Manufactured music superstars are a dying breed, and good riddance.
...completely missing the point. Lots of unique and genre musicians were making a modest but decent living from their music, now they're not. Manufactured music superstars are, if anything, doing better than ever. The author comes right out and says it near the outset:
This article is not about the majors or rock stars, but about the indie musicians and labels watching the waterhole dry up and wondering what the hell happened.
...but you totally ignored that and projected your own worldview onto his argument. This suggestion that it's all one thing or the other is an intellectual sleight-of-hand that I see a lot on HN - a classic false dilemma.
I didn't ignore the point. I was countering it. Today's amateurs have access to far better tools and distribution than yesterday's indies. Those that love making music will find real jobs and do it on an amateur basis, quite possibly achieving better results. Those who were only in it for the money will quit. As the barriers to producing music continue to be lowered by technology, masses of amateurs will start making music and more than compensate for the loss of indies. For every indie band that cranks out the same record with different lyrics a half dozen times before fading into obscurity we'll hear music from hundreds of eager amateurs, each bringing a wildly different sound to the world. That's a big win for culture, albeit not necessarily for the in-it-for-the-money indies.
There's still no magic technology that replaces the #1 biggest expense in writing and recording original music: time.
And not just the time it takes to make one album (which is more than people think unless they've done it themselves). Even more important is the time it takes to mature as an artist--years and years of doing nothing but writing and playing.
But there are plenty of popular musicians who spend very little time on their music.
For some reason many people here have a god fearly approach to music.
Music is fantastic, it can feel like a whole other world, it can emote feelings, it can communicate, it can be a channel for it's generation.
But music isn't some magical unobtainable skill anymore than programming, design and so on. And it's not the actual skill of the musicians or composers that make music popular. It's a much larger discussion.
Those that love making music will find real jobs and do it on an amateur basis
I reject your implication that making music is 'not a real job.' Is graphic design a real job? How about journalism? Playing sports at a professional level? Do you consider musicians unworthy of payment because they seem to be having too much fun?
Those who were only in it for the money will quit.
This is not how it actually works in the real world, where unlicensed sampling and ghost producing have become the norm. I suggest you look beyond your model and consider some empirical data. I agree that the means of production are cheaper than ever (also true of cinema) but that doesn't mean production is effortless by any means - mastery of instruments takes as long as it ever did, marketing and publicity still cost quite a bit of money.
in-it-for-the-money indies
I don't know what this is suppsoed to mean/ 'Indie' is short for 'independent' and describes labels that are not affiliated with one of the large global music publishers (and to a lesser extent, bands signed with said labels.' why you equate this with 'in it for the money' is beyond me. I'm getting the impression that you don't know anyone who actually works in this sector, but are speaking purely as a consumer.
>> Those that love making music will find real jobs and do it on an amateur basis, quite possibly achieving better results. Those who were only in it for the money will quit.
What's wrong with wanting to get paid for your time and talent?
>> That's a big win for culture, albeit not necessarily for the in-it-for-the-money indies.
There's music and then there's music. For example, you can go to your friend's house and sing along or to a Rolling Stones concert. Different tastes for different folks.
>What's wrong with wanting to get paid for your time and talent?
It's wrong to assume you're entitled to be paid for something just because it took time and talent. If you're making something people want to pay for, great - but if they stop wanting to pay for it, that's your problem.
No, that's not wrong at all. The point you've raised has no grounding in ethics or economics. When people don't want to pay for something, they aren't usually entitled to simply use it for free over the objection of its creator.
> but if they stop wanting to pay for it, that's your problem
So if your boss could get away with not paying your at the end of each month he feels like you didn't perform up to standard, you would be OK with that yes?
if you agreed to such terms and conditions at the beginning of your employment, then yes, that would be "OK" - as in, you have to accept it since you agreed to it as part of your employment.
There's a lot of stigma in music around making money, it's pretty weird. I remember a pretty successful alternative musician once telling me that you couldn't survive these days if you divorced being creative and being entrepreneurial.
There's nothing wrong with that, but it's simply acknowledging the facts that:
a) it looks like the money won't be there in the long run, at least not for most artists;
b) those who want or need to get paid will quit if they won't get paid;
c) even if all of those people quit, there will still be an overabundance of new, great music, not a scarcity of it.
