mistakes will give you a huge motivation boost to improve. You will take a shortcut finding out what rocks and what sucks. Its an immediate feedback loop.

I went to the same process and I thought it might be helpful to some people to describe the setup I’m using for our secret little band project, which I’m extremely happy with.

General Setup

We have two guitars, one bass and one drum kit. We record with 4 microphones through an 8 channel audio interface which is connected to my laptop.

Mics

We are currently using Shure’s SM57 for recording the guitar amps and the drum kit and an AKG D 112 for the bass. The SM57 is a professional but reasonably priced dynamic microphone which is very versatile. You can use it for all kinds of instruments and even for recording vocals. It is rock solid and its likely to last decades. The SM57 is commonly used for recording guitar amps and parts of drum kits.

Recording the drum kit with only one microphone is good enough for now. We put the mic about 30cm in front of the kit, about 1m above the ground, pointed down about 45° towards the kick drum. For now that is good enough but I will keep experimenting which position is best for the single mic setup.

The SM57 and the AKG D 112 are put directly, as close as possible without touching, in front of the speaker.

Audio Interface

We are using a Focusrite Saffire Pro 40 as audio interface with 8 microphone preamps. I chose the Saffire Pro 40 because I think it offers the best value in its price class. The 8 preamps sound fantastic, it has two headphone outputs, great built quality and enough flexibility for our needs. Look up some reviews on the web and you will come to a similar conclusion.

Software

Right now I’m using Reaper on my MacBook Pro to record. First I tried GarageBand and it is actually a pretty decent tool to start with but its limitations annoyed me pretty quickly. There are not many affordable alternatives out there. ProTools from Avid and Cubase from Steinberg are industry standards but they cost quite a bit of money.

Logic from Apple is also an industry standard and more affordable but there was no demo version and I didn’t feel like investing 179€ for a piece of software without trying it first.

People on twitter recommended to give Reaper a try which is available for OSX and Windows. There is a fully functional 60 days demo version and they offer a fully functional discounted license for only 60$. I was so happy with Reaper that I bought the discounted licence way before the demo expired.

Eventhough the UI may not be as nice and polished as in other DAWs (digital audio workstations) it is capable of delivering professional results.

An even cheaper approach

Instead of buying a 460€ audio interface, 4 mics for another 400€ and some software you can have a much cheaper, decent and quick solution for recording your band.

Just buy a Zoom H-4N. Its a portable 4 channel recorder with 2 built-in mics and 2 XLR jacks for 2 additional mics, like the Shure or AKG.

You can then put the recorder in the middle of the room and just record stereo. This alone will be sufficient for what I have described in the first paragraphs. The two additional mics can be used for lyrics or whatever else needs special attention. Its less stuff to carry around and to set up.

Conclusion

It does not matter if you use the same setup I have described or something completely different, just record yourself!

How to set up a basic HTTP API with Erlang in 10 Minutes

Posted on by hukl

I have recorded a short screencast, demonstrating how easy it is to set up an Erlang application with a HTTP API using Test Driven Development.

If you can’t see the embedded video go to vimeo directly: https://vimeo.com/59832641

Make sure you have a recent version of erlang and rebar installed when trying it yourself.

Get Erlang through your standard package/port system. In this screencast I used R15B01.

Get Rebar from Github and follow the instructions: http://github.com/basho/rebar

You can find the code on Github

Web Typography

Posted on by hukl
There is no reason nor excuse why websites should still get away with bad typography and therefore bad readability. Applying some basic rules and using proper fonts can yield a big improvement without much work.

For me typography is about aesthetics and readability at the same time. It is a form of art as letters alone, without other abstract shapes involved, can form a design. The fonts themselves can be considered art as they exist in millions of different shapes and styles. Some of the most recognized brands in the world use only letters for their logos. I’ve seen people fall in love with a certain typeface or even just a single letter, including myself.

But there is also a very functional approach to typography. »Form follows function« is a famous quote by the american sculptor Horatio Greenough which can also be applied to text and readability. Reading a book or a long article on the web has to be as efficient and pleasant to the eye as possible. If you can read a long text very fast and almost effortless it is an indicator for good typography. If you have to focus on the letters and words, if you accidentally skip lines or read the same line twice, if your eyes get tired while reading even a short paragraph, you are experiencing bad typography.

