I’m a big fan of Dark Side of the Moon – even after all these years, I can still listen to it. So why the clickbait headline?
I’m watching an extended interview with Steve Hackett, former Genesis guitar player, and he was talking about how when he was in his late teens/early 20s, parents would try to talk kids out of a career in music (especially rock music) and how in some cases the parents couldn’t suppress the urge to make music. It very much WAS a fact that you either put a band together and wrote music and got a record contract and “made it,” or you didn’t. There was no in between. And it’s been pointed out many times that almost no band these days can afford to go into a commercial studio for 8 months and make an album – they’d never get their money back. The logic tends to follow then that there “will never be another Dark Side of the Moon.” Five years ago I’d have made the same argument.
But these days you CAN make an album and release it and take as long as you want, because of technology. My parents never officially tried to talk me out of doing my own original music for a living, because they didn’t have to – I already knew I wouldn’t be able to make a living at it. And I was right – back in the 80s, to make a living as an original artist, you needed a lot of things I didn’t have. If I had dropped out of college to write songs, my parents likely would have insisted that I get a real job. Either way, I wouldn’t be able to release my own albums.
But now I do. After I turned 40, technology had given us the tools we needed. In the 80s and 90s I made music with a sequencer and a 4 track cassette, and there was no way to mass release music. Now it’s not just easier, it’s actually possible.
The tradeoffs are that you have to know a hell of a lot more stuff these days in order to write, record, mix, master, release, and market your own music. You have to do everything, and that takes away from the music making time. AND you’re also likely having a full time job and in many cases a family. Despite all of the tools, it’s still a pretty big task to do it all yourself. But it can be done, and thousands of artists like me are doing it.
What this means is that no one has to choose between stable career and making your own music. You CAN do both. If you want massive success making your own music, or if you even want to be able to make a living at it, well, that’s a bigger task. If you do your own music part time, you’ll find yourself in my position – I got an email yesterday that a royalty check is on the way… for $21.57. Don’t spend it all in one place. I can probably buy three sets of guitar strings with it.
Nobody has the money to spend 8 months in a pro studio recording the next Dark Side of the Moon. But they’ve got unlimited time in their own home studios, even the most modest of which has the ability to make the tools Alan Parsons was working with seem prehistoric.
Want to write and record great music? You can. You likely won’t make a living at it – that part hasn’t changed. Maybe one day, any artist who wants to make a living from their own music will be able to. That’d be swell. In the meantime, I’ll celebrate what we have now.
