A brief history of why artists are no longer making a living making music • Hacker News Board

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

#151

Post by cannonedhamster » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 3:50 AM UTC

jdietrich wrote: post #60

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…

>I think people making money making music was an aberration in history, not "the way it should be". Absolute nonsense. We have evidence of professional musicians dating back to at least ancient Egypt. Plato complained in his writings about popular musicians holding unruly concerts. The invention of recorded music was a disaster for professional musicians, because it rendered most of them unemployed. People of the pas…

Do coders get paid every time their code fires? No? Oh then musicians and artists can join the rest of society in not getting paid per usage of an item. Creatives just get greedier and greedier. No other industry gets paid the way that they do, not teaching, not labor, not babysitting, not management, not politics, none. If you want to get paid, perform or provide an object to purchase.

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

#152

Post by catach » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 3:55 AM UTC

Stratoscope wrote: post #148

pmoriarty wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I think people making money making music was an aberration in history, not "the way it should be"." I don't want to put words in your mouth, but are you saying you think we should go back to the way musicians used to be treated in the past? That's a rather reactionary position. Historically, women in most societies were treated very poorly, often treated like property, and you could say that women being treated with…

> I don't want to put words in your mouth... Then don't.

Asking if a consequence is intended is different from asserting that a consequence is intended.

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

#153

Post by voltagex_ » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 4:18 AM UTC

cannonedhamster wrote: post #151

jdietrich wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think people making money making music was an aberration in history, not "the way it should be". Absolute nonsense. We have evidence of professional musicians dating back to at least ancient Egypt. Plato complained in his writings about popular musicians holding unruly concerts. The invention of recorded music was a disaster for professional musicians, because it rendered most of them unemployed. People of the pas…

Do coders get paid every time their code fires? No? Oh then musicians and artists can join the rest of society in not getting paid per usage of an item. Creatives just get greedier and greedier. No other industry gets paid the way that they do, not teaching, not labor, not babysitting, not management, not politics, none. If you want to get paid, perform or provide an object to purchase.

A vanishingly small percentage of artists make a living from art. An even smaller percentage of artists get rich. A bit like not every developer is making $120k+...

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

#154

Post by Swizec » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 4:19 AM UTC

cannonedhamster wrote: post #151

jdietrich wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think people making money making music was an aberration in history, not "the way it should be". Absolute nonsense. We have evidence of professional musicians dating back to at least ancient Egypt. Plato complained in his writings about popular musicians holding unruly concerts. The invention of recorded music was a disaster for professional musicians, because it rendered most of them unemployed. People of the pas…

Do coders get paid every time their code fires? No? Oh then musicians and artists can join the rest of society in not getting paid per usage of an item. Creatives just get greedier and greedier. No other industry gets paid the way that they do, not teaching, not labor, not babysitting, not management, not politics, none. If you want to get paid, perform or provide an object to purchase.

> Do coders get paid every time their code fires?

That's what the SaaS model was invented for and why you increasingly can't use software without a subscription anymore.

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

#155

Post by mirimir » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 4:25 AM UTC

Swizec wrote: post #154

cannonedhamster wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do coders get paid every time their code fires? No? Oh then musicians and artists can join the rest of society in not getting paid per usage of an item. Creatives just get greedier and greedier. No other industry gets paid the way that they do, not teaching, not labor, not babysitting, not management, not politics, none. If you want to get paid, perform or provide an object to purchase.

> Do coders get paid every time their code fires? That's what the SaaS model was invented for and why you increasingly can't use software without a subscription anymore.

I would never use SaaS. Or at least, I'd never base a business on using it. Because you have no recourse if the price increases dramatically (e.g., Google map API) or the API goes away (not at all uncommon).

