Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

marker.medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 245 posts

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

#161

Post by CPLX »

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…

> Liberal economists use this term the most, they usually mean large companies trying to get goodies from the state.

No, they don’t. That is neither a correct nor common use of the term.

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

#162

Post by mindslight »

wolco wrote: post #152
mindslight wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why not 4% with robots handling the rest?

I was saying what the numbers would change to at the same level of technological progression, but with policy changing to make the work more evenly distributed.

Obviously the long-term goal is ever-more automation. But current economic policy is based around creating full full-time employment, which is fundamentally at-odds with ever-less needing to be done due to automation. Hence the proliferation of anti-productive "bullshit jobs" where people ultimately aren't ultimately helping to produce anything (eg the entire medical billing system), but still need to cling on and go through the motions so they can eat.

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

#164

Post by walshemj »

wiseleo wrote: post #156

It will be industry-wide game over when they grab Max Martin and Lukasz Gottwald https://nypost.com/2015/10/04/your-favorite-song-on-the-radi... I think the goal is to launch the next ASCAP/BMI/SESAC and basically charge astronomical rates for songs people want to hear. Songwriters will love it and artists will have no choice. This is pretty much a confirmation: "Along with owning a bigger chunk of the publishing mar…

Its Listed on the LSE with the code SONG

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

#165

Post by iso947 »

jariel wrote: post #160
loso wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"Your friends and other people in your age group hate the new music so they only listen to music from when they were young." Young people hate a lot of music made these days and listen to older music. It's not just a 'when I was young' thing anymore. There's something very profound that comes from artists who make music, as opposed to a producer who makes some licks, a mediocre singer who belts it out, and a label th…

They always did. Young people like to be contrarian.

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

#167

Post by klarstrup »

rhizome wrote: post #148
netcan wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Property(intellectual and otherwise) enforcement _is_ a goody from the state, by the by

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

#168

Post by doh »

wiseleo wrote: post #156

It will be industry-wide game over when they grab Max Martin and Lukasz Gottwald https://nypost.com/2015/10/04/your-favorite-song-on-the-radi... I think the goal is to launch the next ASCAP/BMI/SESAC and basically charge astronomical rates for songs people want to hear. Songwriters will love it and artists will have no choice. This is pretty much a confirmation: "Along with owning a bigger chunk of the publishing mar…

> I think the goal is to launch the next ASCAP/BMI/SESAC and basically charge astronomical rates for songs people want to hear. Songwriters will love it and artists will have no choice.

In US, for mechanical royalties, the rates are set by government. So yes, they could charge whatever they want for live and synch, but that would have much smaller impact on the general population.

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

#169

Post by narrator »

jrs95 wrote: post #145
tomrod wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you have a billion dollars in the U.S you can park it in treasuries and make millions and outsource the income generation to the government's tax collectors. Meanwhile, in China, the government just prints money electronically when they need it and billionaires have to be clever about where to park their billions to earn a decent return. That need to be clever contributes to creating useful capital that increases the wealth of society generally instead of just adding to the interest bill on the national debt.
Post reply on HN