Fortunately, it is not hard to achieve good readability as all the essential knowledge that was acquired in the past centuries has been distilled to a countless number of books and articles on the web. Yet it is shocking to see how many books, articles and websites with bad typography are still being published. In the web this is easy to fix, there is no excuse. Edit and upload the stylesheet, reload and review the effect of your changes. In CSS you don’t have all the tools and tricks available like in desktop publishing software but it is absolutely sufficient. Lets look at some basic rules, fonts and tools to improve web typography.

Structure, Length, Line Height and Size

Structure is about breaking a long piece of text into smaller parts by various means. It is very annoying to read a 5000 words article in one block so the first step is to create paragraphs that are neither to long nor to short and which group sementic blocks of content together. This sounds very obvious but I see many bad examples of this on the web and its easy to fix. Using commas, quotation marks, headlines, sub headlines, block quotes is also helpful for structuring the text for the readers eye. The distance of two structural elements should be greater than the line hight. When experimenting, rather use more distance than less. If things are looking to narrow, tight, crowded – try more distance between the elements.

The lines of the paragraphs should not be too long nor too short. Usually the rule of thumb is to have between 50 and 80 characters per line but this is not typography law. Pick a good book from your bookshelf or a website which you remember being pleasant to read and count the characters on a couple of lines. They will be around those numbers. For short / special paragraphs of text, longer and shorter lines are acceptable.

The wrong line height can seriously harm the readability of your text. If the lines are too narrow you will skip lines or start reading the same line twice. Basically, you lose track of the lines which you’ve just read and can’t find the next one. If the lines are too far apart, the same happens and the eyes will have to travel a longer distance which makes them tired more easily. For paragraphs you can start using a line height of x 1.5. If your font size is 16px, a line height of 24px is a good first approximation. From there, fine tune as required. Headlines usually need less line height.

There is no definite rule which font size is the correct one for which application. The best way to find a good font size for long text, regardless if its for print or screen, is to create three variations of font size, of the same text, in the desired layout and putting them side by side. Now you read the same paragraph on all three variations, in the typical reading position of the given medium, one after another and your eyes will tell you which size is better in terms of readability. Like I said in the beginning, the faster and effortless you can read it, the better it is. Obviously this is highly subjective which is why you should also ask a friend, your mum or whoever else is around, to do the same thing and let them tell you which they think is best. This can be a decision where you have to compromise between aesthetics and readability.

Text alignment

Exactly seven years ago I wrote a blog post called »Typography and the Web« which was mostly about text alignment. In the past seven years nothing much changed here which is why I will make this short: Do not use justified text for paragraphs. Please read my old blog post if you want a more elaborate answer. Just use the alignment which is natural to your language, which means for all languages that are read from left to right: use left aligned text.

Choosing the right font for the job

This is something you can decide on your own. Serif fonts are generally a good choice for long texts because the serifs will make it easier to read as it is easier for the eyes to distinguish the characters and follow them along a line. If you don’t want a serif font for whatever reason, this is not a problem though. There are many, very good and readable sans serif fonts that are absolutely suitable for long texts.

Times New Roman, Georgia, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, Courier – those fonts dominated the web from the late 1990’s up until the early 21st century. They were preinstalled on Macs and PCs and could be used anywhere without paying royalties. The font distributors would not allow people to host a font on their own web server, to use them on their own website, because anybody could then just download them. Those license / royalty issues and an elaborate debate about different font formats prevented other fonts to be used on the web, but luckily those days are over. The format debate came to a conclusion and the font distributors found licensing models that would allow people to finally chose any font they want. You can buy web fonts from almost any big font foundry directly but I would also recommend to check out myfonts.com which is a web shop for fonts with a large library from multiple foundries.

There are two models to achieve font individuality. The first one is that you find a font you like and buy it. Then you put it on your web server and reference it in your stylesheet. It gives you full control, its straight forward but it is also a bit less flexible if you haven’t decided yet which fonts you like best.

The other option is to use a web service which is hosting the fonts for you. You pay a monthly fee and can try all the fonts available from the given web service. Usually these services offer free accounts which are limited by the size of the font library. Nonetheless this is way more flexible than the self hosted option described above. To use them you have to sign up, embed some code in your website and then you can use their fonts. It could not be simpler than that. The downside is that you now rely on a 3rd party service. If you want access to all the fonts, you have to pay a monthly/yearly fee. Its usually not expensive but definitely more than just paying once. I encourage you to try it out and see if it works for you.