The vast majority of great current artists don't suffer from piracy, they suffer from obscurity. They don't have any sufficient income from music, but they still produce it. For every Justin Bieber there are thousands or more really talented singers, guitarists and songwriters who desire an audience, not a job. Remove 10% or 50% or 90% of the current artists, and still no genre will 'dry up', we'll still have a [slightly smaller] abundance of new good records that you don't have enough time to listen to.
Anecdote: No musician has come to my house and put a gun to my head. Now if I downloaded a song that they spent their time, money and (used their) talent to create it, why shouldn't they get paid for it?
It's hard to tell whether this was intended seriously, but if so you totally missed the point of the parent post.
No, musicians don't enforce the rights that some of them claim. Those who do believe in copyright rely on a third party. Uncle Sam, let's say, has a preponderance of coercive force and demands payments according to the terms set by copyright holders. (Note: the copyright holders, for many generations now, have been mostly not the creators, but a middle-man industry that has hijacked copyright law to exploit other people's creations.)
The GP post is pointing out that this situation is inconsistent with libertarian/free-market principles. For intellectual property to be consistent with such principles, a musician would have to a contract with each customer, like "I'll sell you this copy if you agree not to give a copy to anyone else". Even then, a deal-breaker might transfer a copy to an innocent third party and that person might not have any obligation to refrain from sharing.
There's no reason that creators "shouldn't get paid for" their efforts, but to show that they are entitled to enforce such a claim, with the force of government, you have to show that the laws providing for such an arrangement are legitimate.
And to show that, you have to argue either (a) that intellectual property is a natural right or (b) that everyone is obligated to obey whatever laws the government chooses to make, regardless of their content.
>> There's no reason that creators "shouldn't get paid for" their efforts, but to show that they are entitled to enforce such a claim, with the force of government, you have to show that the laws providing for such an arrangement are legitimate. And to show that, you have to argue either (a) that intellectual property is a natural right or (b) that everyone is obligated to obey whatever laws the government chooses to make, regardless of their content.
It's possible to argue the moralities and causes and effects of piracy all day, but the simple fact is that you can't stop piracy. You (the record labels, etc) can tilt against that windmill until your coffers run dry, and the only result will be your bankruptcy. The better option would be to recognize that fact and rearrange your business model to be profitable in a world where reproduction and distribution costs are zero. If you can't do that, perhaps you belong with the buggy whip manufacturers.
Yes, and so what? Thats been a "problem" with software decades before the same applied to music. Im sure its debatable, but I don't think its had much negative impact.
Good comment. Yeah, the point about Rihanna is interesting but does skirt something pretty clear about the larger music business today - that there's been a dash towards the lowest common denominator in mainstream music. You hear it on the radio and see it everywhere in the culture, that what's being backed and pushed is tending towards homogeneity.
At University my mentor worked (and still works) at Sony, and this at the time was his big grievance - that the so-called 'indie' bands (in reality, larger alternative bands) were the ones being completely marginalized in favour of something that would be easier to sell on broad-demographic radio programming.
If you think about the UK radio market now, this makes sense - Global Radio owns everything, and it's the same playlist of forgettable pop music nationwide. I remember being in America a couple of years ago and finding a station that was playing things like Smashing Pumpkins, NIN and some modern math/post-rock stuff... apart from BBC Radio 6 Music (publicly owned) you just don't see that over here.
There's a big glass ceiling for musicians, and while it's not going away, it's still a difficult reality to face for those that are either semi-professional or say, tour a lot - in order to keep playing music they have obligations that stop them also holding down 'proper' jobs, and you see this taking its toll of great bands (off the top of my head, Reuben would be a classic example).
...completely missing the point. Lots of unique and genre musicians were making a modest but decent living from their music, now they're not. Manufactured music superstars are, if anything, doing better than ever. The author comes right out and says it near the outset:
This article is not about the majors or rock stars, but about the indie musicians and labels watching the waterhole dry up and wondering what the hell happened.
...but you totally ignored that and projected your own worldview onto his argument. This suggestion that it's all one thing or the other is an intellectual sleight-of-hand that I see a lot on HN - a classic false dilemma.