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Non-Fungible Taylor Swift

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Re: Non-Fungible Taylor Swift

#101

Post by BitwiseFool »

eindiran wrote: post #96
michaelt wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Would anyone pay for a Taylor Swift subscription if that meant she could relax and produce music as she sees fit? I have a (completely speculative) theory that the "support the artist to keep creating the work they're giving away for free" model has a ceiling when artists become visibly a lot richer than their fans. After all, what kind of sucker would charitably donate to a multimillionaire's private jet running c…

Even if this is true, the ceiling is very high. Look at the current top earners on Patreon, with a known per month figure: https://graphtreon.com/top-patreon-creators * Chapo Trap House, 3 hosts - 170k/month * The Tim Dillon Show, 1 host - 121k/month * AdeptusSteve (I couldn't figure out how many people, possibly 1 guy making some sort of porn game?) - 103k/month * Flagrant 2, 2 hosts - 98k/month * Tiny Meat Gang, 2…

Part of me finds it ironic that so many leftist podcasts rake in big bucks on Patreon.

Re: Non-Fungible Taylor Swift

#102

Post by ppod »

bombcar wrote: post #87

Nobody ever bought any music "to support the publisher" - the middle man is just that, the middle man.

The middle man is a load balancer for risk. The middleman makes a bunch of artists moderately rich, and they lose money on most of them and make money on some of them. They take on the risk of letting an unproven artist spend a few years doing something that could turn out to generate little money, and in return they get a big share of the ones that do make money. Now, thanks to the internet, the ones that do make it big can cut out the middleman.

Now there will be no middleman to take on the small risks of many unproven artists, and because of the relentless greed and ego of Chapelle and Swift many young artists will never have the opportunity that they did.

Re: Non-Fungible Taylor Swift

#103

Post by kryptiskt »

notyourday wrote: post #49
throwawaysea wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ultimately it has value because people agree it has value. This feels like a pyramid scheme. What makes it different?

> This feels like a pyramid scheme. It is. My Google-fu is failing me but there was a famous art dealer in the early part of the 20th century who promised that he would buy back the pieces he sold at least for the price the buyer originally paid less some minuscule percentage if the buyer could not sell the pieces to someone else. It made paints he sold significantly go up in price. He died. Buyers tried to get his e…

A Swedish gallery called Timeless pulled that scam recently, they sold art in galleries in Sweden and Poland (and Miami and Dubai) with the promise buy it back N months later with a yearly appreciation of at least 20% (I see here that Polish customers were promised 36%).

Re: Non-Fungible Taylor Swift

#105

Post by axython »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #68
sodality2 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it was more than a money grab- I think it was a giant middle finger as well to the company.

> giant middle finger as well to the company. How dare the people who supported, developed, and promoted a young performer get a return on their investment.

Uh, the people who supported developed and promoted her got, 300 mln when they sols the company and 11 years of revenue of her. Ive seen the rest of their artists and Ill assume like 90% of revenue came from T.Swift. A smart move is to not piss off the client who basicly is your whole cashflow.

Re: Non-Fungible Taylor Swift

#106

Post by squeaky-clean »

Aaargh20318 wrote: post #59
rayiner wrote: post #28

The quote from Nilay Patel's Vox article hits on one of my pet peeves. > Nilay Patel wrote in Vox: > "Taylor makes a nice little argument in favor of paying for music. 'Music is art,' she says, 'and art is important and rare. Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for.' > This is an impressively-constructed syllogism. It is also deeply, deeply wrong.... On the internet, there’s no scarcit…

> How does such an obvious fallacy command such purchase among smart people? Swift is talking about "music" as an original work. Patel responds with an irrelevant point about digital copies of music. Obviously these are two different things! Yes, they are two different things. The problem is that artists (and record labels) want to get paid for the non-scarce thing: the copies, and not for the actually scarce thing:…

I don't really see how this is possible for an independent artist unless I go the route of "Once this Kickstarter reaches $10k I'll release my song for free"

Re: Non-Fungible Taylor Swift

#108

Post by squeaky-clean »

michaelt wrote: post #89
lopis wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the reason why many youtubers on patreon switch to a monthly subscription rather than charging per video. It makes it clearer that we are supporting the creator's livelihood, not buying a token that they produced. Would anyone pay for a Taylor Swift subscription if that meant she could relax and produce music as she sees fit? Higher subscription tiers could include merchandising and concert tickets.

