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Has he never heard of the Hunt Brothers and their attempt to corner the silver market? Supply & Demand dictates that prices can go higher than you are liquid. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Thursday
So by buying up the rights he has the incentive to push hard to sell licenses to that music and can build up teams of salespeople to do only that. What songwriter wouldn't want to sign up if they don't like the burden of managing those opportunities themselves and don't trust that labels will put the effort in.
This is what's considered innovation. It's not innovative in that he's solving a problem but just an innovative way to try make more money.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I could also write my own novels and produce my own TV shows but they wouldn't be as good as what an Orwell or Sorkin could produce.
Do the things you do have to be world-class all-time greats in order to be worth doing?
Normally enjoyment of the art making process for amateurs is just that, enjoyment of the process. If I want to enjoy literature, I’ll read the work of professional writers. If I want to enjoy the task of writing, I’ll write myself.
For most people, art making as a hobby is occasional, simply by the time & resource limits of regular jobs, family obligations, etc. While consuming art is much more accessible.
Some other things can be closer to a gray middle area. For me, that is cooking. I expect myself to be able to make really world class food even in my crappy apartment kitchen with limited time and a normal grocery budget. So when I can’t do that, due to time constraints generally, I won’t whip together something quick just ‘cause.. I’d rather simply transfer the grocery budget to restaurant budget and eat better made things.
Thankfully, since most of the very best food is found at cheap or medium end restaurants, and not too much at five star expensive places, this is fairly easy without changing my budget. But compromising to make a mediocre thing myself, either purely for the sake of cooking or to allegedly save money, is not interesting or useful to me.
I could imagine people feel that way about a lot of things.
He raised $1B of others' money; he hasn't spent anything close to that yet, even in aggregate. The article is extremely light on details of why this guy thinks he can turn a bigger profit off these song catalogs than the traditional publishers can, but I guess he's cutting a lot of fat compared to the big publishing houses? This seems positive to me because it's shifting more money towards the artists: "In the music…
That's optimistic of you to think that he's going to give more profits to the artist.
His investors take all the risk on trying to make a return on that investment, the songwriter gets paid double up front.
This new moment of marketization is interesting to observe from the sidelines. I'm a musician but I've never gotten paid for making music and don't want to be. This way, songwriting and playing music can remain something I do purely for the intrinsic joy of it. And it's not really so long ago that, if you wanted music in your house, you had to play it yourself. I have nothing against recorded music or professional mu…
I could also write my own novels and produce my own TV shows but they wouldn't be as good as what an Orwell or Sorkin could produce.
But I think there's a significant difference: with music, as you play it, you are also experiencing ("consuming") it. And that's what also brings a lot of the pleasure to it.
With writing and videography, meanwhile, the act of production is usually a lot more decoupled from the experience of consumption. I happen to think that producing writing and producing video are also fun activities in their own right. But they don't fit into social life in the way that playing someone a song does.
This is what's considered innovation. It's not innovative in that he's solving a problem but just an innovative way to try make more money.
What's to say he's not trying to provide an innovative service? It'd be interesting to be at least able to license most pop music from one place, not that this is an ideal way to get there. If he prices pop music out of the culture, then less popular music becomes a viable alternative.
Didn't Spotify do that already?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do the things you do have to be world-class all-time greats in order to be worth doing?
If they are accessible, then yes, and I don’t see why that would be controversial. Normally enjoyment of the art making process for amateurs is just that, enjoyment of the process . If I want to enjoy literature, I’ll read the work of professional writers. If I want to enjoy the task of writing, I’ll write myself. For most people, art making as a hobby is occasional, simply by the time & resource limits of regular jo…
Taylor Swift, Timbaland, and Bruno Mars are all arguably homogenous music made by marketing groups for middle American focus groups. They are endlessly replaceable, rather forgettable, artists and will be lost to history by the 'next big thing' that sounds just like it or very similar in a year or two. It has more in common with pop fashion than originally expressive art.
Music made by marketers for middle America focus groups commodifies music so that the next thing can easily replace the current thing.
Who remembers blaque, or 3LW, or All-4-One or the train is boy and girl bands from the past?
This is just the music business cannibalizing itself.
Truly expressive, original, personal, music will always be timeless in my opinion, because its irreplaceable, the style is non reproducible, and it's pretty much unexplainable how it's created.even by the artist...see led zepp, Beatles, Billy Corgan, Mozart, etc. etc.
That's my thoughts and what music I think what he should be focusing on.
Has he never heard of the Hunt Brothers and their attempt to corner the silver market? Supply & Demand dictates that prices can go higher than you are liquid. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Thursday
> “We turn down 70% of what’s offered to us, and oftentimes we make the first move in finding writers whose catalogs aren’t publicly for sale,” he says.
> Ultimately, his goal with Hipgnosis — which went public on the London Stock Exchange in June 2018 — is to own 15% to 20% of the overall publishing market.
That's more like someone buying up the silver mining rights across large but carefully picked swathes of land. Then he rents those rights to miners for a fee he can use to buy even more mining rights.