Why the RIAA Really Hates Downloads 289
wtansill recommends the saga of Jeff Price, who traveled from successful small record label owner to successful Internet-era music distributor. His piece describes clearly what the major record labels used to be good for and why they are now good for nothing but getting in the way. "Allowing all music creators 'in' is both exciting and frightening. Some argue that we need subjective gatekeepers as filters. No matter which way you feel about it, there are a few indisputable facts -- control has been taken away from the 'four major labels' and the traditional media outlets. We, the 'masses,' now have access to create, distribute, discover, promote, share and listen to any music. Hopefully access to all of this new music will inspire us, make us think and open doors and minds to new experiences we choose, not what a corporation or media outlet decides we should want."
D'uh from these quarters too. (Score:5, Interesting)
I wrote a (very) short piece [mothership.co.nz] on this a while ago, in response to an article on El' Reg.
Again, looking at the list of 'discoveries' there, and at the reasons given here, it's hard to believe that the industry hasn't already fallen over in a big screaming heap. The only thing propping it up thus far are multi-album recording contracts, and their McDonald's inspired ability to foist very average fair on to the average user.
In the last couple of years with GarageBand etc providing the ability for anyone to make reasonable music at home, the iTunes Music Store and it's ilk providing the ability for almost anyone to publish their work, and social networking sites providing the marketing (often viral), it's time these commercial dinosaurs went the way of their reptilian cousins did millions of years ago.
Reminds me... (Score:5, Interesting)
I never thought one could get pithy one-liners from a video game, but I think the GTA writers had the nail hit on the head with one of the radio station's advertisements (I think it was from Liberty City):
"We tell you what's good! Then play it 'till you like it!"
I think that sums up the Label's business methods quite succinctly.
It wasn't the cannons man! (Score:5, Interesting)
Takes the Aztec's for example. Many story tellers will spin a glorious yarn about the siege of Tenochtitlan. Most of those will be glad to talk about how Moctezuma revered Cortés as a god. Most will also completely gloss over the fact that the Spaniards were only a small percentage of the force that laid siege to Tenochtitlan. The Aztec's were not very popular amongst their neighbors, so when Cortés marched on Tenochtitlan the Aztec's enemies came in droves to capitalize on a change to take them down. The Inca's were smack in the middle of a civil war over succession when the Spaniards arrived on the scene, and by pure luck, managed to kidnap the heir apparent. (They held him hostage for gold and then executed him.) Their timing was fortuitous, to say the least. However, the capture of Cuzco was the real fall of Peru, and by that time the Spanish had again picked up indigenous allies to fight for them.
Finally, there is the Mayans. If you watched Apocalypto then you probably got the impression that the Maya were living in big cities and making a mess of things when the Spaniards showed up and conqured/saved them. Nope. They had abandoned their cities centuries before. Even with their civilization an echo of its former glory, the Maya put up more resistance against the Europeans than, perhaps, any other indigenous people in the america's. Unlike the Aztec's and Incas, there was no single Mayan center which could be attacked and neutralized. The Maya were spread out in some of the densest, nastiest, most brutal jungle on Earth. The Spaniards would capture one town and move on to the next only to find that they had to recapture the previous town all over again the next time they went past it. It took centuries to subdue just a *portion* of the Mayan population.
Now, it would seem that we're way off topic, but we can draw some pretty interesting parallels actually. RIAA is a centralized body, much like the Inca or Aztecs. All it would take is for one major record label to withdraw their support to RIAA and that would be their end. Likewise, a change to copyright law could doom all the labels overnight. Music pirates, on the other hand, are by their very nature decentralized. You can squash as many individuals with lawsuits as you want, but the P2P network lives on. Finding those individuals and gathering enough evidence to bring a lawsuit that has a chance of winning if they don't cave and settle is also not an easy task. They are like the Maya. Hard to find, difficult to suppress, and resilient. If RIAA and the labels somehow managed to keep going as they are now, it would take centuries to bring piracy to and end at best.
Anyways, I'm at the point where I just want easy access to good music. If the labels brought back Oink in all it's glory at $30/month I'd be their first customer. If they insist that I have to spend $10 an album for lossy DRM'd tracks on iTunes or $15 for a CD, neither of which net the artist more than $0.15, then no deal.
