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> What this means is that it is essentially impossible for all but a glancingly small number of musicians to make meaningful income from their recordings. I'm

• codexb 2y ago
  It's also worth pointing out that, historically, a very small percentage of artists live off the income from recordings or reproductions of their works. This is true for musicians, painters, authors, actors, or any other creative artists. By and large, the only way to make a living as an artist is to continuously produce and perform copious amounts of work, or to have another source of income from a day job.
  • gamepsys 2y ago
    The entire concept of making a living off recordings/reproductions didn't really start until the invention of the printing press which allowed for mass reproductions. Prior to that anyone with enough time on their hands and skills could legally reproduce any text, music, painting, etc for profit. Artist where largely compensated for performances or for original artwork. There was more relative demand for live performances because of the lack of other available entertainment options. Now the primary issue with being a successful artist is the attention economy is incredibly competitive, and the barriers to entry are incredibly low.
    • prmoustache 2y ago
      > and the barriers to entry are incredibly low. Yes and no. Technical barrier to entry is low. It is also relatively easy to do something that your friends will say: wow that sounds great. It is totally another thing to make something good enough that they will play it several times a day on their own. Look at rushes and jams released by amateur musicians: the average quality is super super low. Not super low as being painful to listen, but super low as "sounds unfinished/incomplete/dull, I have no desire to play it again".
  • philwelch 2y ago
    Recorded music was a viable business for maybe a single century. That’s a historical blip. If you wanted to listen to music before the 20th century, your only option was live music, so that’s how musicians made money. In the 21st century this is also how musicians make money. Also, it turns out that even in the 20th century, the real money was still made on tour.
    • Yeul 2y ago
      Yeah in the 1980s the stadium concert tours were invented and people like Madonna, Springsteen and Michael Jackson made tons of money from it.
      • philwelch 2y ago
        Goes back before the 80’s. The Rolling Stones played arenas and stadiums on their 1969 tour and “arena rock” was huge in the 70’s. No disrespect towards the 80’s stars though!
• bongodongobob 2y ago
  You're right. I'm going to get bashed for gatekeeping I'm sure, but Spotify is filled with low quality garbage. Not everyone's band deserves to make it. As a former musician, it's incredibly difficult to make a living and always has been. Most bands/artists just aren't that good. Art is hard. There's a lot of loud people yelling about how they can't sit at home and make passive income by gaming social media and getting paid for releasing a song on Spotify and never performing live. Get out and play. Music is a social thing. If you can't book shows or are unwilling to, too bad. I know this comes off as get off my lawn, but that's just how a performance art works. Only the best make it no matter what you do.
  • javier2 2y ago
    Not to be negative towards my musical friends, but the bands that can make a living today are often putting out incredible art.
  • JKCalhoun 2y ago
    Just one data point here — I think popular, mainstream music has been shit for (looks at watch) three decades now. If the most popular music sucks so bad, I can only conclude that either I am from another planet or pumping huge amounts of cash to promote a label's "artist" actually works.
    • bongodongobob 2y ago
      Well if you choose music that's optimized for the lowest common denominator, you'll have that. It's a poor metric. If you pick "most popular food" it'll end up being Dominos pizza or something, which says nothing about anything.
      • eru 2y ago
        I guess it depends on where you live? Most popular food in eg Singapore is surprisingly good. And the singe most popular fast food in eg Germany is the Döner Kebab from your local Döner place, and that's usually pretty decent. Of course, for food popularity price place a large role. All recorded music has approximately the same price, eg when played on the radio.
• tj-teej 2y ago
  Musicians need to live near each other in order to collaborate. Cities are too expensive for artists to live and the rehearsal spaces are too expensive as well. Maybe the technology is better but you have to consider the macroeconomics as well
  • eru 2y ago
    Cities don't have to be too expensive for artists.
• boxed 2y ago
  > that it's not actually very easy for me to imagine a coherent model for music that would work be equitable for all artists in the world today, given the other changes that've taken place. I know a way: universal basic income. Which is coincidentally how you can also fund open source, and serious science (as opposed to the scam-filled journal/grant system we have today)
  • xwolfi 2y ago
    But how do you allocate more capital to more successful people so that you drive effort towards what people need / enjoy the most ? If there's no incentive to do popular music, then we could all do shitty music ?
