Redline wrote:eliya wrote: vinyl is a lofi formatPlease, let's not turn the PRF forum into a house of lies.In the hands of most indie bands, he's not wrong.

Fires can keep you warm, you know. Have you never sang around a bonfire? This is a special experience, you can have it for free, but it may cost you

So selling your art for a higher price is a form of altruism, is it?Certainly making things is work, and work deserves to be repaid, but if you are going to swallow the cost to some degree, that makes it more accessible to Less Privileged folks. Again, trying to make this a negative reading about one's character is dopey. It sounds like you are trying to rationalize disliking some vinyl pressing of a band you don't like, or what? If people have the money to do that, why shouldn't they? Is this unholy privilege more acceptable when it is more hidden in gear, studio costs? This example of the vanity pressing is not something I am very familiar with tho, mostly I am around... tapes and bandcamp. If people are being smug about their merch, maybe it is their smugness that is the problem, not beautiful things they want to make.Maybe I carry too much piss from dealing with the Art and fashion world, where marking up work is the sign of privilege, where entering something into a certain price range puts you in the running. Makes your work Professional, High, Designer. Tho there's no really getting around it atm, but to a large degree, I don't like that art is ever bought, and is ever sold. Like I mentioned, there is always in this some level of compromise. The idea that people have specific standards of something they want to do, and will sink money into it, I like that. Maybe if I encountered the specific instances you guys are talking about I'd feel different, I dunno.My fav band merch is t-shirts anyway <:I wish more bands were privileged enough to hand-make shirts, do one-of-a-kind drawinz on them, and then sell it to me for 5 bux, huehue

Interesting thread. I definitely get the jadedness with the cost of things and how difficult it is to get anyone to care, but that's a personal bitterness. Artists inherently desire physical documents of their work, and I would never tell a young artist to not bother experiencing that for themselves, that's not really fair. Small runs of CDs would be my suggestion generally to most independent artists. Bandcamp and vinyl are the most relevant releases nowadays I would think, though vinyl is probably a really bad idea unless you are okay with swallowing the cost and carrying big boxes around the rest of your life. I've never felt very comfortable selling my music, personally. I'm nobody, so I feel quite honored that anyone would want to listen to it at all, I end up insisting on giving it away for free almost every time. But I've only ever self-recorded up to this point, and the costs are mentally written off from the start. I find ways to scrape by in the meantime. If someone's broke but still (quite understandably) wants a physical product, just burn CD-R's and make your own art! Or else print jackets and sleeves and buy cases and CD-R's in bulk. The cost becomes negligible, and having a self-printed CD is not without its charm nowadays. The only real drawback is that college radio is less likely to consider playing your CD-R. Recording lo-fi and DIY, as an independent artist, almost seems more expressive and fitting to me anyways in this day and age, where you'll begin as the smallest needle in the biggest haystack anyway, so fuck everyone's expectations. I very much support anyone's attempt at doing anything artistically though, however they want to do it. You could argue most things to be a product of privilege, including having access to the very means needed to create or do anything in the first place. Making art at all typically denotes a certain amount of privilege does it not? It generally costs large amounts of time and money to make, yet getting anyone to actually pay for it in the internet age, particularly regarding recouping the costs, is mostly a lost cause. Feels a bit like looking down from a mountaintop but forgetting how you got up there. Just because the monetary value of someone's art is ambiguous at best, doesn't in any way negate the spiritual value it has for those who do bother with it, including the creators themselves. The most valuable things seldom translate to numbers on paper. Enough of the shit people buy and consume is unnecessary, such a life-affirming act as having your work made is incomparably more valuable than the vast majority of it. That said, its important to be thoughtful and responsible about how much you are spending versus how much you are making, particularly if you are pressing albums every year.

I mean, sure. A little pedantic, as I'm sure the majority of digital playback (especially if we're talking the 'relevant' streaming services) scenarios would not fall under 'hifi' either.In the context of this thread: cool, you decide to buy the $15 to support the band only to get it home and find out they went with the cheapest mastering and pressing plant. It's happened to me several times: I end up listening to it once because the BC stream sounds better.

Looking back in the thread, I may be confusing this non-vinyl argument with the conversation about pricing, my bad. Still, I agree with Me Again, the argument that you shouldn't release in a format because... whatever, is... whatever. Highly whatever. I do sense this idea that you shouldn't do it unless you are worth it, or something. Feh!Funny, Jung Jung believed in doing art just for the sake of exploring your imagination. He would encourage his patients to do the same, usually painting. This wasn't with any intention to show it in a gallery. Paintings like this, made purely for narcisstic reasons, I find very activating and beautiful.A format or medium is a vessel, through this vessel we directly experience a work. Different things make it different. For music, listening to something on vinyl, mp3, a player piano roll, these are different experiences. If you create and are drawn to one over the other, do it! I have to agree with the above point on frivolous spending, of all the things you can throw that accusation on, making art seems pretty harmless.Me Again wrote:Hearing is believing.Amen

I'm an ironic 30-year-old, thank yew very much uwu

maybe the thread title is wrong? if you're in a band making music, you're going to be releasing on bandcamp. that is a given. so get rid of the download option. furthermore, if you're making cds, you're wasting your time. nobody wants cds. so the real question is - is it worth it to spend money to press a record OR pay to have cassettes made for ironic 19 year olds. if you don't care about losing the money associated with vinyl, then by all means, go for it. however, you have to be honest with yourself and prepare for the fact that most people will not enjoy your music thus leaving you with a stack of unsold records and a giant hole in your wallet. i guess that leads to a whole another question about why we feel it's necessary to provide a physical product this day and age when most people will only listen via the download (even if they buy the record, you throw in the DL code]. it is one of many internal debates one can have.on top of all of that, one thing that should be noted is the high wait times for vinyl. i know that the last time Hungry Man was going to release a record we debated doing vinyl for quite a while and in the end chose not to, not because we couldn't afford it, but more because we didn't feel like waiting another six to ten months to get it out there. release it the way that you feel works best for you, but be prepared for the financial disaster that awaits if you are strapped for cash.