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Old 11-01-2009, 03:45 PM   #15
zacheryjensen
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jordan View Post
Sorry if I misunderstood something... I thought the discussion was about independent artists not on a label. If we're talking about artists on independent labels, we're talking about a false comparison to "indie authors," who are generally considered to be self-published authors. We should be comparing musicians on independent labels to writers under independent publishers (who, as far as I know, do not have respectability problems).

Otherwise, we should be discussing musicians who have no label, big, small, indie or otherwise... the kind of musicians who literally record themselves in the basement, burn it into an MP3 file and put themselves online... and compare those to writers (like me) who put our own works out there independently of a publisher.

Ficbot, which was your intent?
I think that this relates to the point I made earlier about the music scene having a greater network of support. You very rarely have a band or artist without a label at all because literally every random jerk and his dog has a label to apply to the next remotely listenable band around. When I was in High School I kid you not that three different friends of mine ran a "label" and managed local bands. Each one could not have managed more than 5 or 6 bands total but they did the legwork of getting gigs and promoting (by way, mostly, of extremely cheaply made xeroxed squares of paper handed out whenever they could get away with it.)

As best as I can tell from my point of view, these microscopic band managers derived as much joy and satisfaction out of the act of managing and promoting for a few bands as any of the bands did out of performing. You can look at them as an analog to a publisher but I don't think it's quite the same thing. To me it would be more like a few authors working cooperatively to promote each others' works. Not much more than listing 4 other independent authors in your own forum signature, for example. So with that small of a scale I don't think it negates them from a comparison to authors who do not have publisher contracts.

In both writing and music there are varying levels of independence and various methods of discovery. I believe that the real asymmetry is between the methods of discovery. I find it much more difficult to learn about a new author I'll enjoy than a new musician, independent or otherwise.

And finally you can't ignore the difficulty levels involved. An author can type up a manuscript in 30 days and publish it through lulu without much difficulty or resistance at all. An independent musician has to impress someone before they can do a show. They have to put out a decently large amount of money for a good recording. And if they decided to go all-out garage, there's a really good chance nobody will hear it ever because it's still harder to promote and distribute music online than it is a little bit of text. Add to that the fact that a song will take a few minutes to digest entirely, an album perhaps an hour or less, and a book could take 10 hours or longer depending on the writing. Surely that makes a big difference in the scheme of things especially regarding recommendation networks and promotional volunteerism.

I suppose if I had to guess on a single primary cause for the disparity I would have to choose the time investment required leading people to be much more discerning on books from untrusted sources vs. music from the same.
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