Steve Lukather Rant About Music Biz

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guitardood
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Steve Lukather Rant About Music Biz

Post by guitardood »

I just finished getting ticked off reading this post on Facebook which contains a rant from the almighty Steve Lukather complaining about his dwindling residuals and the fact that only "REAL" musicians be allowed to put music out there for folks to listen. He also complained about cutting/pasting and not playing music from start to finish with feeling. I'm sure he NEVER did an overdub of a part or had a tape editor exacto-knife and tape a reel of any of his performances. I was at first a little compassionate to his plight, but very quickly became extremely agitated at his totally elitist attitude and his essentially crapping on each and every one of us utilizing modern technology to create art.

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Re: Steve Lukather Rant About Music Biz

Post by Guitar Gaz »

A lot of what he says is true of course - but music making is much more democratic nowadays, but with democracy comes things that some won't like, especially if you were part of an elite previously reaping the benefit. Being part of an elite came through practice, talent, sheer hard work, being able to afford decent instruments and tuition, and some luck, but now things are available that can help bypass that (software, Chinese made guitars etc.) - but of course some with talent now can at least have access to music making that was not available previously. But also some won't have the dedication and want a short cut - so all these things contribute to his view of music today. Anyone can make music albeit there is much more music and much more of it is mediocre. But no-one in the elite had a right to vast income streams for perpetuity. But things are bad - but its part of a cycle and live music is thriving - look at the festival scene to realise how much more is going on.

iTunes seized the opportunity but through greed ruined the financial model for selling music and resulted in piracy which is almost the social norm - by charging too much for digital music which was poor in technical sound and you apparently don't own anyway. Streaming is a way of squeezing out piracy although the pay to artists is poor and often insulting. And so it goes - but where it's going no-one knows.
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Re: Steve Lukather Rant About Music Biz

Post by monkey man »

Well, he did qualify much of what might've disappointed many by saying, "there IS some great stuff but you know what I mean".

I pretty much agree with everything he said. I became disenchanted with the pop sector after the "magic" of the '80s died, following the death of the great '70s and so on. When grunge seeped its way in it was the last straw for me. It seemed as if slovenliness, messiness and just just not caring about your product took over from the early '90s onwards. The dress code seemed to reflect what sounded like lazy engineering and production perfectly. Suddenly boxy, barking drum kits nestled in the corner of a crappy-sounding room and mic'ed with a single, inappropriate microphone appeared to represent the new "gold" standard. Guitar parts sounded muddy, lacked definition and bled into each other, all under the guise (read: excuse) of being more "natural" or "organic". Well, more natural they may well have been, but if causing offence to the brain and ear canal is the consequence of pursuing this path then I'll have no part of it... and I chose not to. I went from being someone who could virtually recite the top 40 on any given week (I collected the Aussie "Countdown" hard-copy charts and ended up with a pile a foot high), to someone who couldn't have given two hoots as to who was ruling the roost at any time from then right through to around 3 years ago.

Now, I'm aware of the "manufactured" nature of much of the Asian pop scene, but I have to hand it to the Korean, Japanese and to a lesser extent the Chinese markets for at least investing, as Steve described, in the talent. The various corporate entities plough so much money into the talent it's almost unbelievable, and for most the only way to recoup it is through televisual and live appearances. Case in point might be Girls' Generation. Each of the nine-member outfit received $4m in training before the band even got off the ground. Over in the east, artists get up in the morning and train - voice, dance, instruments, modelling, acting, presentation skills, languages and so on. They spend an awful lot of energy on their music clips. Many groups even live together in "compounds" which obviously facilitates the work ethic and keeps everyone in check. The songs are mostly written by professionals who actually know what they're doing. The parts are played by world-class session musos. The arrangements and production are very often state of the art. Conceptually, melodically, rhythmically and harmonically much of the music absolutely trounces what we in the west have come to accept as, well, acceptable.

I've been meaning to dedicate a thread to extolling the virtues of said industries for much of that 3 years now. The only thing that's stopped me is that as my video collection has grown (now around 2000 clips), it's been ever trickier to choose favourite examples to link to. 'Nuff said. It's MHO only, but I've faith in my musicality (not my playing 'though!) and ability to judge the value of songs in most styles, so I'm in no doubt as to the efficacy of what I'm proposing.