> Would anyone pay for a Taylor Swift subscription if that meant she could relax and produce music as she sees fit? I have a (completely speculative) theory that the "support the artist to keep creating the work they're giving away for free" model has a ceiling when artists become visibly a lot richer than their fans. After all, what kind of sucker would charitably donate to a multimillionaire's private jet running c…

It doesn't have to be pure charity. I was a subscriber to Deadmau5's livestreams back when he was doing that. Monthly subscription and you had access to a private stream that was almost always live when he was producing in the studio. That particular example is boring if you're not into music production, but there are certainly things an artist can do to make a subscription worthwhile. Will it make a superstar artist more money than the usual means? Probably not. But it also doesn't have to include zero rewards.

Re: Non-Fungible Taylor Swift

#109

Post by packetslave »

nickysielicki wrote: post #74
packetslave wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't call it a money grab (TSwift already has a net worth of over $400 million. She's not worried solely about money). I think it's more of a giant, public middle finger to Scooter Braun: "you won't sell me my masters? Fine, I have enough money and spare time to re-record them AND it won't hurt my career a bit, because my fans love me enough to buy something I've literally already released." edit: TS probably w…

I agree, but I feel you've missed the biggest part: if anyone wants to license the song for usage in a commercial / TV show / whatever, she can undercut Big Machine at any price she wants. There's a market now where there otherwise wouldn't be one. It's more like, "You won't sell them to me? I'll introduce a viable alternative to them and drive the value of both to zero."

IIRC, she can already deny licensing for her music -- even though Big Machine owns the publishing, she still owns the songwriter rights. There are about 9,000 exceptions (music law is hard), though, so I'm not 100% sure.

But you're right that she can regain licensing rights AND screw Big Machine at the same time by re-recording. I'm sure that crossed her mind.

Re: Non-Fungible Taylor Swift

#110

Post by munk-a »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #50
rayiner wrote: post #28

The quote from Nilay Patel's Vox article hits on one of my pet peeves. > Nilay Patel wrote in Vox: > "Taylor makes a nice little argument in favor of paying for music. 'Music is art,' she says, 'and art is important and rare. Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for.' > This is an impressively-constructed syllogism. It is also deeply, deeply wrong.... On the internet, there’s no scarcit…

> How does such an obvious fallacy command such purchase among smart people? Swift is talking about "music" as an original work. Patel responds with an irrelevant point about digital copies of music . Your quotes don't support this analysis. There's plenty of original music available on the internet. Enough to call it an endless amount. Weirdly, you point this out yourself immediately after accusing Patel of a fallac…

I'm not a huge taylor swift fan but people who work in an industry with market disruption and the networking effect shouldn't throw stones. I'm a big fan of a number of artists personally - some headliners like RTJ and The Prodigy, and some less well known folks like m|o|o|n and bioxeed - there's a lot of good music out there but it can be quite hard to promote music and actually get it into peoples ears. That is a part of the business of music, as much as we might wish it wasn't - and it's exactly the same with other forms of art. Notoriety does help drive value since it will force people to take your production more seriously than someone hawking paintings at a farmers market - even if their paintings are technically excellent and moving.

Record labels often try to stand up rando pop groups - sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but those groups that manage to stay around for more than a few months do have talent that supports the large marketing campaigns being thrown behind them - they may not be the most talented out there, but a large number of people genuinely enjoy their music.

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