To me the article speaks to the frustration of past funding models giving way to new ways of monetizing creative works. The gateways that have been necessary for works to be promoted are changing from an executives sitting in an office somewhere to everyday people who like your work and have the ability to spread word of it throughout their social networks. As the technology is further developed to further empower these everyday people with even greater ability to spread creative content, such as Spotify is doing, this will accelerate even more. It's my feeling that a new way of monetizing creative works is underway. This will be a paradigm change that will allow works to be seen or heard that would have otherwise never been allowed to see the light of day. We all win when we have the greatest number of individuals having more of a say in things rather than just a select few. Authors, musicians & other creators in the future will be more in the driver seat than in the past and will be given new & different options for monetizing their products.
Paul Graham has lost the plot
131–140 of 302 posts
Re: Paul Graham has lost the plot
#132Although there was some to disagree with in Graham's essay, he had some interesting insight. The restaurant smells analogy is the least bad I've heard so far. This response was flimsy. > This is a flawed analogy. Cooking smells are a > positive externality – they’re generated as a > by-product of providing a service to paying patrons. > But commercially released music is produced > specifically for the purpose of bei…
Would you have a problem with it if Steam started serving games without paying the developers? Also, when he talks about the cost of producing music, he isn't referring to the cost of setting up a microphone, which is miniscule. What he's talking about is the fact that it might take an artist over a month to create a two-and-a-half-minute song.
> What he's talking about is the fact that it might
> take an artist over a month to create a two-and-
> a-half-minute song.
But let's expand, because I can raise Jade Ewen now.
The only musicians who benefit from copyright in a significant way are a few that get hand-picked as front-men by the gansters who run the music industry. These are the ones they can point to.
Consider Ms Ewen. Successful artist, national treasure who performed well in Eurovision for the UK, one of the handful of music artists from the billion around the world who probably makes something a sliver over minimum wage from leveraging copyright. Her record label (who make the real money) tell her to move her life to Los Angeles without telling her what she'll be doing there. http://www.eurovision.tv/page/news?id=4373&_t=jade_had_n...
Her company would have had a choice of twenty girls with excellent looks and high quality vocals when they decided to pick her as their next star. They have some brand invested in her, but they can replace her when they like. They already started the process when they pushed her into the sugarbabes.
She is cattle to them.
But she puts a smile on it in the end, because she has no options.
All those kids who sign on to those talent shows are. They have to sign away their rights to the sponsoring organisations just to get in.
I'm on the lookout for a news story to demonstrate a culture of mates agreements between studios and compliant "managers". It will reveal itself in time.
Copyright law creates structures suitable for a ganster class of copyright interests. It does not serve artists.
Re: Paul Graham has lost the plot
#133Although there was some to disagree with in Graham's essay, he had some interesting insight. The restaurant smells analogy is the least bad I've heard so far. This response was flimsy. > This is a flawed analogy. Cooking smells are a > positive externality – they’re generated as a > by-product of providing a service to paying patrons. > But commercially released music is produced > specifically for the purpose of bei…
Smells are covered by copyright, it's a $20 billion dollar industry. http://bit.ly/GKyiOa
Smells are currently being sold -- as advertisement for products held within stores (big box stores are known to pipe in smells of baked goods at the front etc...)
What if consumers don't pay for music? There have been many suggestions about how this will play out, but maybe it will be that Pepsi and McDonalds will decide the music that is best suited for selling their products. Brittany Spears will stick around for sure (love her), but I'm not sure where this leaves us.
Re: Paul Graham has lost the plot
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
The cost of studio rental is irrelevant. What musicians want to be compensated for is the lifetime of study, dedication to a craft, years of poverty and uncertainty, risk of repetitive stress injuries, etc.
And they do, whenever they perform those skills for an audience. The market doesn't pay for effort, it pays for things people want.
"And they do, whenever they perform those skills for an audience. "
The overwhelming majority of musical work -writing, recording, practicing etc - is done in private with no audience present. Many musicians perform very little in public.
Re: Paul Graham has lost the plot
#135Although there was some to disagree with in Graham's essay, he had some interesting insight. The restaurant smells analogy is the least bad I've heard so far. This response was flimsy. > This is a flawed analogy. Cooking smells are a > positive externality – they’re generated as a > by-product of providing a service to paying patrons. > But commercially released music is produced > specifically for the purpose of bei…
Smells are covered by copyright, it's a $20 billion dollar industry. http://bit.ly/GKyiOa
Sure, but we're talking about smells in the context described in the original PG essay and the response to it that this thread is attached to.
Re: Paul Graham has lost the plot
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn't say anything about where the money should go.
You implied the 99 cents was a convenience charge, therefore the money goes to the provider of the convenience.
Well, from my perspective as a consumer, yes, it's a convenience charge. I would be happier if some of it went to the artist. I don't actually know how much of it does.
I'm not sure it's possible to actually curate a comprehensive MP3 catalog without active cooperation from the musicians, at some level. But, if the Pirate Bay surprised me and made a fast way to search and download music that was as easy as iTunes or Amazon MP3, and they had a library of songs that was at least as comprehensive as the for-pay versions, then I might decide that the hassle of keeping my billing info up to date in the other databases was more trouble than changing to the Pirate App. I'm not sure. The actual 99cent charge is so close to free that it doesn't factor into my decision.
