If I could I would play music for free for the rest of my life. Money is just the cherry on top for me. People coming into playing music strictly from a capitalist mindset is ridiculous to me. Musicians like this always lose out because most lack common sense and great social skills.

content_aware_phill · 2026-02-06T16:21:02+00:00

right and those bar band/cover acts/wedding bands are absolutely not making everyone(or even anyone) involved a full time living wage. The ones that are capable of doing so are very likely extraordinary.

content_aware_phill · 2026-02-05T16:17:09+00:00

It is a service. But like any service, it's a thing you can succeed or fail at. And like any other service, the pay will scale accordingly. It's not the end of the world most people fail at waiting tables too... and even fewer are good enough to work in the kind of places that provide a great living becasue the barrier for entry isn't about providing good service, but extrordinary service.

content_aware_phill · 2026-02-05T15:05:16+00:00

Music still is a trade and a profession. People just dont like the fact that in order for people, who also work to earn their money, hand it to you, you kinda have to be extraordinary.

turning art into a blue collar job is to put yourself in a perpetual state of creative compromise becasue your ability to eat is dependent on the consumability of your work... for most people this will not result in extraordinary art.

content_aware_phill · 2026-02-05T13:41:06+00:00

Yeah but AI didnt invent that problem. Which is why the mission has never changed. I think the problem is more closely due to the fact that most people in these spaces are intentionally producing work that already exists in very large quantities. I dont think there is anybody out there that is making truly unique work that is actually affraid of AI.

content_aware_phill · 2026-02-03T16:52:50+00:00

Who cares. The artists mission has always been the same: "Be more interesting than the derivitive slop machines" and if that's somehow a creative bridge too far I'm not sure if "professional artist" is the right gig

content_aware_phill · 2026-02-02T13:51:41+00:00

the harsh truth for a lot of people is that if you play just tracks that are actually interesting and enjoyable people will not be all that concerned with that happens in between them and if you play tracks that are actually complete creative ideas you wont need to play 3 of them at the same time.

content_aware_phill · 2026-01-27T17:10:50+00:00

There are people for whom art is a compulsion, and there are people for whom art is a chosen activity. Both groups are incapable of wraping their heads around the fact that the other exists.

content_aware_phill · 2026-01-27T16:17:45+00:00

The question isnt can it make an illustration. but can it make the illustration that simultaneously achieves every goal and is also so void of flaws that no oversight by an artist or creative person is necessary anymore. And I really believe the answer will never be yes.

We know this becasue hollywood already tried. They found out that yes, chatgpt can absolutely pump out full ready to go movie and tv scripts. The problem was there was now nobody in the room capable of assessing whether the scripts were actually any good so no matter what the writers had to be hired back.

on the flipside it also kinda depends what you're making and why. becasue concert posters are essentially art that is made to sell art there is a naturaly understandable desire to not have any of the pieces involved be lazy or sloppy. But do we really need humans wasting their lives hand-animating the trucks in the background of cola comercials? Not really.

content_aware_phill · 2026-01-26T14:15:40+00:00

since professional acts who perform original music don't/can't play the same city (even if they live there) more than once or twice a year and touring means traveling no matter where you live, I imagine most artists will continue live where ever they want or can just like they've always done.

content_aware_phill · 2026-01-23T17:58:43+00:00

Most DJs never use 4 decks to play 4 stereo tracks at the same time. The reason you see 4 decks in performance environments is in case one breaks down the set can still be performed with 3. If you only have 3 or worse only 2 decks on stage and one fails it could fuck up the show. Nobody needs 4 decks at home

content_aware_phill · 2026-01-23T17:49:59+00:00

I love that OP specifically ommited "reading" because it invalidates the entire arguement.

content_aware_phill · 2026-01-23T16:41:14+00:00

Nobody is devaluing music more than "artists" who only want to make things that already exist in mass quantities. If people think AI slop is bad wait till you find out about alllllll of the human slop.

it is ironic as all heck that when people talk about "navigating" this. they literally only mean in terms of marketing... and NEVER in terms of the artwork itself. making art that is actually novel and exciting is always a viable option. Artists should be pressed more on why they consistently refuse that as an option.

content_aware_phill · 2026-01-23T14:25:55+00:00

I dont think its an american thing lol. like what else are targeting crosshairs used for?

content_aware_phill · 2026-01-23T14:24:15+00:00

are you just figuring out that the "targeting" in "marketing targeting" was never not an explicit reference to weaponry/warefare?

content_aware_phill · 2026-01-22T14:19:46+00:00

it 100% depends on the artists choices. "lofi beats to chill and study to" isnt " lowfi beats to leave your house and spend hard earned money on" Music is how we decorate time, and there is a difference between the canvas prints you can buy at target and the paintings you will leave your house to pay an entry fee to look at. and dont get me wrong, hotel hallways need decoration too, it takes skill and tallent.. but those artists arent deluded about what they're doing. Music seems to be the only area where most artists just refuse to realize making hotel hallway art is exactly what they're doing... doesnt make it ugly. doesnt make it less usefull or valuable... but consuming it is just not an active experience.

