A brief history of why artists are no longer making a living making music
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Re: A brief history of why artists are no longer making a living making music
#2The author is out of touch.
Plenty of people are making a good living making music. They just aren't making their money selling CDs and MP3s.
I wish the author would read up on self-made artists like Post Malone and Logic. They have made tons of money ... starting small, selling merch, and then finally filling stadiums at $50-$100 a ticket.
Re: A brief history of why artists are no longer making a living making music
#3Is there a historical chart anywhere that shows earnings for low/mid/top popularity tier performers over time?
I believe the general consensus that they make less on average, but no idea how much less, if the hit was even across tiers, what the timeframe was, etc.
Re: A brief history of why artists are no longer making a living making music
#4The author is out of touch. Plenty of people are making a good living making music. They just aren't making their money selling CDs and MP3s. I wish the author would read up on self-made artists like Post Malone and Logic. They have made tons of money ... starting small, selling merch, and then finally filling stadiums at $50-$100 a ticket.
Those are household names and it also requires that the artist wants to tour.
Re: A brief history of why artists are no longer making a living making music
#5So this article is largely about the changes in technology, namely that with a high barrier to entry and when distribution was predicated on moving physical products, times were good for musicians selling the media of the time (records, CDs).
But this article makes the same mistake pretty much every article decrying the zero cost of distribution (ie the Internet) and the inevitable piracy, it ignores a key point: at probably every point in this era only a very few musicians could ever earn a living just from selling recorded music.
The primary source of income for the majority of musicians has been for performances. Even in the Internet/MP3 era, people still want to see live music. Maybe that's not attractive to those who want to sit at home collecting royalties but getting in front of a live audience and playing music was, is and will continue to be a potential source of a living.
And while the income from recorded music situation is unquestionably worse than, say, 50 years ago, we also no longer have record companies and radio stations as the gatekeepers of taste. Anyone can publish digital music to Spotify, Youtube, Soundcloud, etc so it's not all bad.
So whenever you see any articles complaining about low royalties paid by streaming services or the unfairness of record contracts, look at that article and see if it anything about income from performances because almost always it doesn't.
Re: A brief history of why artists are no longer making a living making music
#6For all of human history, we've been making music and art. And for almost all of that time, it was done for love of doing, not money.
For a few hundred years, there was the patronage era, where if you were really good you could get a rich person to feed and clothe and house you while you made art. Or you traveled around giving performances for money or food or clothes or shelter.
Then only in the last 100ish years has it been possible to make art for mass consumption (and mass money), but that's only because of artificial scarcity.
Now that the scarcity is gone, we are back to patronage (see Patreon) and making money from the performance of music, by doing live shows and such.
I think people making money making music was an aberration in history, not "the way it should be".
Re: A brief history of why artists are no longer making a living making music
#7I would have included George Orwell as a successful futurist.
For those that are younger: Courtney Love Does the Math (https://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/). Hard to believe it's been (almost) 20 years since that was written.
I'm watching a young, extremely talented guy make his bones on YouTube. He's now started touring extensively, and working with other up-and-comers. I'm hoping he can reach the tipping point to become mainstream.
Re: A brief history of why artists are no longer making a living making music
#8> However, with a sampling rate of 44,000 samples per second, there were overtones of sound now missing.
Human hearing only goes up to 20 kHz when you are young, dropping to about 12 kHz at the age of 50. 44 kHz sampling gives a Nyquist frequency of 22 kHz, easily encompassing the full range of human hearing. Any overtones that are missing in the recording are overtones that didn't make it through the human ear in the first place.
>I have long since abandoned arguments about the quality of sound. The analog sound was better. It was fuller and warmer, and it held all the sonic information.
16-bit samples on a CD can represent about 96 dB of dynamic range. The cassette tapes that he is arguing for can only represent 60-70 dB of dynamic range. It certainly doesn't hold "all the sonic information".
I really appreciate the historical view that the author brings. In terms of the technology, though, he sounds like one of the foolish audiophiles buying the $1,500 HDMI cables.
Re: A brief history of why artists are no longer making a living making music
#9For all of human history, we've been making music and art. And for almost all of that time, it was done for love of doing, not money. For a few hundred years, there was the patronage era, where if you were really good you could get a rich person to feed and clothe and house you while you made art. Or you traveled around giving performances for money or food or clothes or shelter. Then only in the last 100ish years ha…
Well put, your description of the history of paid art puts things in a different perspective.
Re: A brief history of why artists are no longer making a living making music
#10> However, with a sampling rate of 44,000 samples per second, there were overtones of sound now missing. Human hearing only goes up to 20 kHz when you are young, dropping to about 12 kHz at the age of 50. 44 kHz sampling gives a Nyquist frequency of 22 kHz, easily encompassing the full range of human hearing. Any overtones that are missing in the recording are overtones that didn't make it through the human ear in th…
Also:
>The sample rate of an MP3 is 23,000 compressed samples per second, half the sample rate of a commercial CD and a quarter of the sample rate of a studio quality digital recording.
The MP3 format does not support 23kHz sample rate, which is a strange non-standard rate that I've never hear of anybody using in any format.