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Yes, I think the tech evolution of music has a lot of parallels here. In the 60s-70s, production and distribution were expensive, so there was scarcity. In the

Yes, I think the tech evolution of music has a lot of parallels here. In the 60s-70s, production and distribution were expensive, so there was scarcity. In the 90s-early 2000s DAWs on laptops made it easy to self-record/produce, so there was a a lot more music made, then in the 2010s legal distribution became cheap through streaming. Nowadays there's more music being created and consumed than ever, but the musicians don't make nearly as much money as in the golden days of the CD. The mega-stars like Billy Eillish still make a good amount through brand deals / live shows, but the 'middle class' of musicians has fallen away. I think lower barriers to entry through creating art via AI assistance will mean more art available, but it probably will make it harder to make a living as a professional artist. That said, I don't think anyone who chooses to be an artist today is primarily motivated to earn money.

eyelidlessness 4y ago
> Nowadays there's more music being created and consumed than ever, but the musicians don't make nearly as much money as in the golden days of the CD. The mega-stars like Billy Eillish still make a good amount through brand deals / live shows, but the 'middle class' of musicians has fallen away. I’m not sure where you got the impression that the bygone era of the CD was so lucrative, or that its largess was more evenly distributed in a meaningful way. If you’re open to challenging that conception, I’d highly recommend reading Steve Albini’s article, The Problem With Music (also sometimes titled Some Of Your Friends Are Already This Fucked; not linked because it doesn’t have a canonical link and I’m never sure which site reposting it can be relied on not to edit it). Anyway the tl;dr is this: to the extent there’s ever been a more even distribution of earnings for musicians, that certainly wasn’t attributable to CD sales. The article was written fairly early in the CD era, and those dynamics deepened through that period. I’m doubtful it was ever attributable to any particular sale of recordings on any kind of media. Then, as now (and probably since well before recording technology was available) musicians making a decent or better living by and large made the majority of it performing live. For what it’s worth, the article I mentioned factored greatly into my decision not to pursue a music career, even as I embraced the early availability of cheap digital recording (and intermittently still do). I’m sure there’s an alternate universe where I’d be thrilled that my life’s work would be playing music, but I have little doubt that my entry into the middle class would have been far less likely than by taking up programming.

eyelidlessness 4y ago

> Nowadays there's more music being created and consumed than ever, but the musicians don't make nearly as much money as in the golden days of the CD. The mega-stars like Billy Eillish still make a good amount through brand deals / live shows, but the 'middle class' of musicians has fallen away. I’m not sure where you got the impression that the bygone era of the CD was so lucrative, or that its largess was more evenly distributed in a meaningful way. If you’re open to challenging that conception, I’d highly recommend reading Steve Albini’s article, The Problem With Music (also sometimes titled Some Of Your Friends Are Already This Fucked; not linked because it doesn’t have a canonical link and I’m never sure which site reposting it can be relied on not to edit it). Anyway the tl;dr is this: to the extent there’s ever been a more even distribution of earnings for musicians, that certainly wasn’t attributable to CD sales. The article was written fairly early in the CD era, and those dynamics deepened through that period. I’m doubtful it was ever attributable to any particular sale of recordings on any kind of media. Then, as now (and probably since well before recording technology was available) musicians making a decent or better living by and large made the majority of it performing live. For what it’s worth, the article I mentioned factored greatly into my decision not to pursue a music career, even as I embraced the early availability of cheap digital recording (and intermittently still do). I’m sure there’s an alternate universe where I’d be thrilled that my life’s work would be playing music, but I have little doubt that my entry into the middle class would have been far less likely than by taking up programming.