PavlovsCat

Thanks for recognizing the joke of my user name, when most people call me Pavlov! I'm the freaking cat and I can't be manipulated into ringing that bell! I'll find mice on my own. It's good exercise and a lot of fun. Anyhow, seriously, I meant the name as a metaphor for being an independent thinker.

I had another study that had rates for YouTube, but I couldn't find it and came across the one that had this chart instead, which doesn't include YouTube, but you get the idea. Marketing people regularly deal with influencers, it's a standard part of the job, and you have to pay them -- and sadly, marketers aren't requiring that influencers comply with regulations and laws, even though most countries try to push the brands to keep the influencers accountable, the brands don't want to do it because they realize that if an influencer is honest with his/her audience, it can and likely will destroy the false perception that they're unbiased, which is the cornerstone of how they gain trust with their audiences. Again, every influencer isn't getting money upfront and sometimes the small ones in this space are working for free products and sponsorships (which is really just another way that a brand pays off the influencer for promotion but a lot of influencers like that so they can say things like "no money changed hands"). I shared that one influencer I've gotten to know and like a lot in this space is Cory Pelazarri. I became a fan when he did a review of drum library and he shared the problems that some of the samples had and that he talked to the developer and the developer refused to fix the problems. NO influencers do that. That blew me away. I immediately contacted a developer I've consulted to who's been a good friend who is the most honest business person I know and told him he needs to get his product in this developer's hands. Because I knew that developer and I think a lot alike and he makes superb sample libraries where this influencer can be just brutally honest, as he has done. But I know from Cory that he's had a lot of trouble with developers, even threats of lawsuits. Granted, those are frivolous threats, but they can intimidate someone who isn't legally savvy into thinking they're going to lose everything they own, and I know that Cory has felt intimidated, and has had more than one developer give him problems. Now do I think any influencer, even Cory, who I like a lot, is beyond being influenced by freebies and money? Absolutely not. But personally, I still watch SOME influencers, of course, realizing that they're pitchmen. Of course, Cory, then I really get a kick out of the White Sea Studio guy and our own Simeon is a lot of fun to watch play. And to Simeon's credit, after I did some posts in this forum about disclosures that influencers are supposed to be doing but almost never do, Simeon immediately started doing the disclosures. I definitely don't believe influencers are necessarily bad people. It's just that the business model is all about selling your trust to brands for money. It's not about doing legitimate, journalistic quality unbiased reviews or testing and reviews like Consumer Reports. Influencers really aren't doing unbiased reviews, they're doing product pitches like infomercial pitchmen. And if they started being honest about it, I wouldn't have a big problem with them. But the problem is that they're trying to deceive people that they're unbiased and uncompensated -- all of them do it. And I've actually arranged relationships and the reality is, yeah, you see these folks deceiving their audience, but blowing a whistle isn't going to stop it, because brands (marketers) will just find another influencer. I think until you have better enforcement of regulations and more consumer awareness of practices, influencer marketing will remain as sleazy as it currently is, because brands / marketers are never going to be the ones to stop it. It's super profitable for them.

I'll shortcut the influencer discussion, as I shared, I have a background leading digital marketing at major brands and consulting, so I'm not an outsider. My profession is the one greasing the palms of influencers. The shortcut is, just think of them as covert infomercial pitch people, even the ones that appear the most credible, because the who point of an influencer is gaining people's trust and then cashing in on that trust to sell it to companies. Micro influencers (the folks with the smallest audiences usually operate by getting free product and usually try to persuade the brands they give "reviews" to sponsor or advertise with them. But there are times when influencers aren't getting any money direct from a brand, especially micro influencers who don't have a big following and often just focused on getting free product.

Ha! I don't know what happened, but historically, my threads and posts are targeted A LOT and I'm guessing that it was reported by one of those two and it probably was deleted because they complained comments criticizing Behringer were not appropriate for the deals forum and the mods just want to make things simple. Wookiee is a mod and he's a volunteer and a seriously really kind and thoughtful person, because I've spent a bunch of time explaining to him why I am targeted and why their claims that I'm doing affiliate marketing are a scam to cause trouble. But Behringer does fascinate me, and not in a good way. Maybe the mod who deleted it can chime in. I'd appreciate that.

My lyric was just a simple line, but yours is really good! Kudos, El Diablo. Although I am a little uncomfortable praising "the devil," you have clearly won this round! Hopefully there are no eternal consequences for that.

