[donkeyd]

> It's unfortunate that internet people have been falsely conditioned to believe the people who create the media we consume shouldn't be paid.

I don't think this is true at all. Nobody thinks musicians shouldn't be paid, but until Spotify everyone was downloading music.

> Oh, but you will gladly pay for quality, ad-free content, you say?

I would definitely pay. I just don't want to pay for every single article I read by having going through a signup flow. Usually I can't even pay for a single article because you need to get a subscription.

I would easily pay €10+ a month for a place where I can read all the articles I want from all the publishers I'm interested in. However, like in the video business, this doesn't seem feasible. So you end up with multiple subscriptions just to get the 1 piece of content a month that you want to consume from either of them.

[SomeOldThrow]

> I don't think this is true at all. Nobody thinks musicians shouldn't be paid, but until Spotify everyone was downloading music.

Spotify is hardly an example of successful funding for artists, though. They’re just as exploitative if not more so than the industry was before.

[paulcole]

> Nobody thinks musicians shouldn't be paid, but until Spotify everyone was downloading music.

This is even worse IMO. People think musicians deserve to be paid but still manage to rationalize taking from them without paying instead.

[wasdfff]

Nothing wrong with buying merch and concert tickets while pirating the discography. Fuck the record label.

[paulcole]

Yeah there is. Taking something you shouldn't is by almost any definition wrong. Except when it comes to music and movies apparently.

[SomeOldThrow]

Grandpa’s property rights have no weight in the digital era. If you’re going to make something free to copy the last thing you should do is get mad when people copy it. What’s the point? Just charge people to watch.