The most prominent font web service is Typekit which is owned by adobe. It is widely used and has a very convenient interface. Another alternative is FontDeck which I haven’t used personally but is worth checking out. Lastly there is Google Web Fonts which does the same thing but completely for free. For free also means that it is really hard to find a good quality font there – but it is not impossible and especially when you are starting to experiment it might be just right for you.

Now seriously, how to find the right font?

With millions of available fonts it is easy to get completely lost. I caught myself countless times browsing through the available fonts at myfonts.com or any other big foundry. The problem is that they are presented out of context which makes it hard to judge. The font may looks pretty on myfonts.com but once you buy it and use it on your website it may look completely inappropriate. Usually you can enter some custom text and adjust the font size but still, you will pick the wrong font this way many times.

If you have little experience with typography its best to go by something you already know. Keep your eyes open and if you see a font that you really like in a similar context, find out what it is and try it. This is where services like typekit shine. Another option is to look for »Best fonts of 20xx«, »Most popular fonts of 20xx« or similar collections on myfonts.com. That can be a good starting point to find a good font for yourself. Myfonts also has a tool on their website which helps you to identify fonts by uploading a picture. Its called »What The Font!« and I’ve used it many times to figure out the name of a font which I liked.

In the end I would approach the search for a font like this: Lets say you have a weblog which has a good amount of text. First focus on finding a font for the content. Look for readability rather than aesthetics. Some fonts have super nice character shapes but in a paragraph they look just too quirky and odd. Once you have a good font for the paragraphs you can start looking for a headline font. Either its the same, just bold or black. Maybe even in another style like sans serif, if the text font was serif. Or a completely different font that can focus less on readability. If you want you can have yet another font for the interface elements on your weblog.

The Ultimate Webfont Playground

There is yet another web service for evaluating different fonts on the web with different sizes, line heights etc. The service is called Typecast and I like it a lot! Once you sign up you can create new projects which are based on common website use cases like blogs, news sites etc. In this project you can compose text with any font in their extensive library, play with font sizes, line heights, colors, styles etc. You can edit everything live and in place. It is so extremely nice to work with that I have to mention it in this article. For me this was the most helpful tool to decide on the various aspects of typography of this blog. The service offers much more but it has a downside – it is not for free. Again I recommend that you create a trial account and see for yourself what they have to offer. If I was still earning my money with graphic design I would probably use this service on a daily basis.

What About Free Fonts?

The short answer is: There is nothing wrong with free fonts, go ahead and use them. The long answer is that most free fonts are not as good as commercial fonts. It is extremely hard to create a font where all the distances between all the letter combinations are optimal, where all characters fit visually together, which are easily readable in many different situations, which include non-latin characters for foreign languages which look good as well and so on and so forth. Its a work of months, sometimes even years. This is why some fonts cost money, because people spent significant amounts of their lifetime to create them. It is their job, their profession. Now free fonts can work for some use cases super well but usually they just lack a certain quality compared to those commercial fonts. If you pay attention and invest a bit of time you can find free fonts which are so good you wont ever notice a difference.

Often you can find free versions of commercial fonts as free samples. Usually it is just the regular version and you have to pay for the italic or bold one. But still, if you get a commercial text font for free this is perfect. On myfonts.com you can get these free sample fonts. In fact I got the font for my blog as a free sample from myfonts.com and then later I bought the other styles, then I bought the sans serif version, then some more variations … but you don’t have to go that route and just stick with the free version.

Conclusion

With the basic rules in the first part of this article, it should be possible for everyone to evaluate their own website and improve the readability and appearance if necessary. Question everything, inform friends, website owners if you think their typography needs improvements.

Take a look at the tools that can help you improve and find the right fonts for the job.

If you find spelling mistakes and other errors please let me know. I’m looking forward to your feedback and questions!

Meta

The terms font and typeface are used almost synonymously these days but there is a difference. A typeface can maybe described as the design and a font is its implementation. In the old days you would get a set of metal blocks with letters on them when you bought a font, today you get a piece of software, a file.

I’m using the font Calluna and CallunaSans for this blog. The SMYCK font is the Advert Light.