[crazygringo]

> It's orders of magnitude easier to make working software than it is to make a hit record.

That's apples-to-oranges. Obviously a "hit" anything is hard in any field, by definition. A hit app is just as hard (even harder, probably, since there are a lot less hit apps than hit songs).

But producing a single track? Seriously, it's not that hard. Yes, it takes a team of people and a lot of creativity and skill, but I don't know what this "incredible sacrifice" or "miracle" that is "more effort than you could ever imagine" is that you're talking about. It's a creative project like any other.

But that's not even the point of the article, which is simply to release tracks piecemeal and regularly rather than in an album only occasionally. There's nothing about everyone working "that much harder".

It sounds like you had a hard time in the biz, and I'm sorry. But I don't have any clue who the "geeks" are who "talk about the industry" that seems to bother you so much, and which doesn't seem to have anything to do with the article. I know a lot of software engineers who are also really into the indie music scene in Brooklyn and I think everyone does understand the work bands put into their music and their touring, and that most of the bands are never going to make it beyond attracting a few dozen or couple hundred audience members at any show, but they do it because they love it.

[philmcc]

Not touching the whole heft of the argument, I would like to point out that the original poster didn't compare the difficulty of writing a hit song to a "hit app", he compared a creating a hit song with creating working software.

I can co-sign on this part of his premise. I worked for a music producer who has a number of #1 hits (Beyonce, Fergie, John Legend etc). He wrote >1 songs per day almost every day for over a decade.

His success ratio (hit vs placement vs nothing) was much lower than any mediocre software engineer trying to make working software over the same period of time.

It feels safe to say that in a 365 day period, a software developer can reasonably expect significantly more than one of those days to be used in 'working software' right?

[crazygringo]

But working software doesn't mean commercially successful software. It just means it runs and does something.

"Working software" would be comparable to "listenable music". I'm sure every song that producer wrote daily was listenable.

But even if you mean "working software" as something that goes up on the app charts, top 100 in a popular category? I mean, then no -- I could easily see a developer spend an entire year building 1, 10, or even 100 apps and have none of them gain any traction at all.

[philmcc]

Sorry for the late response, I just mean to suggest that it's pretty clear to me that your average software developer reaps the benefits of his work, day to day, on a higher percentage than your average producer.

There are 4.4 million software engineers in the United States. I would imagine most of the work that is generated by them on a day to day basis moves the needle of their careers forward. I could be wrong, but I bet most of them are employed, and getting paid for it.

At the very least I bet that more than half of them get paid for more than 5% of their workdays, right?

I doubt the same can be said for music producers, at least the ones making hits that the OP was referring to.

[olivejun]

The average income indifference between artists and software developers, and how many of those who make up those communities are able to find any sense of financial stability, are vastly different, so even under your logic that a “hit” is a “hit” no matter the industry, is still really misinformed and I’m sure we are all out here just doing what we are doing for the “love of it”.

Speaking as a producer and developer, they are not the same things in any way and I love doing what I do deeply, thank you very much.

[korla]

You're still off quite a ways in your analogy. I get paid to develop software that someone else owns and brands and makes all decisions for. For nothing more than money. It's nothing like my passion projects, which I do not get paid for at all. Most of the time. Maybe 1 in a 1000 that I will get paid for them in any meaningful way.

[platz]

This whole analogy between working software and music production is flawed from the start and elaboration on the theme does not help.

What's needed is to discuss artists compensation on their own terms.

Don't distort it by relating it to software development.

[TheSpiceIsLife]

This tendency to hyper-analogise everything oh so sinks my boat.

I can’t think of even one example of the use of analogy that has helped me understand a subject better than if it were discussed and explained on its own terms.

It seems all analogies do is enable the analogiser to delude themselves in to thinking similar is equal to same.

[aaanotherhnfolk]

Analogies may be less about equivalency and more to do with bridging ideas. They can help the analogiser draw someone closer in thought, like a shout in the dark to help your friend find you

[beachy]

Think of analogies as being like the windscreen wipers on a car. They help you see things more clearly.

[NicoJuicy]

But working/usable software takes months ( eg. Billing, authentication, DevOps, ... )

Profitability at least a year except if you can fall back to an existing social network/dev infrastructure, which is also based on a lot of work.

Eg. Only getting a decent ranking in Google could take months.

I'm not sure if it's that easy to compare.

[fludlight]

Can you ELI5 what a music producer does? Was he also a writer or is writing part of producing? What is placement?

[hashkb]

Everything from composing and performing the entire song, to contributing a couple of claps during the outtro. It's a very loose term.

[tchaffee]

So hard to put into words because the role is so varied but thinking of them as an artistic coach or mentor to the band while recording is perhaps accurate enough. Often hated or loved by the band and or fans of the band for the direction they push the music and the overall sound of the music.

[puranjay]

As a part-time musician, even a single track can take tens of hours of effort - depending on the genre and the track.

Sure, you could strum a guitar and sing and have a decent song wrapped up in an afternoon.

But if you're creating anything more complex, you will spend hours finding the right sound, more hours creating the right arrangement, and even more hours fine-tuning the vocals, sounds, and final mix.

Something as simple as getting a snare drum right can take a ton of time. You don't hear it because you don't know what the bad snare sounds like.

[thebean11]

I agree, but 10s of hours of effort isn't anywhere near "more than I can imagine" as the OP said. I don't think anyone here is claiming it's easy

[puranjay]

Again, it all depends on what kind of music you're trying to make. If you're copying an existing style, it's not particularly hard. I can make a Drake-like beat in an afternoon - a quick search on Splice will even show me the exact drum sounds to use.

But if you're creating your own sound? That takes effort and experimentation.

Creating a song - easy. Creating music that's distinctively your own - tons and tons of effort.

