Infrastructural challenges in Electronic Music:
1. Any scene tied to legacy formats ideas are too slow for this fast world we live in. Your vinyl EP takes 4 months to come back from the plant. Profit from any money made takes 6 months to come back for you to be able to reinvest.
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2. Vinyl is too expensive to produce at small units for a profit unless selling direct - International postage and taxes so high it kills demand from most of the world, apart from exceptional circumstances or well monied people
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3. EPs - Artists continue to work in this format even though all data points to one song making 90% of the revenue. Alternative is splitting out material steadily, then compiling later, so each song gets focus. This rarely happens. Drop 4 at once, 1 gets heard at scale.
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4. Costs of shows has risen dramatically, without the ability to raise ticket prices. Anything under 200 cap is going to be a hard to break even if you are bringing in a guest from another city.
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5. All the major promoters are 30+. There’s literally no young large scale promoters as it’s so expensive, and why wouldn’t you want to just be a DJ / producer, it’s less hassle, less financial risk. I think there are huge opportunities here for people to look at new models.
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6. We've collectively landed on 'radio' as the primary tool for community building. I think there's an over saturation of stations, shows and a lot of talented people and resources being plowed into work that isn't compounding, and def not sustainable.
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- Problem of using old media terms like Radio and Magazine in this era is that you just rebuild the same structures which don't work online. We can build different things that will work better on the rails of the apps everyone is using currently.
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Calling something an online radio station is like calling my YouTube Channel a TV station
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7. Artists that are making money, most barely scrape by even if they have high visibility. They are unable to reinvest in their own careers at the speed necessary to keep them 'interesting' or 'hot'. Audience moves on quicker, rug gets pulled before artist lands on their feet
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8. Working with DIY labels is very different today, a label without a studio or direct to consumer model, without club nights or a festival network, is this worth you giving away 50% of your royalties for life for all of your material? Prob not.
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Labels for labels
DIY label = run by 1 or 2 people
Small independent label = 5-10 - permanent staff
Big independent label = 10 + staff + international offices / partners.
etc
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9. Before you used to pay to see the DJ. Now people are giving away the sets so there’s no intrigue about anything - and people are burning through material playing to very small audiences. You got your tune played by a big DJ cool. Did it result in anything tangible. No.
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10. If someone does blow up, the new tunes & ideas slow down. The output becomes majority gigs and talking about hotel breakfasts or random dumb shit that you never followed them for. As they fight for their own survival they don't use their platforms to promote others. Yawn
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So the work outside of making stuff for yourself and others is all of these things. If you end up solving a few of these for yourself whatever you build will look completely different to most of what is in operation now. Thats awesome, take that path
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One year may look completely different to the next, you may have to learn new ways of doing things very quickly to move forward. I think you can have a long term direction, but you prob need to have shorter plans of how to get there.
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You can be a great dj with no radio show, great journalist with no articles great producer with no EP or albums great designer with your only client being you. There are many ways I'm sure
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@eli1ah
Having known of you since the Butterz days, now being a house DJ I wasn't particularly paying mad attention, but a week ago I came across the squares. Two nights ago I watched the live. Everything I am seeing you say makes me believe the future for me is DIY
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