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

rootsmusic.ca

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

#161

Post by hollasch »

pmoriarty wrote: post #141
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"." 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…

Sigh. jedberg makes a pretty good argument questioning the framing and underlying assumptions of the thesis, pmoriarty swings in with a respectful and reasoned rebuttal, and I'm ready for what looks to be an actual conversation.

Then the Internet clowns pull up.

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

#162

Post by jedberg »

pmoriarty wrote: post #141
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"." 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 didn't say making money making music is wrong. I do think artists should get paid.

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

#163

Post by vonseel »

arvinsim wrote: post #149
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, but are you saying you think we should go back to the way musicians used to be treated in the past? If there is a demand, then musicians will be paid. But the economy is not obligated to provide musicians a living.

To play devil's advocate, consider how many people you know that work in so-called "bullshit jobs".

TBH, I know plenty of people whose jobs are not that meaningful - yes, some of them create "value" in one way or another, but sometimes even if they create value (indirectly?), maybe it's a bullshit sales job where they are primarily tasked with convincing people to buy their product when an open-source or less-expensive option exists elsewhere. Think "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM". You might choose Expensive Enterprise DB over Free And Open Source DB if you are a purchasing manager and don't want the blowback of choosing something with less history. And the people who sell Expensive Enterprise DB might have a salesforce of thousands of twenty-something's who, for the most part, are not technical experts, but spend most of their days propping up the product and convincing people to buy.

I don't think the theoretical perfect supply/demand curve always matches up with real life. Maybe - in the long-term, it does, but sometimes things fly under the radar, maybe for decades, before the business cycle or something else forces a correction.

I don't disagree with your statement, though. If someone wants to earn a living in music, or at least make money, they need many of the same qualifications any startup needs. 1) They need to understand what they are selling and who is buying (product and demographic). Image/Brand is everything (especially since Instagram). ; 2) They have to be able to market - find a launchpad. Whether this is done in-house or the musician is lucky enough to find someone early in their career that signs them to PR / etc., it has to be done. 3) They've gotta be good at what they are doing. Not everyone has to be a Julliard-trained pianist, but they need to be good enough that people want to listen.

Economically, there are certain genre's that (at least to me) seem to immediately be a problem for actually making a competitive living off it. On the other hand, genre's like pop may be incompatible with someone's age - you won't see many 40 year olds releasing their first album to compete with Bruno Mars, for example.

I don't know, though. Music is less important to some than others. I know people who have literally no preferences and just turn a radio on to hear something, and I know others who spend their days in studios writing and recording and living and breathing music.

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

#164

Post by ip26 »

pmoriarty wrote: post #141
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"." 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…

He didn't say anything about what ought to be. Rather, just an observation that based on the last few hundred years, making a living off your art is simply not the "natural order" of things. This is relevant because a reversion to the mean (which you could argue this is) is not particularly shocking.

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

#165

Post by wwweston »

philipov wrote: post #68
koolba wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not exactly. Before recorded music, a live band (or one man show!) was the only game in town. It was either that or silence. Everywhere that wanted to fill that silence had to hire musicians.

It was not "that" or silence. You're not considering that learning to play a musical instrument was itself more common. Performing music was a community activity people used to entertain themselves; the hiring of musicians was for the wealthy aristocracy.

The existence of DIY approaches was and is real, but:

1) it's a marginal point in response to observations about the meteor-strike level of impact the invention and spread of recorded music had on the market for live performers. The difference between a past with no widespread recording/playback tech and a present where recorded music is widespread and came to be treated as essentially free is so great that invoking the past seems hazardous even if ...

2) we actually have an accurate understanding of it. For my part, I'm pretty skeptical about the idea that paid performances were largely absent in common life before the 20th century.

3) Carefully consider your last sentence there. What exactly was the wealthy aristocracy buying when they hired? Why wouldn't a community or individual with modest wealth want to buy that if they could? Why would it be priced out of reach?

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

#166

Post by arvinsim »

jalgos_eminator wrote: post #23

This article reeks of blaming new technology for killing an industry (it didn't), and resistance to change (i.e. things were so much better when I was young). He actually (sort-of) acknowledges this in the last paragraph when he mentions theatre taking a hit when films came about, but music hasn't been replaced like theatre has so the comparison is moot. > Now everybody can make a record – and maybe that’s not a good…

> The key ingredient of good music is creativity, not sound quality, and having decent recording gear for cheap just lets more people be more creative.

I have to remind myself of this everytime I get the urge to buy new stuff aka GAS

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

#167

Post by arvinsim »

vonseel wrote: post #163
arvinsim wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? If there is a demand, then musicians will be paid. But the economy is not obligated to provide musicians a living.

To play devil's advocate, consider how many people you know that work in so-called "bullshit jobs". TBH, I know plenty of people whose jobs are not that meaningful - yes, some of them create "value" in one way or another, but sometimes even if they create value (indirectly?), maybe it's a bullshit sales job where they are primarily tasked with convincing people to buy their product when an open-source or less-expensi…

> I don't think the theoretical perfect supply/demand curve always matches up with real life. Maybe - in the long-term, it does, but sometimes things fly under the radar, maybe for decades, before the business cycle or something else forces a correction.

Yes, it's not perfect. But supply does play a large role.

Nobody is lining up to do "bullshit jobs" but a ton of people do want to make a living with music(and in the arts, in general).

It's the same problem with video game software development. The pay is not that great compared to other "boring" jobs like finance because the supply of people wanting to do it is far greater.

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

#168

Post by InclinedPlane »

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 there's somewhat of a leap of logic in there. The idea that the transition to the present era is due to the end of artificial scarcity is questionable considering how many confounding variables there are.

Look at the graph of real median income vs. per capita gdp or productivity, income has been flat even while the economy grows. And this somewhat understates the problem because the economy today is different than what it was back in the 1970s. A huge segment of the working class is being pinched, economically, and they have less money to spend than they might otherwise. It shouldn't be shocking that people are spending less on things like music when they can do so. That doesn't necessarily mean that they wouldn't spend plenty if their earnings were in line with pre 1980 historical norms, however.

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

#169

Post by mirimir »

Swizec wrote: post #158
mirimir wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 su…

Yes, I get that. And maybe it works out OK, most of the time. But I've surely seen lots of horror stories on HN.

Also, building in-house isn't that expensive. Or at least, not compared to developing in-house. I'm not all that technical, and I setup my own Docker registry, for example.

I am one of those people who only allow minimal required JavaScript :)

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

#170

Post by kosei »

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'd be curious to know also how many people are still being paid for their work as artists through movies, TV, video games, etc. I bet it is also a significantly larger percentage of the population than a few hundred years ago.
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