Stefan Goldmann is an electronic musician based in Berlin, who specializes in minimal techno and who holds a residency at the city’s prestigious Panorama Bar. He’s also a pretty good writer. In this illuminating article for the website Little White Earbuds (translated from German) he explains the changes to music production and consumption over the last decade from the point of view of a small-scale, independent artist, specifically someone catering to a very niche taste.
Absurdly, the complete disappearance of economic barriers to distribution (offering a free download doesn’t cost more than the time to upload the file) hit the wallets of the “indies” first, stripping a substantial part of their income. This mostly affected the artists and the personnel around them: designers, engineers, studio musicians, promotion and label professionals, music journalists, et al. The mass of competition they encountered meant anyone with a limited marketing budget had a difficult time surviving in the market. With the same promotional tools available to almost anyone, they lost their efficiency.
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There’s this die-hard belief that income, at least for the musicians (but not for the professional environment), will come from the fees for live performances instead. But how do you get live performances in the first place? Well, press helps. The problem encountered there is that the media has adapted to the state of the music industry. In electronic music that means whoever succeeds in producing two singles may find himself covered by all relevant press and booked throughout the club circuit, just to be replaced by the next “lucky fool” (a term from stock speculation) about three months later. New artists get “pumped and dumped.” What about a year old break, a production that takes longer, or time for having a baby?
It’s not all doom and gloom—Goldmann has a surprisingly upbeat message for artists out there who are still dedicated to making and releasing music. I may not agree with everything he says in the article (or more specifically I may not feel it is wholly relevant to everyone) but the last few paragraphs and the post script almost read like a manifesto.
Highly individualized, lightly advertised work is way more attractive nowadays than consensus-style work, advertised to death (short, unsustainable hype is the most one can hope for there). People are starting to realize this. Many top labels stopped promoting their new singles for instance. It just appears in the shops and that’s it. It’s not unlikely that artists will increasingly lose their interest in having their output available all over and seek for a more intimate exchange with the audience. Why plaster the Internet with files? Who finds that valuable anymore?
classics, 
, a 2-CD & book set of Scott’s early electronic work. That makes him totally the dude to talk to about Raymond Scott himself. And on top of being a total badass on Raymond Scott-ology, he was a nice enough guy to answer a few of our questions. The conversation goes everywhere - from Looney Tunes to Benny Goodman to Mark Mothersbaugh.
