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

#181

Post by magpi3 » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 6:45 AM UTC

I think an even easier way to describe this phenomenon: can you commodify what you do? If you can, you can sell it and make a living. If you can't, you can't.

Albums and three minute songs became a popular format to record in because they could be commodified as a record sales. Novels become the most popular form of creative writing because they could be commodified as moderate sized- and moderately priced book sales. Etc.

The title itself is problematic, because it should be "A brief history of why artists are no longer making a living making popular music." Classical musicians (with notable exceptions) have been unable to make a living recording new music for a long time. Only specific genres were able to thrive during the 3-minute song album era. And now the internet has made that more difficult because we don't need the commodified form -- records, cds -- anymore.

But people can still make money writing music that is bundled with other commodities: movies, games, etc.

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

#182

Post by onetimemanytime » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 6:49 AM UTC

ericmcer wrote: post #137

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…

Why were Mozart, Bach, Etc. all relatively poor then? Even the greatest musicians of their age were not wealthy. Compare their incomes to a Taylor Swift or Led Zeppelin and the difference is insane. The last 70 or so years have been the only period where artists incomes rivaled that of land/factory owners.

If Taylor Swift only gave concerts to hundreds of people at a time, she'd be poor too. Mozart never had studio deals or CD distribution, or endorsement deals--at least not in the global stage.

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

#183

Post by magpi3 » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 6:55 AM UTC

joshuas wrote: post #132

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.

I don't know about you, but I'm paid to perform(much like a live musician I suppose). I don't get residuals on my performance. I don't list myself as the writer or composer of my code and receive payment if someone uses or derives their own work from mine. My employer might. I haven't seen anyone here saying musicians shouldn't get paid when they perform for an audience or for a certain purpose (let's say a commercia…

Not a great comparison. We are talking about musicians getting paid for composing music, not for performing. If you want to go with this analogy, then you would note that you DO get paid for the composition (of the software) but not its performance (when it runs on people's computers). Musicians, on the other hand, cannot make money composing anymore, but they can still make money for performing it.

And if you are an indie dev, you probably do make money from the software in its commodified form. And if you are not an indie dev, then your high salary is because someone else makes a lot of money from the software's commodified form (even if that form today is as a service). The point of the article is that musicians can no longer make any money from the commodified (in this regard meaning recorded) form of their music.

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

#184

Post by onion2k » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 6:58 AM UTC

ericmcer wrote: post #137

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…

Why were Mozart, Bach, Etc. all relatively poor then? Even the greatest musicians of their age were not wealthy. Compare their incomes to a Taylor Swift or Led Zeppelin and the difference is insane. The last 70 or so years have been the only period where artists incomes rivaled that of land/factory owners.

The number of business owners whose wealth is far greater than the richest artists has roughly kept pace with changes in artist's wealth. While Mozart was relatively poor compared to his patrons, Taylor Swift is quite poor compared to Spotify founder Daniel Ek.

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

#185

Post by bryanrasmussen » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 7:16 AM UTC

chii wrote: post #157

wwweston wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, th…

if the input to music is ability to eat, clothe and house your family, and pay medical bills then the output is probably the music you wouldn't get otherwise.

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

#186

Post by bashwizard » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 7:35 AM UTC

Popular music will always sell one way or the other. It's that simple.

I've been producing for +10 years and I used to dj almost every weekend for two years but eventually I stopped because even though I loved doing it, it just wasn't bringing in any significant money. I'd probably make more money by creating sample packs and sell them through various of sites but it would be the equivalent of "buy my mix tape!" and I'm not doing that.

I produce a very niche genre where there isn't any real money to be made unless you're one of the absolute top names in that genre and they're not rich by any means but they do make a good living doing it.

It's not a right to make a living making music or art and neither should anyone expect doing it unless you set out to commodify it. Very few people will succeed in doing so.

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

#187

Post by meheleventyone » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 7:45 AM UTC

pmoriarty wrote: post #146

jedberg wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

"when I say I art I'm talking music, paining, sculpture, etc. Things that only have aesthetic use, not functional use." Painting, sculpture, and music have had functional uses since forever. They had functions such as: - reminding people of what happened in the past - teaching people moral lessons - exulting or placating gods - inspiring troops to be braver in combat - honoring the dead - letting people see things th…

Also if you look at the kind of art that is actually just appreciated on aesthetics alone now it’s actually pretty derivative. It’s the sort of stuff you’ll find artists painting in bulk to sell in order to support themselves. Most art that gets put up for public consumption has some function beyond mere aesthetic appreciation. It’s usually about something.

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

#188

Post by TheOtherHobbes » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 8:22 AM UTC

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…

You could apply this argument to almost literally anything that people do or have done for money.

It's a bad argument. It ignores the fact that humans progress by division of talent and labour. You wouldn't apply it to physicists, engineers, medical specialists, lawyers, politicians [1], financial experts, sports, or software developers.

So why is it fine to apply it to an art? The predictable outcome is that you'll get mediocre unsatisfying art that leaves everyone involved feeling like something vital is missing - which is more or less where we are now.

In fact it takes many more years of study and experience to become a competent, productive musician, artist, novelist, or other creative worker, than it does to become a software developer.

The arts are a profession, not a hobby. Just because most people can have a go doesn't mean it makes sense to run them on an amateur basis - any more than it does to run software development in the same way.

[1] The one category it probably should apply to.

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

#189

Post by antocv » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 8:28 AM UTC

jellicle wrote: post #128

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…

Plenty of people are making money in music, just not artists.

Plenty of people are making money in software especially from free and open source, just not the developers.

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

#190

Post by microtherion » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 8:28 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…

Yes, I'm familiar with that, but if said software is distributed under the GPL, one essentially gets to charge for the first sale. So programmers get paid for e.g. contract work, or custom one-offs, but not for writing retail software.

The corresponding model for artists is the Wu-tang clan selling the sole copy of their album to Martin Shkreli.