Yep. I started the thread. It got deleted. There a couple of folks here who report any thread I make and do things like falsely claim I use affiliate marketing links to get my threads and posts deleted. Thankfully, they didn't get my mega post threads on free libraries deleted. I've had to defend a number of my posts to the mods because of fake claims like that certain folks keep making about any threads I do. I was enjoying nerding out in that last thread and I promised someone I'd share some research on going rates for influencers and when I was about to post it, the thread was deleted. So whoever that was, let me know and I can PM it to you. We had an interesting and intelligent discussion going on and it was no less appropriate for the deals forum than this one.

To the melody of The Smiths "Girlfriend in a Coma": "Spammer in the coffee house, I know, i know, it's really serious." Okay, it's really not serious, it's just daily forum life. But this is the kind of ridiculousness that pops into my head after seeing this thread's title.

I second what @jeffdrawscomics wrote. The demo was really sweet and charming. It's generous of the developer to give this away free.

I own it and all of their other drum libraries that I picked up on sales for $15 USD each or so last year, so there is a potential they may discount this more heavily in the coming months. I think it sounds good. Listen to the demos and if you like the sound, that is what you get. It requires full version of KONTAKT.

Absolutely true about talent not equaling success. I was just thinking about the majority of people who put music up. The reality is, the majority of them aren't people with great or even mediocre talent. Most simply aren't honest with themselves about this stuff. I think, with home studios and DAWS making it easy for anyone to create multitrack songs, it's led to a lot of people creating music that didn't get the reality check live playing gives you. As a musician, the audition process is one reality check. When you have to compete to play in a band in open auditions or when you do a lot of live shows, especially to larger audiences, you get a reality check on how the world sees your abilities. I think there are a lot of people who've never done that who aren't able to be objective about their abilities or potential who make up the vast majority of people putting their music on BandCamp and the truth is, that also makes it harder to find good music. And for those who are in the group who are super talented but haven't reached a large audience, it's super tough. There are a few people in this forum who share music who are very talented and deserving of a larger audience, IMO (and no, I'm not among them; I'm just a former very good drummer who thought he wrote decent songs with bad tendinitis who's attempting to play again; at my best, my recordings are demo quality) and there are people I've found on SoundCloud, who are very talented but haven't found an audience. I've stumbled across some artists on SoundCloud that are really, really talented but have very few listens. That's really frustrating to me as a former musician and someone who loves music.

Of course, there are creators that aren't realistic about their abilities and music. That's a heck of a lot of folks there. But that really isn't my concern with building a better mousetrap. I think the greater concern -- at least for me -- is that there are really talented artists who aren't able to reach listeners who would appreciate their work. There's this potential promise that the web has that it can cut out middle men, but the reality is that it doesn't really happen because of how crowded things are it still takes money to reach the right audience. But I absolutely do think it's possible and maybe someday, someone will do it. But it's far more profitable, and much less complex, to operate the system as is, so that those that already have an established following or a serious promotional budget and team behind them get the attention on the music streaming platforms.

Yep. that is the challenge beyond the challenge of making really good music people want to listen to. It's a lot like having a website. There was a time in the early days of the web where having a website was a big deal. MySpace was awesome for its time, IMO. But now there's so much content out there it's incredibly difficult for someone without a team and big budget behind them to find the RIGHT audience. Peter brought up Dave Kerzner -- who I'm guessing some people here are familiar with (he founded Sonic Reality and had played keyboards with Kevin Gilbert -- a singer/songwriter/musician I was very fond of -- back in the 90s). Dave has done a lot of touring (live shows) and is active engaging his fans in social media. So, he follows the indie long-time model of combining traditional live shows and online presence. I think, unless you have a huge social media presence -- such as being a popular influencer -- that's the route that still works best for most indie artists. If you haven't built an audience using either live shows or online, and just put your music up on a service like BandCamp, they will not come (taking that from the often-used Field of Dreams paraphrase, "if you build it they will come"). It's simply too challenging for the right audience to find the right music with so much content out there. That's when you either need a lot of luck (rare) or, more likely, a lot of money and a publicity machine behind you. Most musicians putting up their music on services like BandCamp don't have those resources. I think there are ways of doing it better than the current solutions, especially with using AI to match those who want music around their interests, but the problem is always going to be that those recommendations are going to be impacted by financial concerns. That is, the platforms are going to promote those who pay and I doubt that will ever change. It would have to be a nonprofit that is completely ethics driven by art over commerce for indie artists to get the same treatment as artists with a big budget behind them.

