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> It’s used to subsidize an untenable customer expectation. [...] the only viable endgame is a promise of monopoly concentration and increased prices. But is th

> It’s used to subsidize an untenable customer expectation. [...] the only viable endgame is a promise of monopoly concentration and increased prices. But is that even viable? I think that's such a great summary. This has arguably already been completed with the music industry and streaming. Although another option other than "increased prices" is to have it be a loss-leading part of a larger profitable media portfolio. Either way, songwriters still get screwed. (Five imaginary bucks to the first person who replies that songwriting is just supposed to be a marketing expense for touring and merch! :) )

TimPC 4y ago
Dedicated songwriters (who don't also perform) is a hard problem generally. It tends to be where most systems that want to eliminate copyright monopolies stumble badly.
legitster 4y ago
> Either way, songwriters still get screwed I have a couple of friends who make/made music and they all say this problem is overrated. What you've lost in royalty-per-cd you're more than making up for in availability. If you tried making music 30 years ago, and you got the 1-in-a-thousand record deal, you only make a cut per CD after you pay back the record label. Today, if you just want to make some jams in your basement, you can find a niche and end up on a few playlists and start pulling in some money. The only people losing out are the big name pop artists - but the distribution tail got a lot fatter for everyone else.
- tunesmith 4y ago
  I'm not so much talking about the tradeoff from physical to streaming. I'm talking about how when the transition to streaming happened, it was funded with a bunch of VC money that set a customer expectation of a very cheap music supply, which was later used to leverage negotiations for low streaming rates. Paying the songwriters is a cost from the delivery perspective, and the tech companies have every interest to reduce that cost. They're going to try to turn that knob before they try to raise prices on consumers. Now, if the mathematical modeling has been done to show that any increase in streaming royalty rates is 100% correlated with a decrease in listenership, such that songwriter revenue decreases; in other words, if it's been mathematically shown we are at a maximum from the songwriters' perspective, that would be convincing. I just doubt that that is the case.
  - legitster 4y ago
    We shouldn't mix apples and pears here - music streaming is a different beast. The marginal cost for DoorDash is the cost of a pizza. The marginal cost for a music stream is effectively $0.00 dollars. You could say that VC set the customer expectation for cheap music (although, Zune Music Pass was available a full decade before streaming took off) but even before streaming you could argue consumer expectation for music was pretty dang cheap. Music was free on the radio, albums where shared widely, music was copied and pirated rampantly. It's a stronger argument that streaming services convinced labels that that everyone could make more money if they started competing with piracy on cost and convenience.
mhb 4y ago
That makes sense and it's satisfying but the article says: But what’s funnier about Roy’s friend’s problem ... is that DoorDash priced the pizzas incorrectly. So is this just a DoorDash pricing mistake or evidence of the strategy to which they ascribe it?

TimPC 4y ago

Dedicated songwriters (who don't also perform) is a hard problem generally. It tends to be where most systems that want to eliminate copyright monopolies stumble badly.

legitster 4y ago

> Either way, songwriters still get screwed I have a couple of friends who make/made music and they all say this problem is overrated. What you've lost in royalty-per-cd you're more than making up for in availability. If you tried making music 30 years ago, and you got the 1-in-a-thousand record deal, you only make a cut per CD after you pay back the record label. Today, if you just want to make some jams in your basement, you can find a niche and end up on a few playlists and start pulling in some money. The only people losing out are the big name pop artists - but the distribution tail got a lot fatter for everyone else.

tunesmith 4y ago
I'm not so much talking about the tradeoff from physical to streaming. I'm talking about how when the transition to streaming happened, it was funded with a bunch of VC money that set a customer expectation of a very cheap music supply, which was later used to leverage negotiations for low streaming rates. Paying the songwriters is a cost from the delivery perspective, and the tech companies have every interest to reduce that cost. They're going to try to turn that knob before they try to raise prices on consumers. Now, if the mathematical modeling has been done to show that any increase in streaming royalty rates is 100% correlated with a decrease in listenership, such that songwriter revenue decreases; in other words, if it's been mathematically shown we are at a maximum from the songwriters' perspective, that would be convincing. I just doubt that that is the case.
- legitster 4y ago
  We shouldn't mix apples and pears here - music streaming is a different beast. The marginal cost for DoorDash is the cost of a pizza. The marginal cost for a music stream is effectively $0.00 dollars. You could say that VC set the customer expectation for cheap music (although, Zune Music Pass was available a full decade before streaming took off) but even before streaming you could argue consumer expectation for music was pretty dang cheap. Music was free on the radio, albums where shared widely, music was copied and pirated rampantly. It's a stronger argument that streaming services convinced labels that that everyone could make more money if they started competing with piracy on cost and convenience.

mhb 4y ago

That makes sense and it's satisfying but the article says: But what’s funnier about Roy’s friend’s problem ... is that DoorDash priced the pizzas incorrectly. So is this just a DoorDash pricing mistake or evidence of the strategy to which they ascribe it?