The way I see it, there is an answer to music distribution. Say that somebody created a private torrent tracker site where the members paid a monthly access fee. Artists could seed their music on this torrent site and be paid a percentage of the gross according to how much their stuff is downloaded. No middlemen. No record companies. Just the artists and the torrent site. Potentially, artists could make a lot more money than they are now. However, there are problems. Perhaps the stickiest is that little issue of critical mass. If a handful of independents got together and did this, they'd fail miserably. Such a site would need a *massive* catalog to get off the ground. It would have to include a very large number of artists from day 1. Still, it is a beautiful dream.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
I Am The RIAA's Worst Enemy (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm working on changing careers into music. But I'm not trying to get signed with a label; I've got my own damn label [oggfrog.com], thank you. I've got a business license, resale license, fictitious business name statement, checking account and everything for Ogg Frog.
For a few hundred dollars - a grand tops - a solo artist can purchase digital recording gear that puts the best of what the Beatles had back in the 60's to shame.
Any Slashdotter here who wants a free CD [geometricvisions.com] of my album - autographed! - just email your postal address to support@oggfrog.com [mailto] My first batch goes out in the mail Thursday.
I've given away almost two thousand so far. my manifesto [geometricvisions.com] explains why I'm doing this.
You could really help me out if you shared my music over the Internet.
Re:Reminds me... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:D'uh from these quarters too. (Score:3, Interesting)
None of the Subjective Gatekeepers have led me to this music - it's my own choice to buy the CD and support the artist.
I don't personally mind having to have my own 'not crap' filter - I can tell within 10 seconds or so whether a piece of music is being played well, and my tastes run from Gregorian chant to rap - the style is less important than the execution.
Give me variety, and let me choose - and let the A&R men and the fat cigar smoking publishers starve.
The Korean Answer for Legal P2P (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:D'uh from these quarters too. (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't think this is really going to be a problem if the big labels go away. It would have been fifteen years ago, but the internet is set up to take their place as music taste sifters. I'm sure there would be plenty start ups to fill the void. I can imagine a thousand different services that would help filter the crap for you. In fact, since these services won't need to find music for the masses, they will be able to filter for niche markets. This could be a boon for everyone.
Re:It wasn't the cannons man! (Score:4, Interesting)
GP, however, gives a perspective on the campaign that wasn't addressed by Diamond - I'd hesitate to dismiss his post out of hand.
Yes, there were benefits from the posession of technology by the Spanish, but the indigenous people weren't rolled over quite as easily as popular history reports - indeed, there are still indigenous peoples in South America that are still resisting 'civilisation'.
Just 2 notes. (Score:3, Interesting)
We ourselves are our own filters. Some simple statistics about what others are enjoying would be enough to get a "big" picture. This argument shows no support for Record Labels, or any other "filters for hire".
2. "Hopefully access to all of this new music will inspire us, make us think and open doors and minds to new experiences we choose, not what a corporation or media outlet decides we should want."
You should be doing this already. Record Labels may decide what to sell, but you still have to buy it. You are free to pay the guy on the street an extra 20 bucks for his home made album if you like his music that much. You are also free to offer to become his agent and charge him the going rate if you think he is worth 10 million dollars.
I know this is knit-picking but I thought these angles deserved some light.
Re:D'uh from these quarters too. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's played on proper radio stations, but is also available free online from many, many places at around 192kbps. He becomes the 'gatekeeper' almost - putting together good selections of recent music that the audience can be exposed to - some of it is obscure, some of it are big trance releases, but in either case, it's one source where the public can filter through all the crap and freely be given a good choice of music.
Could this be a potentially good model for other things as well? Podcasts and radio shows becoming the next big thing - played both on real radio and available online? A State of Trance is a model that really, really works well - I wonder if things like this can be expanded to other genres...though, obviously certain genres and types of music - like post-rock concept albums, or really unique Progressive Metal bands, might suffer from the inability to be juxtaposed with other music.
~Jarik
Comment removed (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:D'uh from these quarters too. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:D'uh from these quarters too. (Score:5, Interesting)
The radio audience is definitely different -- in many ways, they're more "captive." They're on their way to work in their cars, or agreeing on a shared radio station at the dentist's office, or playing a radio at an impromptu picnic. Frequently they're mobile, which for most citizens still means "no internet", or at least not enough with the bandwidth to play music.
