PavlovsCat

Exactly. Being at BandCamp is like having a website. No one knows you exist until you do promotion, such as live shows, appearances, get on playlists, etc. Just being on one of these sites doesn't get your music attention. If you're an unsigned artist, especially in rock, I think BandCamp is a no-brainer. But rock -- which is what I think is your genre, @El Diablo. isn't it? -- is simply not nearly as popular as hip hop/rap today. We had a recent post on BandCamp and Peter from IK brought up a mutual friend, Dave Kerzner who is a prog rocker on an indie label who has done pretty well on BandCamp, but like any artist he is promoting the heck out of his music with touring, online / social media presence, etc. BandCamp, while we all know them, is a small business. They only made about $20 million in net revenue last year, It's just a fact of life that most consumers aren't buying music the way they used to and the majority that spend money on music online -- in the US it's more than 60% of households -- are paying for a music streaming subscription, not paying for individual songs or albums, the market just doesn't exist in large numbers. Subsquenty, it's really dificult for an indie artist to make a living off of streaming because it takes a massive amount of plays to generate that kind of revenue and there's not a ton of buyers for individual songs and albums. I think Dave is doing a really good job in today's market if you want to study a model that works. But we all need to be realistic about our music and whether there really is commercial viability for it. Realistically, the answer is no for me and most people -- it's simply not viable. But that's okay, because music shouldn't just be about its commercial value. The art you create can still have a value even if it doesn't produce revenue. Just my opinion.

I thought that was very funny, but there's probably someone who will completely misunderstand all of it. Ah, the dangerous nature of having a sense of humor.

No please keep commenting, stay involved. You seem like a really nice person and this is no big deal. I think most people don't realize that the thumbs down can impact your reputation score. So please, do keep commenting in the forum. I've seen your posts and I think you add value to this community. It would be a real shame for you to not post anymore.

Hey, it's fine if you didn’t realize it was a negative thing. Please don't leave the forum! Stick around! I was just trying to understand why you gave the thumbs down and you explained that. It's not a big deal. I'd just be grateful if you removed the thumbs down and stayed part of this forum.

Okay. I didn't have a chance to download it and try it until today. But why damage someone's reputation score when they're only posting to be helpful to other people? I'll bet you that next month you'll be able to buy that library for 50% off instead of 40%, during their Black Friday sale (I figured that but was too impatient to wait to save 3 bucks). They usually run 50% off sales. Anyhow, I was only trying to be helpful, why penalize me for it?

@Miro KI don't get why anyone would give my above post a thumbs-down, which according to a past post by Abacab damages a forum member's reputation score. I was merely kidding about you're just as bad, writing that to my fellow forum members because we're all so addicted to buying sample libraries and plugins. Did you misunderstand that? I only wanted to share that I bought the library and how much I enjoy it, as I thought there are other forum members who may be considering it who would find my experience useful. Why the thumbs down?

UPDATE; Okay, I bought the Firewood Piano even after knowing it really deserved to have more velocity layers. Don't judge me! You're just as bad, maybe even worse! Anyhow, after playing it the very first time, I fell in love with it. I still wish they made a version with more velocity layers, but I think it sounds beautiful in its own way. While I have dozens of deep-sampled pianos, I don't have another piano sample library that sounds quite like this one. If you're looking for a character piano and the sound of the demos resonates with you (pun may or may not be intentional -- I'll never tell) and can live with the fact that this one isn't well suited for very dynamic playing, I think for $17.40 USD, it's a bargain considering how much I enjoy its sound, which is that of a quirky, not sophisticated, upright with a lot of character. Although I'm not sure if the sale is still on. In any event, I know I'll use it and just playing it solo is very satisfying and inspiring.

Just a basic business fact. When you continuously engage in very deep discounting of your product, the heavily discounted price becomes thw one consumers will value your product at. That's why I've always advised indie developers never to engage in stuff like 70% or more discounts. Who in this group is ever going to pay full price for one of this developer's plugins again? Almost no one. And he trained everyone to be that way, without realizing he was doing it.

Yeah, I also noticed that. It kept showing a bunch of different chords when I was playing the same chord over an entire bar, but doing quarter notes.

I really enjoyed that bit of wisdom. I do need to work on patience -- it is a virtue. Thanks for the encouragement and I wish you the best with your music and in life. You're a very interesting person and I enjoy your posts and those little tidbits of wisdom you share. Maybe I can pick up some tips from someone much better than me at patience -- I'm game to try. All the best, Keni!

I have tons of experience, but I don't have patience! The older I get the less I have (maybe it's the sense that I have less time left to get things done!).

Maybe that's why most of this group is so dang friendly? Maturity. Not like those mouthy whiper snapers at some other forums!

A heck of a lot of us in this group are middle aged. It especially strikes me that when someone doesn't post for a week there seems to be an assumption that they died.

I only tried it once, so maybe I should try it in another project -- in case it's just tied to a conflict with another plugin.