Let's juxtapose this typically-busy day of the average asian "pop star" with that of a westerner, shall we? Easy. You get up in the morning, have your cigarettes / coffee / Jack Daniels and spend the rest of the day taking drugs, making a nuisance of yourself, jamming, hanging with friends and generally living in some sort of narcissistic stupor. Yes, I'm taking relative extremes on both sides in order to highlight the point, but I think you can see where I'm coming from. Steve touches on this. Whilst those in the west are counting their "likes" on the socialist media, those in the east are lifting their game, and it's a game that right now has been the only significant pop area I've been able to handle listening to and indeed enjoy. This, to my mind, is quite a feat in itself as I spent decades listening only to fusion and jazz, thinking that there was no chance I could ever "revert" or "downgrade" to the relatively benign and predictable commercial pop genre. That was of course, until I heard this stuff. Suddenly, disco, funk, R&B, rock... everything was on the table, and being performed flawlessly. Often one's given several genres in a single song. Groove changes are expected more than they're a rare surprise. Put simply, even for the musician, this stuff is actually interesting to listen to.

Sorry if I sounded harsh; I wanted to cut to the chase - Steve's portrayal of the old vs new-scool mentality summed the east vs west's interest in artist development and investment therein up pretty well for me. If I'd managed to stick with our traditional pop through the '90s and naughties, I'd probably have disagreed with him... and have had my standards commensurately lowered in the process.

Rant over. Thank you for listening. Now go and finish that bottle of JD. :lol:

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Re: Steve Lukather Rant About Music Biz

Post by artfarm1 »

His rant is 'music to my ears.'

Like Quincy Jones lamented several years ago when trying to describe his feelings about the sad state of creativity in music; ".... the trouble with many of todays' so-called 'producers', songwriters, and sampling artists is that they've never actually learned anything about how to play an instrument. They don't have a real connection to music.... the breathing, the physicality of music, the sweat of performing for hours, experiencing the joy of playing for real people dancing..." etc. etc.

I took liberties with the quote, because I don't have it at my fingertips.
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Re: Steve Lukather Rant About Music Biz

Post by BKK-OZ »

Sorry, but I most humbly disagree with the previous posts on Lukather's rant.

I think his rant is largely bullocks.

The one exception is where he talks about the parasitic business models of Spotify, iTunes, et al.
I agree with him on that.

When he says '...TOO many people can make records...' and '...when we were kids ... there were only a handful of artists...'.

I thought to myself: A) what a precious, out-of-touch, selfish elitist and, B) bulshit, false.

On the first point, who is he (you, me, anybody) to say who should make and record music? The democratisation of music production is a good good double-triple-good thing.

On the second point, there have always been lots and lots of artists. It is true that we heard about fewer artists (largely the handful of acts that coked-up record company executives wanted to push), but there have always been plenty of artists. Sure, some of the obscure ones were crap, but so were/are some of the popular ones. I really like the fact that technology now allows one to follow obscure, arcane music styles and musicians. I don't miss living in a world where top 40 radio was one of the few ways of hearing music.

His rants about poor quality pop music and people being in pop music just to be popular are also laughable. For goodness sake, did he ever go into a record store or turn on the radio back in the day? Methinks that there has been plenty of rubbish music around for as long as music has been around.

I reckon Lukather is pissed that his privileged position at the very apex of a very pointy hilltop has been undermined.

I reckon I don't care.
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Re: Steve Lukather Rant About Music Biz

Post by monkey man »

I reckon you make some great points, BK!

In my mind I distilled his message down to one that, in essence, laments the downward spiral of commercial music in terms of musicianship, production and so on... generally speaking.

Obviously, if one is to generalise, one must recognise that the democratisation of recording has tipped the scales (again, on average) further in favour of less sophisticated products. It's no different from what might happen if the auto or any other industry empowered the masses thusly. Sure, we'd get some unique cars... and a whole lot of crap to complement the old-school, hold-out companies that managed to squeeze the last drops out of their R&D / business models.

