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> The solution then would be to find a way to charge not for the copies, but for the time effort that the artist put into the production of the music. That's l

> The solution then would be to find a way to charge not for the copies, but for the time effort that the artist put into the production of the music. That's literally what charging for the copies does, though. People just want something for nothing. Claiming you want to "take the copy for free but pay separately for the time" when you aren't willing to pay for the copy so that there is some reimbursment for the time is an exercise in wankery. (You aren't just paying for the time, anyway. You're paying for talent, etc. A genius who creates something better in 5 minutes than someone else does in a year is still someone you'd rather compensate...)

samatman 6y ago
That's fine, and you're right about the economic incentive to charge for copies. I happen to resent the use of legal force to do so, and I'm not alone. I belong to the Napster generation, where the muscle arm of the copyright industry destroyed one of the most promising new applications for the Internet, instead of rolling with it and reaching some kind of mutually-beneficial arrangment. We're all still pretty mad about that when we think on it. Like it or not, NFTs represent a way out of this. Taylor Swift has trufans, she could easily cut a limited-issue NFT for her new recording of Fearless, with a smart contract which pays a residual every time it's resold. If she wanted to. Probably not the right time in the hype cycle for her to get on board, there are unsolved questions in terms of user experience. But the option is there, and if it becomes sufficiently widespread we can do away with the whole tawdry cycle of DMCA requests and randomly penalizing music enjoyers with ruinous fines and lawsuits. That would be all to the good.
- prox 6y ago
  What’s your take on BitClout?
- bradleyjg 6y ago
  The sense of entitlement in this comment is pretty shocking. The only justification I see in here is “I want”. That’s it. You (“and I'm not alone”) want certain things and so the world needs to accommodate you. If it doesn’t—-you are telling us you’ll just do what you want anyway. How is this anything other than sociopathic?
- andrewzah 6y ago
  > randomly penalizing music enjoyers with ruinous fines and lawsuits That's a weird spelling of "people who want to listen to music -without- paying for it". Napster started a conversation about IP and copyright, but I for one am glad it is dead. DCMA is monumentally stupid in its -implementation-, but the idea is not a bad one. There need to be protections for people who make a living by creating music, art, etc. Yes, that means repercussions for people who reproduce digital content and redistribute it without a license. I think that we can all agree that how these things are currently enforced via the DCMA is rather bad, though. What I'm saying is, we need to pay people for their work. This includes artists making music that you want "to enjoy". In 2021 there isn't really an excuse, with spotify/apple music/etc existing for streaming, and things like bandcamp for outright buying cds/lps, and discogs for the secondary/used market.
  - pydry 6y ago
    >What I'm saying is, we need to pay people for their work. Most musicians don't get paid for their work or get paid a token amount. I don't see what the point is in fighting for Taylor Swift's right to make millions from making music if the average person can't make a living. It's not about quality either. It's about distribution channels.
    - jkhdigital 6y ago
      > It's about distribution channels. This is the part that gets completely glossed over when talking about creative output. I’m not convinced that the difference between an artist who commands eight figures in annual revenue and one who commands five figures is a simple matter of talent or dedication to one’s craft. Pop superstars, in particular, are the product of a promotion and distribution machine without which the actual artist would probably enjoy only a small fraction of their reach and popularity. As with most political slogans, “pay people for their work” is in fact an extremely nuanced idea in practice.
    - andrewzah 6y ago
      > I don't see what the point is in fighting for Taylor Swift's right to make millions from making music if the average person can't make a living. This is a strawman argument. Obviously I would like to see -all- artists get paid a living wage at least for their work. The fact that life isn't fair and TS makes millions isn't my fault, and is not what I'm specifically advocating here.
boomlinde 6y ago
> That's literally what charging for the copies does, though. People just want something for nothing. I pay about 10€/mo for Spotify. A significant portion of my use of the service is devoted to artists that are dead. They can't put time and effort into producing music. They can't be reimbursed for the time and effort they've already put into it. I could bury the gold with them, but they wouldn't have any use for it because they're dead. The difference is especially important because options are cropping up for actually funding artists and other creatives by paying for their work, not copies of the results. Kickstarter, Patreon etc.
- wizzwizz4 6y ago
  > I pay about 10€/mo for Spotify. Consider not; the majority of that money just goes to Spotify. If, every month, you paid 10€ to a random artist you liked (or split 10€ between all of them), the artists would receive probably more than two orders of magnitude more money. (If I remember correctly, anyway.) Of course, this assumes you can get the music elsewhere. If Spotify's too convenient to give up, there are several Spotify download tools you can use to get the music onto a device that doesn't support Spotify (e.g. MP3 players). Lots of them seem to actually grab from YouTube, but perhaps if you use the Spotify API, you might be able to do it?
  - dahfizz 6y ago
    A quick google says that spotify pays at least $0.003 per stream to an artist. So your $10 pays for 3333 streams per month, or just over 100 a day. I probably don't average 100 streams per day, but I definitely average over 10. I'm not sure its as bad a deal for the artist as you may think. It's not two orders of magnitude bad, at least.
    - Judgmentality 6y ago
      The problem with this math is you're assuming a roughly even distribution for paying out to artists, when in fact the Spotify pay model wildly favors the popular artists in terms of paying out money. Basically if you aren't already famous, Spotify isn't going to pay you any meaningful money. https://qz.com/1660465/the-way-spotify-and-apple-music-pays-artists-isnt-fair/ https://qz.com/1660465/the-way-spotify-and-apple-music-pays-... I should probably mention I haven't really looked into Spotify's business model in about a year, so if something has changed and my information is outdated someone please let me know.
bottled_poe 6y ago
> That's literally what charging for the copies does, though. People just want something for nothing. Charging for copies to cover effort sounds suspiciously like a leaky abstraction.
Causality1 6y ago
Or, Patreon. You pay creators on an ongoing basis to produce content at a rate you find acceptable for the amount you pay them. Patronage does away with the illogic of artificial scarcity and subjects artistic work to the same standards as any other work. That is, ongoing payment entails ongoing labor. People pay you to write songs, to travel and perform songs, instead of paying you to have once written a song at some indeterminate point in the past. Songs that are already made have no scarcity and hence no inherent value, but your labor to perform them and to write new songs does, so that's what you should logically be paid for. The degree of silliness to artificial scarcity becomes apparent when you try to apply it to any other labor. If an investigative reporter uncovers corruption at city hall, does he deserve a royalty every time you tell someone and hence copy the fruits of his labor? Does a meteorologist when you freely share his forecast? Should the doctor who invents a new surgical technique get a percentage every time it's used to save someone's life?
Aaargh20318 6y ago
> That's literally what charging for the copies does, though. People just want something for nothing. No, it does not do that at all. If you sell 200 copies, you get paid twice as much as when you sell 100 copies. Artists should make a decent hourly wage depending only on the amount of work they have done. Imagine if other professions worked the same way as the copyright industry does. You have a plumber install a new toilet in your home, but instead of charging you for his time and effort, he charges you 5 cents every time you pee, and 10 cents every time you poo. Or you have someone pave your driveway, and instead of paying for his work you pay $1 every tine you park your car there. Would you accept that ? Why should artists be different ?

