Fair enough. But TV & film is about to become the refugee camp for people who are figuring out that the "pop music" industry (I actually think of it as the retail recorded music industry - the only sales channel where the recorded music itself is the product - I classify TV and film as a secondary market since the music is an embellishment to the main product and not sold directly to the consumer).MIDI Life Crisis wrote:It's not just TV & film that is viable.
So the tide of noise will definitely rise and this field will get proportionately harder to work in as well. The second problem I see coming is the constant drive to get more for less. The business world calls this "productivity" and it has been steadily rising to the point that less than the entire population is require to do all the work that needs doing.
This is hitting all segments of the music business. Orchestras are being replaced with samples or even electronica in film and TV. I suppose if we can write and arrange that we might take comfort that at least those jobs are bullet proof. Only this isn't true either. Emily Howell and her progeny threaten to replace composition of accompaniment as well, reducing it to parameterized algorithms. Won't the film industry LOVE that? Not this year, but in a decade?
I wouldn't be surprised if an automated composer that cues off of the film itself analyzing movement and color and composing original "music" that reinforces the visual - possibly with some human input such as selecting among alternative versions didn't arise within a decade.
Recorded music let us multiply our efforts for the last 50 years or so. Now the technology has become widespread enough that it is being used the other way - dividing them.
I'm just musing here but I can see the entire industry - all segments - going up in flames and needing to be reinvented. Live performance is irreplaceable - but even there the performer has to compete against the movies, video games, television, and other forms of entertainment for consumer dollars. There aren't all that many venues. *I myself seldom attend live performances because they're really expensive compared to dinner and a movie and I don't have the free evenings.
*(Although I have tickets to the Brian Setzer Orchestra at the Belly Up on Sunday - a dinosaur of an act if ever there was one - a 17 piece swing band with a guitar slinging front man - so I will come out for something really amazing - but it needs to be amazing).
Also, I just recently read Frank Zappa's autobiography and his highly negative experiences with getting works performed by orchestras and union musicians in general makes the whole performing of new compositions thing sound totally commercially unfeasible. My impression of what can be done in that line is colored by reading that.