I wouldn't attribute the change to the population, but to technology. A larger world population would actually translate into increased sales revenue if all other things were equal, not less. The change that led us to this situation is technology what strategists call digital disruption, in this case. First, it was Napster, then Apple (iTunes) then Spotify, etc. that caused the public to transition from buying physical product like CDs to either buying or pirating digital product online. I knew the head of marketing for Napster back in the 00s, just after they changed their model from piracy to paid MP3s, and we had some interesting chats that probably would have made for a good book. So the public (that wasn't engaged in piracy) went from paying for physical product to paying for digital product to streaming services (of course, there are small numbers of Boomers and Gen X that still will buy CDs, but it's a very small percentage of the total market and most households (over 60%) in the US do pay a monthly subscription fee to a music streaming service. But that revenue model really only provides enough to make a good living on if your music gets a very very high number of streams. I know someone through a friend who had a hit I loved in the 80s and a lot of us here might recognize it, but he doesn't make enough annually to buy a used economy car from his streaming royalties and is a director with Meta today, handling music. But that's the reality. The streaming model only creates significant revenue for artists with a very high volume of plays. So it's extremely difficult for an artist that doesn't have mass appeal to make it in the current world beyond working their tails off doing live shows. Whereas a couple of decades ago or more, artists made most of their money from record sales and toured to promote record sales. Today, most artists make the majority of their income from live shows and I love live music and that was what I did back when. But it makes it extremely difficult for the next very creative non-commercial artist to make a living from music. It's not an environment where you could see the next Jimi Hendrix, Beatles, Radiohead, etc. succeeding and I wish that wasn't the case.

Yep. I don't envy young musicians these days. Twenty years ago it was much easier to make it whether or not you were on a major label. These days people aren't buying CDs, you need huge volume of streams to make decent money. If your music doesn't appeal to a wide audience you're going to have a very hard time making a living from music. While my mother was a musician who encouraged me to be a professional musician, even though I am madly in love with music, I'm glad that my kids aren't pursuing music for a living, the odds are incredibly tough for anyone who isn't a child star the labels want to back. Whereas the reality a lot of indie developers face is to have to do a deal with the devil AKA influencers to shill their products to get noticed. Advertising alone doesn't cut it, so you are really forced into having to deal with the industry of professional and semi-professional shills in order to get your product the attention it takes to be successful. Folks here who haven't seen all of my posts might be surprised that even with my disappointment with influencer marketing, I just recommended to a developer to use influencers last week. Why? They reach an audience and have a level of influence over their followers that you just can't attain as inexpensively or as quickly through traditional online advertising and promotions. Throwing free products and cash at someone with millions, or at least thousands (which is the way this industry works), of followers who see them as authoritative aspirational figures is unquestionably the cheapest, quickest way to sales growth in this industry -- and most other industries. And back to your comparison with musicians and record labels, in that business, it's all about list curators and synchronization these days (like getting your songs in ads, placed in tv, movies and games). There's not a lot of opportunity in radio and the audience is largely boomers, and even they're not paying for music these days. In fact the last study I found, only, less than 15% of Boomers even pay for a music streaming service. So if you don't have big backing behind you and your music doesn't have wide appeal, there's little chance to become a successful new music artist these days short of playing live shows -- and even those opportunities are limited.

Man, I hate seeing talented devs go under. It actually compelled me to advise a bunch of small devs at no cost in return for them giving free NFRs to low income musicians (something I didn’t publicly share back then because I was already too busy with paid work and didn’t want everyone calling me). It's tough for indie devs to make it, even if they're really talented, they need to know how to successfully run a business and its rare for one person to be great at both things.

For such a channel with such low subscription and view rates -- and it's so niche, I don't think it has much potential to be very big -- I think whomever is behind thar channel puts a lot into these videos and has a lot of talent. If the market was bigger, one could always theorize that it was an anti influencer who was funded by competitors of developers he goes after. I don't think that, but I could see how other channels like this could be used that way.

Thanks for the ideas. That was super thoughtful of you to offer that and I really appreciate the offer. Like I said earlier, I do have a plugin that analyzes the midi I just slap on like an effect or I duplicate the piano track and replace the piano with my ezKeys piano which has a really nice display that shows chords. I was just hoping for something with a bigger display than the freebie tool I have. Songkey does claim to analyze MIDI, but when I used it, it caused this strange buzz and problems with Cakewalk. Considering that I couldn't have paid more than 3 bucks for it, I don't even want to bother the developer.

I did demo Scaler a long time ago -- or at least I think it was Scaler. But it's overkill for my purposes. I'm just looking for something that will tell me what the chord progression is for a song I recorded a week ago and completely forgot to write down the progression for. Of course, I could read the MIDI notes -- but that's a hassle to do or just work it out by ear, which I sometimes do - but otherwise, I have a freebie that shows the chords and notes that were played on a MIDI track, it's just really small and not great to look at. I thought SongKey might do better. Historically, I've sometimes duplicated a piano track and put ezKeys on it, as it tells you what chords are being played with a pretty nice display, IMO. I tend to just want to pop open a DAW, find a plugin, often a piano in KONTAKT to start and just play either something I wrote ages ago, new ideas or a cover. I'm not sure I would want to rely on an app for ideas unless it was really fun to use and I've read from people who love it that they enjoy what it does, but it's not super intuitive.