samatman 6y ago

That's fine, and you're right about the economic incentive to charge for copies. I happen to resent the use of legal force to do so, and I'm not alone. I belong to the Napster generation, where the muscle arm of the copyright industry destroyed one of the most promising new applications for the Internet, instead of rolling with it and reaching some kind of mutually-beneficial arrangment. We're all still pretty mad about that when we think on it. Like it or not, NFTs represent a way out of this. Taylor Swift has trufans, she could easily cut a limited-issue NFT for her new recording of Fearless, with a smart contract which pays a residual every time it's resold. If she wanted to. Probably not the right time in the hype cycle for her to get on board, there are unsolved questions in terms of user experience. But the option is there, and if it becomes sufficiently widespread we can do away with the whole tawdry cycle of DMCA requests and randomly penalizing music enjoyers with ruinous fines and lawsuits. That would be all to the good.

prox 6y ago
What’s your take on BitClout?
bradleyjg 6y ago
The sense of entitlement in this comment is pretty shocking. The only justification I see in here is “I want”. That’s it. You (“and I'm not alone”) want certain things and so the world needs to accommodate you. If it doesn’t—-you are telling us you’ll just do what you want anyway. How is this anything other than sociopathic?
andrewzah 6y ago
> randomly penalizing music enjoyers with ruinous fines and lawsuits That's a weird spelling of "people who want to listen to music -without- paying for it". Napster started a conversation about IP and copyright, but I for one am glad it is dead. DCMA is monumentally stupid in its -implementation-, but the idea is not a bad one. There need to be protections for people who make a living by creating music, art, etc. Yes, that means repercussions for people who reproduce digital content and redistribute it without a license. I think that we can all agree that how these things are currently enforced via the DCMA is rather bad, though. What I'm saying is, we need to pay people for their work. This includes artists making music that you want "to enjoy". In 2021 there isn't really an excuse, with spotify/apple music/etc existing for streaming, and things like bandcamp for outright buying cds/lps, and discogs for the secondary/used market.
- pydry 6y ago
  >What I'm saying is, we need to pay people for their work. Most musicians don't get paid for their work or get paid a token amount. I don't see what the point is in fighting for Taylor Swift's right to make millions from making music if the average person can't make a living. It's not about quality either. It's about distribution channels.
  - jkhdigital 6y ago
    > It's about distribution channels. This is the part that gets completely glossed over when talking about creative output. I’m not convinced that the difference between an artist who commands eight figures in annual revenue and one who commands five figures is a simple matter of talent or dedication to one’s craft. Pop superstars, in particular, are the product of a promotion and distribution machine without which the actual artist would probably enjoy only a small fraction of their reach and popularity. As with most political slogans, “pay people for their work” is in fact an extremely nuanced idea in practice.
  - andrewzah 6y ago
    > I don't see what the point is in fighting for Taylor Swift's right to make millions from making music if the average person can't make a living. This is a strawman argument. Obviously I would like to see -all- artists get paid a living wage at least for their work. The fact that life isn't fair and TS makes millions isn't my fault, and is not what I'm specifically advocating here.