To be clear, when I say, "on average", I'm literally referring to the pure mathematical definition. 920 sub-standard songs / pieces for every 80 good ones equals a 92% crap-rating. I'm simply arguing / agreeing with many that in statistical terms the industry has taken a dive.

Thank God for all the talented, imaginative, persistent folks out there who're still havin' a go, I say!

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Re: Steve Lukather Rant About Music Biz

Post by mikehalloran »

iTunes seized the opportunity but through greed ruined the financial model for selling music and resulted in piracy which is almost the social norm - by charging too much for digital music which was poor in technical sound and you apparently don't own anyway.
I'm sorry but the facts don't support this.

iTunes was launched January 2001. IRC was well in existence and the court battles over Napster were nearly over by then. Stealing music for fun and profit was well established by the time of iTunes.

As for the price, singles were $1.00 from the 1960s and were about $1.69 by the early 1980s. Getting two songs was no longer the norm – instead you often got the mono version on one side and the stereo on the other. When singles went to injection molding instead of being stamped, the quality went to nearly unlistenable for many titles (radio stations still got stamped signals as most deemed the commercial versions unacceptable). I am trying to remember when this happened - 1975?

That iTunes launched successfully after everyone figured out how to steal music makes it pretty amazing, IMO. Apple didn't create the stealing music industry; they did well in spite of it.

As for Mr. Luthaker, he's full of it. The public votes with the collective pocketbook (or nowadays, the music that they stream and steal). OK, I don't like lazy music either but millions and millions of people do. People have been making such rants since the player piano mean't you could have music in the home without knowing how to play.
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Re: Steve Lukather Rant About Music Biz

Post by Guitar Gaz »

mikehalloran wrote:
iTunes seized the opportunity but through greed ruined the financial model for selling music and resulted in piracy which is almost the social norm - by charging too much for digital music which was poor in technical sound and you apparently don't own anyway.
I'm sorry but the facts don't support this.

iTunes was launched January 2001. IRC was well in existence and the court battles over Napster were nearly over by then. Stealing music for fun and profit was well established by the time of iTunes.

As for the price, singles were $1.00 from the 1960s and were about $1.69 by the early 1980s. Getting two songs was no longer the norm – instead you often got the mono version on one side and the stereo on the other. When singles went to injection molding instead of being stamped, the quality went to nearly unlistenable for many titles (radio stations still got stamped signals as most deemed the commercial versions unacceptable). I am trying to remember when this happened - 1975?

That iTunes launched successfully after everyone figured out how to steal music makes it pretty amazing, IMO. Apple didn't create the stealing music industry; they did well in spite of it.

As for Mr. Luthaker, he's full of it. The public votes with the collective pocketbook. OK, I don't like lazy music either but millions and millions of people do. People have been making such rants since the player piano mean't you could have music in the home without knowing how to play.
Digital music and mobile devices were not in the ascendency at that time and certainly not to the degree they are now - and this change is my own personal view and how I remember it. There is no comparison in costs to manufacturing even substandard vinyl records and packaging, or CD's, and distributing them, with allowing compressed files to be downloaded over the internet. I have always thought it was too much to charge as the costs don't justify it. In 2001 people were still buying cd's and generally did not have a mobile phone to play music on. It was difficult to download music as I remember it back then - and not everyone had internet access at home or at work. So piracy was not endemic - people always borrowed albums and made tapes anyway. You mention 2001 as if the world were the same then as it is now - it wasn't. Everyone has internet access virtually now - very few did in 2001. Everyone has a mobile phone which plays music now - they didn't in 2001. It was the start of the global internet age really - I think an opportunity was missed - just my opinion as I was there and this is how I remember it and the change it made.
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Re: Steve Lukather Rant About Music Biz

Post by mikehalloran »

None of which changes the fact that you blame iTunes for the current climate of music piracy – I didn't make that claim. Again, the facts don't support your proposition. If Apple charged 25¢ instead of $.99, it wouldn't have kept the genie in the bottle.

