3 ms·

> huge amounts of money are spent on maintaining a system that props up superstars. i see no evidence that the profits of the superstardom is spent maintaining

by chii 2y ago

> huge amounts of money are spent on maintaining a system that props up superstars. i see no evidence that the profits of the superstardom is spent maintaining the "system". My point is that if a musician is good, they will earn money proportional to their success. If the argument that it's the promotion that makes them successful, then the argument is less correct today than ever before - the advent of the internet means there's no more strict radio slots etc, which is unavailable to an amateur or starting musician. Even if you reset today's system - for argument's sake, we make everybody forget all previous musicians, and start from scratch - what would happen is that those musicians that are "good", measured in popularity, will garner more and more audience and popularity, leading to what looks like today's system (but just with perhaps a different person). That's why my condition, if you wanted to equally distribute the profits of music making, is to segregate markets into small, non-overlapping segments. You will not be allowed to pay for or listen to music from another market segment. This way, no matter how good or popular a musician is, they only ever earn the maximal of their own (small) market. But i don't see why such a system is good, with the exception that some bad musicians gets to be the big fish in a small pond.

dbspin 2y ago
There is absolutely zero evidence to support your assertion - "My point is that if a musician is good, they will earn money proportional to their success." In fact it's demonstrably wrong. Take any aspect of musical talent, from innovativeness to musicianship, and measure any top 100 chart musician against it. They'll do worse than a typical Berklee or Juliard Grad. Measure technical ability / virtuosity, and essentially no mainstream pop artist will rival the guitarist in one of a hundred thousand unknown speedmetal bands. You're working from the fallacy known as the 'just world' hypothesis rather than reality. We may be at point in post WW2 history where the lines of talent / ability and fame are most divergent in the music space. There absolutely are fantastic musicians with large audiences, but extremely few at the top of the industry. Meanwhile the production line of safe, marketable, utterly conventional pap - from Taylor Swift to K-Pop is operating at maximal efficiency. I don't have a solution to this problem (outside the wholesale destruction of consumer capitalism), but to pretend its not there is ludicrous.
- CuriousSkeptic 2y ago
  Don think you need to destroy all of capitalism. Just abolishing copyright on music would be a surgical strike with pretty good effect I believe.
  - eru 2y ago
    That wouldn't make more people pay for music.
    - CuriousSkeptic 2y ago
      It would not. It is not relevant either. Music is shaped into something you buy by wielders of copyright. Removing copyright as a weapon would leave them powerless to do so, allowing music to once again be some thing you primarily do.
      - eru 2y ago
        That might be true, sure. But it wouldn't get musicians paid. Making music is something people enjoy so much, that many do it for free, and many would do it professionally for very little pay. Predictably, the average musician ain't paid a lot. Even the top, say, 0.1% of best-paid musicians are paid very little compared to eg the top 0.1% of lawyers or surgeons or programmers. (I am not trying to make an argument about whether musicians _should_ get paid nor how much. I'm just following the context of the discussion.)
        CuriousSkeptic 2y ago
        FWIW I agree with you analysis. I am making the argument that that is how it should be and that copyright gets in the way. For context, compare making music with parenting and imagine we had a legal framework allowing parents to extract a royalty from their kids future earnings, further imagine some clever lobbying having made that right transferrable.
        2y ago
pornel 2y ago
Being "good" in music is not universal. There's a certain level of skill required to compose and produce a song, but beyond that the genre/style of the song is more important, and which style is better is very subjective. The best opera singer in the world will not take much business away from a techno DJ who merely presses a "play vocal sample" button, and both genres have their fans. In a system where people listen to songs based on recommendations fitting their individual taste (where the recommender doesn't assume popular is good) you can have people listening to individual songs from the long tail of many artists.
maldusiecle 2y ago
> My point is that if a musician is good, they will earn money proportional to their success. If the argument that it's the promotion that makes them successful, then the argument is less correct today than ever before - the advent of the internet means there's no more strict radio slots etc, which is unavailable to an amateur or starting musician. This is an unimaginative way of looking at things. For one thing, many people do still listen to the radio, where slots are still limited. Those who don't listen to the radio often listen to equivalents of the radio--Spotify or Apple Music playlists that are curated and quite likely involve the same kind of payola issues that the radio had. It's the same structure: musicians reach their audience through a middleman that has an interest in promoting a particular group. Spotify is only a piece of this, you also have album promotion campaigns, brand tie-ins, and so on. (For example, did you know that the artist who plays the Superbowl half-time gets paid a pittance for it?) > Even if you reset today's system - for argument's sake, we make everybody forget all previous musicians, and start from scratch - what would happen is that those musicians that are "good", measured in popularity, will garner more and more audience and popularity, leading to what looks like today's system (but just with perhaps a different person) The whole premise of this is that there's a universal quality of "good" that you can assess for a particular musician. That's nonsense. Some people love Taylor Swift, others can't tolerate her. Some people find a Bartok string quartet sublime, others think it's just noise. There's no universality to appeal to here. At best you can create an average over the population--but that changes from time to time, place to place, demographic to demographic. Popularity involves skill but also luck. That's why there are so many "one hit wonders": musicians who happen to be in the right place at the right time but are never able to repeat it. For every musician with a steady career, there are many of these. > That's why my condition, if you wanted to equally distribute the profits of music making, is to segregate markets into small, non-overlapping segments. You will not be allowed to pay for or listen to music from another market segment. This way, no matter how good or popular a musician is, they only ever earn the maximal of their own (small) market. But i don't see why such a system is good, with the exception that some bad musicians gets to be the big fish in a small pond. This is already the way genres work, with the difference that these segments are voluntarily chosen. There are people who listen to, for instance, modern classical and almost nothing else, or death metal and almost nothing else, etc. I think a good system would be one that works like ours, but with more to cushion artists from the random contingencies of the market. A lot of this already exists--grants given to artists in areas that are deemed culturally valuable, for example. Laws placing minimum prices on music licensing for film, TV, etc. Probably there should be laws forcing Spotify to be more transparent about royalties and promotions as well.

