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On the other hand there is money in music, and it could and should increase. When you have 1 billion people paying $10 / month you have $12 billion per year to

On the other hand there is money in music, and it could and should increase. When you have 1 billion people paying $10 / month you have $12 billion per year to split between the artists, songwriters, record companies and distributors. That might still be lower than before but it is some money.

danbruc 9y ago
$120 billion per year, you missed a factor of 10.
vkou 9y ago
Fortunately for Hacker News, most of that economic windfall goes to middlemen.
- tormeh 9y ago
  Unfortunately, it goes to the labels. The streaming services aren't rolling in the dough.
  - vkou 9y ago
    It also goes to the engineers working on the services. $200,000-$300,000/year to a senior, even if the service itself is losing money (And when it goes bust, you can always find another job.)
    - romwell 9y ago
      I feel like this irony is horribly lost on about half of the commenters here. Creator's job is seen as worthless, but the deliveryman's job value is indisputable. And yet if Spotify were to pay its engineers scraps, I doubt the voices here would be as supportive. The only reason the engineers are paid as much is because the companies can't get away with paying less. And just because they can get away with paying musicians less, doesn't mean the musicians should "get with the times". I am not saying every musician should be a millionaire, but there are plenty who collectively carry the multi-billion dollar industry on their backs, but get scraps in return. On a more general note, when a vulnerable part of the population gets shafted, they shouldn't "get with the times" either. It's a sign of our failure as a society. I guess it is not surprising that people in a capitalistic society think that the value of an activity lies in how much profit it can generate to the performer of that activity. I guess it's beyond reasonable to expect people to think of externalities and understand them. I guess it's not at all surprising that a bunch of people who claim to be in STEM have a collective amnesia when it comes to understanding that M in STEM is an art akin to music, but with laughable ROI and a far more limited audience (and the number of corporations that hire mathematicians to do mathematics in the entire world is probably... 5? Go on ArXiV and see how many math papers there are by people outside academia, i.e. are the product of the "free" market system). None of that is surprising. But that doesn't make victim-blaming any less tiring to see.
      - kelnos 9y ago
        Victim blaming? These people aren't victims. They're people who picked a profession where it is (and always has been) difficult to find success, both in terms of popularity and material wealth. I don't see the creator's job as worthless, but I do think I see it as more of a commodity than many creators would like. The biggest hits in music today aren't there because they're somehow objectively the best at their craft. Don't get me wrong, they do have talent, but their success is largely driven by promotion and marketing. There are a ton of largely-unknown artists who could see just as much success if only they'd been able to get their material in front of someone with influence and reach in a better way than the current incumbent successes have done. > On a more general note, when a vulnerable part of the population gets shafted, they shouldn't "get with the times" either. It's a sign of our failure as a society. I'm very sympathetic toward people who are actually in vulnerable places. People who can't kick drug addictions, people who are homeless, people who just made one bad decision or just had enough bad luck to end up in a bad place. Creative types are not that. They've chosen to follow their passions to the place they are now. Even older artists simply can't remember a time when their craft was a "gold mine", because that's never been the case. > I guess it is not surprising that people in a capitalistic society think that the value of an activity lies in how much profit it can generate to the performer of that activity. I think you give people too little credit. I think people understand that an activity can be very valuable to society but not be lucrative at all. Grade-school teachers are the prototype example of this that pretty much everyone has heard before. I don't think many people would argue that music and art have low value to society. They're certainly not essentials like housing, clothing, and food. They're not going to push the sum of human understanding further like scientific research. But they're certainly more valuable than some bullshit apps that we talk about here, things like "Yo" that attracted an obscene amount of investment for what I'd consider very little value. But I feel like you contradict yourself with this point you've made. If you do manage to separate the value of an activity from the profit generated for the performers, you can easily make the argument that no one "deserves" to get paid for creative output. Just because something has non-monetary value, it doesn't mean people will want to pay a lot for it.
      - realthings 9y ago
        Actually, the musicians don't carry the industry. Even if Taylor Swift died tomorrow, and all of her music was erased from history, the music industry wouldn't be threatened even slightly. There is a virtually endless supply of musicians. Society hasn't failed either. Society is made up of individuals. If the individual wants to stream music instead of buying a CD, and if that means less money for the musician, then the only choice is to adapt as a musician or "get a job". I say all of this as a musician myself. I realized all of this the hard way. Just about everything in the world that can be bought or sold is valued based on perception, which means anything can be worth millions tomorrow or squat. Nothing is permanent. We're all gamblers in a huge game of perceived value, and technology only makes it more crazy.

