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> I wonder if "The Orchestra that draws no salary" was as controversial at the time as "Artisans won't complain about work-life balance" is today. Yes, it was.

> I wonder if "The Orchestra that draws no salary" was as controversial at the time as "Artisans won't complain about work-life balance" is today. Yes, it was. Here's the view from Local 802, American Federation of Musicians. Nowhere else in this mechanical age does the workman create the machine which destroys him, but that’s what happens to the musician when he plays for a recording. The iceman didn’t create the refrigerator. The coachman didn’t build the automobile. But the musician plays his music into a recorder and a short time later the radio station manager comes around and says, “Sorry, Joe, we’ve got all your stuff on records, so we don’t need you anymore.” And Joe’s out of a job.[1] This finally came to a head in an 800-day strike. The outcome was that performers started getting royalties from recordings. An unexpected side effect was the end of the big band era and the rise of the pop star. [1] https://www.local802afm.org/allegro/articles/the-silence-was-deafening/ https://www.local802afm.org/allegro/articles/the-silence-was...

diggan 2y ago
Thanks a lot for digging this up, the outcome of introducing royalties is very interesting.
gorjusborg 2y ago
> I wonder if "The Orchestra that draws no salary" was as controversial at the time as "Artisans won't complain about work-life balance" is today. I'm not sure about controversy, but I do think they will look similarly silly in retrospect. Early vendors of new technology tend to over-promise and under-deliver. They sort of have to, as they are creating a new market. People need to be moved in order to be convinced they need it. The technology (if there is real merit to it) usually evolves over time based on who pays for it, which helps separate the actual uses from imagined ones. I do not think today's AI will replace everything, it's unclear where it will be used and where it wont. Just keep doing what you are doing. The salesmen are just doing their thing. As for whether musicians specifically will be impacted, sure, some will. Good musicians, the ones who channel and share their feelings with listeners will always (well, until AI has something resembling real emotion) have work. Today's AI does not have emotion, and I expect people will know the difference. I'm sure the music industry will go wild trying, but people will always create music for themselves, and real emotion will resonate far further than 'art' created via a prompt.
jancsika 2y ago
> An unexpected side effect was the end of the big band era An unexpected side effect was to contribute to the shift away from big bands dominating the musical scene, during/after a world war and changing tastes in music and music-making. In other words, the strike hastened a trend. And keep in mind that the troops themselves had access to the newest jazz recordings, as mentioned earlier in the same article you're citing: "As the strike progressed, limited recordings (called Victory Discs, or V-Discs) could be made solely for servicemen, as long as they weren’t distributed commercially." IIRC, some of those V-Discs featured early bebop performers. Like bop, big band in general had already been getting faster-- often not even dance-able-- and more dissonant-- to the point of becoming avant-garde. By the end of the decade, in 1949, you already had Miles Davis' Boplicity and Israel, and those trends were never going to sustain a popular music industry, especially with the advent of television (where, according to the article you cited, Petrillo negotiated again for musicians' royalties). In any case, Petrillo apparently had balls of steel. Everyone on HN should read that article, if only to get an idea of the work it would take to get remunerated fairly when a cluster of GPUs can be trained to do all your future work.
- Animats 2y ago
  The entire set of V-Disks was preserved by the Library of Congress, and the Internet Archive has them all on line.[1] As publications of the U.S. Government, they are not copyrighted. Many are military-oriented. "Officer of the Day March", "It's a Long Way to Tipperary". Some big names, mixed in with the military bands, often with messages to the troops. Some good jazz. It's specialty content for the troops. [1] https://archive.org/details/V-discs1-991943-1944/ https://archive.org/details/V-discs1-991943-1944/

diggan 2y ago

Thanks a lot for digging this up, the outcome of introducing royalties is very interesting.

gorjusborg 2y ago

> I wonder if "The Orchestra that draws no salary" was as controversial at the time as "Artisans won't complain about work-life balance" is today. I'm not sure about controversy, but I do think they will look similarly silly in retrospect. Early vendors of new technology tend to over-promise and under-deliver. They sort of have to, as they are creating a new market. People need to be moved in order to be convinced they need it. The technology (if there is real merit to it) usually evolves over time based on who pays for it, which helps separate the actual uses from imagined ones. I do not think today's AI will replace everything, it's unclear where it will be used and where it wont. Just keep doing what you are doing. The salesmen are just doing their thing. As for whether musicians specifically will be impacted, sure, some will. Good musicians, the ones who channel and share their feelings with listeners will always (well, until AI has something resembling real emotion) have work. Today's AI does not have emotion, and I expect people will know the difference. I'm sure the music industry will go wild trying, but people will always create music for themselves, and real emotion will resonate far further than 'art' created via a prompt.

jancsika 2y ago

> An unexpected side effect was the end of the big band era An unexpected side effect was to contribute to the shift away from big bands dominating the musical scene, during/after a world war and changing tastes in music and music-making. In other words, the strike hastened a trend. And keep in mind that the troops themselves had access to the newest jazz recordings, as mentioned earlier in the same article you're citing: "As the strike progressed, limited recordings (called Victory Discs, or V-Discs) could be made solely for servicemen, as long as they weren’t distributed commercially." IIRC, some of those V-Discs featured early bebop performers. Like bop, big band in general had already been getting faster-- often not even dance-able-- and more dissonant-- to the point of becoming avant-garde. By the end of the decade, in 1949, you already had Miles Davis' Boplicity and Israel, and those trends were never going to sustain a popular music industry, especially with the advent of television (where, according to the article you cited, Petrillo negotiated again for musicians' royalties). In any case, Petrillo apparently had balls of steel. Everyone on HN should read that article, if only to get an idea of the work it would take to get remunerated fairly when a cluster of GPUs can be trained to do all your future work.

Animats 2y ago
The entire set of V-Disks was preserved by the Library of Congress, and the Internet Archive has them all on line.[1] As publications of the U.S. Government, they are not copyrighted. Many are military-oriented. "Officer of the Day March", "It's a Long Way to Tipperary". Some big names, mixed in with the military bands, often with messages to the troops. Some good jazz. It's specialty content for the troops. [1] https://archive.org/details/V-discs1-991943-1944/ https://archive.org/details/V-discs1-991943-1944/