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>The hard question a creator needs to ask themselves now is not "how do I get paid for what my art is worth?", but instead "was my art ever worth much to begin

>The hard question a creator needs to ask themselves now is not "how do I get paid for what my art is worth?", but instead "was my art ever worth much to begin with?" I disagree. The hard questions for creators of anything is how to control sales of the product. The digital platforms have failed musicians. The challenge is how to enforce prevention of piracy (ie illegal uploading of material). This will ultimately be legal hardball, and what 'record companies' used to do to protect their label and artist roster. Someone needs ot take on the big digital platforms in a landmark case. Regarding creativity, a tangible asset (like a box and booklet containing the music in some new format for example) would go a long way to making people think they had actually bought 'something' rather than just listening to an fM radio like stream of tunes. Art is rarely worth very much at the time of creation, but can subsequently explode in future popularity. Creators need robust protection mechanisms in place to help them keep creating, and that is legal precidents.

dhruvrrp 9y ago
What? Piracy isn’t the evil that it used to be 15-20 years ago where people would rip cds and tapes. Nowadays everyones music is hosted and streamed legally on youtube/spotify/play music/any generic music service. The days of people paying $20 for an album cd just to listen to the one hit they like are long gone. If artists trust their popularity then they can pull their music from streaming services, indirectly forcing fans to purchase their albums (like taylor swift did a while ago). But even this isnt an option for smaller artists, who would just disappear into obscurity because of how over saturated the industry is.
- rlonstein 9y ago
  > The days of people paying $20 for an album anecdata, but I see a lot of people (myself included) buying $10 CD's and $20 vinyl with a download code at shows in small venues.
  - thomastjeffery 9y ago
    What parent said holds up if you include the other half of that sentence.
cl0ne 9y ago
I'm not too worried about people pirating my music. It's already up on Spotify and Apple Music legally and I make no money from that. Most people I know in smaller bands are not in it for the money and support themselves through other jobs. I'm happy as long as enough people turn out to shows and have a good time and we make enough money to help out a bit with practice space rent or gas and food while on tour. People who are into it are supportive and do buy tangible assets such as records or tapes at shows or order them online. There are enough people out there who'd rather pay for a record they can hold, look at the artwork and listen to as a complete album instead of just skipping through some mp3 files or hearing a random song in a stream. I'd say that people coming out to shows and buying records and merch is what helps us keep creating.

dhruvrrp 9y ago

What? Piracy isn’t the evil that it used to be 15-20 years ago where people would rip cds and tapes. Nowadays everyones music is hosted and streamed legally on youtube/spotify/play music/any generic music service. The days of people paying $20 for an album cd just to listen to the one hit they like are long gone. If artists trust their popularity then they can pull their music from streaming services, indirectly forcing fans to purchase their albums (like taylor swift did a while ago). But even this isnt an option for smaller artists, who would just disappear into obscurity because of how over saturated the industry is.

rlonstein 9y ago
> The days of people paying $20 for an album anecdata, but I see a lot of people (myself included) buying $10 CD's and $20 vinyl with a download code at shows in small venues.
- thomastjeffery 9y ago
  What parent said holds up if you include the other half of that sentence.

cl0ne 9y ago

I'm not too worried about people pirating my music. It's already up on Spotify and Apple Music legally and I make no money from that. Most people I know in smaller bands are not in it for the money and support themselves through other jobs. I'm happy as long as enough people turn out to shows and have a good time and we make enough money to help out a bit with practice space rent or gas and food while on tour. People who are into it are supportive and do buy tangible assets such as records or tapes at shows or order them online. There are enough people out there who'd rather pay for a record they can hold, look at the artwork and listen to as a complete album instead of just skipping through some mp3 files or hearing a random song in a stream. I'd say that people coming out to shows and buying records and merch is what helps us keep creating.