Once upon a piddly time, we decided we'd make our own records (albums) (CD's, more likely) from scratch and sell them in stores that would carry them. Be our own makeshift production company/record label. We started branching out from our hometown, securing the region, whoever would have us. We sold several CD's as the music industry was slowly but fo' sho'ly making its massive transition from CD to the world of digital. When we first started making them, they were really easy to sell. They'd be gone really fast, even though they were printed, hand-made, in minuscule runs. As people became more and more inundated with listening and finding anything they wanted at the spontaneous click of a button, they exponentially became harder to move.
When you first start doing things, if you're doing alright, you think, okay, I'm new to this, all I have to do is keep up the practice and work and I can only do better, but in places as fickle and ever-changing as marketplaces, you have to constantly adapt to not be side-swiped by bloodthirsty competitors, and I, for one, have never been too keen on competition, anyway, not of the serious blood-lusting kind. Well, maybe a little. Eventually, everything was expected to be free because everything was exposed online for free and was available right now, then another click of a button, and attention spans became even shorter than they ever were. We found out it was hard to even sell stuff online, because it's just a piece of air or code that (magically) carries a sound. Oh well. At first, musicians and businessmen had to rush to set up their online store and had to pay a whopping 30-some dollars for a website domain name and perhaps 200 dollars a month for a hosting fee just to have the website storage. Which you still do, but for not as much. Several people were interested in checking out others' websites.
The advent of social media made it possible for everyone to have their own website, for free, and more and more storage space became possible. Then, everyone in the world had their own website and became addicted to looking at themselves online and all of their friends. Soon, you could even access all of this from anywhere on your cell phone, and people everywhere constantly reached for their phones as a reflex to check out anything that was happening except what was right in front of their face. Cafes were full of people staring at screens and very few people were actually having conversations. People were consumed with absorbing information until they started talking like robots. Musicians stopped getting paid to play in public places because people could just listen online to music being made by robots. When musicians did play for free and maybe (if they were lucky) a meal, no one listened because they were on their computers typing about how they were typing on their computer right now. What did it matter? The musicians were boring, anyway, and so was Hollywood. Everyone was making up their own stuff now.
I'll tell you about when we sold our albums at Borders, what happened, maybe tonight if I have time, but I have to run to band practice real fast...
When you first start doing things, if you're doing alright, you think, okay, I'm new to this, all I have to do is keep up the practice and work and I can only do better, but in places as fickle and ever-changing as marketplaces, you have to constantly adapt to not be side-swiped by bloodthirsty competitors, and I, for one, have never been too keen on competition, anyway, not of the serious blood-lusting kind. Well, maybe a little. Eventually, everything was expected to be free because everything was exposed online for free and was available right now, then another click of a button, and attention spans became even shorter than they ever were. We found out it was hard to even sell stuff online, because it's just a piece of air or code that (magically) carries a sound. Oh well. At first, musicians and businessmen had to rush to set up their online store and had to pay a whopping 30-some dollars for a website domain name and perhaps 200 dollars a month for a hosting fee just to have the website storage. Which you still do, but for not as much. Several people were interested in checking out others' websites.
The advent of social media made it possible for everyone to have their own website, for free, and more and more storage space became possible. Then, everyone in the world had their own website and became addicted to looking at themselves online and all of their friends. Soon, you could even access all of this from anywhere on your cell phone, and people everywhere constantly reached for their phones as a reflex to check out anything that was happening except what was right in front of their face. Cafes were full of people staring at screens and very few people were actually having conversations. People were consumed with absorbing information until they started talking like robots. Musicians stopped getting paid to play in public places because people could just listen online to music being made by robots. When musicians did play for free and maybe (if they were lucky) a meal, no one listened because they were on their computers typing about how they were typing on their computer right now. What did it matter? The musicians were boring, anyway, and so was Hollywood. Everyone was making up their own stuff now.
I'll tell you about when we sold our albums at Borders, what happened, maybe tonight if I have time, but I have to run to band practice real fast...
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