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

#221

Post by ataturk » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 12:39 PM UTC

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #188

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…

Let me see, at the first little college I attended, a stupid Liberal Arts school in Upstate NY, there were probably 150 Art majors and about 8-10 Computer Science majors at a school of about 1200. I ended up leaving that place because I couldn't stand it there. This was just before the tech boom in the early '90s. Also, you couldn't toss a pebble and not hit a Music major. Thus, I always figured the low pay was because they were fields saturated with talent. It's not that I don't appreciate the arts--I do. My daughter is fabulous musician. I push my kids towards art and music because they are backbone of our culture. But there are the realities of making a living in this stupid country, are there not?

It took me probably ten years to become a truly competent software engineer and it has been a constant (often frustratingly so) process of remaking my skill set over the past 20 years. I don't care how great people think writing code for a living is, I think these corporate jobs are soulless, you have to deal with pigs and complete narcissistic assholes, and you pretty much give up all your creativity as a side effect. My alternative seems to be working at Target as a cashier, though.

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

#222

Post by JoeDaDude » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 12:40 PM 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.

This is the intro to Gradus ad Parnassum by Johann Joseph Fux (1725) [1], the textbook used to teach music in Mozart and Beethoven's time:

Aloys. — Perhaps the hope of future riches and possessions induces you to choose this life? If this is the case, believe me you must change your mind; not Plutus but Apollo rules Parnassus. Whoever wants riches must take another path.

Joseph. — No, certainly not. Please be sure that I have no other object than to pursue my love of music, without any thought of gain. I remember also that my teacher often told me one should be content with a simple way of life and strive rather for proficiency and a good name than for wealth, for virtue is its own reward.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Joseph_Fux#Gradus_ad_Pa...

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

#223

Post by buro9 » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 12:46 PM UTC

buro9 wrote: post #195

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 worked in the music industry for a decade and contributed to research to determine the value of music. Everything I learned said one thing: The value was high when scarcity was controlled, and scarcity was mostly controlled by distributors and those involved in distributing art would make the most money - not the artist. That the artist, and even the record label, make any money is a mere side effect and overspill…

Also the best way to summarise the research and the distribution angle was:

The avg value a consumer expresses for:

* listening on a radio in medium or high quality is near zero

* downloading a track in medium quality is near zero.

* buying an CD album in high quality is 75p per track.

* buying a CD single in high quality is 25 per track.

* buying sheet music in an abstract quality is £3 per track.

* buying a midi file to use as a ring-tone in lowest quality for portion of the track is close to £12 per track.

The fidelity and quality were not a major influence on the value... but the distribution and how controlled or locked-down the distribution and means of playback for the end consumer of the music had a direct impact on the value. The ring-tone was DRM'd (badly) at the time, which meant it was not trivial to put your own music on there but yet people would pay £1 for barely 20 seconds of a barely recognisable midi file.

The more you can lock down the distribution and control the means to access the media, the more you can push the price up.

Or as I think it... if Apple hadn't come along and artificially held the value of music at the price it did by controlling distribution, the sooner we would have reached another age of patronage. I still believe that Apple, and now Spotify, are merely holding back the inevitable and they haven't stopped it but will get very rich in the interim.

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

#224

Post by Spellchamp » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 12:51 PM UTC

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #83

jdietrich wrote: post #33

The author's basic premise is false and his article is riddled with basic factual errors. The vast majority of artists never made a significant proportion of their income from recorded music, due to the extremely shady accounting practices used by the industry to deprive artists of royalties. For detail on this, see Steve Albini's notorious essay The Problem With Music . https://www.negativland.com/news/?page_id=17 T…

> it has greatly increased the marketability of live music Yet that might be a blip. Some of my friends who used to be passionate concertgoers, now say there’s no reason to pay for a concert, deal with getting to the venue, etc. when bands are uploading full-length concerts in fine video and audio to YouTube. Also, since musical tastes have fragmented enormously due to the wider supply, people are less likely to shar…

Mind if I ask how old these friends are? This seems like more of a general age thing. I'm 26 and wouldn't even begin to compare watching a concert on Youtube to actually being there. I've watched Stop Making Sense 1,000 times but it would still be my first stop in a time machine.

