Bravo!
Nicely done!

It is misleading because the Internet is not destroying the music industry. It is the record business that is screwed. The music business is in rude health. So to answer the question what are musicians to do: they are to do what they have always done. If they are driven and ambitious enough they are to find ways of turning their talents into a career. That is not an easy call but it’s a possibility.

When I started out, the options available were similar to the ones that still exist today. Here are some: get a qualification and teach, get a qualification and join a professional orchestra or choir, get accomplished and become a session player, become a live performer, become a producer or engineer, open a recording facility, join or form a function band, compose music for visuals, advertising and broadcast. Or a concoction thereof.

Granted, some of these are not very sexy. But we’re talking jobs here. A careers officer might counsel caution and rightly so. The arts in all its forms is a precarious endeavour. But he wouldn’t shoo a student from the room who suggested any of the above. They are tangible. He might shoo If the student suggested becoming an artist or a songwriter and pursuing a record deal. Why? Because that would be the equivalent of buying lottery tickets as a career choice. It’s not an impossible prospect just an unlikely one. It always was. Nothing has changed in that regard except it is even more unlikely now.

Of all musicians, a very small fraction got on the record business gravy train. All but a small fraction of them were thrown off again. Of the remainder another small fraction got to drink from the cup. Being an artist in the record business is not and never was a viable career option. So why do the discussions around the various forums including some of Ted Cohen’s remarks here seem to assume that it is?

The new networks and associated technology add something extra to the business of making music whether one is involved professionally or recreationally. They take something away from the traditional business of making records. And that loss hampers virtually no one other than the gravy train people. So to ask what are musicians to do is a legitimate question with a simple answer: find work! To ask what are the folks on the train to do is like asking what will kings and queens do when the world is a republic. Why would anyone care?

The notion that diehards are sophisticated purveyors of taste, and casual fans have opinions of no consequence to the art, is facile. Thankfully the truth is more complex.

There are fanatics who are narrowly interested in one thing, blind to the beauty in everything else. There are ordinary appreciators who value music highly but have a casual relationship to it. These are just two examples of appreciator types of which there seems to be an infinite number.

Schlosberg’s point in Farewell to the Casual Music Fan about something essential being lost with the fragmentation of the platform is a valid one. Music is as much defined by context as content. Change the context and everything changes with it.

The forward developments will continue to bring positive changes. But there will be losses too and the Great Artist who bestrides the globe appreciated by millions will probably be one of them.

I understand that Scott Andrew was having a wee bit of a polemicist’s moment there and no one grudges him that. But Schlosberg’s piece is well thought out and points to some uneasy realities about the consensus value of music to come.

It’s neatly rebutted in the comments by Scott Andrew:

Casual fans? Casual fans are for chumps.

Casual fans are the ones that only read one book a year, recommended by Oprah. Casual fans are the ones that abandon you the moment you have an opinion on anything (see: Dixie Chicks, et al) or try something different. Casual fans buy the “greatest hits” compilations because they only want the radio hits.

Casual fans are the reason artists make limp, unintelligent, non-challenging cookie-cutter music. Casual fans are the reason why artists lie about their age and spend more time on their hair and makeup than writing interesting songs.

We’re never going back to 1992. “Casual fans” are never going to pay $18.99 to sample your music ever again. They will preview it at Lala or Rhapsody for $0.02 a spin. If they like it they will select ONLY the tracks they want and buy them for $0.99 or less.

Forget about piracy; a casual fan won’t even care enough to bother. (Seriously, if you’re still worried about piracy in 2010, you should quit now and go sell bookcases or something. You are lost.)

Ignore these “casual” fans. I’m serious. They either get it or they don’t. No fence-sitters, no tourists. Like the man said, spit out the lukewarm.

Also. Get used to the idea that culture is, and has always been, participatory, and that’s never been more true than now.

Want passive listeners? Get lost. Or build a time machine. Or get a job.

Anyone else here uncomfortable with “remix culture,” or hates the idea that any kid with Protools and an internet connection can bang out an album? You should quit music, right now. Because these things are here now, they’re not going away, and they don’t need your approval to exist.

Seriously. Get out of music. Save yourself. How will you handle the future when you can’t even handle the present?