In a car, that doesn't matter as much. iPods and podcasts can give that measure of control to people who think that choice of music is important. But most people don't care about their music enough to mess around with podcasts -- the "pop" or "country" station is good enough to meet their need for an auditory background during their commute. And for many people, the DJ with the morning news becomes a personal friend. Again, podcasts lack that touch unless you're extremely diligent with syncing your iPod every morning moments before heading out the door. (That's still way too much effort for the average listener.)
iPods also fail miserably in the case of crowds joined for reasons other than music appreciation. I promise you that there isn't enough music on my nephew's iPod that I could sit through for 30 seconds. (Actually, that's true for all the music choices of my nephews and nieces, and most of my siblings-in-law.) I'd likely sabotage the damn thing before the end of the first George Strait song. Similarly, my collection of electronica and trance would be nothing but noise to him. A "classic rock" station may be bland enough as to not offend either of us, but neither of us may have any classic rock on our iPods. So where do you find a classic rock station at the beach, or on a picnic, or in a car? The answer today is still broadcast radio.
Perhaps in this new world the role of gatekeeper doesn't have to be a hand-picked RIAA payola jockey, but there are only a handful of frequencies to fill, and the public still wants "generic bland" music readily available. How are those few gatekeepers/DJs selected? Who identifies the DJs for the mass markets?
Re:D'uh from these quarters too. (Score:1, Interesting)
I think you're making a big error in logic because you're not looking at the data closely enough. If you're comparing the music industry to McDonalds because of their mediocre products, it would be logical to also note that McDonalds makes bucketloads of money, presumably because consumers tend to like predictable, mediocre products.
Almost anybody can make a vastly superior burger at home, yet McDonalds thrives. It's not hard to find really good burgers in most any town, yet people keep buying Big Macs. Any high-quality, but rinky-dink band can offer their songs on their own web site with little effort, yet iTunes completely dominates. Independent bands can easily get their songs on iTunes, yet the latest major-label hits account for virtually all the sales.
As it turns out, people don't like to do hard things, and searching for the best music on the internet is hard. Searching for the best music within a single site online is hard, too. Listening to the radio, hearing a nice song and then finding that song advertised on the front page of iTunes is easy, familiar and confortable, just like a Quarter Pounder. One click and you're done. As long as major labels control these resources, and they're experts at controlling these resources, they'll continue to make lots of money for some time to come.
Re:D'uh from these quarters too. (Score:3, Interesting)
If the labels ever lose their monopoly on radio airplay they'll finally get the death we've all been waiting for. Unfortunately we're going to need ONE non-college radio station to get the ball rolling, like KSHE started FM rock radio.
You can see now why they wanted internet radio dead, having all those usarious fees heaped on it.
Re:D'uh from these quarters too. (Score:5, Interesting)
You're wrong.
When I was a teenager I walked into a record store and the most amazing music was playing. Song after song. I asked the sales clerk who it was. "A new band, Led Zeppelin". I bought the album right then and there.
The critics panned them and they never got any airplay; at least until non-critics and non-radio people found them.
My crazy friend Tom Egbert called me up one day after school. "Man, you GOT to hear this album! It ROCKS!" He was right: the Jimi Hendrix Experience's Are You Experienced kicked ass! He never got any airplay, either.
The Yardbirds never got airplay. We all found out about them from the local bands covering their songs. Meanwhile when you turned on the radio you got what they called "bubblegum pop". Yummie yummie yummie I got love in my tummy" - pure dreck, not unlike what you hear on the radio today, very similar to the kind of absolute crap put out by the likes of Britney Spears or the Backstreet Boys.
My oldest daughter is mentally handicapped. She likes the rap they play on the radio. My youngest (just turned 21) otoh is "gifted". She listened to punk and ska - and you didn't hear either of those genres on the radio (and never have outside the college stations).
In short, the major labels and the radio stations they bribe with their cocaine payola never had a fucking clue what young people want, and still don't.
to the radio in your car suddenly becomes like a Google search for not-crap, every time you try to use it.
It's like that now, and always has been. Thank God and technology for CD changers.
Sometimes, Britney will do.
No, Britney will NOT do. Britney is a talentless bimbo. John Lee Hooker will do (he never got airplay either). Led Zeppelin will do. Tchaikovsky will do. Merl Haggard will do. Bob Marley will do. The Pietasters will do. The Dead Kennedys will do.
Britney spears will NOT do. The Backstreet Boys will NOT do.