    • ornornor 2y ago
      That’s misunderstanding the human spirit in my opinion. Maybe some would coast and be happy with whatever the basic income is, but I suspect many others would strive and do more. If not for survival and the privilege of having food + a roof (like it is now), then mostly for the satisfaction. I don’t subscribe to the theory that giving everyone a basic income would instantly turn everyone into a couch potato. That’s just not how a healthy person thinks/functions. At least not in the long term.
      • stoperaticless 2y ago
        Not over night, but there is long term risk. First, I admit, I believe in certain stereotypes that X people are more hardworking than Y people. (On average) I believe so, because I believe that upbringing has tremendous impact of how an adult lives, commits and achieves things, and different cultures have different styles of life, and consequently guide kids differently. UBI most definitely would not change things over night, but it could (I mean that it’s probable) start the shift towards “couch patato” like end of culture spectrum.
        • immibis 2y ago
          We've 100xed the amount of production per human. Surely we can afford to risk some couch potatoes bringing that down to 80x if it makes everyone happier.
• AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  > I don't think it's just to pretend that if there are 4-5x more people releasing music today, we would all would be spending 4-5x more on records and concerts than we did in 1996. But they also don't have to. In 1996, the primary way for people do buy music involved it being pressed in a factory and then delivered on a truck to a store that had to pay for retail real estate and checkout clerks. The percent of the sale price going to the artist was tiny. Today the distribution cost is you send it over the internet, the cost of which rounds to zero. The dominant cost ought to be the 3% the credit card companies take. And if you give the cost savings to the artists instead of the record companies, they could very easily be getting 4-5x more of every dollar customers spend. The problem is, the record companies would prefer that they get the cost savings from digital distribution, and we need a system that ensures that they don't. There is also the question of what it means to make it. The artist at the top of the charts is making many millions of dollars, but suppose we didn't have a system that props up superstars. Then instead of having a tiny number of artists who make many millions, we would have a thousand times as many artists who make many thousands.
  • chii 2y ago
    > we didn't have a system that props up superstars. such a system does not exist. Superstardom is a natural phenomenon in the industry. Just like sports or really, any mass entertainment. The only way to achieve the "thousands times as many artists making many thousands" is to have separate communities of music markets that do not overlap. I dont think that's feasible on the internet, and i certainly would not support any laws that tries to bring that into effect. There's nothing wrong with a tiny number of extremely famous, extremely successful artists.
    • roenxi 2y ago
      Well, somewhat. A "natural phenomenon" in the sense that the natural economic equilibrium implies that huge amounts of money are spent on maintaining a system that props up superstars. I think Mr Mouse's point was that we should imagine for a moment that the natural order of things was upset and we instead had a system that was a bit more organic in promoting good musicians and the implications that would have. Ie, a counterfactual.
• Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  Thing is, recordings alone are only part of what a musician does. Concerts, merchandise, and special editions of their albums with padding and thus a higher profit margins. If it was only recordings that earned them money they would only work for a few weeks or months a year.
• camillomiller 2y ago
  If we think about the history of music, the period of "getting extremely rich selling records" is a very short window of time.
• burningChrome 2y ago
  >> those are the people the average person knows about, and spends money on—and most other musicians would be broke. My son is a drummer. Has been doing studio work and other stuff but steadfastly has refused to be in a band. On multiple occasions he's said the same thing. Not enough exposure and the insane amount of work you have to do to make even a little bit of money isn't worth it. He says he would prefer to be a studio musician and do production work since its more stable, reliable and actually pays his bills.
• some-guy 2y ago
  My aspirations to become a rock musician peaked right after I graduated high school in the US (2006). It was sort of the beginning of music-streaming being cheap and possible for small artists. I decided to join a local singer-songwriter's band (self-titled) as a lead guitarist and backup singer. It was a huge wake-up call for me who had spent my youth idolizing musicians as to just how much work and hustle everything was. The music was just barely passable as mid-tier singer-songwriter John Mayer wannabe rock, but the hustle the leader had was insane. With all of that work we managed to have 40k MySpace followers (some had to be bots), 100k streams on PureVolume, and a decent number of CD sales, at least to my mind (in the several hundreds). But the barrier was no longer whether or not an artist could get to a studio or a record deal, the barrier now is the noise of the internet.