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This gets me thinking of something an old friend wrote recently, contrasting music with sport in eg a bar setting. A backstreet pub can easily shell out £2200/m

This gets me thinking of something an old friend wrote recently, contrasting music with sport in eg a bar setting. A backstreet pub can easily shell out £2200/month (almost $3000) for football (that's soccer for you across the pond), but will pinch pennies when it comes to paying for music. It is indeed kind of weird how music is so highly valued, and gives rise to such feelings on one end, and is yet so commoditized and valued so low in eg bars and shops. A music catalog is transferred for pretty much the same fee as one football player, AFAIK.

cameronh90 5y ago
Music is, to some degree, fungible. Sure we all have our favourite bands, but as far as a pub is concerned, there are tens of thousands of good enough bands that can provide atmosphere. Whereas with football, supply of watchable players is highly constrained. Nobody is coming to your pub to watch the local five aside on the TV. Plus there's the gambling aspect...
munificent 5y ago
> A backstreet pub can easily shell out £2200/month (almost $3000) for football (that's soccer for you across the pond), but will pinch pennies when it comes to paying for music. It is indeed kind of weird how music is so highly valued, and gives rise to such feelings on one end, and is yet so commoditized and valued so low in eg bars and shops. You can't treat information products like fungible commodity goods. Thinking that way leads to all sorts of nonsensical results. A backstreet pub isn't paying for "football" in some general sense of "video products of football matches". They are paying for *the specific currently-occurring matches that the patrons want to watch". That is a very rare product that commands a high price. If you put on "Australian footie highlights from 1987", you aren't going to have a full bar. Sports games are almost completely non-commodity and non-fungible and the pricing reflects that. Music is semi-fungible. Patrons have strong associations with particular songs and love to hear them. But there are generally enough songs that meet that criteria, and enough patrons that don't really care, that a bar just needs a bit mostly-interchangeable bucket of songs. The price reflects that.
- yesbabyyes 5y ago
  Right -- this makes sense, and you put well into words some of the thoughts going through my head. But where does this leave players vs bands'/artists' whole catalogs? A club paying for a Ronaldo/Messi/Zlatan has to make that up pretty fast (disregarding brand value/brand management), whereas a Beatles/Dylan/Rihanna catalog will keep bringing in revenue for ages. As (I believe) you hint at, music has a whole different staying value compared to (many/most?) other forms of entertainment.
  - hibikir 5y ago
    How close are you to soccer fandom? As far as merch sales for a player, players might lose value quickly, but fan retention is very sticky: You aren't going to find a lot of people that suddenly root for a new team once a decade. So when in 1996 Barcelona spends about 20 million for Ronaldo de Lima, they were getting young fans that stay with them for decades, and who get their children to root for the same team, as arguing with dad about soccer every day is exhausting. Hell, having a great team also makes your school-level teams more attractive, and gives you more talent: Does Messi move to la Masia just because Barcelona paid a bunch of money, the school quality, or also because there's a great chance to face great competition in a top club? Barcelona is still getting value from Cruyff, Maradona or Ronaldo, and will still make money from the Messi years for decades to come, even if the merch sales for his shirts drop to zero. Fandom leads to more fandom, and that comes from good results. A team like Manchester City has put top money into their team for decades, but the team's value lags a bit not because their short term results: They've been great for over a decade. It's the residual value of decades of good performance from other teams that they have to compete with.

cameronh90 5y ago

Music is, to some degree, fungible. Sure we all have our favourite bands, but as far as a pub is concerned, there are tens of thousands of good enough bands that can provide atmosphere. Whereas with football, supply of watchable players is highly constrained. Nobody is coming to your pub to watch the local five aside on the TV. Plus there's the gambling aspect...

munificent 5y ago

> A backstreet pub can easily shell out £2200/month (almost $3000) for football (that's soccer for you across the pond), but will pinch pennies when it comes to paying for music. It is indeed kind of weird how music is so highly valued, and gives rise to such feelings on one end, and is yet so commoditized and valued so low in eg bars and shops. You can't treat information products like fungible commodity goods. Thinking that way leads to all sorts of nonsensical results. A backstreet pub isn't paying for "football" in some general sense of "video products of football matches". They are paying for *the specific currently-occurring matches that the patrons want to watch". That is a very rare product that commands a high price. If you put on "Australian footie highlights from 1987", you aren't going to have a full bar. Sports games are almost completely non-commodity and non-fungible and the pricing reflects that. Music is semi-fungible. Patrons have strong associations with particular songs and love to hear them. But there are generally enough songs that meet that criteria, and enough patrons that don't really care, that a bar just needs a bit mostly-interchangeable bucket of songs. The price reflects that.

yesbabyyes 5y ago
Right -- this makes sense, and you put well into words some of the thoughts going through my head. But where does this leave players vs bands'/artists' whole catalogs? A club paying for a Ronaldo/Messi/Zlatan has to make that up pretty fast (disregarding brand value/brand management), whereas a Beatles/Dylan/Rihanna catalog will keep bringing in revenue for ages. As (I believe) you hint at, music has a whole different staying value compared to (many/most?) other forms of entertainment.
- hibikir 5y ago
  How close are you to soccer fandom? As far as merch sales for a player, players might lose value quickly, but fan retention is very sticky: You aren't going to find a lot of people that suddenly root for a new team once a decade. So when in 1996 Barcelona spends about 20 million for Ronaldo de Lima, they were getting young fans that stay with them for decades, and who get their children to root for the same team, as arguing with dad about soccer every day is exhausting. Hell, having a great team also makes your school-level teams more attractive, and gives you more talent: Does Messi move to la Masia just because Barcelona paid a bunch of money, the school quality, or also because there's a great chance to face great competition in a top club? Barcelona is still getting value from Cruyff, Maradona or Ronaldo, and will still make money from the Messi years for decades to come, even if the merch sales for his shirts drop to zero. Fandom leads to more fandom, and that comes from good results. A team like Manchester City has put top money into their team for decades, but the team's value lags a bit not because their short term results: They've been great for over a decade. It's the residual value of decades of good performance from other teams that they have to compete with.