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> That's fine, but art has always been a difficult road for a career; the advent of streaming has little to do with this Oh, in the realm of recorded music, it
by PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
> That's fine, but art has always been a difficult road for a career; the advent of streaming has little to do with this
Oh, in the realm of recorded music, it absolutely has a LOT to do with it.
From the early 1950s until the advent of streaming, record labels played an important role as cross-subsidy systems. You might not like Brittney Spears, but the cut of her album sales that went to her record company allowed her label to continue to work with many artists who were barely profitable (if at all).
Streaming (and to a lesser extent, megastars forming their own vertically integrated corporations) has ended that model entirely. If you make "niche genre" music, you're going to be operating without any potential cross-subsidy from more popular music, which translates to either working without a record label at all, or working with a "niche genre" label that helps with marketing but also has extremely low cash flow.
> That's not unlike asking, "Why start a business when you could instead work a 9-5 and probably make more money?"
I see it as a very different question. I'm acknowledging the appeal of pursuing your artistic inclinations, and I think we should encourage as many folks as possible to do that. But I'm also saying "if you think you're going to make a living from this, you're almost certainly mistaken". There are plenty of things people keep doing in their lives without the prospect of making money from it. I'm suggesting that it would be better if more people understood that in 2023, music probably ought to be one of those things, rather than the basis of a dream way of making a living.
It's more like "should you start a business based on your hobby, that almost certainly will not make enough to live on and stands a good chance of destroying your interest in the hobby, or should you accept that it's a side-gig that bring s you joy and occasionally a little bit of extra income?"