Totally called for. If you're going to troll me with a meme, I'm going to respond and I can at least have a little fun back at you. It's weird that you would troll me and then take offense when I respond with a little sarcasm -- it wasn't anything heavy, on either end. When I wrote that PA ghosted me in the OP, it was humor -- I was writing it with a smile on, to try to get a laugh. I was playing off the concept of ghosting -- which is normally tied to dating and personal relationships. I was adding some faux drama about being left off the list. Anyhoo, if you're going to troll people, mocking them due to your misunderstandings on language and humor, you really should have thicker skin if they respond back with a little lighthearted sarcasm. Or maybe you might just consider -- I don't know -- maybe not trolling instead? Also, if you read my original post, there isn't a voucher to get for me. I wasn't on the list. That email response made it clear, hence my joke that I was ghosted "confirmed" Anyhow, I think a lot of what you don't understand may be due to getting lost in translation, as, if English isn't your first language, this can be a bit challenging to understand and all of that might make catching my humor complex. Food for thought. In any event, peace.

But I don't think it's working. You're not normal. (Neither am I. Being normal is overrated! I'd much rather be unique.)

@MusicMan The demo I did for Orange Tree Samples for their Evolution Vintage VIolin Bass library, which is the sampled Hofner bass model that will forever be associated with Mccartney -- and I'd been begging Greg to sample it for more than a decade by the time he released it, so he asked me if I wanted to do a demo. I used Abbey Road 60s Drums along with a bunch of Orange Tree Samples guitar libraries. I had written 4 songs for consideration for a demo and submitted one and Greg liked it. Then, an hour later I told Greg, "I wrote this song when I was like 14 that my music teacher mother loved, that sounded very McCartney-esque that I never played to anyone because I thought it sounded way too influenced, but I still think it's pretty good and would fit perfectly for this demo. It will be old Peter covering young Peter. Do you have time to let me try it really quickly?" So, I threw this together really fast, all improvised. I was having MIDI issues at the time and it was like the mod wheel was going on and off and my sustain pedal wasn't working (in another thread I've talked about my problems with NEKTAR pedals). So Greg redid my guitar and, I'm not sure, but he may have redone the bass parts, pretty much note for note with some nice little added touches like guitar harmonies and arpeggios that when I heard I was like - wait, how come I didn't think of that? So yeah, my performance won't impress you, and I'm not a great or even competent mixer -- Greg tried to fix that but was stuck with what I handed him. You can hear Abbey Road 60s' Drums in a mix. It opens with the chord progression from McCartney's song "Dear Boy," which I did as a tribute to McCartney. A tip to you non-drummers or beginning drummers out there that want to go for a 60s vibe, one of the major hallmarks of the way guys like Ringo and Charlie Watts -- two icons of those days -- played was that their playing had a little swing in it (triplet feel) and that was definitely part of the vibe I went for in this demo.

You think I'm going to be the one to judge someone else for long posts???? Hahaha. Um, no you're good with me. We could talk drums for hours and I'd be happy. Back when I was a drummer I would hang out with other drummers when we weren't playing and check out other drummers! And some of those guys were just brutal on drummers. I made one of them promise never to go to my shows and he said, "You don't have to worry, you're good. I only rip on guys that suck." I still didn't trust the guy and he was one of my favorite rock drummers on the local scene (actually he played nationally to with a bunch of bands that had hits in the 60s and 70s). But even though I did a ton of playing and did some recording, I never learned about mixing or mastering, there were always pros that handled that. I actually bought all of the effects and mics I own on the advice of sound engineers for bands I played with or sound guys I knew from the local music scene. So now that I don't play anymore, I rely on some friends and you guys! I could be pretty savage when I saw a bad drummer, but I remember when I saw a band that I met with before an audition, I was so into the drummer -- the guy was just extremely good, played perfect for the music, that my girlfriend got tired of hearing me praise him and jokingly said, "I just want to let you know that I understand if you want to leave me for him. I won't stand in the way!" And weirdly enough, I didn't know it, but they fired the guy to have me replace him and he would go to our shows just to give me the finger (with both hands) and yell you suck during breaks. He did that for three or four shows, and they had covers of like $10 or $15 and funny enough, I started to feel bad for him. So I walked up to him during a break -- I think he thought I was going to punch him. Anyhow, I asked him, "I thought you quit the band, because that's what I was told. But I'm beginning to suspect that you were fired and think I knew that when I was introduced to you." He confirmed that's what happened. and begin to profusely apologize. I told him he was far too good of a drummer to not be playing and we had a beer together and really bonded. We toasted each other and he told me he actually really loved my drumming and was just angry with me because he thought I stole his job. I never saw him again. But I should have gotten his number, we would have had great times, I'm sure. And yeah, from your other comment, if those guys created a kit that sounded like the drums in the video you shared, I would absolutely want it. It sounded gorgeous to me.

The APX 351 is listed as $29 USD in the hero image on the home page whether you have a cookie on your machine or not, even if you view it anonymously. I'm not sure if rubenruben is referring to that though, I'm guessing he means the Goliath and the Locness.