4 ms·

No it's not. A commodity would mean that people are indifferent to the music of Metallica vs Taylor Swift vs your brother in law's blues band. They aren't. So

by CPLX 3y ago

No it's not. A commodity would mean that people are indifferent to the music of Metallica vs Taylor Swift vs your brother in law's blues band. They aren't. So it's not a commodity. Because that's what commodity means. You could let your playlist run for years, but you don't and nobody else does either because repetition and familiarity and quality are things people care about musically. Playing music well in a way that is liked by millions is an unbelievably valuable thing. Playing music badly is utterly worthless from an economic standpoint.

bluefishinit 3y ago
I think you're underestimating the role marketing plays in demand generation. It's not that Taylor Swift is "better" than the local jazz guitarist, she's just more heavily marketed. Music labels know that the mass audience doesn't appreciate musical complexity so they market simple music with attractive performers. Then the Clear Channel/Ticketmaster... machine takes over and handles the promotion and distribution. I'm actually a big fan of pop music, but that doesn't mean that non-pop is financially unsuccessful because it's "bad", it's just not put into the marketing machine because it very well may be too good.
- CPLX 3y ago
  I'm probably not underestimating the role marketing plays in music. I'm the former head of digital at a major music agency, and I handled campaigns for multiple album of the year Grammy winners and household name artists, almost certainly including music and artists you consider important in your life. It's not really about marketing. Everyone thinks that and they're wrong. You learn this instantly when you are actually in the business and see all the artists and projects that get the exact same amount of marketing effort as the massive hits and go literally fucking nowhere. It's like home run batting, even the best in the world at picking and promoting music are lucky to have like a 10-20% success rate. Audiences have a mind of their own, they like what they like. The problem people have with understanding this is usually that they don't like the same thing that mass audiences like, and they consider what they do like higher quality. So in their minds the masses are being duped, marketed to. Which is true to a point, they are being marketed to. And having resources and labels and monopolies behind you can definitely expose you to more people. But it's not enough, at all, if people don't respond to it. And conversely, if you have no resources whatsoever it's way harder, but it's not impossible at all and stuff that really has wide appeal most of the time really does bubble up and catch attention pretty quickly.
  - bluefishinit 3y ago
    > It's like home run batting, even the best in the world at picking and promoting music are lucky to have like a 10-20% success rate. Mass market success is basically a crap shoot and doesn't really reflect the quality of the musician. You said: > Playing music badly is utterly worthless from an economic standpoint. And that's not true at all, being a virtuoso is pretty much worthless from an economic standpoint. It's pointless to try to equate skill to economic success because in pop art they don't have anything to do with each other. It's all about marketing and distribution. Not to say that the studio musicians that make the pop music aren't virtuosos, but they're definitely playing simplified songs.
    - CPLX 3y ago
      I never said being a virtuoso was worth anything, that's a new discussion. My point is just that some music is incredibly valuable economically, and most is not worth anything at all. Which is clearly true. As such, music is not an interchangeable commodity it's an extremely idiosyncratic and heterogenous market. I've heard the argument about how nobody cares about "better" music and so on my whole life. It's like the thing people like to talk about. But it's kind of boring, there's no definition of better that everyone is going to agree on. For example I think Pitbull fucking sucks, deeply and profoundly, and objectively. When he rhymes Kodak with Kodak in the song "Give Me Everything" I want to throw rocks or other durable objects at whatever speaker is subjecting me to that fucking song. Somehow, 12 years after its release, this is still happening to me on a regular basis, usually within the first 2-4 hours after entering the state of Florida. But people seem to like it. So that's the only actually objective way to determine the value of music. All the other ways are just people talking.
      - bluefishinit 3y ago
        > But it's kind of boring, there's no definition of better that everyone is going to agree on. I agree. Part of that is that economically successful music also isn't "better", it's just making money. I like Madonna but she's an objectively crap singer. Just because something is popular, it doesn't make it good. That's like saying Coke is the best drink in the world because it makes the most money. Commercial success is due to marketing, distribution and luck.
- dahfizz 3y ago
  You're not understanding. Commodity has a very specific meaning in economics. You can very easily tell that a Taylor swift song and a local jazz song are not the same song. They are not interchangeable. If someone replaced some songs in your playlists, you would notice. Therefore, not a commodity.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
    To argue that the technical meaning of the word "commodity" doesn't fit what OP is saying is to completely miss the point.
  - 8note 3y ago
    > If someone replaced some songs in your playlists, you would notice. I don't think this is true. In the Spotify world, people have playlists where the songs sound similar to a certain song or band, rather than a hand curated one.
tel 3y ago
