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raindance-rob
Average Member
United Kingdom
194 posts
Joined: Aug, 2007
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 Posted - 2007/12/20 : 20:31:47
iv been into hardcore for 13 years u'v beaten me by 3 years lol
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NeXuS
Advanced Member
United States
1,627 posts
Joined: Nov, 2004
81 hardcore releases
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Posted - 2007/12/20 : 22:21:24
quote:
Originally posted by raindancerob:
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Comeon raindancerob dont clutter and already long-ass thread with useless posts...
I fully understand where your coming from luweiqd, alot of the money made in the music industry these days are not only from music but merchandise & tours. The talent is out there but unfortunately to get a decent income from anything other than the music itself you have to have a name for yourself, meaning the ravers know you and will come out to your events. Most of the talent is running more "underground" than the big labels and with our already limited fan base its hard to get people's names & music heard.
It seems to me things need to change drastically to match the times we live in, where we can basically get anything off the net for free if we look hard enough. I have not downloaded a single song illegaly since I was probably 13 years old (Ive had some bad expriences with p2p & Im a huge supporter of buying your music).
Downloading is never going to stop, we arn't going to be able to manipulate somthing so massive to our advatage BUT we CAN manipulate ourselves and our scene to our advantage. p2p networks are an amazing way to advertise yourself, people have become "internet" famous over the weekend because of these p2p networks.
Some things other artists have done is flood the net with tracks edited from the original that they feel ok about people sharing. That in turn builds their fan-base which could get more traffic to their site or recordlabel site who just might purchase and item or two that they cannot get through the net...
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nrXic
Junior Member
Canada
117 posts
Joined: Feb, 2002
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Posted - 2007/12/21 : 11:27:38
I'm glad Kevin Energy brought this up. I know it's not the first time, but any added introspective can help build up to a solution.
I've been thinking about this for a while now, as part of an assignment for my Entrepreneurship class was come up with feasibility studies for a handful of ideas, one of my ideas was releasing an album of my own music. The end result was a 200 word spiel on the feasibility of the idea, an actual feasibility document would have been a lot longer, and I think after all the reading I've done for that assignment I could do a larger one. Anyways...
Keep in mind that I'm pretty tired right now, my grammar/spelling will probably suck.
Since it was a business class, the only thing that matters is getting a good profit margin and making sure I can push volume, and due to that it seemed like the way the scene operates wasn't going to cut it. Keep in mind, I'm in a place in Canada where there isn't a "scene" at all, it's still hard to import CDs from music stores (for some unknown reason), and not many people listen to (or even know of) this music.
Another hurdle I faced was that my music is not really mix friendly in terms of content. It's still got poor production values ("mastered" over my Sony headphones), still is cheesy, and some of it is depressing (sadcore ftw). So I figured that I didn't need 8 bars of mix friendly portions of my tracks, and that they should be released as radio edits that target the consumer and not DJs. Now, I had my own reasoning, but I think a good argument could be made for HHC producers to do that same. I mention this now so that you can get a good understanding of why my target demographic is how I'll describe it, but I think that this same reasoning could be applied to pro-HHC producers.
Before I get into the target market, I'll briefly go over the proposed product: a 10-12 track album w/ a variety of radio-edit hardcore tracks. HHC, Freeform, Gabber, whatever label you would want to apply to them. Quite simply the same sort of stuff (and variety) you would see on a Bonkers compilation.
Anyways, I saw the target market consisting of current HHC listeners, and new listeners (which in Canada, there is a lot of potential for). Note that "DJs" were not considered for my target market (not for this album, they could get the single they want by buying the track individually). From anecdotal evidence and my own observations, I get the impression that most HHC listeners pirate their music, moreso that most music listeners. It is a growing problem among all genres of music, but EDM seems to be most affected by this, and to a greater degree. The only way for producers to make a living off of this is because they get so big, that the small percentage of listeners that actually buy the music provide a big enough cut to survive. Couple that with the fact that they may also DJ and make money off of live performances. My brother is involved with the hardcore punk scene (hardcore runs in our genes :D) and it seems that there is a common knowledge that hardcore punk bands make little money off of it, that many of them wouldn't dare download stuff from their favorite bands. There are a lot of reasons for this (I won't go into this now, but for an example, there are faces attached to the music), but it seems the international HHC scene doesn't feel the same way. They think that someone else is paying for it and the artist will make their money somehow, whereas punks know that their brand of music is hanging by a thread and their favorite bands would disband if they didn't buy that one record that just came out. Now, not all of them think like this, but I think a far larger percentage do (as compared to EDM fans).