You would have loved The Archies. Sorry dude but you have no musical taste whatever.
Current Radio Gatekeepers are Whores (Score:3, Interesting)
Around that time I started discovering Napster and 'other' means by which to find new music. A friend goes "Hey man! Check out X by this band, their lead guitar kicks ass!" or "Pick up a song or two by Y, they have a female lead and her voice will make you cream your pants!" and I will most likely try it on their recommendation... My friends are the new gatekeepers and I am probably one of theirs. Now I listen to a lot of bands I probably would have never found it if weren't for listening to friends or just trying something new I see off of a Napsteresque style program. Whenever possible, I try to buy the CD from the band themselves, and if I really like them, buy t-shirts and the like. (I am not sure who they are with now, but I still love Nightwish.)
Does anyone know of any good metal band with a female lead vocal? Just askin...
The Recording Label's Four Services (Score:4, Interesting)
1. Production. They would hook up artists with the equipment to produce professional sounding albums. A few decades back, this equipment was pricey so the artists could only dream about having access to it outside of a recording contract. Nowadays, though, you can buy equivalents to most of the equipment off the shelf for around $1,000 or so. You might not get a "100% professional" sound, but you'll get an album that sounds professional enough for 90% of the listening public. So a recording label isn't really needed for this anymore.
2. Distribution. If you wanted your album to get on the radio and in the stores, you needed contacts. This meant that you needed the recording label to contact the right people for you and set up the distribution channels. With digital distribution, though, any artist can upload their own music to their own website and instantly be their own distributer. If they want to parter with someone else, they can use a service like eMusic, iTunes, or Amie Street to distribute their music. They give up some of their revenue to do this, but not nearly as much as the recording label would take. A contract with a major label is no longer needed for this.
3. Filtering. Also could be called Separating the Diamonds from the Coals. Traditionally, the labels would promote the good music and filter out all of the bad stuff. With the Internet, the "bad stuff" problem grows exponentially since anyone can put their awful attempts at making music online. However, services like Amie Street are already coming up with ways of letting users themselves act as filters. (Amie Street's model increases the price the more people buy the song, to a maximum of 98 cents. So a bad song won't rise in price much, but a good song will rise in price quickly.) There's also an argument to be made that the traditional labels have failed in this service recently by releasing so many bad albums and so many bad artists.
4. Promotion. The labels would market new artists to get their names out and encourage people to buy their albums and attend their concerts. While Internet marketing and word of mouth might be nice, this is the only area that I can see a future for the labels. I think that they will eventually change into glorified marketing firms. Of course, their reduced roles will mean that a lot of fat will be trimmed from their organizations. It will also mean that they will have to accept less control over artists. I predict that, eventually, they won't seize the copyrights of the artist. Instead, they will enter into deals with artists to get a cut of album sales. (A much smaller cut than they currently get.) Artists will also be free to leave labels at any time if they are unsatisfied with their performance without worrying that all of their old music is "tied up" in the old label. I think that our grandchildren will grow up with music promoted by record labels, but will look at us oddly when we describe the power that record labels exerted over artists when we were their age.
Re:Uhhh.... Duhhh..... What???? (Score:4, Interesting)
Intelligent musicians are now turning the labels and their thieving contracts down. I believe this may explain the dearth of much listenable RIAA music this century; the bands with talent realise they have no need of the majors. I know at least one local guy who told two major labels to go fuck themselves, and I'm sure for every Joe Frew there's a thousand more non-idiots out there.
Re:Uhhh.... Duhhh..... What???? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:D'uh from these quarters too. (Score:3, Interesting)
There are 2 such travel agents I can think of at the moment, with my limited experience - CD Baby and Pandora. CD Baby does small off-label artists, but they have a "sounds like" search that lets you put in major artists and find Indie music in the same vein. Then you can sample tracks and purchase, if desired. I haven't actually used Pandora, but according to friends it does "the Amazon thing," people who like this track generally like this other track.
Those models help you find your way to new music, but neither restricts you. Restriction is the essential model of a gatekeeper, which is why I propose travel agent instead.
In a signed band? You may already be this fucked (Score:3, Interesting)
Some of your friends may already be this fucked:
http://www.arancidamoeba.com/mrr/ [arancidamoeba.com]
Who owns who(m):
http://www.arancidamoeba.com/mrr/whoownswho.html [arancidamoeba.com]
Your favorite label may not be independent at all, but a shell company of one of the major labels.
