Don't jump ship for digital bullshit like beaport and then complain when people dont "value" your product.

Uhhh maybe people make music because they uhh ... enjoy making music? There's millions and millions of people on this planet making music without ever seeing a financial gain.

I can see why you could get frustrated, when you don't get the same financial return as you used to as a professional artist but when I read things like this I'm like "uhh ... so why do you even make music in the first place?"

I'm more upset that Swayzak forgot to capitalize anything in the rant, to be honest.

This right here, i agree

imagine start producing more " David Guetta's " ?

someone needs a hug

In many ways I think i was really lucky to get into the music bizz when I did (circa 2007).. already the glory years were some time past, vinyl sales were already heavily in decline, and anyone I knew in the industry was touring heavily to support themselves. I've never made very much money from sales, either digital or vinyl and licensing fees even in the few short years I've been in the game have dwindled down to almost nothing. I live pretty much from my gigs.

I can certainly see how anyone who entered the music world in the 90's is really feeling the pinch now. I can empathize 100% with what Swayzak are going through. If I had a choice, I too would sit in the studio every day of the week and never have to leave... and live just from the music I make. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE playing. I do so most weekends. I've had so many great gigs and amazing experiences and met so many wonderful people. I'm really happy when I'm playing out, especially when I play live and realise that MY music is making everyone happy and making everyone dance. But when it comes to the crunch, as much as I love playing out, the actual joy of making a new piece of music outweighs that even. I can totally understand when someone doesn't want to play "the game", when someone doesn't want to have to leave their home, their family, every weekend and go and play a gig just so they can put food on the table and facilitate their love of making music.

Of course any genuine, true musician makes music because they love it. But isn't it nice to have the joy of doing that and also making a career out of it. It should be everyone's right to do what they love and still make a living from it. I think the guys deserve a break.

surely people make music nowadays to get dj gigs?

100% agree with Chymera's view

Very true..

Lets keep music alive people...before Simon Cowell ruins it.

Nufff said about the times we are living in...

I feel bad if an artist's work is getting endlessly copied and pirated and he's not seeing a dime. But it's the age we're in - less barrier to entry to make a record means less financial returns on making a record.

Swayzak's been around for a while; there are just more people who can make decent sounding electronic music these days than when they started. Note I didn't say good, I just said decent, thanks to the cheaply/freely available digital tools at everyone's disposal. It's a shame that artists who have spent so much time honing their craft are getting marginalized, but technology has a way of creatively destroying lots of jobs, not just in the arts.

I'm not defending people who never buy any music. But he can't expect to actually see a financial gain on a piece of dance music when there's such an increasing glut of it out there these days.

Make an amazing track and give it away for free, sell something people want instead of something you want to create - have a free party and sell booze, sell vinyls, sell your dj services, sell yourself out as a ghost producer, sell t-shirts, get a day job... I think that most people involved in dance music (quality, underground dance music that is) are doing it 'for the love' anyways.

the only thing that's guaranteed in dance music is that there will be a scene of people who love it - individual artists, promoters, clubs and djs aren't guaranteed a thing.

true story

People who make music just for fun are amateurs. They don't get paid enough to earn their living through music, so they have day-jobs to pay the rent and raise their families. Some people still continue with their hobby even when they have kids, some people just simply don't have enough time. This is also why most "dj/producers" are 20-29 years old - they haven't got a loan or a family. If they are students, they also have a lot of time to spare.

There is nothing wrong with amateurs - I'm one of them. I've been lucky enough to release my music on some labels, but never got big bucks from the sales nor the gigs. I work from nine to five as a communications specialist and have approximately four hours per week to concentrate on music. This is the point where I understand why there should be professionals, who actually get paid from music. You can't really express yourself as much as you would like, when you stay as an amateur. An artist should be able to be an artist 24/7. Like someone put it - day-jobs hold artists down.

Then again - not everyone is an artist. Swayzak definitely is. I'm not saying every person in their bedroom should be.

We all should be....artists that is.. every human being should according to " William Blake" the English author and painter..the problem here is not if music is a love endeavour or not.
Simply the mere respect we should hold for others people's dreams,
Like Yeats said "i have spread my dreams under your feet,so thread softly"
Art has always been an open door to the thought of the period of human history we are living in..artists, musicians are historians of sorts.. They remind us What Life Holds.. Humanities intimate golden thread the one our parents, grandparents and civilisations before us have used as a blind walking stick for the dark times of existence..why do we all convine to drink at musics water fountain...? it is because their we replenish our tirsthy souls..
The feeling is surely worth a measure of respect and recognition .. Out of normal respect for a humans labour"
You pay the baker for his bread don't you? Why not play the fiddle man as well...


Jus saying..

If a product is created for sale upon a market, it should be bought before it is used, this maintains an industry and employment.

This is simple law, simple economics.

If someone invests time and energy in something that should be respected and appreciated, even if the way you do that is through buying it, (we are living in a capitalist system after all).

There are those that go "oh well ok jaar, its the times we're living in, I can download/torrent/share for free whatever, so I will"

And there are others that realise that music is both a product and (often, especially in EDM) a work of art which has taken many pain staking hours to create.

in both cases, the pragmatic hard-nosed economic/legal sense, and in the moral/creative sense you should pay for what you use,

If you borrow a CD from a friend, or download a decent album just buy them if you think they're really good, downloads cost nothing and CDs cost about 7 quid these days. This is hardly going to break the bank.

