ru a musician or a content creator?

[jackson white]

from a recent Sonic Scoop article (not april fools)

Quote

"A lot of our customers are ... content creators as I like to call them because I don’t call them musicians anymore — it’s content creators, beatmakers, streamers, DJs — all morphed together. When you look at who makes the latest Justin Bieber record and you see 10 songwriters and 10 producers on the record, it’s people that all know a little bit of how to make a record. It’s all about an easy barrier of entry, so that’s where the audio business is going in my mind: easier, better."
 - John Bastianelli, CEO, Slate Digital

em, ok... but easier = 'better'?  well, POV is everything, right, horses for courses and all that, thought I'd check the ableton user forum for some balance. The very first topic under General Music Production was; "Why this obsession with mixing/mastering quality?" The post included a link that did a pretty good job of answering that question.

idk.

ChatGPT gonna be awesome.

[Old Joad]

Honestly content creator sounds so sterile, it probably doesn't take much to put together a Justin Bieber record. a few doobies and a couple of hours on a keyboard in a sweet studio setup. Whereas musicians take a little time to sound good in a crappy little hole of a studio. I'm Justin saying?

[craigb]

Is "music lover" an option? ?

[jackson white]

15 hours ago, craigb said:

Is "music lover" an option?

apparently not, as it's the "audio" business per the CEO of Slate.  

the team thing did get me thinking about a doc which made the Brill building sound like a song writing factory. 

does that make "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" the same as "Sorry"?

same as it ever was? 

ima thinking maybe call them content "generators" and have at it with ChatGPT.

[Starship Krupa]

On 4/1/2023 at 11:17 AM, Old Joad said:

....it probably doesn't take much to put together a Justin Bieber record. a few doobies and a couple of hours on a keyboard in a sweet studio setup.

Guy like that has songwriters, engineers, producers and musicians lined up around the block begging to work with him. Many with way more musical (and pruduction and engineering) talent than I have been refused, not a doubt in my mind.

As for the terms in popular use these days...."content creator" seems to fit as a description for someone using software to make music and video and games. A marketing term that describes the people being marketed to, who do have similar needs: powerful, stable computers with specialized peripherals like audio interfaces and powerful graphics cards (not always the case with music creators), as many plug-ins as they can get their hands on. I might find "multimedia creator" to be more accurate, but it sounds a little archaic, like they're making learning CD-ROM's with animated slides. "My latest title, Ranger Rick's Reading Ranch earned a Gold CD award from the Academy of Electronic Courseware."

Maybe I'll start referring to myself as a "contentment creator."

"Producer" sounds weird and pretentious to those of us of a certain age who grew up hearing Phil Spector and Bob Ezrin and Tony Visconti and George Martin being called that, but that one itself had a pretty flexible definition by the time the 70's rolled around (it could include arranging, engineering, playing, any number of roles). But is there an alternate term for someone who (as I do now) uses their computer as their primary composition tool and instrument? "Computerist?" "Laptopper?" "Computer musician" sounds old-fashioned to me, like it evokes CANYON.MID playing on a Sound Canvas being driven by an MPU-401 when someone uses the term. "It sure is easier now for us computer musicians than when we had to encode every note on a punched card and set up patches with 1/4" cables."

Edited April 3, 2023 by Starship Krupa

[Old Joad]

On 4/1/2023 at 9:18 AM, jackson white said:

from a recent Sonic Scoop article (not april fools)

10 songwriters and 10 producers on the record,

 

Like they say in Nashville "Change a word in for a third"

[craigb]

3 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

... it evokes CANYON.MID playing on a Sound Canvas being driven by an MPU-401 ...

LMAO!  Boy does that bring back memories!  That was actually the midi file I was using to test Cakewalk v1 when I was helping Greg debug an issue except I had one of those way too expensive Turtle Beach sound cards with onboard General MIDI! ?

[Starship Krupa]

Here is proof that just about any random thing you can think of is already available on the Internet:

 

[Rain]

As impersonnal as it may sound, content creator may indeed be the most appropriate label for people assembling sounds without really investing their heart and soul into a particular project. It's a mercenary approach. Which can be hard to undertand for old-school people who have more of a samurai heart when it comes to music. We think art, they think product.

Considering oneself in terms of brand and a product is no longer the prerogative of prostitutes in the age of social media, and not a source of shame either, and our contemporary understanding of music reflects the times we live in.