With respect to your experience cited in your other comment, a lot of my music experience time is a continuous stream of random tracks on Apple's "Made for You" feature. I'm not particularly partial to what comes up. There's obviously a degree of quality that I'm expecting in order to keep the experience smooth and a set of genre and musical conventions I'm expecting. I wouldn't say that's exactly commodified, no, but I definitely feel like my engagement with the difference between Taylor Swift and some other well-produced halfway reasonable pop artist is pretty minimal. At least in that act of listening. I used to care a lot more about this. I used to keep up with my favorite artists and look forward to their releases excitedly. Now, I feel everything is such a continuous stream of mild-novelty that I'm less attuned to these differences. So in that sense, I think I agree with the grandparent in that something feels interchangeable and indifferent about music. I don't want to pay a ton for it, even as someone who used to love buying albums. Or, at least, the times when I engage with music in that way seem fewer and further apart. Music seems to serve two purposes. The majority of my listening is unintentional, background listening. Much more rarely am I more engaged in the experience. Only in those latter times do I feel all that attuned to a difference in quality.
- CPLX 3y ago
  Sure. Now, instead of using an algorithm of music selected by a mass market service that is playing you an endless stream of songs that are proven to have a large audience, try listening to the raw feed of uploaded music to major services. Like the literal feed coming in that is just a firehose of every major label, all the indie releases uploaded via Distrokid or similar, and so on. You'd find it instantly unlistenable. Nobody wants that because it sucks. Most music, even music people have taken very seriously, has almost no appeal to anyone at all.
  - tel 3y ago
    So there's a filtering/refinement process. That doesn't immediately seem so unlike other commodities. I buy refined gasoline, for instance.
toast0 3y ago
Fruit is a commodity, but there's many types of fruit. And when you drill down, there's a tons of types of apples or whatever, but they're pretty much commodities. Some are more valuable or desirable than others, but if you want fruit and you can't get what you want, you substitute with something else. Music has a lot more variety than fruit, and some varieties are much more valuable, but still. If you're thinking about a career in music, realistic goals are going to be in education, maybe session musician, live music at entertainment venues (theme parks, cruise ships), maybe symphony; maybe something in support of music like a sound tech at a venue, etc. Being a headlining act is a career, but not a lot of people get to do that. > You could let your playlist run for years, but you don't and nobody else does either because repetition and familiarity and quality are things people care about musically. I mean, I typically listen to a specific internet radio station and it feels like they have let their playlists stagnate, but I still listen to it. So I wouldn't say nobody does. They've been down for the last two days though, currently listening to a local radio station with similar tastes (but they're constantly adding new music to their catalog).
- CPLX 3y ago
  You're not understanding what commodities are. An apple (or type of apple, to be specific) can be a commodity because I don't care or who which orchard made the apple, and I am completely indifferent to the apples of various orchards when I go to the supermarket. Recorded music isn't like that, at all. I care if the song is Fly Me To The Moon sung by Frank Sinatra or Stairway to Heaven sung by Frank Oz using the voice of Kermit the Frog. Some products are commodities. Some aren't. The word has an actual substantive meaning.
  - toast0 3y ago
    > You're not understanding what commodities are. You're not understanding how some people use music. Does the supermarket care who the artist is? Not really. Do I care who the artist is? Not really, I just need dance music to keep part of my mind occupied so I can get into the zone easier; saccharine vocals help too, no substance please.
solarmist 3y ago
It's a commodity in the same way as fashion is. Each piece is unique, and people become attached, but something equivalent would take its place in its absence. I don't know a term for that other than commodity, but sure, it's not the strict definition in economics. Please suggest an alternative word if you know it.
- CPLX 3y ago
  > It's a commodity in the same way as fashion is. Which is to say, it's not. That's the point. There's no fashion choices in West Texas Crude or Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil. Those are commodities. Each producer of the product produces an indistinguishable result from each other producer. You are producer indifferent. Most of the time you don't even have a way of knowing who produced the commodity you're consuming. Fashion, music, cars, hotels, laptops, and many other things aren't that. You care if it's Chanel, BMW, Hilton, Apple, or Taylor Swift, versus H&M, Honda, Motel 6, HP, or Metallica.
  - solarmist 3y ago
    I'm not asking what it's not. I'm asking what it is. If an option were removed, something (not a random substitution, but eventually a substitute would be found) else would take its place and fulfill the same function even though it isn't the same it's close enough to fulfill the purpose.
    - CPLX 3y ago
      That’s called a substitute good. Every good has a substitute good. That doesn’t make it a commodity, words have meanings. The distinction is important. The original thread here posited that music wasn’t a lucrative field because it’s an interchangeable commodity. That’s just flat wrong. It’s the opposite. It’s not lucrative because it’s very highly differentiated and the popularity follows a power law distribution and you’re probably not in the top echelon. But you could be. Which is why people try so hard. That’s an entirely different analysis.
      - 3y ago