by chii 2y ago

dbspin 2y ago

There is absolutely zero evidence to support your assertion - "My point is that if a musician is good, they will earn money proportional to their success." In fact it's demonstrably wrong. Take any aspect of musical talent, from innovativeness to musicianship, and measure any top 100 chart musician against it. They'll do worse than a typical Berklee or Juliard Grad. Measure technical ability / virtuosity, and essentially no mainstream pop artist will rival the guitarist in one of a hundred thousand unknown speedmetal bands. You're working from the fallacy known as the 'just world' hypothesis rather than reality. We may be at point in post WW2 history where the lines of talent / ability and fame are most divergent in the music space. There absolutely are fantastic musicians with large audiences, but extremely few at the top of the industry. Meanwhile the production line of safe, marketable, utterly conventional pap - from Taylor Swift to K-Pop is operating at maximal efficiency. I don't have a solution to this problem (outside the wholesale destruction of consumer capitalism), but to pretend its not there is ludicrous.

CuriousSkeptic 2y ago
Don think you need to destroy all of capitalism. Just abolishing copyright on music would be a surgical strike with pretty good effect I believe.
- eru 2y ago
  That wouldn't make more people pay for music.
  - CuriousSkeptic 2y ago
    It would not. It is not relevant either. Music is shaped into something you buy by wielders of copyright. Removing copyright as a weapon would leave them powerless to do so, allowing music to once again be some thing you primarily do.
    - eru 2y ago
      That might be true, sure. But it wouldn't get musicians paid. Making music is something people enjoy so much, that many do it for free, and many would do it professionally for very little pay. Predictably, the average musician ain't paid a lot. Even the top, say, 0.1% of best-paid musicians are paid very little compared to eg the top 0.1% of lawyers or surgeons or programmers. (I am not trying to make an argument about whether musicians _should_ get paid nor how much. I'm just following the context of the discussion.)
      - CuriousSkeptic 2y ago
        FWIW I agree with you analysis. I am making the argument that that is how it should be and that copyright gets in the way. For context, compare making music with parenting and imagine we had a legal framework allowing parents to extract a royalty from their kids future earnings, further imagine some clever lobbying having made that right transferrable.
        2y ago

pornel 2y ago

Being "good" in music is not universal. There's a certain level of skill required to compose and produce a song, but beyond that the genre/style of the song is more important, and which style is better is very subjective. The best opera singer in the world will not take much business away from a techno DJ who merely presses a "play vocal sample" button, and both genres have their fans. In a system where people listen to songs based on recommendations fitting their individual taste (where the recommender doesn't assume popular is good) you can have people listening to individual songs from the long tail of many artists.

maldusiecle 2y ago

> My point is that if a musician is good, they will earn money proportional to their success. If the argument that it's the promotion that makes them successful, then the argument is less correct today than ever before - the advent of the internet means there's no more strict radio slots etc, which is unavailable to an amateur or starting musician. This is an unimaginative way of looking at things. For one thing, many people do still listen to the radio, where slots are still limited. Those who don't listen to the radio often listen to equivalents of the radio--Spotify or Apple Music playlists that are curated and quite likely involve the same kind of payola issues that the radio had. It's the same structure: musicians reach their audience through a middleman that has an interest in promoting a particular group. Spotify is only a piece of this, you also have album promotion campaigns, brand tie-ins, and so on. (For example, did you know that the artist who plays the Superbowl half-time gets paid a pittance for it?) > Even if you reset today's system - for argument's sake, we make everybody forget all previous musicians, and start from scratch - what would happen is that those musicians that are "good", measured in popularity, will garner more and more audience and popularity, leading to what looks like today's system (but just with perhaps a different person) The whole premise of this is that there's a universal quality of "good" that you can assess for a particular musician. That's nonsense. Some people love Taylor Swift, others can't tolerate her. Some people find a Bartok string quartet sublime, others think it's just noise. There's no universality to appeal to here. At best you can create an average over the population--but that changes from time to time, place to place, demographic to demographic. Popularity involves skill but also luck. That's why there are so many "one hit wonders": musicians who happen to be in the right place at the right time but are never able to repeat it. For every musician with a steady career, there are many of these. > That's why my condition, if you wanted to equally distribute the profits of music making, is to segregate markets into small, non-overlapping segments. You will not be allowed to pay for or listen to music from another market segment. This way, no matter how good or popular a musician is, they only ever earn the maximal of their own (small) market. But i don't see why such a system is good, with the exception that some bad musicians gets to be the big fish in a small pond. This is already the way genres work, with the difference that these segments are voluntarily chosen. There are people who listen to, for instance, modern classical and almost nothing else, or death metal and almost nothing else, etc. I think a good system would be one that works like ours, but with more to cushion artists from the random contingencies of the market. A lot of this already exists--grants given to artists in areas that are deemed culturally valuable, for example. Laws placing minimum prices on music licensing for film, TV, etc. Probably there should be laws forcing Spotify to be more transparent about royalties and promotions as well.