[rlonn]

>The volume of people making money, and the amount of money made by people doing artistic endeavors on the internet, when compared to decades past is troublingly lower.

Would love to see some actual numbers here. My guess would've been that more people are making in aggregate more money off artistic endeavors on the internet, than in past decades. Look at the music industry, whose total value peaked and started falling, but is now back and has exceeded earlier peak, due to internet streaming. Diversity, meanwhile, seem bigger than ever. In the 80's you had a few mega stars raking in all the money whileas now there are millions of small producers each making small amounts. I don't buy this "troubled times" theory. The only trouble is the fact that a lot of former producers are getting replaced, but this is encouraging because if we're in the middle of a shift and the total market isn't shrinking it probably means there is more growth ahead.

[vinceguidry]

My understanding always was that the music industry even in it's heyday only ever allowed a very small number of extremely popular artists to make a real living, everybody else made mostly nothing. The share of wealth extracted by creatives seems to me to be going up while the share extracted by gate keepers is going down.

This can remain true even if the absolute size of the economy is still rising, so it can look like the rich are getting richer while the poor are also getting richer. Inequality is still rising, but the tide is lifting all boats.

[microtherion]

> Look at the music industry, whose total value peaked and started falling, but is now back and has exceeded earlier peak

Would you mind citing your data for this? What I've seen suggests the opposite:

https://www.ifpi.org/news/IFPI-GLOBAL-MUSIC-REPORT-2018

"Despite the recent uplift, revenues for 2017 are still only 68.4% of the market's peak in 1999."

And as far as I can tell, that 68.4% is based on nominal revenue. Inflation adjusted it works out to 2017 revenues being less than 47% of 1999 revenues, if I calculated correctly.

[Nullabillity]

IFPI represents record labels, not musicians.

[Meph504]

I agree my statements should be backed with some solid stats, I'm traveling for holidays and on my mobile so, I won't be able to provide this, my apologies, if you wish to disregard I understand.

But if we are going to compare or discuss this, I don't think the music industry is a fair place to start, as stated that was always a pretty crappy and controlled sector for individuals. With that said, from what I have read streaming as a whole hasn't provided better opportunities to individuals either, but again admittedly I can't cite sources to back up this claim.

But I think if you look at journalism, photography, marketing and advertisement, etc. These have all gone from careers to gigs, none of which provide for a long term path for securing a future.

When you calculate the tradition benefits (medical, dental, vision, retirement) as compensation it's a pretty obvious that the gig economy cost workers a lot, Including the peace of mind of knowing you'll have a career that will be a viable path to retirement.

I like many of us, are pretty isolated from these problems in tech because of demand, but I imagine 30 years ago, a senior writer at sports illustrated did to.

If you aren't concerned from a high level, look at where the money in our economy is going, it's moving away from individuals and into corporate profits, all while corporations are removing long term responsibilities to their workers.

And example of that would be, that almost no one has an active pension system any longer.

This is basically the core thoughts behind my troubled times response.