This cat speaks the truth on the music industry from a producer's point of view. He wrote a whole entry on what he calls "The Free Music Generation". Some choice excerpts:
The general strategy in the minds of those “on the grind” is this: I’m going to talk everyone into doing free things for me. Then I’m going to press up a product (CD, DVD, whatever else you can think of), promote the hell out of myself, and then I’m going to walk into a major label and they’re going to fork over a few million dollars for me to record my project.
The problem is that major labels, while they still have some value, have seen their relevance and their ability to just pour out money to artists with a “buzz” dwindle in recent years. There isn’t just some big pile of money waiting to be handed over anymore. This isn’t the 90s. Dudes need to be realistic. Buzz does not equal record sales.
The message:
Everyone’s got a company these days, but nobody wants to do business. Everyone’s an executive, but can’t execute even the simplest thing. And it’s because they think there’s some big bag of money that’s gonna fall out of the sky once they put out enough mixtapes, go to enough industry parties, kiss as many A&R asses as possible, and get on as many street DVDs with guns as they can before they get locked by the local cops (not the hip-hop cops, they’re not that important).
What do you guys think? We're all about supporting independent artists, especially on MySpace Mondays but I agree that there's a lot of presumption on the part of the MC or the promoter that "grinding" online will get them a deal.
Leave your thoughts in the comments.
