[readymade]

There's such a pervasive notion, especially among techies and other white collar types, that artists and musicians either don't deserve a good living or should be happy just to get to do what they do, regardless of income. It's a tremendous sense of entitlement on the one hand, to express contempt for the individual while expecting unlimited access to their work. I believe Astra Taylor made an interesting point about how this idea of the artist as the mandatorily broke but (ideally) self-fulfilled creator is also increasingly extended as a metaphor in recent business press when discussing the plight of graduates, interns and freelancers.

[gnaritas]

> that artists and musicians either don't deserve a good living or should be happy just to get to do what they do

They don't; that's simply a fact, no one is owed or deserves a living, you have to work for it like everyone else. If there is demand for what you do, monetize it, if you can't, then pick another career because the market has spoken. You can't mandate that X career deserves to be paid, the market does that naturally via demand.

> It's a tremendous sense of entitlement on the one hand, to express contempt for the individual while expecting unlimited access to their work.

Stating facts about their lack of being entitled to anything isn't expressing contempt. If they don't want people accessing their work, they don't have to publish it, but expecting perpetual payment anytime anyone looks at what you put out is absurd; intellectual property is a flawed notion that only worked well when distribution was a challenge. With virtually free distribution, you cannot prevent information being free, i.e. copying, and thus you cannot rely on making money from distribution; you better learn how to make money performing live, as has been done historically.

[readymade]

It's funny how tech companies are making money from the distribution of this supposedly valueless content that the market supposedly has no demand for.

[gnaritas]

Tech companies tend to sell services, which have value, and can be removed from those who don't want to pay. Websites are services.

[Kalium]

Perhaps the value is in the distribution, rather than the content.

[Kalium]

I think you may have missed the core of the notion. It's not about who "deserves" what at all. It's about providing value. Techies and other white collar types generally provide value by doing bespoke work. Demanding payment to copy non-custom bits because they have a certain color is not providing value in any readily apparent way.

What you've also missed is how sick and tired techies are of artists and musicians seeking to "deserve a good living" by controlling techies. To express contempt for our work while expecting unlimited cringing subservience.

Why is it that so-called "artists" are so quick to demand creative control over the work of others who work in different mediums? I have a few guesses.

[readymade]

Not at all. Rather, it's that your heuristic of "providing value" breaks down spectacularly in the face of even the most casual observations of consumer demand. Whether value is provided by copying bits is arguable, that artists add value to society is not even worth debating. Producing an album is bespoke labor as well, just work that, as such, typically goes uncompensated. And to the extent that these are merely symptoms of a market in flux, as opposed to the stratifications of a class system, it undermines that analysis to make the tired assertion that poverty wages are the price one pays for "following one's passion" (albeit very specific passions).

In any event, I suspect that you don't know many "so-called artists". May you have a long and prosperous career, and retire young before the market value for your passions is reduced to zero.

[Kalium]

Artists, as a group, unquestionably add value to a society. Whether or not a given individual artist adds sufficient value to society to justify them "deserving a good living" is a very different question. A question that is not to blithely glossed over with vague assertions about sizable classes of people.

An album in which an artist has key creative control is not bespoke labor. It's self-expression, a very different form of work. Software engineers generally perform bespoke, custom, specified labor for others who control what that labor looks like and produces. For this, said engineers are compensated for their time and labor. Said engineers do not generally expect to own the result, just as a portrait artist does not expect to own the commissioned piece.

May you have a long and prosperous career in which you fit your business model to the times in which you live. With luck, you'll even manage what the rest of us have - a way to profit from your passions.