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Non-Fungible Taylor Swift

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Re: Non-Fungible Taylor Swift

#131

Post by a1369209993 »

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…

> Swift is talking about "music" as an original work. Patel responds with an irrelevant point about digital copies of music.

No one wants Swift's music as an original work; that doesn't even make sense, because it's not possible to retroactively make someone else the creator of given song. They want digital copies of Swift's music, the thing that is not scarce.

Re: Non-Fungible Taylor Swift

#132

Post by Sebb767 »

jasode wrote: post #93
Aaargh20318 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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:…

>The solution then would be to find a way to charge not for the copies, but for the time effort that the artist put into the production of the music. But this method would be anti-consumer for many buyers of music because the final quality of a song does not always correlate with effort. - low effort but high value: a musician can have a flash of inspiration and come up with a catchy chorus melody and great intro hoo…

Also, repeatability does not necessarily correlate with quality. John Cages works or an AAA movie are surely of high quality, but it's fine experiencing them once. Compare that to quite a few (even cheap) songs, which I've listened to hundreds of times

Re: Non-Fungible Taylor Swift

#133

Post by majormajor »

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:…

> The solution then would be to find a way to charge not for the copies, but for the time effort that the artist put into the production of the music.

That's literally what charging for the copies does, though. People just want something for nothing.

Claiming you want to "take the copy for free but pay separately for the time" when you aren't willing to pay for the copy so that there is some reimbursment for the time is an exercise in wankery.

(You aren't just paying for the time, anyway. You're paying for talent, etc. A genius who creates something better in 5 minutes than someone else does in a year is still someone you'd rather compensate...)

Re: Non-Fungible Taylor Swift

#134

Post by WillDaSilva »

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…

I think that would be great. If the artists are being paid enough to support them* and their craft, and they're being paid enough to help motivate others to become artists, then they shouldn't get any more money. That money would be better spent elsewhere.

* "support them" would also include leaving them with enough money to retire on after their career, if they live in a country where retirement savings are important to have, or otherwise are a strong motivating factor for those who are considering this as a career.

Re: Non-Fungible Taylor Swift

#135

Post by majormajor »

megaman821 wrote: post #123
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…

I don't think Nilay was talking about digital copies. The abundance of music on the internet has hurt artists like Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift's album wouldn't even be in the top 10 sales of 80's albums. It looks even worse if you consider the US had 100 million less people than now (nearly a third less).

It does read like that, but it's hurt the stars far less than the second-level folks. While (slightly) helping the long tail.

The abundance of meh on the internet makes it harder to charge for mid-level stuff that you used to be able to make a living off of, but the money still finds the trancedental stuff.

Re: Non-Fungible Taylor Swift

#136

Post by packetslave »

eric_b wrote: post #128
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…

She was given the opportunity to purchase her masters and she thought the price was too high. So they sold them to someone who would pay more. It's definitely about the money to some extent - she wasn't willing to pony up what it would take to buy them.

That's one side of the story. TS's side is that Big Machine refused to sell her the rights unless she signed a new contract with them, which she didn't want to do.

Re: Non-Fungible Taylor Swift

#137

Post by stuart78 »

lopis wrote: post #76
Aaargh20318 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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:…

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.

Bandcamp offers a subscription service [0] for just this purpose. I've thought about it for one or two, and $5/mo or whatever doesn't sound much, but it pretty quickly adds up across music, newsletters, patreons, etc... i need an aggregator for paying all of my content aggregators.

[0] https://bandcamp.com/subscriptions

Re: Non-Fungible Taylor Swift

#138

Post by bombcar »

ppod wrote: post #121
bombcar wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory things like YouTube and Patreon could provide that gap - but not sure it actually will.

Don't get me wrong, I like the internet. It is almost free to record and publish material now, which probably far outweighs the value that is captured by the fat cats.

I do think there's a missing ground that is being lost - it was incidental to the publishers but they would provide production, editors, other various things that are seen as "not important".

It takes an exceptionally bright young artist to REALIZE they need those things and go out of their way to find and pay for them. Neither Patreon nor Youtube is going to provide an editor and certainly not force you to use one - no matter how valuable it may be.

Re: Non-Fungible Taylor Swift

#139

Post by m463 »

bombcar wrote: post #119
ppod wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In theory things like YouTube and Patreon could provide that gap - but not sure it actually will.

But youtube and patreon are the equivalent of the publisher. Nobody ever things about them.

Re: Non-Fungible Taylor Swift

#140

Post by samatman »

majormajor wrote: post #133
Aaargh20318 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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:…

> The solution then would be to find a way to charge not for the copies, but for the time effort that the artist put into the production of the music. That's literally what charging for the copies does, though. People just want something for nothing. Claiming you want to "take the copy for free but pay separately for the time" when you aren't willing to pay for the copy so that there is some reimbursment for the time…

That's fine, and you're right about the economic incentive to charge for copies.

I happen to resent the use of legal force to do so, and I'm not alone. I belong to the Napster generation, where the muscle arm of the copyright industry destroyed one of the most promising new applications for the Internet, instead of rolling with it and reaching some kind of mutually-beneficial arrangment. We're all still pretty mad about that when we think on it.

Like it or not, NFTs represent a way out of this. Taylor Swift has trufans, she could easily cut a limited-issue NFT for her new recording of Fearless, with a smart contract which pays a residual every time it's resold.

If she wanted to. Probably not the right time in the hype cycle for her to get on board, there are unsolved questions in terms of user experience.

But the option is there, and if it becomes sufficiently widespread we can do away with the whole tawdry cycle of DMCA requests and randomly penalizing music enjoyers with ruinous fines and lawsuits. That would be all to the good.

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