There is good reason the RIAA members want to outlaw P2P networks, or if they can't squelch it, get the ISPs to pony up a levy to them; they are rapidly losing control of the music industry; it is quickly becoming a direct creator-to-customer venue, where a truly independent band can make a very good living playing small, intimate clubs - and can maintain more creative control over their work, without having to settle for a tiny percentage of their sales. They don't have to worry about appealing teenyboppers and having a manufactured, socially-engineered sound and rely on sex-themed promotions to sell their work. They can produce their best work, engage in long jams on gigs, and make a very good living selling not only their studio productions, but recordings right off the sound board (hope they have a good sound engineer, see below). Labels don't want bands that can sell a couple hundred thousand units and gain popularity over time; they want a major, earworm-inducing syrupy-sounding bubblegum band that they can heavily market through kids' shows and magazines and have a major hit to make some quick money, and who cares if the "artist" ends up a train wreck in 4-5 years and no one wants to hear them any more? They'll just hire some other skank or boy band and sell a new image. No big deal on the record companies' part. What we end up with is crap on the radio and getting innundated from all directions with these personalities, until they burn out.
Bands with staying power are usually the ones who started small, and gained popularity over time, due to contemplative lyrics, experimental sounds, or simply having GREAT talent. Bands like that have been Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Queen, Phish, and even No Doubt (Gwen's sucky solo work notwithstanding - without the rest of the band she SUCKS). Members of some of them (Pink Floyd and Phish notably) have bemoaned having lost "intimacy" with their fans in the big stadiums (that's what much of Wish You Were Here and The Wall were about) and the "evils" of the music industry. Think the big labels as they exist (or wants to exist) will ever produce another Pink Floyd, another Queen, or another Led Zeppelin? No; the way those bands start out don't appeal to the masses right off; long experimental jams, studio pieces that are "too long" for radio play, sounds that are just "too different," and in some cases focusing SOLELY on the music, and not so much on the personalities - or if they do make it, people will be only familiar with short, poppy-sounding pieces, and will probably never hear the less-played but far superior back tracks.
There is a plus to big labels: they generally have VERY good sound engineers; that is something lacking in smaller venues. It's one thing to know how components interconnect, it's another thing entirely setting it up to enhance the band's sound and not detract from it. A lot of sound guys in small venues SUCK - I've been at several shows friends' bands performed at where I had to go to the sound guy to tell him to fix something, or SHOW the idiot how to fix it, and at one I even had to move a mike because he had no clue what to do. However in gaining access to good engineers and good equipment, you often have to go with big labels, and end up in debt to them.
Tagged: someofyourfriendsmayalreadybethisfucked
Re:D'uh from these quarters too. (Score:3, Interesting)
Jailer.
Instead of being guides leading you through the jungle, the established players want to restrict who actually can have contact with you. Thus the desire to keep the listener, the consumer as ignorant as possible so that they can maintain their Authority. The more information you have, the less you need them to play gatekeeper.
Re:Uhhh.... Duhhh..... What???? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Uhhh.... Duhhh..... What???? (Score:5, Interesting)
" That's what scared them from the start...the loss of their ability to dictate our tastes in music and control the top 40 charts."
This is not only true for the music industry - it is even MORE true for journalism in general - because, right now I think anyone who in an even halfway savvy media consumer, (or really anyone who doesn't have blinders on) can see that the mainstream media is operating almost EXACTLY in the same way...
Blogging and other indie media have allowed the masses to get and produce news that is REAL news and that is relevant to them, not that "infotainment" Paris Hilton bullshit.
The government and MSM (via their symbiotic partnership) both do not like this - they lose ability to control the agenda, to list the plausible opinions which the sheep can debate at the water cooler - as I have heard said often back in school "the media doesn't tell you what to think, the tell you what to think about, they set the agenda" - Well, I would go further, I would say that now, for most Americans who are brain dead television receivers - they set the agenda as well as providing a "multiple choice" format what what the possible opinions of the public can be - then reinforce this with bullshit polls.
If you take it to the core of what I am saying - it is information in general, and the ability for the masses to access it readily, unflitered, and to share and create it in the same manner without it being sanctioned, filtered, and controlled by authorities (be they govt or corp) that the powers that be are goign to try to destroy.