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

#156

Post by mirimir » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 4:34 AM UTC

voltagex_ wrote: post #153

cannonedhamster wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do coders get paid every time their code fires? No? Oh then musicians and artists can join the rest of society in not getting paid per usage of an item. Creatives just get greedier and greedier. No other industry gets paid the way that they do, not teaching, not labor, not babysitting, not management, not politics, none. If you want to get paid, perform or provide an object to purchase.

A vanishingly small percentage of artists make a living from art. An even smaller percentage of artists get rich. A bit like not every developer is making $120k+...

Yes. This is the key point. And various commenters have made it here, in one way or another.

Also, as others have argued, only a vanishingly small percentage of musicians have ever made a living from their art. Even during the peak of the 40s-80s boom in recorded music. At least, if you include everyone that others have cared to listen to.

That is, you only made it if you signed with a record label that didn't screw you. And through graft or luck, hit the charts. Those are some serious filters.

Indeed, one could argue that direct marketing via the Internet has allowed more artists to earn at least some income from their music. If in no other way than getting paid for performances. It's just that the chances of making it big are lower.

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

#157

Post by chii » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 4:37 AM UTC

wwweston wrote: post #101

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 syst…

> do you want it to reliably tie outputs to inputs, or optionally tie outputs to inputs?

if the input to music is money, i argue that the output is poor quality music.

> Paying for things supports the enterprise that goes into providing them

and thereby changing the goal of the enterprise from producing music, to producing money from music. Look at modern pop music today? They are pretty terrible at best. And yet, the money keeps flowing in!

Nobody is saying that artists don't get paid - they get paid by selling their music in some form, and performing their music. But because the motivations for them doing music ins't due to money, the product end up being a labour of love - a true expression of art. I think patronage achieves the same goals, where as a mass market music business model doesn't get the same result because the goals of a mass market music business is to saturate, and to make sure that their audience is huge (so you end up with pop music).

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

#158

Post by Swizec » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 4:37 AM UTC

mirimir wrote: post #155

Swizec wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do coders get paid every time their code fires? That's what the SaaS model was invented for and why you increasingly can't use software without a subscription anymore.

I would never use SaaS. Or at least, I'd never base a business on using it. Because you have no recourse if the price increases dramatically (e.g., Google map API) or the API goes away (not at all uncommon).

That's like those people who disable JavaScript in their browser. Yes you can get through life without using SaaS and you will likely be fine. But you can also join the 21st century and get on with your life.

I like that I can pay for software based on how much I use it rather than ponying up hundreds of thousands of dollars once. A lot of the cheaper end SaaS-es could never ever be sustainable without the monthly subscription business model. Particularly because they themselves use SaaS and have to keep the lights on.

Imagine if isntead of paying a monthly fee to use whatever services companies use to run their company they'd be required to build everything in house? Ain't nobody got the funds for that.

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

#159

Post by chii » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 4:40 AM UTC

pmoriarty wrote: post #144

microtherion wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you don't think artists should be paid, then neither should programmers. Pretty sure that RMS is advocating for that kind of vision.

"> If you don't think artists should be paid, then neither should programmers." "Pretty sure that RMS is advocating for that kind of vision." That's a common misconception. He actually has no problem with programmers making money. The GNU Project has an article on this, which starts by saying: "Many people believe that the spirit of the GNU Project is that you should not charge money for distributing copies of softwa…

> Actually, we encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as much as they wish or can.

with subtext being > "good luck if somebody attempts to undercut your prices though."

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

#160

Post by 6nf » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 4:42 AM UTC

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #96

jerf wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the beats are audible, they're "real" and recordings will pick them up just fine. You don't need to record the original ultrasound to hear them. You still can't hear the inaudible frequencies, at the risk of stating a tautology. You can make some small case for lower frequencies, because even if they are not audible they get to the point where other senses can pick them up too. A sufficiently loud 1Hz wave is simp…

They are an artifact, a side effect, of the way human hearing works, they are not actually present on a recording medium (only the frequencies that produce the effect in the human ear are).

Yes so the EFFECT is recorded cause the microphone hears it just the same as a human ear.