Check how much artists verses labels made.
Bands made money touring and selling merchandise at shows. Only stadium bands made notable money from royalties. The label made the lion’s share.
“hardware fun vs daw productivity”
Ill pass, thanks.
Sorry, stadium was an overstatement as bands like autolux, enon, pinback etc. etc. made money. But they definitely wont be living out their lives on it.
There will have to be something else.
But they also toured their ASSES off.
I see your point but I don’t think it’s quite so straight-forward as that. Playing gigs IRL isn’t a straight-forward thing to arrange as in my experience the bands/artists who get the most gigs are the ones who’ve got the most mates or work a scene. Of course, some times you’ll see a less popular band/artist make progress based on their talent but that’s less often. And then, you have to factor in fashion and trends… even up in Glasgow, if you go to a gig with unsigned/unknown electronic bands you’re lucky to get more than a smattering of people there who are connected to the bands playing.
I guess it’s been about 10 or 15 years or so since I played live as I haven’t really had the time or motivation to make the contacts to get gigs. Thing is, I’ve taken a notion to maybe playing again using the “Hardware fun” approach suggested by this thread as some of my favourite anecdotes from my younger years came from playing gigs…
So, filming some stuff and uploading to Youtube might be a way to have something to send to people to start that merry-go-round…
Part one of your statement is very true. With an average record deal the label loans you a huge amount of money. For sales they tended to get 88% and you get 12%. Worse still, you have to recoup the huge loan before you see mechanical royalties, which comes out of your 12%. They earn their 88% from record one. I’ve had many records that never recouped, yet the labels made 7 figures. Their ‘loss’ and my loss were very different things.
The “only stadium bands…” bit is false though, I’m afraid. Even moderate record sales secure bigger festival slots, better venues and much higher pay. I had a good 3 year run in the 90’s making 6 figures each of those 3 years and I gaurantee you’ve probably never heard of me 
Interested to know…in a six figure year, was that pre or post the cost of opperation…travel, lodging, food etc?
Adding: and what kind of schedule? Im sure it was busy and more stressful than posting online.
Net income. I’m all about fun and hopefully revealing conversation. As a fairly new OT owner, I’m used to getting corrected and playfully smacked down here on a regular basis. And I love it because I’m learning stuff.
Just trying to share my experience, man. I have a fairly large circle of friends who range from solidly middle class to wealthy in the music biz that most folks have never heard of. It’s just true. If you prefer snide or rude asides to that experience , it’s on you. I’m here to make friends with like minded people. It’s supposed to be fun.
Might be time to get back on topic folks 
Ok!
Is this a weird workflow? I often jam out parts for samples into Logic. Once I got enough parts (6-8 tracks), I arrange the parts into something resembling a song. Fully arranged and mixed. Then I hack that up into stems, transfer to the OT and give it another go. I almost always prefer the results there. At that point, it goes back into a new project in Logic for mixing and possibly more editing. Convoluted and maybe dumb, but I tend to go in and out of the box several times before a song is finished
Never heard of your music, but I’m a big fan of your activity on the forum 
Consider yourself lucky
I mirror your sentiment exactly 
I also do the same thing. There’s a lot of “ah ha” moments with the OT. That means you’ve covered a lot of ground on the machine already. Be patient you’ll figure out more stuff. The OT is not like an MPc where you write, record tracks, mix, then print. There’s a lot underneath the hood of that beast.
Thanks! Yeah, I’m having a ball with the OT. First two weeks sucked though! Now it’s my favorite noisebox ever so far
For me, one of the biggest boons to the DAW workflow is the modern SSD.
Whether it is a lightning fast NVME PCI-E in a brand new Mac, or a simple 450MB/sec SATA-III being used as a boot drive in a USB 3.0 enclosure… they sure make the whole experience snappier and less frustrating. Loading VSTs and multi-sample instruments, copying large libraries, it’s all a breeze now.
Hard to believe there was a time when we were happy that a laptop had a 5400rpm drive and not a 4200rpm drive in it, and 7200rpm seemed like a luxury for only those who could afford to burn money.
How far things have come…
Can’t disagree! It’s good, and a super efficient way to showcase ones stuff! What I’m really saying is, it’s never been easy, and the YT economy (as well as FB and IG) sucks many people in, working hard to monetise something that I think is not worth more than just to showcase your music for the next step to actually get out and play. I guess it could be super personal, but I came into music to play music, that is the cat’s pyjamas to me! NOW - I’m not saying YouTube is a bad thing on its own! So let me reiterate: don’t get stuck shooting tons of videos of jams when you really dream of something else! But if your goal is to show some friends, have a good time, jam something out and then get on with your day, then, god, don’t listen to me lol
Just shared my view on social media like YouTube. And what I think it really does to consumers and producers is tricking us in to values that they dictate. Sorry for the derailing!
Wow, this thread is many faceted indeed! I’ll throw in another yay for hardware (but also a yay for editing in a daw!)
recording synths and re-sequencing them on samplers was a huge part of early ebm and late 80s industrial music, you get more interestingly mechanical results when you make a track out of sequenced samples of analog or heavily modulated or FM synths.
there is also an important cognitive element to this, where you can rethink your initial creative decisions from a new perspective without redoing the whole thing or operating in surgical edit mode.
it’s certainly something I want to be doing more and you should keep it up if it’s working for you
Funny, my earliest influences were industrial bands…so that makes sense