When you look at the corporations and governments we have on earth right now, how long do you think we have before they find a way to subvert the freedom of the net? I have already seen the fear campaign is in full force from all angles - whether it's "Hackers shutting down the pwoer grid" to "Pedaphiles are EVERYWHERE on the net looking for your children" to "identity theft is everywhere" to "terrorists use the net to learn about nukes," - then you see the economic control side - the debate about "net neutrality" etc....Personally I wouldn't cal America a democracy or a democratic republic anymore. I would call it a corporatist feudal system....and there are many synonyms for such a system.
Re:Uhhh.... Duhhh..... What???? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It wasn't the cannons man! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:D'uh from these quarters too. (Score:2, Interesting)
When I'm busy (running, driving, working ect) I listen to familiar content I've already sorted and when I've got time to listen carefully I explore other artists and genres. I know I'm not the only one who listens to music like this and I'd venture to guess that it's very common. The way we deal with information has changed, controlling distribution and advertising matters less than categorizing information in a useful manner. If big music labels want to stay relevant they need to figure out how to provide a useful service rather than using the courts to cling onto a model that doesn't work anymore.
Re:The real reason... (Score:3, Interesting)
You had a "skip" button that skipped to the next of four stereo tracks. In many (iirc, most) cases the skip was in the middle of a song! You still had to sit through half an album side. If it was a double album you had to sit through a whole album side. No rewind like cassettes had, only fast forward. If you forwarded past the beginning of the song you wanted, you had to keep fast forwarding.
With an LP you could lift the tonearm and place it at the beginning of the wanted track. Where songs started was clearly visible.
A few rare players could play a special version of 8-track: quadraphonic sound.
Believe it or not, quadraphonic sound was available on LPs, too. Stereo LPs were backwards compatible; if you played a stereo LP on a monophonic player, both channels would play (through the same speaker of course). This was accomplished by having both channels from the needle going up and down, and one channel with the sideways motion. The two signals were fed together to phase out one channel from the channel holding the up and down motion.
Quadraphonic was possible by modulating the two rear channels with a 40 khz tone and demodulating it on playback. Compare that to CD's 20khz ceiling. They used to have speaker enclosures with supersonic speakers called "super tweeters", which are no longer necessary since CDs can't reproduce frequencies that high.
Quadraphonic never took hold because of the expense of the equipment - you needed four of everything instead of two of everything. So a $1000 stereo sounded almost twice as good as a $1000 quadraphonic setup. That, coupled with the fact that in a live performance the audience is not usually in the middle of the orchestra makes the whole idea stupid on its face.
Surround sound happened because they've figured out that you don't really need more than one woofer. The woofer is the most expensive speaker, and speakers are the most expensive part of any stereo, especially now. The other electronics have vastly come down in price; in 1977 I paid $600 for a twenty five inch TV.
I knew a guy with quadraphonic cassettes. That's possible because a cassette has four channels. But you had to either rewind the cassette or listen to it play backwards when it was done.
Re:Don't worry about it. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:It wasn't the cannons man! (Score:2, Interesting)
Setting up a studio is a lot less than you might think - certainly cheap enough for a poor student to get a working rig together. As a gigging bassist in a number of bands, I can assure you that my first recording setup was less total value than my bass, amp and pedals and I have seen many (poor) muso's with substantially more expensive gear than mine.
Our local college runs a contemporary music and recording course - teaching general studio craft as well as Pro-Tools. Nearly all the students buy some form of recording set-up before the end of the course - they may not all become "genius producers", but in my experience there is some real talent there. Some of these guys have more of an interest in recording and production than in being in a band. It's just another form of expression.
This sort of thing is happening all over the country (here in the UK) - look in Sound on Sound mag and you see hundreds of adverts for courses. This months backpiece editorial was all about how there is an absolute glut of new recording engineers and producers desperate for work. You could look on this as the beginning of a new era - just like in the 70's everyone picked up a guitar and thought they could play, many now are entering sound recording as a pastime - out of this vast pool very few will enter large studios, most will end up doing it for themselves.
The main point is, *your* main thing is writing/producing the music, these guys main thing is recording - look around, maybe you'll find a local guy with a few decent mics, a macbook and logic.
The technical guys are out there - they are growing in number and have no industry to work in, so they are all working independently. Stick an advert up in your local music store and see how many responses you get!