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golauglau:

Full page Golau Glau interview in Golwg. Click the picture to see a bigger version.

Beth yw Golau Glau?

Two strange things going on here. 1) Well done Golwg for writing about a mysterious London based dance duo wearing their Welsh connections on their sleeve. 2) Golau Glau’s name. Not sure what a Glau is. Sounds Welsh but its not something I’m familiar with. Glaw is rain.

The best thing is Golau Glau’s music and mixes. Follow the links to Golau Glau’s own Tumblr to hear some tunes. 

Also here’s another Welsh friend writing about them. Jude Rogers

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/may/13/first-sight-golau-glau

Who are they? Secrets drive me insane.

Filed under: feature, press, print, print press Tagged: “golau glau”, feature, …

david-noel:

An extensive study into the effect of digitalization on the music industry in Norway has shed an interesting light on the position of artists today, compared to 1999. While the music industry often talks about artists being on the brink of bankruptcy due to illicit file-sharing, the study found that the number of artists as well as their average income has seen a major increase in the last decade.

Rafer sez:
And the music companies are making much less. Go figure. 

I’d argue that it’s the record companies making less and, that too, depends on who you talk to. I’ll say it again: music industry != recording industry. More people are creating music than ever before, buying more instruments and production software than before and not always with with a commercial goal. 

We regularly hear stories from SoundCloud users who tell us they originally never intended to make any money with their music. Fast-forward  a few months and they’ll tell you they’ve sold their first songs because of sharing them for free in the first place. These numbers don’t fall into any statistics of recordings sold. 

Technically, there is more music being made and released, and therefore, less money per artist, despite the overall pot of what is spent by consumers going up. These numbers also don’t quantify the fact artists now need to invest in themselves, their recordings and their touring. 

And there’s so much more which is distorted by a headline like this. For instance, a lot of these figures overlook the fact that some people now buy one expensive festival ticket, rather than 10 tickets. This also ignores the fact that most of the acts on the smaller stages of a festival are often getting as little as £50, which doesn’t cover a day’s van hire, let alone fuel, accommodation, sustenance, etc for 4-5 people. Apart from a few major management firms putting £20-40k+ start-up funds into the likes of La Roux and Kate Nash, very few people are investing in music, least of all on the live side which is apparently “booming” (yet considers losing money on early shows, to beat off competitors, investing). Yet, very few artists, below the 1,000 capacity audience mark, are doing anything but barely scraping by (obvs the maths vary if you can play to 500+ people in 50 cities, rather than just the 10 major cities at high ticket prices). And many of them forego a few big shows of their own in major cities in order to play at festivals to bigger crowds but in many cases for less money than for their own sold out show (and also festivals take a huge cut on merch sales). And obviously, for a lot of curious fans, they see the band at the festival and the sound wasn’t great or the context not quite right, and they never go see the band again.

The biggest problem with this flattening is that the huge successes which once funded the risk taking, are gone. Coldplay led not-particularly-indirectly to DFA Records getting megabucks from EMI, for instance. Labels both big and small (and individuals such as managers or sound guys for that matter), need the successes to take risks on music that is innovative and inspiring but at the moment, they have to play it safe. I’m not saying direct-to-consumer artist services such as Bandcamp and Tunecore or the fan-funding model (see here and here) and everything else which is strengthening the grass roots is killing music but it is very short-sighted to think this is a new future for the business of music, least of all for creative individuals who don’t have the means to invest in their ‘career’. Plus amid this never-ending deluge of music, very few unexceptional artists are getting the funds and resources, least of all the specialist knowledge and support, to make either an impact or a career out of music. This isn’t about getting rich, this is about survival and I fear a future where only bland rich kids can afford to be musicians or where truly great music goes unheard by more than a few hundred people. [insert the Kate Bush didn’t and shouldn’t need to tour to be a musician example here]

I guess what I’m really trying to say is, for every penny shifting from the “evil” major record companies, there’s a whole eco-system that relies on the Boyzones and Britneys, to fund the invention and brave decision making of the Radioheads and LCD Soundsystems of the future. You don’t hear of many success stories from DIY acts that can rival what a mid-sized indie label can do - you hear them of the Radiohead’s of this world, post-millions of investment from those ‘evil bastards’. For once majorly funded types like Amanda Palmer and Trent Reznor, it may seem they are the faces for an incredibly exciting new DIY industry but as much of Andrew Keen’s Cult of the Amateur and Jaron Lanier’s You’re Not a Gadget must-read books have double-underlined, is that these success stories are just convenient glimpses of hope or rather mere spectacles masking the fact that the iceberg only has but a shiny tip, bobbing on the surface.