I second everything TheSteven just said. I picked up Softube Transient Shaper in a past sale and am very glad I did.

Your post intrigues me, @Bajan Blue. Especially after knowing the quality of your music. So you use this to try out different tempos and key change ideas in demos you've worked on? That seems like it'd be pretty useful as a songwriting tool. I often will try different keys for sections (e.g., the bridge) as well as the entire song and different tempos and it would be cool to be able to easily try different adjustments and quickly understand what works and doesn't work. I need to look into this. Thanks for sharing how you use it.

Thanks for the post, @Peter - IK Multimedia. I do think BandCamp has been a good place for musicians. Their revenue split is pretty generous. I didn't mean to be a Debbie Downer, I just meant to express that I think the vast majority of creators there won't see success and there's no easy solution for that. I didn't realize that Dave has used it so extensively. I need to spend more time there. Is that largely where Dave has cultivated and grown his fan base online (of course, in addition to touring/live shows)?

Yep. I made a couple of posts over the years reminding people not to discuss politics or make thinly veiled intolerant/prejudiced statements against certain groups of people (same folks did both), and it's always the same bad actors over the years, and over time, a couple of them sent me some pretty hateful PMs and regularly post snipes at me in the forum even in threads I don't even participate in and they'll make a reference to me (while at the same time stating that they've hidden my posts, defying logic. Life's too short for anyone to carry around that much hate and resentment; it's such a waste of energy and one's life, IMO. But there's no shortage of people who think otherwise. Fortunately, most people in this forum are nothing like that. Just report spam to the mods. There would absolutely be abuse if the ignore function could be manipulated to ban people -- because trust me, there are folks here who will (and are already) abusing the system.

Speaking of 2 cents, I can't help but wonder how much money anyone who's not young and doing live, well-attended shows in person with a decent size following or that has well-viewed social media shows and appearances (e.g., YouTube, TikTok, etc.) can make just putting their songs on BandCamp? I can't imagine there is a realistic hope of making much there; it's just not realistic. It's so complex to get noticed online for music, even if you are fantastically talented. Of course, like anything else, you have to start with something really special, a great product that appeals to people and that's not easy to do with music. Music that's really compelling to a group of people and of course, it needs to be polished even if it's songs about cats or something off the wall. Even then, if you have that great product / art, finding and reaching the right audience that enjoys it AND is willing to pay for it is the next hurdle and that almost always requires spending on promotions, be it advertising, sponsorship, getting on playlists or popular influencer channels, etc. Rarely is someone out of nowhere without any serious awareness-building effort simply found by a sizable group of consumers eager for to listen to and pay for their content without serious promotion and costs. Those days are generally over. If I were a young working musician today, I'd be spending a lot of energy trying to make the best music possible and then figuring out ways to build my audience offline AND online. But I don't see most BandCamp creators actively doing those things and I think it's the land of lost hopes and dreams for 90% of the creators there, and a really easy place for those with unrealistic hopes to see them fade. I also wonder how well BandCamp can do if they're not charging creators, because the folks who consume just don't seem to be there in significant quantities. To be clear, I realize that BandCamp is, or at least once was, profitable. But I do wonder about the potential of their model for the average creator and how they can grow their revenue. That is, I think for the overwhelming majority of creators, they're going to be disappointed. They won't draw an audience and they won't produce much revenue. Which is bad for them and bad for BandCamp IF BandCamp is counting on creators' music as their primary source of revenue. I would expect that BandCamp is going to need to derive a significant source of revenue FROM creators to keep growing by doing things like making revenue from tools creators use, which is what Bandlab's owners have been trying to do (now this is what Musk has attempted to do, and I believe it's a fantastically bad idea for X to attempt that strategy for many reasons; to keep it simple, amateurs who create music are heavily emotionally invested in their music and can be incredibly unrealistic about their abilities and willing to pay money to fund their hopes, however far fetched they may be; folks churning out social media messages attempting to influencers have a mindset that people should pay them and give them free things; they'll never embrace having to pay when every other media vehicle pays them). There'd have to be some way to have an incredibly motivated audience of music seekers not just looking for music from unsigned artists and not just looking, but eager to pay money for it. But I don't really any sign of that demand being sizable and very lucrative for creators /independent artists merely putting their music on the service without ongoing, serious promotion. In 2021, BandCamp had publicly stated they make 80% of their revenue from music sales and 20% from artist services. My guess is that the new owners will focus on growing that 20 percent. For record companies, that historically meant live shows and appearances for artists and the company's people doing advertising, publicity and promotion, working with radio program directors, deejays, the media, etc. Today, it still means that PLUS getting artists on playlists, their music placed in videogames, etc. And it's been said, but it's true that music industry today is very focused on image, so it's always been tough for artists past 30 to build an audience. Popular music (not jazz, cinematic or gaming music) has always been very youth-oriented. Of course, some folks might think of geriatric multimillionaire rockers with household names, but those folks all built their legacies as young artists; the public doesn't have a lot of interest in 40 something or older new faces in the popular music world, even if you're the dad version of Jacob Collier. So considering all of that, what does a middle-aged person who puts their original music on BandCamp take in during a month? I've thought of putting stuff up there, but not with any hopes of "making it," I had my chance at the big time when I was young and passed on it, and of course, it struck me by my 30s there weren't going to be any second chances. But I only thought of BandCamp as a means of distributing my music to my little group of friends and folks who've come to appreciate my musical output along the way. But I'm curious if anyone here is making anything off of Bandcamp beyond a few hundred bucks a year, at best? My guess is no, but it'd be great to learn that's not the case. EDIT: I found a subreddit answered my question and confirmed my suspicions:

"No more plugins and sample libraries after this purchase!" The lies people tell themselves, right? Haha.

This year I've been really good about not spending too much on sample libraries and plugins -- and Hornet's plugins are so cheap on sales that I just can't resist picking up a couple more plugins. I just bought two pretty useful plugins for a few bucks and I certainly can't regret that.

Awesome! Unrelated to the disclosure stuff, but @Simeon Amburgey, do you have an acoustic piano at your house? I It's amazing to have access to amazing sounds from sample libraries, but there's still a magic to playing an acoustic piano -- the feel and sound of the instrument-- that playing a MIDI controller and sample libraries can never compare with. Of course, it's the same for every other acoustic instrument as well..

If we're posting musician memes and quotes, I just saw this and it cracked me up.

Yeah, I wish I could find a good singer! Back when I was young and playing, I worked as a drummer and finally found talented musicians who believed in my originals to form a band -- I even turned down a major label signed band (Veruca Salt) -- and instead focused on my own band and for several months of trying we couldn't find a decent lead singer and I finally threw in the towel. Two decades later I've been redoing those old songs singing -- when I didn't even make the cut for my original band back in the day (I never would have considered me as the lead singer, even though a bunch of people suggested it; I sang on demos and that was it). If anyone knows of a good way to find singers to collaborate with online, I'd be very interested. I have friends who are guitarists, bassists, keyboardists, and drummers but no singers beyond a friend who's an amazing jazz singer, but I do rock (plus she's a pro).

Seriously, at least we had the experience playing in front of audiences. I loved playing . When I had an injury and all of that stopped, I can't begin to explain how much I miss being able to play with other musicians, to see music I play to bring joy to people. Now, attempting to play again, two decades later and finding even a few people who enjoyed something I played is a unexpected joy (especially when it's musicians), when I can't even play very well. Is really appreciated, but it can't compare to playing with other musicians and playing in front of an audience. And making multitrack recordings by yourself is something I've done since I was a kid, but it falls far short of the magic that happens when you interact with other musicians. To me, that's the greatest thrill of all playing music. I realize not everyone feels the same way, but for me, music is best when you collaborate. I've collaborated on two recordings since I've attempted to play again and that was the most fun I've had.

It would save us a lot of money to watch videos where the pianos sound terrible and Simeon is saying things like, "Wow, that just doesn't sound very good, does it?" But then Simeon would need bodyguards from angry developers after a while.

You made my day, Simeon! I'm so glad that you received that in the intended spirit. Like everyone else here -- and you already know this -- I have a blast watching your videos. I can't play like you, but I had a mother and two siblings who could (the reason I started playing drums!) and it brings back fond musical memories to see you just play whatever you feel inspired to play. That kind of joy -- really the joy of a child -- is what, IMO, makes your videos fun to watch. Your videos reflect that love for music that we share. To me, that's the strength of your brand that can't be easily duplicated. Seriously. I see you as kind of like the Bob Ross of the sample library influencer world. Yes, you're not teaching people how to play, but the very inspired joy you get when playing is one of those pure things in life, and there's an innocence and sweetness about it that I love. Thanks, and have a great day!