[dijksterhuis]

+ 10 years crafting a unique sound.

[badfrog]

Tons of amazing music with totally new sounds comes from people 16-20 years old. For the right person, it doesn't take a decade.

[dijksterhuis]

So these people just woke up one day and knew exactly how to make music?

[tomc1985]

And I bet they started at 10 or 12. I know I did.

Also, "tons" is amazingly overstated. Very few of those 16 year olds are producing "good" music that appeals beyond their immediate demographic, and that's to say nothing of how low of standards many youth demographics have.

[eslaught]

It probably took me about 10 years to get good at programming. Sure, I could create programs pretty quickly---but making something like [1] is another matter altogether.

[1]: http://regent-lang.org/

[dijksterhuis]

But I'm guessing you were paid for programming during those 10 years.

[eslaught]

I guess it depends on how you count, but not really, at least not for the first 6 years or so. The first two-ish were high school, the next four were college, and the next six were in graduate school (so on a grad student's salary). After that I got a "real" job.

For what it's worth, I do other artistic pursuits as well. I did music for about 15 years though I wouldn't say I was ever good. I've been writing for about 10 years. I would say I'm just now barely at the point where I think I can write half-way decently.

To be clear, I am very aware, and very grateful that one of the things I happen to like doing also pays well. I was responding more to the "you can't imagine the level of effort required to do this work" aspect of the ancestors' comments. Yes, I can imagine, thank you very much. While I don't like where we're going with funding models for art, that doesn't mean that understanding the effort is the limiting factor.

[icebraining]

You think most developers learn programming from scratch at a job?

[matwood]

Artistic endeavors always take me a long time, but then I read about people like Kanye who puts down a hit track in 20 minutes (he’s apparently known for working this way). You may not line rap or him, but he has a knack for hit beats.

https://www.okayplayer.com/news/heres-the-story-behind-kanye...

[rrrrrrrrrrrryan]

This is probably similar to the apocryphal story about Picasso:

A woman who approached Picasso in a restaurant, asked him to scribble something on a napkin, and said she would be happy to pay whatever he felt it was worth. Picasso complied and then said, “That will be $10,000.”

“But you did that in thirty seconds,” the astonished woman replied.

“No,” Picasso said. “It has taken me forty years to do that.”

[matwood]

Yeah. Many don’t realize he was making beats for well known rappers before the general public knew who Kanye was. I still think his best talent is as a beat creator/producer.

[theodric]

RIP cohesive bodies of work or concept albums in your new publish-or-perish hellworld

[bleah1000]

But if you put out a concept album, do you expect it to pay your bills for three or four years? I don't think that's a reasonable expectation. If you want to make a living off music, then you might need to put out more music, or do other things like playing in a cover band or being a studio musician.

Compare it to actors/actresses who do hollywood movies, but also do indie films. If you want to make a living, you might not be able to do whatever it is you want, and might need to put out some more mainstream stuff.

Only a few people really get to do what they want in the arts and make a living.

[mark-r]

That was already gone when people stopped listening to music a CD at a time.

[ekianjo]

Wasn't that also the doom scenario that was forecast when iTunes launched?

[pietrovismara]

Have you ever composed music that others have liked? I strongly doubt so, otherwise you would refrain from comparing developing a hit app to a hit song, to save yourself the shame of looking like a fool. apple-to-oranges, as you said.

[quonn]

Last year the founder of Shazam told his story at a conference. That‘s a hit app. The effort that went into it is mind boggling. Far more than ever could possibly go into a single hit song.

[pietrovismara]

I'm not talking about complexity but about the creative process, which is totally different. You can't apply SCRUM to the composition of a song. You can't set a deadline to it. You can't hire a junior musician and have him write parts for you. It is a much less rational and plannable process than software dev. Hence apple-to-oranges.

[harikb]

A good way to draw that line would be “what level of success is required to make a decent living, house, and typical luxuries of life” compared to your peers. For a software developer, this is not as hard as making a “hit”. A regular 9-5 job at any one of a thousand companies is enough. I don’t think that is the case for music industry though.

[sixothree]

It sounds to me like you're making his point. You offered no insight into the process of creating music whatsoever.

[laughinghan]

What is the relevance of offering insight into the process of creating music?

With or without insight, it's obviously apples-to-oranges to compare "working software" to a "hit record".

Most "working software" is rarely used and makes no money, look at the long tail of apps in the iOS App Store, Google Play Store, etc that didn't become hits.

[manigandham]

It's comparing effort to get to the same monetization.

Software is easier to create, doesn't need to be a hit to be used, and you can be paid to write it and to sell it.

Music requires much more creative work, the production is often unpaid, and the work product usually doesn't make much unless it's a hit with millions of plays.

[DaniloDias]

What instrument do you play?

[tomphoolery]

I find that in software, it's much easier to anticipate change. Companies are more open about their future plans and long-term goals. For example, GitHub just publicized their roadmap. This entire website is predicated on the fact that people like to share their latest ideas, inventions, and solutions to problems that everyone faces.

I've never seen Universal Music post their "roadmap" of how they plan to sign new artists, or what new social media marketing ideas they might have up their sleeve. This is because the music industry is, by far, more competitive than the tech industry. Record labels, publishing groups, etc. are not very willing to share their "trade secrets". If the tech industry was like the music industry, there would be absolutely no such thing as open source.

Also...

> I don't know what this "incredible sacrifice" or "miracle" that is "more effort than you could ever imagine" is that you're talking about. It's a creative project like any other.

Your second sentence answers the question in the first sentence. :)

[cosmodisk]

Well,in a way, software industry is very similar: "Aaaa, Britney!!Oh, wait, who's that?Lady Gaga!!!" and then "Java is cool...I mean JavaScript..No,no,I mean Golang... Did I say Rust?"