by CPLX 3y ago

bluefishinit 3y ago

I think you're underestimating the role marketing plays in demand generation. It's not that Taylor Swift is "better" than the local jazz guitarist, she's just more heavily marketed. Music labels know that the mass audience doesn't appreciate musical complexity so they market simple music with attractive performers. Then the Clear Channel/Ticketmaster... machine takes over and handles the promotion and distribution. I'm actually a big fan of pop music, but that doesn't mean that non-pop is financially unsuccessful because it's "bad", it's just not put into the marketing machine because it very well may be too good.

CPLX 3y ago
I'm probably not underestimating the role marketing plays in music. I'm the former head of digital at a major music agency, and I handled campaigns for multiple album of the year Grammy winners and household name artists, almost certainly including music and artists you consider important in your life. It's not really about marketing. Everyone thinks that and they're wrong. You learn this instantly when you are actually in the business and see all the artists and projects that get the exact same amount of marketing effort as the massive hits and go literally fucking nowhere. It's like home run batting, even the best in the world at picking and promoting music are lucky to have like a 10-20% success rate. Audiences have a mind of their own, they like what they like. The problem people have with understanding this is usually that they don't like the same thing that mass audiences like, and they consider what they do like higher quality. So in their minds the masses are being duped, marketed to. Which is true to a point, they are being marketed to. And having resources and labels and monopolies behind you can definitely expose you to more people. But it's not enough, at all, if people don't respond to it. And conversely, if you have no resources whatsoever it's way harder, but it's not impossible at all and stuff that really has wide appeal most of the time really does bubble up and catch attention pretty quickly.
- bluefishinit 3y ago
  > It's like home run batting, even the best in the world at picking and promoting music are lucky to have like a 10-20% success rate. Mass market success is basically a crap shoot and doesn't really reflect the quality of the musician. You said: > Playing music badly is utterly worthless from an economic standpoint. And that's not true at all, being a virtuoso is pretty much worthless from an economic standpoint. It's pointless to try to equate skill to economic success because in pop art they don't have anything to do with each other. It's all about marketing and distribution. Not to say that the studio musicians that make the pop music aren't virtuosos, but they're definitely playing simplified songs.
  - CPLX 3y ago
    I never said being a virtuoso was worth anything, that's a new discussion. My point is just that some music is incredibly valuable economically, and most is not worth anything at all. Which is clearly true. As such, music is not an interchangeable commodity it's an extremely idiosyncratic and heterogenous market. I've heard the argument about how nobody cares about "better" music and so on my whole life. It's like the thing people like to talk about. But it's kind of boring, there's no definition of better that everyone is going to agree on. For example I think Pitbull fucking sucks, deeply and profoundly, and objectively. When he rhymes Kodak with Kodak in the song "Give Me Everything" I want to throw rocks or other durable objects at whatever speaker is subjecting me to that fucking song. Somehow, 12 years after its release, this is still happening to me on a regular basis, usually within the first 2-4 hours after entering the state of Florida. But people seem to like it. So that's the only actually objective way to determine the value of music. All the other ways are just people talking.
    - bluefishinit 3y ago
      > But it's kind of boring, there's no definition of better that everyone is going to agree on. I agree. Part of that is that economically successful music also isn't "better", it's just making money. I like Madonna but she's an objectively crap singer. Just because something is popular, it doesn't make it good. That's like saying Coke is the best drink in the world because it makes the most money. Commercial success is due to marketing, distribution and luck.
dahfizz 3y ago
You're not understanding. Commodity has a very specific meaning in economics. You can very easily tell that a Taylor swift song and a local jazz song are not the same song. They are not interchangeable. If someone replaced some songs in your playlists, you would notice. Therefore, not a commodity.
- HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
  To argue that the technical meaning of the word "commodity" doesn't fit what OP is saying is to completely miss the point.
- 8note 3y ago
  > If someone replaced some songs in your playlists, you would notice. I don't think this is true. In the Spotify world, people have playlists where the songs sound similar to a certain song or band, rather than a hand curated one.

