How come more people aren't releasing songs?

Above is yesteryear technology, the Stereo 8 cartridge, commonly known as an 8-track tape. My dad had a few of these around when I was little, but chances are if you're under the age of 45, you have no clue what they are.

My point to mentioning the Stereo 8 is just to show how much things have changed since the Stereo 8 has been around.

In the early days of multitrack audio recording, it was ridiculously expensive and time-consuming to record pretty much anything. The cheapest way was from using compact cassette, but you only had 1 stereo track of audio and that was it.

It wasn't until the very-late 1970s - 1979, to be exact - where home recording finally became affordable with the Tascam PortaStudio 144. And by affordable I mean sort of affordable, as it was still about $1,000 USD to buy one - in 1979!

Fast-forward to present, 35 years later.

It's 2014. For less than $200, you can buy an 8-track digital multitrack recorder. And that recorder absolutely obliterates what the old 144 could do in every single way. Perfect, whisper-quiet recording, "undo" function, effects, and many, many hours of record time on a memory card just slightly larger than a postage stamp.

Or heck, you can use free software to do the same damned thing and not spend a dime.

And yet, incredibly, we're not seeing any significant increase in new songs posted by musicians or bands.

You would think that with all this wonderful, cheap (or free) tech we have, places like YouTube and SoundCloud would have at least 10,000 new, original songs posted every day.

But that's not happening.

Why isn't it happening? I don't know. But there is one positive to this.

Because of the lack of music being released, you have more of a chance of your music getting noticed.

Follow this advice

You have the recording technology. It's cheap, it sounds "clean," and it works. Use it. Do not let anyone convince you that you need thousands of dollars of crap just to record a song, because it's not necessary.

You don't need expensive recording gear, expensive microphones or expensive guitars. Purposely buy cheap, get your songs recorded and get them out there. Don't think about it. Just do it.

Even if your music sucks, post it anyway

Yeah, I know that people are morons on the internet, and I know you're afraid of being judged negatively from internet commenters.

If you feel your music sucks and you'll be made fun of for it, post your songs anyway. People complain in internet comments because it's easy and takes no real effort to do.

Any song you post is better than some stupid comment someone says about it. Remember that.

We're not in the stone age of Stereo 8 carts anymore. Everything is digital now, and you already have all the tech you need to get songs finished. So finish and release them. Get on with it.

Published 2014 Nov 12