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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

#171

Post by neilwilson »

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…

Time is likely the currency we all spend.

Human activity of all kinds is exchanging time with each other. I spend some time doing A and give you some. In return you spend time doing B and give me some.

Ultimately we all have a finite amount of time available.

When you start assessing things in terms of hours exchanged rather than dollars, euros or pounds you see how it all works.

Baumol’s cost disease explains itself for example. It still take the same number of hours to be a violinist and a concerto takes the same amount of time to perform. And we still value violinists so some of them get paid.

Our machines reduce the human time element embedded in other products and services and that reduces their value in exchange terms. We see that expressed as the dollar price of violinists going up.

There’s even a film In Time where this idea is explored Hollywood style. Not the greatest film but the philosophical idea behind it is fascinating.

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

#172

Post by Swizec »

mirimir wrote: post #169
Swizec wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

I think it’s about opportunity cost. It’s often cheaper to outsource everything not-core and focus your time and attention on the things only you can do. Where “you” is whatever you consider the relevant company/team/businessunit.

Can I build a website? Yes. Can I save money by paying someone to build a website and focus instead on filling it with great content? You bet.

Same applies for SaaS. It would be a waste of time/money/effort to build my own ConvertKit for example

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

#173

Post by Animats »

mrj wrote: post #25
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?

People got paid, but there wasn't a way to reproduce art for basically nothing but sell it as if it was the original. That radically changed the economics of music for a period, which could be seen as a distortion and not the way things should be. OP is now lamenting (right or wrong) that system is gone, only the live performance really still exists as a money maker.

Right.

The OP's lament is heard from other musicians of his age. Being In A Band used to be a Big Deal. Fame, fortune, groupies. Then came lower cost equipment, Myspace, and streaming. At peak there were several million bands on Myspace.

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

#174

Post by baroffoos »

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…

Its a kind of pointless quote though because the GPL requires that after the first person buys your software they can legally put it up online for free and now you have lost your sales.

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

#175

Post by baroffoos »

throwaway8879 wrote: post #138
Fricken wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitalism is destroying the planet. That's hardly a net positive. In fact it's the worst thing possible. There is nothing humans are even theoretically capable of that is worse.

Worst thing possible? Really? That's a simpleton's view about existence. Countless planets die every day. I only care about the next 20 years I'm going to be alive for. I don't care about the planet or the survival of your children. Don't force responsibility on me. So capitalism it is for me.

This is the capitalism mindset and this comment is proof that its the worst thing there is.

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

#176

Post by mirimir »

Swizec wrote: post #172
mirimir wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

I think it’s about opportunity cost. It’s often cheaper to outsource everything not-core and focus your time and attention on the things only you can do. Where “you” is whatever you consider the relevant company/team/businessunit. Can I build a website? Yes. Can I save money by paying someone to build a website and focus instead on filling it with great content? You bet. Same applies for SaaS. It would be a waste of…

There's a huge difference between outsourcing and SaaS. Sure, it's cheaper to pay someone to build your website. That's outsourcing. But then you run it on a server that you lease. If it's running on something managed by a third party, it can just disappear. And that's SaaS.

There's also the issue of sharing sensitive data with SaaS providers. Just think of all the data leaks that's caused. The Squarespace heatmap stuff we just saw. The deals between Google and phone manufacturers. The behavioral-ad-delivery morass.

Re ConvertKit, the alternative would look like "git clone foo".

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

#177

Post by Stratoscope »

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.

I apologize for my previous comment being rather terse. I should have taken the time to write a more reasoned reply.

I was responding to this:

> 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.

That was just the start...

> Historically, women in most societies were treated very poorly...

> Slavery was the norm in many societies for thousands of years...

And these had what to do with the original comment?

Then the coup de grâce:

> If you want to argue that...

This is the very definition of putting words in someone's mouth!

And it's not a nice thing to do.

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

#178

Post by olalonde »

Fricken wrote: post #113
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 most of human history nobody made money doing anything . Capitalism is an an abberation in history, not "the way it should be".

I guess it depends on your definition of capitalism but many would argue that it only requires private property and voluntary exchange, both of which probably stretch back into prehistory.

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

#179

Post by dwd »

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…

Not so much aberration but a gradual corporatisation and then collapse of the industry of "recorded music".

To a large extent the performance side of music has remained unchanged. For a period it may have become subservient to the recording side where artists "toured" an album, but a lot of what went on was due to artists patronage from the respective recording rights holders.

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

#180

Post by onetimemanytime »

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…

Regarding the scarcity thing: I still listen to the same music, but for free. YT, downloaded a while back etc etc.
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