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A Man Who’s Spending $1B to Own Every Pop Song

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Re: A Man Who’s Spending $1B to Own Every Pop Song

#141

Post by hinkley »

loso wrote: post #128
NOGDP wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think pop songs are a depreciating asset since new ones can be pumped out rather quickly like out of a factory.

When you hit 40 you start to see in real time how valuable those old songs are. Your friends and other people in your age group hate the new music so they only listen to music from when they were young. All of the commercials play music you thought would never be used in a commercial. Walking through the grocery store or waiting in an elevator you start to bop your head because one of your favorite songs from high sc…

See also Stranger Things, Guardians of the Galaxy (I and II), Captain America, etc.

Re: A Man Who’s Spending $1B to Own Every Pop Song

#142

Post by mindslight »

neilwilson wrote: post #82
TomMckenny wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems that's the way society ended up being structured. Perhaps we will all end up selling houses to each other and no one will have to make anything at all! I swear, even the Aztecs had a less destructive system.

We need about 1% of people to grow the food and perhaps 9% of the people to make stuff we need. The other 90% then have to convince the 10% that do the actual work that they are worth the time to produce a surplus for. IP barriers are one way of doing that. Even farmers like pop songs.

That assumes the amount each individual person "works" remains the same. Why not full-time employment at 15 hours a week, with 30% of people making stuff we need?

Most of our efficiency gains are presently being funneled into a glut of overproduction of nonsensical "goods" (eg overfinancialization and overadministration) rather than direct quality of life improvements of everyone being able to work less.

Re: A Man Who’s Spending $1B to Own Every Pop Song

#144

Post by pzmarzly »

jancsika wrote: post #63
decasia wrote: post #15

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…

Who is buying music? On the whole don't people either stream it or look it up on Youtube?

All the music I'm listening to nowadays is the songs I buy on Bandcamp, and I'm far from being a hardcore music fan. I do see music as commodity, and that's why I don't mind limiting the selection available to me. I download the songs I buy to my laptop, and stream them to my phone via Bandcamp app. It has bugs and imperfect UI, but so does every Subsonic or Plex client I've tested.

The main problem with streaming off Youtube is that, unless you stick to popular songs (>100M views), it's just a matter of time before some songs in your playlists become unavailable ("video is not available in your country", or unofficial upload gets deleted). I've been using NewPipe (Android) and Ivory (iOS) to play YT videos in background, so I'm not as annoyed with that as I would've been if I had been paying for Youtube Music, but it's still a deal breaker. Meanwhile on Bandcamp, some songs I bought have been deleted since that time, but I still have them in my library and can stream them in the app (I can't share link to these, though, as it's 404 unless you're logged into an account that has these in the library). Of course I could have been downloading YT videos to my PC, and stream them via Subsonic, and I was doing exactly this for many years, but I kept having weird issues with that (and it's metadata hell).

If I were to switch to Spotify, I would have to leave my music collection behind, as the songs I have on Bandcamp are not on Spotify, and vice versa. But I don't see a reason to, as Spotify would also be more expensive option vs buying 1-2 $2 albums per month. And the money I would be paying to Spotify wouldn't even go to the artist I listen to afaik, since the only thing that matters when it comes to Spotify payouts is the total number of times your songs have been played, which is determined in a large part by what the recommendation algorithm has been recommending to hairdressers and drivers, as well as what the current mainstream trends are.

Re: A Man Who’s Spending $1B to Own Every Pop Song

#145

Post by jrs95 »

tomrod wrote: post #84
umvi wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like the old aristocracy days except for instead of the elite owning physical property and renting it out to the peasants, the elite own intellectual property and rent it out to the peasants.

Feudalism is one of the standard memes of history, as per David Brin.[1] The essay is well worth reading, as well as the thesis that a new meme ("otherness") arose within Western Liberalism. In my mind Otherness is a saddle point, and worth investing in to protect.[2] [1] http://www.davidbrin.com/nonfiction/dogmaofotherness.html [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

Western Liberalism increasingly seems to just be a system by which you establish global feudalism. I guess it's good for a few generations. Hard to argue it's even good now though because even though we're wealthier than ever we're increasingly unhappy and mentally ill.

Re: A Man Who’s Spending $1B to Own Every Pop Song

#146

Post by trsohmers »

goodmachine wrote: post #108
carbocation wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hipgnosis is a beautiful portmanteau.

Pity the guy stole the name from Storm Thorgerson's design studio. Kind of a dick move. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipgnosis

Since it says his favorite band of all time is Pink Floyd, it is fair he is using the name as Storm and Hipgnosis designed all their major album covers. Hopefully he paid for the name...

Re: A Man Who’s Spending $1B to Own Every Pop Song

#147

Post by TomMckenny »

neilwilson wrote: post #82
TomMckenny wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems that's the way society ended up being structured. Perhaps we will all end up selling houses to each other and no one will have to make anything at all! I swear, even the Aztecs had a less destructive system.

We need about 1% of people to grow the food and perhaps 9% of the people to make stuff we need. The other 90% then have to convince the 10% that do the actual work that they are worth the time to produce a surplus for. IP barriers are one way of doing that. Even farmers like pop songs.

That 90% does not live on IP, they live by offering medical care, police service, education, roads, reservoirs and aqueducts. By transporting those farm goods, inventing new tractors and efficiently managing all these things.

And while pop songs artists may deserve compensation, society does not crucially depend on someone collecting royalties for generations after the guy's death.

On the farmer analogy (and inspired by the recent .org tld acquisition), if one really wanted to extract rents, simply acquire the land they work on and set them all to sharecropping.

Re: A Man Who’s Spending $1B to Own Every Pop Song

#148

Post by rhizome »

netcan wrote: post #123
umvi wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intellectual property didn't used to be rent seeking. It's a relatively recent phenomenon where you can no longer buy-to-own, you can only subscribe-to-use. Virtually every company is moving toward this model - Microsoft, Adobe, Disney, etc. That's my main complaint.

Depends on what you mean by "rent seeking." Liberal economists use this term the most, they usually mean large companies trying to get goodies from the state. Lefty ones tend to mean something like "profiteering." X-as-a-service businesses models aren't exactly new in intellectual property. The patent/copyright systems explicitly assume licensing and royalties. But, I agree that subscriptions are pretty new in consum…

>they usually mean large companies trying to get goodies from the state

I think here you might be thinking of Regulatory Capture.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

Re: A Man Who’s Spending $1B to Own Every Pop Song

#149

Post by bitL »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #5

Not a bad idea. Finding avenues to rent-seek seems to be the winning strategy, especially with all the cash floating around looking for returns.

Everybody should read about Tibetan society in the early 20th century to understand consequences of extreme rent seeking... Hell has many forms.

Re: A Man Who’s Spending $1B to Own Every Pop Song

#150

Post by maroonblazer »

decasia wrote: post #46
maroonblazer wrote: post #23

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.

Sure. And the pleasure you would get out of this would depend in part on your skill in the relevant medium. 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 happ…

I play music too and derive a lot of pleasure from it, both as a performer and a consumer. However you seemed to be claiming that DIY-ing music was a viable alternative to consuming professionally produced music. Depending on one's aesthetic standards this is most likely not the case.
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