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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

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 systematizing than a model where you pay to listen to a performance or a recording. I mean, if you're designing a system function, do you want it to reliably tie outputs to inputs, or optionally tie outputs to inputs? And yes, the economics matter, even considering the "love" factor. Paying for things supports the enterprise that goes into providing them. Diluting or disconnecting payment from the music is another way of saying "in order to make music, you should be spending time doing things that aren't making music." And the problem with that is that Time is the primary ingredient that goes into making music. More time goes into making music that's "better" by any number of reward functions in listeners. You can cheat that rule a little bit at the margins with better tools or inherent talent more than a standard deviation or two above the mean, but the significance of those terms in the equation is generally less than capital-T time. Which means diluting/disconnecting payment either limits the output of people who don't have outside resources, or limits the quality of the music produced.

chii 8y ago
> 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, the money keeps flowing in! Nobody is saying that artists don't get paid - they get paid by selling their music in some form, and performing their music. But because the motivations for them doing music ins't due to money, the product end up being a labour of love - a true expression of art. I think patronage achieves the same goals, where as a mass market music business model doesn't get the same result because the goals of a mass market music business is to saturate, and to make sure that their audience is huge (so you end up with pop music).
- bryanrasmussen 8y ago
  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.
- moate 8y ago
  >>Look at modern pop music today? They are pretty terrible at best. That's a whole lot of opinion there affecting your theory. Pop music makes money because, as the name implies, it's popular. That doesn't mean it has to be lyrically or musically devoid of complexity. There's high quality pop music. Pop music makes money because 1-it tends to be formulaic in it's musical composition to hit sounds that people "like". 2- the stars are young and attractive and people respond to that for a myriad of reasons. 3- the people producing the music and marketing the industry have found that it's a stable and reliable market in a time when the industry as a whole collapsed. As someone married to a professional artist, I would also like to point out that the starving artist who just LOVES producing their Art so much is a problematic ideal that people romanticize. The bottom line is, if you produce something of value, and someone wants to procure this thing, they should respect your time. The problem is that so many artists don't value their work or time in an economic framework, and thus they drive the market rates lower for the community as a whole.
neilwilson 8y ago
Time is likely the currency we all spend. Human activity of all kinds is exchanging time with each other. I spend some time doing A and give you some. In return you spend time doing B and give me some. Ultimately we all have a finite amount of time available. When you start assessing things in terms of hours exchanged rather than dollars, euros or pounds you see how it all works. Baumol’s cost disease explains itself for example. It still take the same number of hours to be a violinist and a concerto takes the same amount of time to perform. And we still value violinists so some of them get paid. Our machines reduce the human time element embedded in other products and services and that reduces their value in exchange terms. We see that expressed as the dollar price of violinists going up. There’s even a film In Time where this idea is explored Hollywood style. Not the greatest film but the philosophical idea behind it is fascinating.
- pferde 8y ago
  The movie had an interesting idea (presumably stolen from any number of old sci-fi novels), but unfortunately turned it to a generic "the rich hoard all the money, we should redistribute it to the masses!" action flick. While there were several hints at some interesting effects on society throughout the movie, they were never actually explored.
boomlinde 8y ago
> Patronage is... a thing. Better than nothing. But obviously a weaker form of economic systematizing than a model where you pay to listen to a performance or a recording. > I mean, if you're designing a system function, do you want it to reliably tie outputs to inputs, or optionally tie outputs to inputs? > Paying for things supports the enterprise that goes into providing them. Diluting or disconnecting payment from the music is another way of saying "in order to make music, you should be spending time doing things that aren't making music." So when you pay for a copy of a recording of a piece of music, do you feel that you are more directly paying for someone to make music? In the exact sense that you describe here, paying for copies of recordings has a very weak tie to the actual production of music. I'd have to pay for a copy of a recording even if the recording artist has been dead for decades and can't possibly create more music. It's not payment for "making music". It's rent on some work that may have been performed in the last century. No one needs to make music to sell me a copy of a recording. As a patron, however, I'd be paying people to create music. If they didn't and I didn't trust that the investment was worth it, I wouldn't. If they were dead, there'd be no sense in supporting them. It would be like sending paychecks to a dead employee. Someone needs to make music to receive my patronage. If the output I expect of a "system function" is for someone to make music, paying into a function where the output is copies of recordings is worse than paying into a system function where the output is the labor of creating music. I can see why this view would be confusing, though. Vague abstractions have a tendency to obscure actualities, and of course there is a more complex relationship with more inputs, outputs and feedback loops.