I remember when a friend who was getting into podcasts mentionned that she had been shopping for some royalty-free music and I realized that there were people out there just pumping out music, dumping it online for people to browse through, and purchase the bits they liked. Content seems like a very adequate description for that.

I guess it's not unlike back in the days when I spent time writing and recording music in all kinds of genres for presentations, to show potential cutomers what I could do. Except that nowadays, it's all about "monetizing", so they skip the presentation part and just sell that material directly.  

And I guess it makes sense. People who would have paid independent little guys like myself even just a bit of money to write and record original music specifically for their little documentary know that most people don't hear the difference, so they might as well save themselves some dough and pick some royalty-free generic music for peanuts. Worst case, they can even assemble loops in GarageBand themselves.

Anyway, with AI, even content creators are likely to be replaced by content generators (I'm guessing that's also already a thing, but I prefer to stay behind the times and let them lemmings run off that cliff w/o me).

Edited April 3, 2023 by Rain

[craigb]

"Content Creator" - Not to be confused with caca creator (Kanye and Yoko come to mind here... ?).

[jackson white]

20 hours ago, Old Joad said:

Like they say in Nashville "Change a word in for a third"

standard practice there, feeds the collaborative vibe and eliminates all the lawyering. a word can make a difference. there's a song that was called "You Rock Me" for the longest time, until they changed a word to come up with "You Wreck Me". 

21 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

"Producer" sounds weird and pretentious to those of us of a certain age who grew up hearing Phil Spector ...

"producer" could be a deep topic. but keeping an open mind, someone like Phil Spector could be considered as a producer with a complete "vision" for a finished product. the difference today is a "producer" can do the same with a laptop full of loops and samples whereas Spector only had organic material/analog tools to work with (musicians, studios, etc) and a budget. and an ego, but that's another story. 

for the record, and jmho, not dissing any of it, it's all good. the frontier is always more than a bit messy. just hearing more "magic" in the creative interaction between people than piling a load of vintage compressor/saturation presets on a string of loops. i imagine "consumers" are more likely to respond to the humanity in an art work over an algo. but i could be wrong...

11 hours ago, Rain said:

People who would have paid independent little guys like myself even just a bit of money to write and record original music specifically for their little documentary

ya, much more a family and friends thing these days. i have peeps with "content" on bandcamp that get hit up for film placement with the pitch that "you'll get great exposure" = we want to license it for free. standard response is "do you work for free?" but it is truth...

 

11 hours ago, Rain said:

it's all about "monetizing"

same as it ever was. there's no surprise the bulk of the profits back in the "record" days went to distribution, not the artist. the difference today is technology has leveled the playing field by lowering the barrier to entry and eliminating/commoditizing distribution. monetizing is a challenge all around (re financials for Spotify, Soundcloud, YT T&Cs for getting paid, etc). people be doing whatever to get that money. 

11 hours ago, Rain said:

Worst case, they can...

just use ChatGPT. would not be surprised to see "AI" become a verb in short order (ala "google").

Edited April 3, 2023 by jackson white
format

[Old Joad]

22 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

Maybe I'll start referring to myself as a "contentment creator."

"Producer"

Or something snappy like Cyber producer?

[Notes_Norton]

Both.

Musician: I play sax, wind synth, flute, guitar, bass, drums, keyboards, and vocals. We played 20 gigs last month, and now that the tourist season is winding down, only 16 this month.

Content creator: I make aftermarket styles for Band-in-a-Box, and other musicians in over 100 countries use my music snippets to make their music. But I make these styles by playing music into a computer and taking pre-planned, and pre-played snippets into the StyleMaker app.

I create backing tracks for my own duo. I do this by playing the music into a MIDI Sequencer. I don't know or care if that is a musician or content creator.

Anyway, I'm lucky enough to be able to make my living doing music and nothing but music.

 

Notes ♫

[craigb]

I'm more of a content corrupter...

[Starship Krupa]

8 hours ago, jackson white said:

i have peeps with "content" on bandcamp that get hit up for film placement with the pitch that "you'll get great exposure" = we want to license it for free. standard response is "do you work for free?"

I've seen it said that "people die from 'exposure'." I'll license all day long, with the fees dependent on the licensee. Sometimes that could be zero, like music for fan-created ages in MYST Online: Uru Live. But for commercial use, gotta get commercial fees.