A Man Who’s Spending $1B to Own Every Pop Song • Hacker News Board

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

#181

Post by pascalxus » Sun, Jan 12, 2020, 4:22 AM UTC

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.

That we're somehow wealthier than ever is a great misconception.

GDP per capita and even GDP per capita adjusted for PPP is also misleading because it uses the wrong basket of goods: focusing on things that dont matter.

People forget, wealth is not money. Wealth is the things you buy with money. Wealth is when you can afford the essentials of life: Shelter, food, water, medical insurance, education and transportation (with the costliest ones being Shelter and medical insurance). Consider the number of working hours the average person needs to expend to afford shelter and compare that to 500 years ago. I think you'll find that there hasn't been much improvement. In fact, in CA and bay area, I think you'll see that we're working even longer hours to afford basic shelter than 100s of years ago.

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

#182

Post by SyneRyder » Sun, Jan 12, 2020, 4:23 AM UTC

djmobley wrote: post #137

ancientworldnow wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For people curious about synch rates, a friend just licensed the music (not performance) to an unknown song for promos for a major streaming production with A listers for $8000 on a two month license. This was with the assistance of an entertainment lawyer. Of course every case is unique.

Sounds like this is all the money being poured into television and film content by Netflix/Amazon/Apple etc. trickling down.

On the flipside, we now have Discovery Channel refusing to use music with sync licensing costs (ie licensed through ASCAP, BMI) and demanding composers sign away their royalties if they want their music on the show:

https://variety.com/2019/music/news/discovery-networks-compo...

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

#183

Post by pascalxus » Sun, Jan 12, 2020, 4:34 AM UTC

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…

Yup, my 4 year old sings in the car whenever we're on a trip. Only problem is, you don't get to pick what's playing and there's NO volume control. lol.

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

#184

Post by wiseleo » Sun, Jan 12, 2020, 4:36 AM UTC

peteretep wrote: post #174

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…

> It's a public company. I might want to buy some stock in it when I can. Why, what’s the information advantage you have over the market?

I like the concept. I believe the value of back catalogs will only increase. As they increasingly corner the market, there should be a corresponding value increase in stock. What's not to like?

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

#185

Post by peteretep » Sun, Jan 12, 2020, 4:50 AM UTC

wiseleo wrote: post #184

peteretep wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a public company. I might want to buy some stock in it when I can. Why, what’s the information advantage you have over the market?

I like the concept. I believe the value of back catalogs will only increase. As they increasingly corner the market, there should be a corresponding value increase in stock. What's not to like?

The thing not to like is the current stock price, because everything that you like about it will have already been analysed in deep detail by the market, and priced in.

By investing in a public company, you are saying “I think the market is wrong about the potential for this company”, and I’m curious to know why you think that having read this public piece, you think the company is currently undervalued? The shares are at £109 — what price do you think they should be really?

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

#186

Post by tehjoker » Sun, Jan 12, 2020, 4:57 AM UTC

Concentration naturally builds in competitive markets. As each competitor is slain, you get the stuff they owned and add to your power. Nothing stops it except pressure from below. Allowing one man to own huge swaths of our cultural heritage is absolutely mind boggling insane, like a feudal king dictating what culture the peasants are allowed to have.

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

#187

Post by mr_toad » Sun, Jan 12, 2020, 5:16 AM UTC

pascalxus wrote: post #181

jrs95 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That we're somehow wealthier than ever is a great misconception. GDP per capita and even GDP per capita adjusted for PPP is also misleading because it uses the wrong basket of goods: focusing on things that dont matter. People forget, wealth is not money. Wealth is the things you buy with money. Wealth is when you can afford the essentials of life: Shelter, food, water, medical insurance, education and transportation…

What passed for shelter 500 years ago wouldn’t attract any tenants these days, even if it was legal. No heating, plumbing, sewage, not to mention the fire code violations.

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

#188

Post by MaximumYComb » Sun, Jan 12, 2020, 5:27 AM UTC

peteretep wrote: post #185

wiseleo wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the concept. I believe the value of back catalogs will only increase. As they increasingly corner the market, there should be a corresponding value increase in stock. What's not to like?

The thing not to like is the current stock price, because everything that you like about it will have already been analysed in deep detail by the market, and priced in. By investing in a public company, you are saying “I think the market is wrong about the potential for this company”, and I’m curious to know why you think that having read this public piece, you think the company is currently undervalued? The shares a…

Very similar to the attitude I take with sports betting (legal in my country). You don't bet on who you think will win, you bet on who is paying odds that don't reflect your view on the event. I only bet relatively small sums and I don't bet very often (since I don't often find odds that seem poorly priced) but I've won way more than I've lost.

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

#189

Post by Railsify » Sun, Jan 12, 2020, 5:50 AM UTC

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.

You are correct, Piketty provides empirical evidence that supports this theory in "Capital in the Twenty First Century". Essentially the return on capital investment is always greater than labor. He also suggests this rule and feature of capitalism threatens capitalism itself as long as wage earners make no efforts to themselves invest their wages. There was a brief period post war where wage earners did invest their wages but that fad has ended, now we spend all our wages plus some. The 'plus some' is often at interest rates the mafia would be proud to charge. Any salary increases earned are generally spent to pay off this debt while incurring more debt to enhance our lifestyle. The dollar will collapse eventually, maybe not in the lifetime of anyone reading this, but it will happen.

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

#190

Post by _wzsf » Sun, Jan 12, 2020, 6:05 AM UTC

m0zg wrote: post #157

I hope he succeeds and makes "every pop song" so expensive to license that pop music just dies a natural death, yielding way to musicians who can actually play instruments and singers who can actually sing. The current situation is kind of absurd.

In the current world, it seems the "artist" has taken the form of a hive mind (artists and songwriters) while the "instruments" are the mechanisms of production and distribution - and monetization: microphones, pickups, mixers, autotuners, amplifiers, filters, mastering artists, distribution companies, Logic Pro, digital-to-analog converters, headphones...

Unless they're seeing a live symphony or literally sitting in the recording studio with an artist, the vast majority of people (99.999%) aren't hearing music performed by the named artist. They're hearing music recordings generated by teams of people and performed by a computer.

Local musicians (the main source of music for people earlier than about 150 years ago) just cannot compete with the supranormal stimulus of pop/rock/soul written and performed and mastered by students of psychology and music and distributed by capitalists.