So if a large percentage of the existing fanbase would pirate, I would still target those who do (and fashion my pricing to encourage more to purchase the album), but look at perhaps getting a new audience for the music. With indie bands doing so well, it seems that people are more open to new types of music. To do this I would have to accomplish a few things, start DJing for one, get a few videos done for my music (Canadian government offers tens of thousands of dollars for artists wanting to make music videos), target local/national music magazines (far easier than most people think), and some few innovative things that I won't mention here, heheh (ok, I'll mention one that I think labels should be doing at this point, send demo CDs to movie/television/videogame producers and their respective companies. I'm not kidding. Next time they want to depict a "rave" in their show, have your music at no cost to them. Free music in this regard could mean in a lot of missed profits, but my issue is with exposure, and for me at this stage that would be most important to me, but I do believe that HHC needs more exposure as well. I suppose this has a far greater chance at success in places like Canada, rather than in the US or the UK.).
I did go over start up costs, and I gather that this isn't an issue at hand for established producers in the UK so I won't go into it. For small time producers like me they are dirt cheap (I'd get some monitors, buy some VSTs I've been eyeing, get Ruffage to master all my tracks in the end; and again the Canadian government helps with tax-write offs for musicians.)
After the start up cost, the largest cost are my variable costs in the form of manufacturing and distribution. I couldn't raise the amount of capital required to do this, so my only option is to be signed onto a label if I wanted actual CDs sold at retail. For many reasons I didn't want to do that (if I could to begin with, it would be near impossible without a previous success on my resume), so the best option seemed to be an online only distribution method where the point of sale was on a website and the disc would be shipped to the consumer. But then I looked at the market penetration of mp3 players, and it looks like personal CD players are on their way out (almost completely on the way out) and mp3 players are in. If people bought it on discs, the first thing they would do is put it on their iPod. So selling the music primarily in a digital format does not only reduced my variable costs (from actual discs/labels to simply bandwidth), but it's also the most sensical. After looking at the various online music distribution sites out there, it seems that people have embraced them. Apple doesn't release actual figures but of the entire market it seems iTunes has 70% of the download market (largely fueled by its 80% dominance of the portable mp3 player market). Now, I've seen many stories of successes and failures for artists going this route. In these cases (both success and failure), they deal with mainstream music. So underground music poses and even greater risk. But risk at what cost? Very little to me. It has to be noted, I am piggy-backing on a distribution system that will take a cut of my revenues, but it does provide more exposure than a personal site. I could set up my own "shopping cart" on my own website, but I don't get anywhere near the amount of traffic iTunes does. Plus, once you get a decent amount of success over iTunes, that success grows exponentially, not so with a personal site.
My SWOT analysis (Strength/Weakness/Opportunity/Threat) would differ that of pro-Producers, but I'll try a brief analysis of their situation.
Strength: Quality music. People involved in these businesses know their industry/scene very well. People involved in these businesses have easy access to music related resources. Successful from a mind-share perspective (HHC artists and labels are known to many HHC listeners) within their marketshare.
Weakness: Niche market from a macro perspective. People involved in these businesses may not have the appropriate contacts for non-music related resources (ie. see N.E.C.'s issues with the website). Target market ill-defined or not catered to (DJs are the ones primarily buying the music. Compilation CDs are the only way for consumers to buy music, and in that case, the revenues are split up in many ways).
Opportunities: Chance to expand the market. To go from niche to mainstream. You are seeing some genres like DnB (at over 160 bpm) being featured in automobile ads. Hardcore has potential (without needing to sacrifice its roots). Create a product more ideal for the end user and sold in an easily accessible fashion could mean more sales within your existing marketshare (ie. exclusive radio edit digital downloads).
