Although he may not be able to compete with Lady Gaga’s Little Monsters, Andrew York has an international following that includes classical guitar masters Christopher Parkening and John Williams, who have covered his compositions including “Sunburst,” played by Andrew below. He also won a Grammy for Best Classical Crossover Album for Guitar Heroes (2004) with the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet.
Andrew’s latest work is Centerpeace, a collaboration with Andy Summers (former guitarist for the Police), and pianists Allaudin Mathieu and Mitsuko Kado. High Quality MP3s are available now, and the CD will be released on July 14th.
Players of a certain age still refer to “records” even though many haven’t held or heard a vinyl album in decades. In a recent interview, Brian Eno spoke about the end of an era:
I think records were just a little bubble through time and those who made a living from them for a while were lucky. There is no reason why anyone should have made so much money from selling records except that everything was right for this period of time. I always knew it would run out sooner or later. It couldn’t last, and now it’s running out. I don’t particularly care that it is and like the way things are going. The record age was just a blip. It was a bit like if you had a source of whale blubber in the 1840s and it could be used as fuel. Before gas came along, if you traded in whale blubber, you were the richest man on Earth. Then gas came along and you’d be stuck with your whale blubber. Sorry mate – history’s moving along. Recorded music equals whale blubber. Eventually, something else will replace it.
The recording businessis certainly in trouble: it’s estimated that nearly half the commercial studios in L.A. have either been closed or sold to artists for private use. [Anybody wanna buy Abbey Road?] There is plenty of recording activity however, most of it in home studios with relatively inexpensive digital tools. The problem (for some) is that there isn’t much money in records any more. But then there are performers who have figured out how to make money while giving it away:
Lady Gaga’s towering digital sales, almost all of them iTunes downloads, only tell part of the story. In fact, much of Gaga’s audience got her music for free, and legally. They have listened to free streams—by the hundreds of millions—on YouTube and the other online services that Gaga currently leads, according to research firm BigChampagne. On MySpace, Gaga has had 321.5 million plays. By contrast, singer Susan Boyle tallied only 133,000 plays, despite scoring the No. 2 selling album of 2009. A difference (among many) between Gaga and the dowdy Scotswoman discovered on a British talent show: Ms. Boyle’s material, including “Amazing Grace,” was traditional—and so were most of her buyers. Some 97% of her albums were sold on compact disc.
Of course, superstardom can’t be for everybody. In Music Lessons, Seth Godin suggests that 10,000 fans should be enough to make a nice living. Kevin Kelly has a similar message for those who aspire to something less than Gaga but more than poverty. By his calculations, 1,000 True Fans will do the trick. Whatever your formula for success, it seems clear that album sales are becoming a vanishingly small part of the equation.
, 
