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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

#101

Post by wwweston »

jedberg wrote: post #6

For 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…

Sure, music will always exist as a human form of expression.

It's just more likely to exist in the same way your hobby projects compete with your full time job. Lots exist as concept only. Some are half-finished but never ship. Maybe some of them get done. What could you have done if people payed you to do what you cared about?

Patronage is... a thing. Better than nothing. But obviously a weaker form of economic systematizing than a model where you pay to listen to a performance or a recording.

I mean, if you're designing a system function, do you want it to reliably tie outputs to inputs, or optionally tie outputs to inputs?

And yes, the economics matter, even considering the "love" factor. Paying for things supports the enterprise that goes into providing them. Diluting or disconnecting payment from the music is another way of saying "in order to make music, you should be spending time doing things that aren't making music."

And the problem with that is that Time is the primary ingredient that goes into making music. More time goes into making music that's "better" by any number of reward functions in listeners. You can cheat that rule a little bit at the margins with better tools or inherent talent more than a standard deviation or two above the mean, but the significance of those terms in the equation is generally less than capital-T time.

Which means diluting/disconnecting payment either limits the output of people who don't have outside resources, or limits the quality of the music produced.

Re: A brief history of why artists are no longer making a living making music

#102

Post by anigbrowl »

jjeaff wrote: post #95
anigbrowl wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument crops up on every discussion of this topic. Why is it always people who work in the arts always told their work isn't worthy of payment except when delivered under certain conditions? If you don't think artists should be paid, then neither should programmers.

Saying there isn't a market for something is not the same as saying they aren't worthy of being paid.

There obviously is a market for songwriting and composition, but anger over excessive copyright (eg Disney style life+90) has drastically undermined all copyright. It's throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and is justified (above and in other comments below) on the idea that music lacks utility.

Re: A brief history of why artists are no longer making a living making music

#103

Post by tahoemph999 »

The title of this needs to be changed go "A brief history of why artists are no longer making a living recording music". Live music is still huge and there are great musicians who make the majority of their income making something unique every night. Much like how people have made money off music has changed from selling sheet music to live performances to recordings we are back at creating music. Not selling its reproduction.

Re: A brief history of why artists are no longer making a living making music

#104

Post by ken »

jedberg wrote: post #38
Pfhreak wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For 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. This seems wildly improbable to me? People didn't get paid for art until a few hundred years ago? Are you suggesting artisans weren't a thing? That all the art produced globally outside of the past few hundred years was done just for love of doing?

> Are you suggesting artisans weren't a thing? Historically, anyone who made something by hand was an artisan, so the hammer maker and the sword maker. I suppose you could consider that art, but when I say I art I'm talking music, paining, sculpture, etc. Things that only have aesthetic use, not functional use. And I don't believe there are any examples of people making aesthetic works as their only source of income…

This sounds like an artificial distinction, drawn there only to make the point you want to make. A hammer isn't art, because a hammer is functional, and a decorative handle on it is part of that non-art. A wall isn't art, because a wall is functional, yet a fresco painted on it is art?

Re: A brief history of why artists are no longer making a living making music

#105

Post by zepearl »

I don't remember the moment when I first installed in the 90' on Windows 3.x "Napster" on a PC connected to my 28.8k modem, but I do remember the "oh-my-gosh-it-seems-to-really-work"-feeling while watching the download bar(s) slowly progressing towards the ultimate target of 100%.

And then the "oh-my-gosh-this-technology-is-incredible"-feeling after doubleclicking on the downloaded file and seeing/hearing Winamp playing it (not sure if I was already using Winamp right from the start).

That's when I really realized that I was connected to the whole world.

Nowadays I still usually first download songs/CDs but only to be sure that they aren't bad (in the 90' I often had to pay 30CHF for a CD which contained only 1 good song) => if they're good then I buy the CDs or the single digital files (I have to "own" the media, hehe) => many people think that I'm more or less stupid/weird doing this but personally I just try to motivate the artists to keep creating what I like (kind of similar to opensource donations) and I do not want to have dependencies towards 3rd-parties => this (that for other people it's weird that I really "buy" the CDs & songs if I have anyway already downloaded them) makes me think that "ethics" have recently been lost not only in the big/high areas (e.g. big mixed scandals like Enron/Andersen, AIG/Lehman, Madoff, Volkswagen, ...) but as well on an individual level.

On the other hand Spotify & Co. are anyway changing all the rules (except for me, as I have to "own" the song, hehe), so what I mentioned above is now probably not relevant anymore.

Re: A brief history of why artists are no longer making a living making music

#106

Post by chipotle_coyote »

jjeaff wrote: post #95
anigbrowl wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument crops up on every discussion of this topic. Why is it always people who work in the arts always told their work isn't worthy of payment except when delivered under certain conditions? If you don't think artists should be paid, then neither should programmers.

Saying there isn't a market for something is not the same as saying they aren't worthy of being paid.

You're right -- I think the reason this is so contentious is that the market for recorded music didn't collapse, to the degree it did, due to lack of demand; it collapsed due to the marginal cost of reproduction dropping to effectively nothing. I'm not making a moral argument here, lest market libertarians prepare to jump -- I'm not saying the market as it existed should have been propped up artificially. I'm just making the observation that "there is no market for recorded music" is a very different statement than "there is no market for horse-drawn carriages." People are listening to recorded music as much as ever, by some measures more so; we just don't expect to have to pay more than ten bucks a month for All The Music.

Re: A brief history of why artists are no longer making a living making music

#108

Post by benji-york »

Causality1 wrote: post #27

Sounds like sour grapes to me. "I'm done arguing about it, but analog sounded better" as if he has any evidence to back up his claim. Not all of us can tolerate music with an assload of white noise splattered all over it. I've yet to listen to a vinyl without the experience being ruined by analog hiss.

I posted this elsewhere, but you will probably enjoy this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIQ9IXSUzuM

Re: A brief history of why artists are no longer making a living making music

#109

Post by microtherion »

anigbrowl wrote: post #79
jedberg wrote: post #6

For 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…

This argument crops up on every discussion of this topic. Why is it always people who work in the arts always told their work isn't worthy of payment except when delivered under certain conditions? If you don't think artists should be paid, then neither should programmers.

> If you don't think artists should be paid, then neither should programmers.

Pretty sure that RMS is advocating for that kind of vision.

Re: A brief history of why artists are no longer making a living making music

#110

Post by microtherion »

bsder wrote: post #35
jedberg wrote: post #6

For 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…

> For 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. I would challenge you almost precisely the opposite. The vast majority of the "great art" was in fact done for money. For example, walk through the Parthenon and its museum, most of the art was commissioned. Look at the wall murals of Pompeii--again, done for hire. I can go on and on…

Pretty sure the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel was not done as a volunteer graffiti job either.
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