But that's theoretical. Right now, the musicians get a few cents, Apple and Amazon get legitimacy and a little bit more of my money.
My few cents per mp3 doesn't add up to much. When I actually want to support an artist, I use Kickstarter, or I buy some merch, or click a donate button.
Re: Paul Graham has lost the plot
#137The author, and the content industry in general, are misunderstanding basic economics: Just because there is a cost to produce something does not mean that it has market value . pg was right in pointing out that the content industry is built on the economics of scarcity, and that this scarcity no longer exists. You could charge someone to see a movie in a theatre when doing so was the only way to see the movie. You c…
The author, and the content industry in general, are misunderstanding basic economics: Just because there is a cost to produce something does not mean that it has market value. And your are misunderstanding even more basic economics: being able to take something (or a copy of it) without paying, doesn't mean it doesn't have value either. Value is where there are people willing to pay. And people ARE willing to pay fo…
Market value is determined by scarcity and demand, right? Scarcity is finished for digital items. Sorry, but that train has left.
This very much follows economics.
(and stop conflating utility with market value...argh....)
Re: Paul Graham has lost the plot
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
Content is scarce if you think not just about distribution, but creation. As a thought experiment, if no one earned anything off of information goods, at all, then fewer of them would be produced.
No, go to any mid-sized town or bigger, there is at least one recording studio, making decent or good recordings for bands that never hit the "*AA lottery", but make decent money (either in the form of door fees and schwag, some even enough to live on) giving away CDs at shows to keep people coming to the next show. Even more that do the same thing, but keep a day job and do music for the love of it. For every band y…
Every band I've ever gone to see sells CDs at their shows, and they're mostly the kinds of bands you describe.
> keep a day job
"Producing less of it" because they can't earn enough to do it full time. There would be more people in that boat if, in my thought experiment, they earned absolutely nothing from their content. I don't think we'd actually ever reach that point, but just think about it as a 'what if'.
Re: Paul Graham has lost the plot
#139I don't know why this is upvoted so much. PG's article seems pretty clear. The problem I have with this article is the association of investment with a 'right' to recoup that investment. There is no inherent right to recoup investment money of this type. NONE! It doesn't matter how hard something is to produce, there is no inherent right to make a profit based on that effort. People paint, write, sing and act all the…
The question is not whether there is a right to make a profit but whether there is a right to pursue a profit.
Free, instantaneous distribution of all music as soon as it is produced (an exaggeration of torrents, but not by much) seems to take away the right to pursue a profit, at least profit by distribution of recordings.
Or perhaps there is no right to pursue profit by distribution. Perhaps there is only a right to pursue profit by live performance. But what happens if that becomes copyable? We already have at least one instance of a holographic singer (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatsune_Miku). What if holographic recorders and projectors become as cheap as cameras and microphones and screens and speakers? Live performance could be copied about as effectively as live sound is now (recorded music is not a perfect reproduction of what was played in studio or on stage). What then?
Is there no right to pursue profit by live performance either? Decreasing costs of production seem likely to make copying merchandise reasonably possible (you can already just draw a design and have someone print a T-shirt or such for you). So is there no right to pursue profit by merchandise either?
If there is no right to pursue profit by distribution, live performance, or merchandise, I think it is safe to say there is no right to pursue profit at all. But is that really fair? Musicians don't even deserve the right to try to get people to buy their product out of anything other than sympathy?
Frankly, I think pay-what-you-want is great. But I don't think it can provide the same level of economic activity and technological development we are used to. The most advanced personal computing company in the world is also the most closed or near it. The iPhone, iPad, corresponding retina displays, the Macbook Air... all produced under tight control and for direct profit only. Why isn't an open, pay-what-you-will hardware company beating Apple? We all like our i-things, so why aren't we paying people to develop them? Why is Apple's cheapest product $129, and the cheapest Kickstarter level usually $1? Why won't we pay $129 for Kickstarter projects that sound interesting to us if pay-what-you-will really works?
Similarly, the most advanced synthesizers, digital mixers, even music software are all produced to be sold. Why is there no open, pay-what-you-will synthesizer to match Kurzweil?
Why is there no open, pay-what-you-will library to match O'Reilly's? Why no open, pay-what-you-will coffee to match Starbucks? Why no open, pay-what-you-will transportation system to match the U.S. interstates and European and Japanese light and high-speed rail?
I would argue it's because accepting only the payment you can convince people to offer voluntarily doesn't work in most cases at an advanced level.
And either way, it doesn't seem to right to force people into a pay-what-you-will model.
Re: Paul Graham has lost the plot
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
couldn't charge for their creations but of course people do charge for open-source code to be made. IBM, RedHat, the US National Security Agency, Canonical, DARPA, Google, etc. all pay for open source code to be written. If the programmers weren't allowed to charge for their code, a lot less code would be written.
> IBM, RedHat, the US National Security Agency, Canonical, DARPA, Google, etc. all pay for open source code to be written. IBM: sells tons of proprietary software. Redhat: genuine open source deal. Legit example. Government: money comes from taxes. I don't think I fancy a world where information goods are mostly paid for through taxes. Google: makes most of their money from the proprietary bits of their software.
My point isn't that IBM etc. make money from open-source software. My point is that they are all charged money by people writing open-source software.