People have come to believe that they somehow have a right to free music. There are businesses making billions of dollars encouraging this notion who are spending millions on advertising and lobbyists to make you think that, somehow it is a right. Google is the biggest player in this sandbox but they certainly aren't alone.
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Re: Steve Lukather Rant About Music Biz

Post by Guitar Gaz »

Not making a proposition just an opinion as part of my response. If you don't think Apple are greedy with their charging policy then fine but I don't see any facts which counter what I say. I think it's a big factor but you don't. Something caused this change - I have suggested one reason. You haven't suggested anything other than defending Apple. We differ as we have before about Apple. This was a small part of my response and I was trying to summarise a complex economic and social change from the opinion of myself who lived through this and observed it at the same time. I don't think it's simple to explain why someone will pay $100 to see someone live and yet pirate their album.
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Re: Steve Lukather Rant About Music Biz

Post by James Steele »

Guitar Gaz wrote:I don't think it's simple to explain why someone will pay $100 to see someone live and yet pirate their album.
I do. Fences, gates, security guards. There's no easy way to circumvent security and sneak into a concert venue.
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Re: Steve Lukather Rant About Music Biz

Post by Guitar Gaz »

James Steele wrote:
Guitar Gaz wrote:I don't think it's simple to explain why someone will pay $100 to see someone live and yet pirate their album.
I do. Fences, gates, security guards. There's no easy way to circumvent security and sneak into a concert venue.
That is only part of the reason - it's more about perceived value, as concert ticket prices have increased massively and this is where the money is now made. So £7.99 or £13.99 for an album is small in comparison - and some people will pay for one but not the other. I am not so stupid as to believe that part of this is not that people will cheat because they can - they will. But there is something else going on here - maybe it's the medium - you don't physically own anything other than a digital signal and you apparently don't own that - a record or CD of course is physical. So you can be simplistic about it and say it's a crime prevention matter - and of course it is on one level. I think it's more subtle than that. I think a cheaper price would have helped in the long term with iTunes as you can't justify paying the same for a CD as for a compressed signal you don't own and which costs Apple very little to distribute or produce. But that horse bolted long ago and the mindset shifted.

But we are never going to agree on this. The cost of making music has fallen dramatically and more people can do it - so that is a good thing. Whether it holds the same value anymore is another matter. We all know things have changed and some think for the worse (as they always do through history). I am not one for saying things aren't what they used to be - how do people deal with the new economic model? They find other ways to make money through their music by playing live, YouTube hits or crowd funding. People adapt and those dinosaurs who can't will gradually become extinct. I preferred going to a record shop every week and buying albums with gatefold sleeves but I know that has all changed - that's progress!
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Re: Steve Lukather Rant About Music Biz

Post by billf »

Guitar Gaz wrote:Digital music and mobile devices were not in the ascendency at that time and certainly not to the degree they are now - and this change is my own personal view and how I remember it. There is no comparison in costs to manufacturing even substandard vinyl records and packaging, or CD's, and distributing them, with allowing compressed files to be downloaded over the internet. I have always thought it was too much to charge as the costs don't justify it. In 2001 people were still buying cd's and generally did not have a mobile phone to play music on. It was difficult to download music as I remember it back then - and not everyone had internet access at home or at work. So piracy was not endemic - people always borrowed albums and made tapes anyway. You mention 2001 as if the world were the same then as it is now - it wasn't. Everyone has internet access virtually now - very few did in 2001. Everyone has a mobile phone which plays music now - they didn't in 2001. It was the start of the global internet age really - I think an opportunity was missed - just my opinion as I was there and this is how I remember it and the change it made.
The iTunes store opened in April 2003, not in 2001. There would not be a Windows version until 2004.

As for piracy, Bittorrent was launched in 2001, and by 2004 the damage was done. Apple selling digital music was a last ditch effort by the industry to try to salvage the industry itself.
Programmer Bram Cohen, a former University at Buffalo student, designed the protocol in April 2001 and released the first available version on 2 July 2001. By November 2004, BitTorrent was responsible for 35% of all Internet traffic
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Re: Steve Lukather Rant About Music Biz

Post by nk_e »

Guitar Gaz wrote:iTunes seized the opportunity but through greed ruined the financial model for selling music and resulted in piracy which is almost the social norm - by charging too much for digital music which was poor in technical sound and you apparently don't own anyway. Streaming is a way of squeezing out piracy although the pay to artists is poor and often insulting. And so it goes - but where it's going no-one knows.
...it's the "and resulted in piracy" part that is wrong. Piracy was well established by 2001 and on a meteoric trajectory, smartphones or no. (There were plenty of cheap MP3 players then also. CDs and Iomega disks of MP3 files were common.)