Threats: Piracy. Selling in a format that is easily stolen and leeched (I was gonna say "shared" but that sort of word doesn't convey the harm it does, from now on I am gonna stick with "leeched", heheh) seems a bit odd. iTunes DRM can be easily circumvented and then distributed, but the hope is to reach an larger audience so that sales can reach a point where there is enough revenue to sustain production of music. I don't think that other hardcore labels could be considered a threat...as it stands if one label does well in this regard, it's good for everyone.
Keep in mind: I COULD BE WRONG IN MY ANALYSIS AND COMPLETELY OFF. Most of this is from my remote perspective on the scene, and mostly geared to what it would take for me to be successful primarily locally and nationally. I know that if I made a music video, that I can get it on Canadian television. For the Brits, it may be near impossible. I just wanted to post this to re-affirm what others have been saying, and to show that ideas like radio-edits of tracks and digital downloads pose great benefits. Putting all your eggs in one basket (ie. iTunes, and ignoring others such as Rhapsody or your own site) is in most cases a bad idea. But on the other hand, exclusive distribution may get you some other benefits (such as promotion from their end). Say if a collection of hardcore labels went to Rhapsody (RealNetwork's iTunes alternative) and said, "We'll stay exclusive to you guys if you promote our scene/genre", RealNetworks may bite (they need any competitive advantage they can get over Apple).
Anyways, maybe I'm ranting, I dunno, I'm pretty tired right now. :P I know I'll wake up and read this and be like "WTF". :)
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http://www.soundclick.com/nrxic
^^^Mah Chewnz
"From the mean streets of Calgary, Alberta, Canada!" - Jericho
http://www.myspace.com/nrxic
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nrXic
Junior Member
Canada
117 posts
Joined: Feb, 2002
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Posted - 2007/12/22 : 11:35:48
Holy crap WTF did I do.
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http://www.soundclick.com/nrxic
^^^Mah Chewnz
"From the mean streets of Calgary, Alberta, Canada!" - Jericho
http://www.myspace.com/nrxic
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Samination
Advanced Member
Sweden
13,083 posts
Joined: Jul, 2004
195 hardcore releases
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Posted - 2007/12/22 : 13:07:30
you typed hellova lot, thats what happened :P
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Samination, Swedish Hardcore DJ
Happy, UK Hardcore, Freeform, Makina and Gabber
http://samination.se/
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luminate
Senior Member
Australia
467 posts
Joined: May, 2006
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Posted - 2007/12/23 : 13:29:43
nrxic... u sound pretty fcuking switched on about all this n look like u've given it a lot of thought n done more then ur share of research...
if i ever need some marketing done, i'll give u a call ay :P
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CHOONZ!!!!
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NeXuS
Advanced Member
United States
1,627 posts
Joined: Nov, 2004
81 hardcore releases
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Posted - 2008/01/04 : 08:00:17
nrXic that was a great late night read haha.
Bump this, everyone take a gander again.
It's unfortunate this thread got cluttered with too many people flaming and arguing between eachother...
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We're gonna start a new revolution...
One that will rock and roll your senses
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Samination
Advanced Member
Sweden
13,083 posts
Joined: Jul, 2004
195 hardcore releases
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Posted - 2008/01/04 : 09:19:25
Yea, but with that said. Anyone has a different opinion.
Someone blames piracy.
Someone blames people for making mixes downloadable (like me).
Someone blames bootlegs.
Someone blames tape/cd-packs.
Someone blames commercial shit/one label compilations.
... and so forth
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Samination, Swedish Hardcore DJ
Happy, UK Hardcore, Freeform, Makina and Gabber
http://samination.se/
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NeXuS
Advanced Member
United States
1,627 posts
Joined: Nov, 2004
81 hardcore releases
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Posted - 2008/01/09 : 23:20:55
quote:
Originally posted by DjSamination:
clip
Im not trying to blame anyone and I think we need to stop finger pointing. Blaming a cause is not going to change anything, we are where we are because we are lol, that simple.
My views are to try and better educate the listeners who want to learn more about the scene, if people dont want to listen then they will keep doing what they want. Then they can make better educated decisions because they will know who downloading tracks will affect. This is a more indirect way.
A more direct way would be to change the way the music is "delivered" if you will. Read my previous post for more info.
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We're gonna start a new revolution...
One that will rock and roll your senses
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