tel 3y ago

With respect to your experience cited in your other comment, a lot of my music experience time is a continuous stream of random tracks on Apple's "Made for You" feature. I'm not particularly partial to what comes up. There's obviously a degree of quality that I'm expecting in order to keep the experience smooth and a set of genre and musical conventions I'm expecting. I wouldn't say that's exactly commodified, no, but I definitely feel like my engagement with the difference between Taylor Swift and some other well-produced halfway reasonable pop artist is pretty minimal. At least in that act of listening. I used to care a lot more about this. I used to keep up with my favorite artists and look forward to their releases excitedly. Now, I feel everything is such a continuous stream of mild-novelty that I'm less attuned to these differences. So in that sense, I think I agree with the grandparent in that something feels interchangeable and indifferent about music. I don't want to pay a ton for it, even as someone who used to love buying albums. Or, at least, the times when I engage with music in that way seem fewer and further apart. Music seems to serve two purposes. The majority of my listening is unintentional, background listening. Much more rarely am I more engaged in the experience. Only in those latter times do I feel all that attuned to a difference in quality.

CPLX 3y ago
Sure. Now, instead of using an algorithm of music selected by a mass market service that is playing you an endless stream of songs that are proven to have a large audience, try listening to the raw feed of uploaded music to major services. Like the literal feed coming in that is just a firehose of every major label, all the indie releases uploaded via Distrokid or similar, and so on. You'd find it instantly unlistenable. Nobody wants that because it sucks. Most music, even music people have taken very seriously, has almost no appeal to anyone at all.
- tel 3y ago
  So there's a filtering/refinement process. That doesn't immediately seem so unlike other commodities. I buy refined gasoline, for instance.

toast0 3y ago

Fruit is a commodity, but there's many types of fruit. And when you drill down, there's a tons of types of apples or whatever, but they're pretty much commodities. Some are more valuable or desirable than others, but if you want fruit and you can't get what you want, you substitute with something else. Music has a lot more variety than fruit, and some varieties are much more valuable, but still. If you're thinking about a career in music, realistic goals are going to be in education, maybe session musician, live music at entertainment venues (theme parks, cruise ships), maybe symphony; maybe something in support of music like a sound tech at a venue, etc. Being a headlining act is a career, but not a lot of people get to do that. > You could let your playlist run for years, but you don't and nobody else does either because repetition and familiarity and quality are things people care about musically. I mean, I typically listen to a specific internet radio station and it feels like they have let their playlists stagnate, but I still listen to it. So I wouldn't say nobody does. They've been down for the last two days though, currently listening to a local radio station with similar tastes (but they're constantly adding new music to their catalog).

CPLX 3y ago
You're not understanding what commodities are. An apple (or type of apple, to be specific) can be a commodity because I don't care or who which orchard made the apple, and I am completely indifferent to the apples of various orchards when I go to the supermarket. Recorded music isn't like that, at all. I care if the song is Fly Me To The Moon sung by Frank Sinatra or Stairway to Heaven sung by Frank Oz using the voice of Kermit the Frog. Some products are commodities. Some aren't. The word has an actual substantive meaning.
- toast0 3y ago
  > You're not understanding what commodities are. You're not understanding how some people use music. Does the supermarket care who the artist is? Not really. Do I care who the artist is? Not really, I just need dance music to keep part of my mind occupied so I can get into the zone easier; saccharine vocals help too, no substance please.

solarmist 3y ago

It's a commodity in the same way as fashion is. Each piece is unique, and people become attached, but something equivalent would take its place in its absence. I don't know a term for that other than commodity, but sure, it's not the strict definition in economics. Please suggest an alternative word if you know it.

CPLX 3y ago
> It's a commodity in the same way as fashion is. Which is to say, it's not. That's the point. There's no fashion choices in West Texas Crude or Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil. Those are commodities. Each producer of the product produces an indistinguishable result from each other producer. You are producer indifferent. Most of the time you don't even have a way of knowing who produced the commodity you're consuming. Fashion, music, cars, hotels, laptops, and many other things aren't that. You care if it's Chanel, BMW, Hilton, Apple, or Taylor Swift, versus H&M, Honda, Motel 6, HP, or Metallica.
- solarmist 3y ago
  I'm not asking what it's not. I'm asking what it is. If an option were removed, something (not a random substitution, but eventually a substitute would be found) else would take its place and fulfill the same function even though it isn't the same it's close enough to fulfill the purpose.
  - CPLX 3y ago
    That’s called a substitute good. Every good has a substitute good. That doesn’t make it a commodity, words have meanings. The distinction is important. The original thread here posited that music wasn’t a lucrative field because it’s an interchangeable commodity. That’s just flat wrong. It’s the opposite. It’s not lucrative because it’s very highly differentiated and the popularity follows a power law distribution and you’re probably not in the top echelon. But you could be. Which is why people try so hard. That’s an entirely different analysis.
    - 3y ago