Essentially, the consumer has a responsibility too.

It really pisses me off these people that bang on about how much they love music, but then just rip it all off the internet, most of it at a poor bit rate.

It is not certain that the EDM scene will always be here. All it takes is for enough people to stop making music, or music of a decent standard for the whole scene to begin to collapse.

People will always do it for the love, but if you can create music professionally the quality goes up, and ultimately the whole scene benefits from it.

Actions have repercussions, its not all about the evil record labels getting bucket loads of cash, not with EDM artists anyway. Support the scene, buy your fucking music.

poor swayzeez

As someone who used to buy Swayzak's albums, tracks and remixes I'll say this - they fell off my radar. Why? I think TranceArmstrong above made a good point in that there are so many more artists release electronic music now than there were in the 90s. When I go looking for music I need some method of finding what I like.

When it comes to physical product (mostly CDs for me) the selection is fairly limited. Unless I were to do a (relatively expensive) mailorder, a lot of this type of music just isn't available. With CDs I end up buying older music that isn't available digitally or that I'm a collector of (such as YMO for example). Therefore, like many, I've moved onto digital downloads (I'll emphasis that I purchase the music legit, as it's not expensive and I do believe in supporting the artists).

Here is where it gets tough. WIth the huge glut of music out there I need something that really stands out (just like someone in the original FaceBook post mentioned that it need to be a track they "can't live without"). First the music has to somehow come to my attention, via an ad, an article on RA for example, or I may listen to a group of tracks on a known label or by a known artist and I find a new artist I like via a remix. There's a reason I mention this last point about finding "new artists". With electronic dance music it seems that it's possible to become a victim of your own success. I tend to shy away from purchasing a lot of tracks by artists that I feel are very successful or who's tracks are played out a lot, as I enjoy the feeling that I've discovered (and thus supported) an artist that is relatively unknown (probably not as unknown as I like to believe, though).

It's just that with so much music out there I'm looking for something unique, something that touches me in a way that the 10,000 minimal tech house tracks with dubby chord stabs, shuffled 808-bongos and latin horn samples don't (i'm sure there are tracks that fit this description that are amazing!). Unfortunately the money no longer is concentrated enough amongst a small(er) group of artists, but spread amongst a huge variety of producers. Few artists will end up making a living from their music productions in this environment. But isn't this how the arts have always been? How nice it would be if all artists could make a living doing what they love, but unfortunately that's not reality...it's just something we have to live with.

Things change, industries move forwards. if you dont move with it you get left behind. i don't think anyone in the business expects to make any money directly from their music anymore. bitching about it on Facebook certainly isn't gonna change anything

That said, 2 record sales in a month is shite. Maybe Swayzak need to look at themselves a bit more!

Well said, just because you can download something for free doesn't make it right. Short-termist and selfish behaviour. Music brings joy and happiness, what price is £1-2 to pay for that?

Would the same people go and loot a store in a riot? Or avoid paying taxes which pay for the roads and health care and education they use every day?

The whole world has gone to pot

music is not selling records

juhok says above: "I work from nine to five as a communications specialist and have approximately four hours per week to concentrate on music. This is the point where I understand why there should be professionals, who actually get paid from music. You can't really express yourself as much as you would like, when you stay as an amateur. An artist should be able to be an artist 24/7. Like someone put it - day-jobs hold artists down."

There is something to all of this (Chymera suggested a similar thing) about not having time / energy when you're a producer w/ a day job...but we shouldn't lose sight of the fact the history of art, literature /music/painting/etc, is replete with counterexamples to "professionalism is necessary", e.g. Omar S and Norman Nodge (if memory serves) have day jobs and they're doing just fine. (I also think that for a lot of the music I connect with, the DIY, unprofessional, unpolished, fuck the rules mentality that produced it is part of what explains its' brilliance...and I think that struggling against limitations, whether gear or time or your own skill set or whatever, can also be very important to the creative process for lots of reasons.) There is a tendency amongst people who don't make stuff that cuts the mustard to complain about not having enough time...or for people w/ day jobs to make excuses for not making the small sacrifices that are required to have just enough time to produce something of value (i.e. I don't know the details of your personal life, but many people can and do put in 2 or so on weekdays, and more on the weekends, into their "hobbies" w/ a 9 -5 and 2 kids [sleep six or seven hours instead of 8, give up on TV, stop posting on forums, whatever, I don't know, just focus and make it happen...maybe your situation is different, but most people can do this)

Plus consider this from Monolake as a sort of defense of the amateur (from this interview: www.monolake.de/interviews/silence.html): "I don't want to read anymore sound quality discussions that deal with the last bit of a 24 bit file in a world where people listen to mp3 over mobile phones and enjoy those artefacts. The most exciting new music comes from young kids guys running some audio software in a bedroom, listening to the result over a shitty hi-fi and use Melodyne 'all the way wrong'. Those folks do not read gear magazines, they could not care less about yet another mastering EQ, but create the most stunning beauty. If people talk too much about gear I usually do not expect too much good music."

Great post and thanks for that quote, I'll use that in the future.

Dennis Ferrer said something along the lines of the way it is today "Making Music Is Your Business Card, to land Gigs".

Ive work in this industry since 2004 but first and foremost i am a big fan of House Music Culture since 1990. I buy about 90% of my music while the others i receive are promos. IM NOT A DJ.