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There used to be much more tension between creating culture (art, music, etc.) and making money from it. I think that tension has pretty much evaporated.

jhbadger 1y ago
I don't think there was ever really such a tension in terms of making money from art, but rather how. The idea of "selling out" was that, say, selling the rights to your songs to advertisers was viewed as crass. That I agree has pretty much evaporated -- nobody calls musicians who allow their songs to be used in ads "sellouts" anymore.
chemotaxis 1y ago
For whom - for Taylor Swift? The average artist experience is pretty miserable: it's harder than ever to break through because there is more competition - two or three generations who looked up to rock and pop stars and imagined that this could be a viable career. One in a thousand talented artists will get lucky, but I suspect the ratio is historically low. Everyone else more or less needs to find another job. There are other things that probably push artists toward the cultural mean. You're no longer trying to cater to the tastes of a wealthy patron or even a record studio executive. Now, you gotta get enough clicks on YouTube first. The surest way to do this is to look nice and do some unoffensive covers of well-known pop songs.
- margalabargala 1y ago
  The tension the parent referred to is the concept of "selling out" as a bad thing. Your comment supports this. While you may talk about how it's harder to "break through" or "get lucky" than it was, it presents both of those as good things. There used to be other measures of success for musicians other than financial.
moritzwarhier 1y ago
There is a term for this, at least some people used to use it, I think it would appear as tied to certain kind of "ideology" to most though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_industry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_industry I also guess it is just a wordy description of the combination of commercial entertainment and industrialization. I like your point, although I feel that in some contexts, it was probably _easier_ for people to create something they feel is valuable as art and also can earn them money, a few decades ago. I don't think the tension has evaporated, it's just the difference between "art" and "entertainment". Sure, you can always say that entertainment is art. No matter if you're Christopher Nolan or a street musician who knows what to play to get some money. The tension is still there, there's just a mass-scale production of commercial art that hasn't been there before. But I'd say that probably, with these products that have giant budgets and are feeding thousands of people, there are just a few people involved who consider themselves artists in a sense that isn't the same in that a baker or sewer is also an artist. No coincidence we're discussing this in a forum that has software development as a main subject. Christopher Nolan's movies are "art" the same way Microsofts UI design is art, IMHO. I didn't bring Nolan into this in order to be smug about him, his work just feels like it symbolizes this kind of industrial cultural production well, especially because many people might consider him a top-notch _artist_.
- gsf_emergency_4 1y ago
  How about Hans Zimmer and the gen-Z Swedish musician Nolan went with for Oppenheimer? Not dissonant enough? I'm more curious if the periphery has declined in coherence thanks to "autocuration" as by TikTok & YouTube. (creators of GangnamStyle or BabyShark have industrial funding to outdo themselves on their preferred axes just like Nolan but..?) Opposite, less quantitative take: https://contraptions.venkateshrao.com/p/the-new-systems-of-survival https://contraptions.venkateshrao.com/p/the-new-systems-of-s... (author sorta argued that we're deep in the Perma_weirdo_cene) It's easy on HN where "votes have won".. evenso I've given up and have resorted to reviewing what 1-pointers PaulHoule and his machine deign coherent enough to respond to
  - cindyllm 1y ago
    [dead]
  - moritzwarhier 1y ago
    I just wanted to give an example for mass culture that some people consider "artsy", not dive too deep into some kind of taste discussion. :)

jhbadger 1y ago

I don't think there was ever really such a tension in terms of making money from art, but rather how. The idea of "selling out" was that, say, selling the rights to your songs to advertisers was viewed as crass. That I agree has pretty much evaporated -- nobody calls musicians who allow their songs to be used in ads "sellouts" anymore.

chemotaxis 1y ago

For whom - for Taylor Swift? The average artist experience is pretty miserable: it's harder than ever to break through because there is more competition - two or three generations who looked up to rock and pop stars and imagined that this could be a viable career. One in a thousand talented artists will get lucky, but I suspect the ratio is historically low. Everyone else more or less needs to find another job. There are other things that probably push artists toward the cultural mean. You're no longer trying to cater to the tastes of a wealthy patron or even a record studio executive. Now, you gotta get enough clicks on YouTube first. The surest way to do this is to look nice and do some unoffensive covers of well-known pop songs.

margalabargala 1y ago
The tension the parent referred to is the concept of "selling out" as a bad thing. Your comment supports this. While you may talk about how it's harder to "break through" or "get lucky" than it was, it presents both of those as good things. There used to be other measures of success for musicians other than financial.

moritzwarhier 1y ago

There is a term for this, at least some people used to use it, I think it would appear as tied to certain kind of "ideology" to most though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_industry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_industry I also guess it is just a wordy description of the combination of commercial entertainment and industrialization. I like your point, although I feel that in some contexts, it was probably _easier_ for people to create something they feel is valuable as art and also can earn them money, a few decades ago. I don't think the tension has evaporated, it's just the difference between "art" and "entertainment". Sure, you can always say that entertainment is art. No matter if you're Christopher Nolan or a street musician who knows what to play to get some money. The tension is still there, there's just a mass-scale production of commercial art that hasn't been there before. But I'd say that probably, with these products that have giant budgets and are feeding thousands of people, there are just a few people involved who consider themselves artists in a sense that isn't the same in that a baker or sewer is also an artist. No coincidence we're discussing this in a forum that has software development as a main subject. Christopher Nolan's movies are "art" the same way Microsofts UI design is art, IMHO. I didn't bring Nolan into this in order to be smug about him, his work just feels like it symbolizes this kind of industrial cultural production well, especially because many people might consider him a top-notch _artist_.

gsf_emergency_4 1y ago
How about Hans Zimmer and the gen-Z Swedish musician Nolan went with for Oppenheimer? Not dissonant enough? I'm more curious if the periphery has declined in coherence thanks to "autocuration" as by TikTok & YouTube. (creators of GangnamStyle or BabyShark have industrial funding to outdo themselves on their preferred axes just like Nolan but..?) Opposite, less quantitative take: https://contraptions.venkateshrao.com/p/the-new-systems-of-survival https://contraptions.venkateshrao.com/p/the-new-systems-of-s... (author sorta argued that we're deep in the Perma_weirdo_cene) It's easy on HN where "votes have won".. evenso I've given up and have resorted to reviewing what 1-pointers PaulHoule and his machine deign coherent enough to respond to
- cindyllm 1y ago
  [dead]
- moritzwarhier 1y ago
  I just wanted to give an example for mass culture that some people consider "artsy", not dive too deep into some kind of taste discussion. :)