boomlinde 6y ago

> That's literally what charging for the copies does, though. People just want something for nothing. I pay about 10€/mo for Spotify. A significant portion of my use of the service is devoted to artists that are dead. They can't put time and effort into producing music. They can't be reimbursed for the time and effort they've already put into it. I could bury the gold with them, but they wouldn't have any use for it because they're dead. The difference is especially important because options are cropping up for actually funding artists and other creatives by paying for their work, not copies of the results. Kickstarter, Patreon etc.

wizzwizz4 6y ago
> I pay about 10€/mo for Spotify. Consider not; the majority of that money just goes to Spotify. If, every month, you paid 10€ to a random artist you liked (or split 10€ between all of them), the artists would receive probably more than two orders of magnitude more money. (If I remember correctly, anyway.) Of course, this assumes you can get the music elsewhere. If Spotify's too convenient to give up, there are several Spotify download tools you can use to get the music onto a device that doesn't support Spotify (e.g. MP3 players). Lots of them seem to actually grab from YouTube, but perhaps if you use the Spotify API, you might be able to do it?
- dahfizz 6y ago
  A quick google says that spotify pays at least $0.003 per stream to an artist. So your $10 pays for 3333 streams per month, or just over 100 a day. I probably don't average 100 streams per day, but I definitely average over 10. I'm not sure its as bad a deal for the artist as you may think. It's not two orders of magnitude bad, at least.
  - Judgmentality 6y ago
    The problem with this math is you're assuming a roughly even distribution for paying out to artists, when in fact the Spotify pay model wildly favors the popular artists in terms of paying out money. Basically if you aren't already famous, Spotify isn't going to pay you any meaningful money. https://qz.com/1660465/the-way-spotify-and-apple-music-pays-artists-isnt-fair/ https://qz.com/1660465/the-way-spotify-and-apple-music-pays-... I should probably mention I haven't really looked into Spotify's business model in about a year, so if something has changed and my information is outdated someone please let me know.

bottled_poe 6y ago

> That's literally what charging for the copies does, though. People just want something for nothing. Charging for copies to cover effort sounds suspiciously like a leaky abstraction.

Causality1 6y ago

Or, Patreon. You pay creators on an ongoing basis to produce content at a rate you find acceptable for the amount you pay them. Patronage does away with the illogic of artificial scarcity and subjects artistic work to the same standards as any other work. That is, ongoing payment entails ongoing labor. People pay you to write songs, to travel and perform songs, instead of paying you to have once written a song at some indeterminate point in the past. Songs that are already made have no scarcity and hence no inherent value, but your labor to perform them and to write new songs does, so that's what you should logically be paid for. The degree of silliness to artificial scarcity becomes apparent when you try to apply it to any other labor. If an investigative reporter uncovers corruption at city hall, does he deserve a royalty every time you tell someone and hence copy the fruits of his labor? Does a meteorologist when you freely share his forecast? Should the doctor who invents a new surgical technique get a percentage every time it's used to save someone's life?

Aaargh20318 6y ago

> That's literally what charging for the copies does, though. People just want something for nothing. No, it does not do that at all. If you sell 200 copies, you get paid twice as much as when you sell 100 copies. Artists should make a decent hourly wage depending only on the amount of work they have done. Imagine if other professions worked the same way as the copyright industry does. You have a plumber install a new toilet in your home, but instead of charging you for his time and effort, he charges you 5 cents every time you pee, and 10 cents every time you poo. Or you have someone pave your driveway, and instead of paying for his work you pay $1 every tine you park your car there. Would you accept that ? Why should artists be different ?