Musican Vents

How the heck am I supposed to continue this if people steal my music?

This is a serious question. I play mid line gear, and I play for a mid-sized audience.
I recorded in a mid-line studio, and published my album in mid-line formats at a mid-line price.
Yet, I've heard through the grape line of several fans bootlegging my music to their friends. I'm not in Metallica. I can't make money from tours based upon music created in an era sustained by album sales.

Everything cost money.

To play a show the venue has to make enough money from tickets to pay the staff, and mortgage first. Sometimes we make just enough money for there to be money paid to the bands. However, everything my band makes goes into a fund we use to create more products. This model works very well enough for an up and coming band. We have figured out how to make just enough money to grow the band. We are moving in the right direction. However, it all falls apart when people start pirating our music.

The recording process is costly. Proper recording requires proper acoustics and proper gear to capture the sounds. The sound which people have grown accustomed to hear from their CDs requires large amounts of time and monetary investment to create. It requires a studio. We built our own for our album, so it was much cheaper than most pay it cost us $3k+ worth of gear and the monthly rent for our house. It requires a mastering engineer. We got a screaming deal on ours; we only paid $1000 for it. CDs require duplication. That cost money too; the bare basic duplication is usually around $1000 for 1000 CDs. Needless to say it's a rather large investment.
We create the CD so that the band will eventually be able to make enough money to be more than an expensive hobby. Maybe we’ll have enough money to play nicer guitars. Not 1960’s Gretsch White Falcons, but maybe a Gibson Les Paul and acoustic. Maybe we could buy nicer amps or more effective effect set-up so it sounds more like what the CD sounds like. Maybe we could make enough money so that we can tour, or enough so that we’re able to put out another CD. Or maybe, just maybe we’re able to hire a producer to help us make that magnum opus we feel we can make.

When people decide to copy and distribute the music on the CD for free it becomes harder to sell our music. We loose any financial leverage that we'd need to improve the art we're creating. Now that people have our studio music for free on their computer some of them even feel there is less reason to go hear the music live, because they can just listen to the recordings. Money from the fund invested results in a zero return. Maybe they’ll buy a t-shirt because they think that is a way to support us, but the hilarious joke is that because we’re not a touring band we can’t sell them for a price that will actually make us any money.

So do us a big favor and don’t steal our music just yet. Wait till we’re called a platinum selling artist or we get nominated for a Grammy. If you have please buy the CD.