Recorded music used to have value and, while people continue to enjoy recorded music as much as they ever did, they no longer want to pay for it. How times have changed. When I was seventeen, and many of my peers were making car-related purchases, I put my money into buying records.
In those days the record industry was flush with cash and bloomed with creativity and investment. New technology and recording techniques gave us sounds that were hitherto impossible to imagine. But now audiences take immaculately produced music for granted, leaving musicians in a strange position: what do we do when the public decide they basically want their music for free?
A rule of thumb among workaday musicians is that money from ticket sales pays for tour travel and hotel costs while money from merchandise sales – traditionally CDs, records and t-shirts – provides the wage. However, since revenue from recordings has reduced to a trickle, musicians have had to become more creative with their merchandise.
At Bowtie & Petal gigs we’ve discovered that audiences will crowd around to take home Catherine’s greeting cards, mugs and even original works of art, while anything musical, such as books and CDs, are eclipsed. So, when we get asked whether Bowtie & Petal will be recording, our thought is, “Why would we?”
Recording can be a slog. With so many music choices available, musicians feel compelled to record with the same production standards as the big studios of the past. As a result, an industry has sprung up offering cheap musical gear for artists to reproduce any sound created in the days when music still had value. If you want your ukulele to sound like it’s playing in the Abbey Road studio, with a full orchestra behind it, you can make that happen – in your living room.
And, when you’ve finished your album, with all the crisp production of a Beatles or Pink Floyd creation, purchased CDs (and pressed a vinyl version for good measure), it turns out, sadly, that hardly anyone wants to buy it. Yet, despite all this, musicians continue to record.
Why do we record and how can our recordings be most effective?
Recording for me often starts at the beginning of music creation. I try to keep a recording device close at hand, in the same way an artist uses a sketch book, so when musical and lyrical ideas come to me, I sing them into my handy little recorder. Most of this stuff never gets used frankly. I mainly do it to prevent the anguish I feel from losing an idea that seemed unforgettable only 10 seconds ago and is already lost to the ether.
Every now and then these recordings pay dividends. One day I heard Catherine at the piano trying out a new song that we’d been talking about. I grabbed the recorder and went to capture her tinkering. She saw the device in my hand and the first thing she said was, “Don’t record this!”
I know that’s what she said because it’s the first thing you hear on the recording. Although she made it clear that she didn’t want her experiment to be recorded I did it anyway and we are both glad I did. I felt it best to record first and then have the discussion about whether to keep it once we had it in the bag. I have found the best performances are recorded when people are unaware of being recorded.
Music is at its most captivating when the player is lost in the moment: either captured live onstage, or while practicing before a take. Conversely, when a player is self-consciously hemmed in with cables, mics, headphones and the sound of a producer saying, “Go”, the sound quality may be first-rate but the performance often isn’t.
One of my favourite ukulele acts is the Australian duo Tyrone & Lesley. I interviewed Tyrone (real name David Megarrity) for their latest album release on February 1, 2026. I told David how much I still enjoy listening to their album Ukulele Heart. He seemed surprised and said, “That was our first one. We didn’t know it was going to be an album. We just stood up in a studio and played and later went, okay, maybe we’ll release that”
I can point to at least three occasions in my own career when I’ve done a similar thing and made a recording that was only intended as an “interim album”. The thinking was to give the new music a try-out while also giving myself something to sell at gigs – that is, until such time when I’d gathered the resources to make a “good” album worthy of official release.
In every case these cassette tapes or CDs, while having minor glitches, were surprisingly well received by listeners who told me they were still enjoying the work years later.
A recording can be:
a thoughtfully conceived and highly produced work of art
a sketch of developing work
a glimpse into a moment when a performer reveals how they truly sound – alone in a room and unadorned – to the future listener.
All are perfectly valid choices but there is one more choice: whether to record at all. There is nothing wrong with not recording. It’s a perfectly valid musical choice so don’t be pushed if it’s not something you feel moved to do. It’s a bit like when you photograph a landscape or a blizzard only to discover that the photo in no way lives up to the experience of just “being” there.