chii 8y ago

> 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, the money keeps flowing in! Nobody is saying that artists don't get paid - they get paid by selling their music in some form, and performing their music. But because the motivations for them doing music ins't due to money, the product end up being a labour of love - a true expression of art. I think patronage achieves the same goals, where as a mass market music business model doesn't get the same result because the goals of a mass market music business is to saturate, and to make sure that their audience is huge (so you end up with pop music).

bryanrasmussen 8y ago
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.
moate 8y ago
>>Look at modern pop music today? They are pretty terrible at best. That's a whole lot of opinion there affecting your theory. Pop music makes money because, as the name implies, it's popular. That doesn't mean it has to be lyrically or musically devoid of complexity. There's high quality pop music. Pop music makes money because 1-it tends to be formulaic in it's musical composition to hit sounds that people "like". 2- the stars are young and attractive and people respond to that for a myriad of reasons. 3- the people producing the music and marketing the industry have found that it's a stable and reliable market in a time when the industry as a whole collapsed. As someone married to a professional artist, I would also like to point out that the starving artist who just LOVES producing their Art so much is a problematic ideal that people romanticize. The bottom line is, if you produce something of value, and someone wants to procure this thing, they should respect your time. The problem is that so many artists don't value their work or time in an economic framework, and thus they drive the market rates lower for the community as a whole.

neilwilson 8y ago

Time is likely the currency we all spend. Human activity of all kinds is exchanging time with each other. I spend some time doing A and give you some. In return you spend time doing B and give me some. Ultimately we all have a finite amount of time available. When you start assessing things in terms of hours exchanged rather than dollars, euros or pounds you see how it all works. Baumol’s cost disease explains itself for example. It still take the same number of hours to be a violinist and a concerto takes the same amount of time to perform. And we still value violinists so some of them get paid. Our machines reduce the human time element embedded in other products and services and that reduces their value in exchange terms. We see that expressed as the dollar price of violinists going up. There’s even a film In Time where this idea is explored Hollywood style. Not the greatest film but the philosophical idea behind it is fascinating.

pferde 8y ago
The movie had an interesting idea (presumably stolen from any number of old sci-fi novels), but unfortunately turned it to a generic "the rich hoard all the money, we should redistribute it to the masses!" action flick. While there were several hints at some interesting effects on society throughout the movie, they were never actually explored.

boomlinde 8y ago

> Patronage is... a thing. Better than nothing. But obviously a weaker form of economic systematizing than a model where you pay to listen to a performance or a recording. > I mean, if you're designing a system function, do you want it to reliably tie outputs to inputs, or optionally tie outputs to inputs? > Paying for things supports the enterprise that goes into providing them. Diluting or disconnecting payment from the music is another way of saying "in order to make music, you should be spending time doing things that aren't making music." So when you pay for a copy of a recording of a piece of music, do you feel that you are more directly paying for someone to make music? In the exact sense that you describe here, paying for copies of recordings has a very weak tie to the actual production of music. I'd have to pay for a copy of a recording even if the recording artist has been dead for decades and can't possibly create more music. It's not payment for "making music". It's rent on some work that may have been performed in the last century. No one needs to make music to sell me a copy of a recording. As a patron, however, I'd be paying people to create music. If they didn't and I didn't trust that the investment was worth it, I wouldn't. If they were dead, there'd be no sense in supporting them. It would be like sending paychecks to a dead employee. Someone needs to make music to receive my patronage. If the output I expect of a "system function" is for someone to make music, paying into a function where the output is copies of recordings is worse than paying into a system function where the output is the labor of creating music. I can see why this view would be confusing, though. Vague abstractions have a tendency to obscure actualities, and of course there is a more complex relationship with more inputs, outputs and feedback loops.