[coldtea]

>Music has existed for a few thousand years before the idea of selling recordings of it started existing.

As did society, without the idea of e.g. cooked food.

Still, once we get something, we might find it's good for some reasons, and want to keep having it...

[Cederfjard]

And now we have vast libraries of music streaming on demand immediately and everywhere. We might also want to keep that (I personally have been using Spotify for over a decade now, and I still think it's amazing compared to what we had before).

Rather than trying to put the genie back in bottle (which I don't see happening), perhaps musicians and songwriters can focus their attention on the practices of the major labels that enable them to extract a huge amount of the revenue the music industry generates, as well as experiment with new income streams (and you still have merch, donations, sponsorships and touring (admittedly difficult right now), avenues that aren't all as available to artists working in different mediums).

It's easier and cheaper, more accessible than ever before to record, mix and put out quality music. Is it harder to make a living off it? Maybe. Would that be solely due to streaming removing income from album sales? Maybe there's also more competition over listeners' dollars these days. And at the end of the day, as a society is the goal to maximize the number of people who can live off their music, or do we have other competing objectives as well?

[tsimionescu]

Is music better off now than 100 years ago?

Sure, there is a greater variety of music than probably ever in the history of humanity.

On the other hand, I think a much smaller proportion of humanity is participating and creating music than ver before - the rise of recorded music has made folklore music all but obsolete - there is essentially no new folk music being produced, maybe for the first time in history.

Of course, Spotify is still driving in this same direction, and maybe it will be even worse.