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

#225

Post by jancsika » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 1:38 PM UTC

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #208

jancsika wrote: post #129

Ok, so further down in the comments there is this: > Superficially there is some sense - the higher frequency signals are rendered less and less accurately, and nearer a binary on-off. Who knows what nuance and harmonics may be lost affecting what's heard at lower frequencies. It's true that at a given sampling rate, if you choose a sine wave with a frequency right below Nyquist it is composed of fewer samples per pe…

No idea of the technicals, other than sampling at double the audible frequency does- to this layman - seem logical it would give you a wave more diverged from reality as frequency increases - and at the absurd extreme a 22khz (inaudible to most) square wave if sampling at 44, 4 points to represent 11k etc. I don't see how it can be otherwise, just as interpolating and anti aliasing is often right but cannot always co…

> No idea of the technicals, other than sampling at double the audible frequency does- to this layman - seem logical it would give you a wave more diverged from reality as frequency increases - and at the absurd extreme a 22khz (inaudible to most) square wave if sampling at 44, 4 points to represent 11k etc.

I gave a link that clearly explains and tests the technical aspects using analog equipment. It's an extremely well-thought out and well-researched video. Did you watch it?

I'm not saying you didn't hear something. I'm just saying the phenomenon you described does not accurately characterize the current state of digital audio, even when using commodity hardware.

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

#226

Post by hannasanarion » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 2:01 PM UTC

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".

Nonsense. Capitalism is when people make money for doing nothing. People have been paid for work they produce for all of time. The innovation of capitalism is that you can be paid for the work other people produce.

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

#227

Post by captainbland » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 2:05 PM UTC

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #188

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…

Arguably the equivalent work that artists can do as compared to what other professionals can do is to have their work commissioned for some other project. You know, jingles, soundtracks, creating atmosphere (i.e. live performances), that kind of thing.

I guess what I'm saying is that following the state of typical labour markets, having somebody produce something that they have their name on, that is an artistic work of its own right and actually getting paid for it is actually pretty extraordinary. Only a very tiny fraction of people get to work that way (probably because of the limits of attention as much as anything else). In many respects it's not surprising that it's fragile.

While I don't disagree that it would turn out to be bad for music to lose its professional art for art's sake, I also don't think the comparison with other professionals holds.

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

#228

Post by hannasanarion » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 2:08 PM 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).

And they weren't actually present at the time of recording either, they're a product of waves adding together. Those same waves are still added together when it plays from your speakers.

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

#229

Post by hannasanarion » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 2:10 PM UTC

felipemnoa wrote: post #130

clairity wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

by the way, livenation and ticketmaster are the same company (headquartered in LA).

Honest question, why has nobody gone after them for monopolistic practices?

Lol this guy thinks that American authorities enforce antitrust laws

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

#230

Post by Nasrudith » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 2:11 PM UTC

shkkmo wrote: post #87

jdietrich wrote: post #33

The author's basic premise is false and his article is riddled with basic factual errors. The vast majority of artists never made a significant proportion of their income from recorded music, due to the extremely shady accounting practices used by the industry to deprive artists of royalties. For detail on this, see Steve Albini's notorious essay The Problem With Music . https://www.negativland.com/news/?page_id=17 T…

I found it underwhelming that the author talks about "artists are no longer making a living making music" but provides no numbers. Do we have fewer professional musicians per capita? Do they make less on average/median/mode? The closest he comes to evidence to support his thesis was the informal survey he gave his students about their perceptions about becoming a professional musician. Yet even here he fails to provi…

Yeah - /any/ "star" role has always been a risk that it is foolish to go for without a back up plan! That is simply the case of all winner takes most jobs. If you want to complain about low level viability being ruined you need to go back to before recording where getting rich was even rarer.

Not to mention the downright dishonest exclusion of song downloads while lamenting decline of CD sales.