If anything, Apple contributed to abating this. And their iTunes financial model is still one of the better ones for musicians and labels (at least the non-streaming remuneration). Better models may have since risen granted, but Apple established one of the first "reasonable" models. (Quotes because it's relative to what is out there. The old system is dead.)

Furthermore, iTunes Match monetized pirated music for the industry and, theoretically at least, the artist.

You can be pissed at the state of things, the commoditization of music, the fact that we are all ripped off by this new era of streaming...but get the history right and lay the blame where it belongs. Don't let the true perps off so easy.

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Re: Steve Lukather Rant About Music Biz

Post by guitardood »

Not to condemn or condone the piracy, but it seems the biggest complaint, at least in Lukather's rant, is not so much about a drop in sales, whether due to piracy or other reasons, but a drop in his percentage of the sales because of contracts he signed giving record labels the power to negotiate the top sales dollar, in turn renegotiating his bottom line, which he claims "without his consent" despite his signing said contract and giving his consent. He rolled the dice that the dollars would continue to flow and grow, and he crapped out. Lukather also seems to elevate and in the same breath complain about the music labels themselves for taking such a large cut, "for life", which I'm sure sounded great when revenues were up but he's now having sour grapes about a contract he may have signed previously. Seems his problem should be with his lawyers that negotiated the contracts and not the music industry, Apple or Spotify, crappy artists giving away material or the listening public.

Apple must be making money or they would have discontinued their service long ago. They're also not alone. Amazon seems to be doing okay with it's music sales & streaming as is Google's Play. While I believe that piracy is definitely not a non-issue, I don't think it's the primary issue, IMHO.

In a second rant, which I guess was his not-so-very-apologetic apology (at least IMHO) for the first one, he likened his position to that of plumber who finds out that 90% of his revenue is now gone due to tech. The music biz is not the first industry in history to have this happen. Natural gas lighting gave way to electricity, horse carriages gave way to the automobile, trains and buses to planes, etc. I'm sure all of the former experienced major financial loss due to the latter and probably made the same rants, probably in a boardroom or bar somewhere instead of the internet. Now this is pure hypothetical sci-fi on my part, but to use his plumber scenario... What happens to the plumber if science is one day successful with creating Star Trek transporter/replicator technology? You won't need plumbing any more. You want water, the computer synthesizes it on the spot. You take a dump, it gets sent off to the great subatomic-particle ether to become someone else's glass of water. What are they to do? Retire, if you saved enough. Get retrained in a different field if you didn't. Live off the public dole like most folks usually do when they're obsoleted by technology. Ranting about an already arrived future is pointless.

It seems that the music industry's approach has been to continue trying to control recording tech by getting the government to force additional fees (i.e. charging premiums for blank tape, premiums for blank CD's) on technology to help keep their industry floating, instead of figuring out a real solution, and the internet tech got away from them. Reliance on government regulation is the stupidest solution on which they could have possible counted. As soon as it was possible to RIP a near perfect copy off of a CD into an WAV or MP3, either the industry or the artists themselves should have been working on a solution to continue getting paid for their work or at this point, unfortunately, accept getting relegated back to the textbook definition of starving artist.

If I ranted too much or any of this doesn't make sense, sorry... It is 5:42am here, LOL!

EDIT: BTW, just because I disagree with his rant, I don't want to be a douche like a lot of other folks out there dissing his playing or music. I can disagree and still thoroughly enjoy his talent and art. Hell, I purchased Toto IV at least 4 times since its release (LP,Cassette,CD,Digital).

EDIT2: I may have inadvertently laid a quote on Steve Lukather's door that was actually made by Neil Young, regarding his claim of not giving consent. Sorry to Steve, but I stand by my comments regarding this, just replace Steve with Neil, LOL!
Last edited by guitardood on Tue Jul 21, 2015 3:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Best,
Guitardood

Chuck Fletcher on Reverb Nation
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"Life is like a box of chocolates. You know, eventually you're going to get the one filled with alien-like nasty tasting goo and have to spit it out and say YUCK".
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