danbruc 9y ago

$120 billion per year, you missed a factor of 10.

vkou 9y ago

Fortunately for Hacker News, most of that economic windfall goes to middlemen.

tormeh 9y ago
Unfortunately, it goes to the labels. The streaming services aren't rolling in the dough.
- vkou 9y ago
  It also goes to the engineers working on the services. $200,000-$300,000/year to a senior, even if the service itself is losing money (And when it goes bust, you can always find another job.)
  - romwell 9y ago
    I feel like this irony is horribly lost on about half of the commenters here. Creator's job is seen as worthless, but the deliveryman's job value is indisputable. And yet if Spotify were to pay its engineers scraps, I doubt the voices here would be as supportive. The only reason the engineers are paid as much is because the companies can't get away with paying less. And just because they can get away with paying musicians less, doesn't mean the musicians should "get with the times". I am not saying every musician should be a millionaire, but there are plenty who collectively carry the multi-billion dollar industry on their backs, but get scraps in return. On a more general note, when a vulnerable part of the population gets shafted, they shouldn't "get with the times" either. It's a sign of our failure as a society. I guess it is not surprising that people in a capitalistic society think that the value of an activity lies in how much profit it can generate to the performer of that activity. I guess it's beyond reasonable to expect people to think of externalities and understand them. I guess it's not at all surprising that a bunch of people who claim to be in STEM have a collective amnesia when it comes to understanding that M in STEM is an art akin to music, but with laughable ROI and a far more limited audience (and the number of corporations that hire mathematicians to do mathematics in the entire world is probably... 5? Go on ArXiV and see how many math papers there are by people outside academia, i.e. are the product of the "free" market system). None of that is surprising. But that doesn't make victim-blaming any less tiring to see.
    - kelnos 9y ago
      Victim blaming? These people aren't victims. They're people who picked a profession where it is (and always has been) difficult to find success, both in terms of popularity and material wealth. I don't see the creator's job as worthless, but I do think I see it as more of a commodity than many creators would like. The biggest hits in music today aren't there because they're somehow objectively the best at their craft. Don't get me wrong, they do have talent, but their success is largely driven by promotion and marketing. There are a ton of largely-unknown artists who could see just as much success if only they'd been able to get their material in front of someone with influence and reach in a better way than the current incumbent successes have done. > On a more general note, when a vulnerable part of the population gets shafted, they shouldn't "get with the times" either. It's a sign of our failure as a society. I'm very sympathetic toward people who are actually in vulnerable places. People who can't kick drug addictions, people who are homeless, people who just made one bad decision or just had enough bad luck to end up in a bad place. Creative types are not that. They've chosen to follow their passions to the place they are now. Even older artists simply can't remember a time when their craft was a "gold mine", because that's never been the case. > I guess it is not surprising that people in a capitalistic society think that the value of an activity lies in how much profit it can generate to the performer of that activity. I think you give people too little credit. I think people understand that an activity can be very valuable to society but not be lucrative at all. Grade-school teachers are the prototype example of this that pretty much everyone has heard before. I don't think many people would argue that music and art have low value to society. They're certainly not essentials like housing, clothing, and food. They're not going to push the sum of human understanding further like scientific research. But they're certainly more valuable than some bullshit apps that we talk about here, things like "Yo" that attracted an obscene amount of investment for what I'd consider very little value. But I feel like you contradict yourself with this point you've made. If you do manage to separate the value of an activity from the profit generated for the performers, you can easily make the argument that no one "deserves" to get paid for creative output. Just because something has non-monetary value, it doesn't mean people will want to pay a lot for it.
    - realthings 9y ago
      Actually, the musicians don't carry the industry. Even if Taylor Swift died tomorrow, and all of her music was erased from history, the music industry wouldn't be threatened even slightly. There is a virtually endless supply of musicians. Society hasn't failed either. Society is made up of individuals. If the individual wants to stream music instead of buying a CD, and if that means less money for the musician, then the only choice is to adapt as a musician or "get a job". I say all of this as a musician myself. I realized all of this the hard way. Just about everything in the world that can be bought or sold is valued based on perception, which means anything can be worth millions tomorrow or squat. Nothing is permanent. We're all gamblers in a huge game of perceived value, and technology only makes it more crazy.