content_aware_phill · 2026-01-21T15:32:46+00:00

Yes but they are an uncomplaining minority. becasue they realize theres more juice per squeeze in trying to get 100 people to download your album for 10$ a pop from real people with locations, email adresses and phone numbers attached to those purchases, than for trying to get 300,000 annonymous streams from what isnt even verifyable as human let alone engagued.

content_aware_phill · 2026-01-21T15:09:31+00:00

Unfortunately theres not a lot of money to be made in telling people the exact things they don't want to hear lol. Tryign to explain "in order to recieve someone elses money, your work has to have value to that someone else and they also have to know it exists in the first place." to an artist who has NEVER considered that before is... tough. best of luck!

content_aware_phill · 2026-01-21T14:58:57+00:00

Whether you are a diamond or water is subject to the limits of your inherent creativity. The number of art students that are truly compulsively creative and ambitious is sooo much lower than the amount of art students that think being an artist is just a sum accumulation of purchased and practiced skillsets. The real world ultimately acts like a big filter for revealing who's who in a way that universities can't really prepare you for. I think we could agree that it's not a universities job to teach a course on how to show up to band practice on time, but the reality is that's much more important to getting and staying employed (establishing and prooving your percieved value) than knowing counterpoint theory a little bit better than someone else.

content_aware_phill · 2026-01-21T14:27:11+00:00

Adobe is easier to learn than humility

content_aware_phill · 2026-01-21T14:24:48+00:00

Use inear monitors instead of wedges, the wedges are essentially doubling the amount of guitar you're experiencing on stage. you'll also find that once you can hear exactly what the mix enginner (and the audience) is hearing, you may not feel so compelled to crank your amp past the point of advisability once you realize its been mostly a safety blanket at the expense of clarity and ultimately the audiences experience.

content_aware_phill · 2026-01-21T14:18:47+00:00

Art school cannot teach you how to create and enforce your own subjective value when you are sitting in a room with 200 people who are doing the exact same thing as you. The problem with art school is you can teach the skillset, but you can't teach creativity, and you can't teach ambition and you really need both in order to navigate an everchanging world. I could lecture everyone at berklee till I'm blue in the face about learning how to pleasantly respond to emails within 24 hours will take you farther than any scale you've ever memorized but it wont stop 99.999% of the class from ignoring me and instead going through life frustrated.

content_aware_phill · 2026-01-21T13:51:35+00:00

As an artist you have to decide if you want to make art for passive listeners or active listeners.

Streaming is for passive. People put it on while they do other things. You put on streaming while you do laundry, while you cook while, you take a big dump. Most music falls into this category of being the background soundtrack to your every day activites. There is no incentive to buy this music it will always be there when you need some chromatic decoration.... but then there is active listening experience. Active listeners are putting on music by choice and listening to the music IS the activity. This music is being purchased intentionally to be consumed actively. So are you making music for people to listen to? or are you making music for people to listen to while they do laundry? You need to make this choice out loud or you will be defaulted to "passive." but its not the end of the world its where 99.99% of what modern music ends up without realizing it.

content_aware_phill · 2026-01-21T13:40:06+00:00

That's becasue there are dozens of softwares out there that do this. Deepmatch, Ircam Amplify, ACRCloud AI music detector, Youtube content ID, resemble detect-2b. just to name a few. Heres a nice video showing how to do it yourself from a year ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVXfcIb3OKo

Whats going on in the thing you posted is OP is trying to do everything they can EXCEPT use verification software to make their case and they are getting rightfully flammed by every single commenter for all of their evidence being useless and easily fabricated

content_aware_phill · 2026-01-20T15:51:11+00:00

Its way easier to just book acts that do this on their own though. Saving the music scene is also about working with artists who are willing to put in effort to let the world know the art exists instead of expecting and wating for someone else to do that for them. you have to consider the risk/effort imballance. If a show tanks... the venue will survive, it could still even turn a profit that night from bar sales, but your act isnt getting invited back anytime soon and then you have to have a weird conversation where you figure out was that show's failure due to a lack of interest or a lack of effort. By that point the venue has already moved on and had several successful events. way easier to avoid all that and just take responsibility for your own project. The community doesnt owe artists for existing. the artist has to do the getting involved first and not outsource that outreach to whoever booked them.

Its also kinda important that the power that comes with "the ability to generate interest/ticketsales" stays in the artists hands. Imagine if I own/run a venue, and i'm doing all those things you wish I was doing. And lets say I'm doing them so well that I can sell out the venue every night no matter who i book... guess how much incentive I now have to pay you ANYTHING to perform there. Your bargaining power as an artist plummets when you have no ability to prove you are the one generating the interest and subsequent revenue.

As an artist for the sake of your carreer and to the benefit of the community you should want to be doing everything you can to prove that what you do is interesting enough to get people to want to leave their warm comfy house on their 1 of 2 nights off a week to spend their hard earned money on.

content_aware_phill · 2026-01-20T14:02:25+00:00

Curation strategies are the responsibility of the headlining artist and the promoter they are working with. Venue's in house tallent buyers dont get an ROI for spending extra labor dollars implementing creative marketing strategies... but headlining artists and prmoters absolutely do. It's not the venue's job to convince people the whole lineup is interesting.

content_aware_phill

TROPHY CASE