3 ms·

Oh no, not free and unlimited access to art! Anything but that!

• tux3 3y ago
  Think of the middlemen and distributors, they need to get paid, otherwise who will be making the music?
  • redwall_hp 3y ago
    I like how they've even managed to shove the middleman bullshit into digital distribution, where there's practically no way to even justify it. You can't just upload music to Spotify or Apple Music or whatever as an independent artist. You need to pay rent to a distributor who is allowed to interact with the streaming service. (Some of them offer the convenient feature of administering royalties for cover songs, but it's an additional cost and not a given...) Most will probably never make enough royalties to cover the fees. Then you have the whole growing SubmitHub thing. (Pay for consideration on playlists to get exposure.)
    • IndySun 3y ago
      Who are 'they'?
    • sethhochberg 3y ago
      I do wonder how much the influence of the distributors has helped the streaming music world avoid the problems of the streaming movie/TV providers, where content rights are usually exclusive and it’s almost impossible to be an indie service The blessing of the way the music side is set up is that if you want to be an indie streaming music company, you can, you just need to contract with a critical mass of the big distribution houses and royalty reporting agencies and you’ll be able to play pretty much anything your customers might want to hear. If that didn’t exist, nobody would bother uploading their music to anyone but the giant incumbents like Spotify and Apple
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    • nucleardog 3y ago
      Worked with a company that did stuff like that for a while. My view on it (take it for what you will) is those companies exist mainly as a way for the streaming platforms to outsource and scale their quality control/checks. The expectation from platforms like Spotify was basically that anything we sent over can go up without further review and that it added value to the platform, didn’t violate copyright law, was appropriately encoded, etc. If we let anything they rejected or later found issues with through, our status as a distributor was at risk. I expect if Spotify had to staff and scale to deal with the garbage our users were trying, they would end up charging enough extra that you’d pay the same anyway. Basing that mostly on the fact that we weren’t really making much money.
    • theoriginaldog 3y ago
      huh? A friend of mine is an independent musician and he uploads his song on the platforms directly without a middleman, at least on spotify.
      • extraduder_ire 3y ago
        One or two years ago, they started requiring you to be a label or something to start uploading. Before that, individuals could join and start publishing their own music, and I assume everyone already in was grandfathered.
  • lakomen 3y ago
    Surely not those now dead people
    • ponderings 3y ago
      My theory is that nature implemented a timely death so that one can stop bothering the following generations.
  • 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
    This is the bogus argument made by so-called "tech" companies profiting from user-generated content. The so-called "tech" company middleman needs to get paid, otherwise so-called "creators" will not produce works nor share them.
    • ponderings 3y ago
      I'd say lets run the experiment in production. "Stop" the music! We could have the year "without" music then do more similar experiments. On the other end of the spectrum we could charge royalties on the sales of instruments and require musicians and listeners to buy a license. We would have so much more music that way! No one would listen to it but it would be there behind the great paywall!
• IndySun 3y ago
  Is this 'Art access' you refer to something you make also? Or are you only referring to 'Art' other people make? The distinction is critical.
  • margalabargala 3y ago
    It of course includes all of the art I make myself, which I make available for free to all under either permissive or copyleft licenses.
    • IndySun 3y ago
      Interesting. Do you believe, your applaudable position, should be enforced on anyone doing anything, or just anyone creating 'art'? Seems odd to weaken a musicians chances of making a living (not majors, individuals - copyright laws are odious). The position implies a 'living' will not be permitted by means of creativity. Is that the intention?
      • pessimizer 3y ago
        > The position implies a 'living' will not be permitted by means of creativity. You're begging the question, here. Also, you know that there exist people who distribute creative works for free, and make money by donations, sponsorships, patronage, and grants. Therefore you know that the statement as you have made it is false, and that you should be looking for a weaker one. edit: I don't know how somebody goes from "weaken the chances" to "not be permitted" in subsequent sentences, and in addition tries to derive "not be permitted" from "weaken the chances" through the weasel word "imply," and still feels like they're engaging in good faith argument. If you're confident, you don't need to make up a position for your opponent, and your position is not as weak as you're making it look.
        • IndySun 3y ago
          I am not or have not or do not advocate 'one way or my way', at any point, anywhere in any post, but simply to remind people just be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.