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by falcolas 1918 days ago
> Patrons. Sell merch. Sell tickets. Super chats.

None of those scale. I pointed this out elsewhere, but how much money would a creator on Patreon make if all creators were on Patreon, hoping to make at least $1 per month per follower? Musicians alone would push me into the hundreds of dollars (which really means a vast majority of musicians would make nothing from me; less than they're getting via Spotify).

How much are you willing to pay for tickets to the 20th tour in a week that's in your area? For their merch? As for myself, precious little. Probably not enough to even cover their tour costs, let alone the cost of producing the music (and merch) in the first place.

> Patents and copyrights are literally ideas put on paper that one is claiming legal dominion over.

Patents and copyrights make it practical to cover the costs of realizing those ideas in the first place. Ideas aren't worth anything until they're realized, be it in writing for a book, or a performance for a song.

Books often take a minimum of 6 months of full time effort to produce. There's multiple people involved - the writer, the editor, the proofreader, the typesetter. How do they pay for it if they can't make any money from actually selling the book?

Music takes weeks or months of effort in a studio to produce. How do you recoup those costs if you can't sell the output?

1 comments

The majority of artists will not be able to support their entire lifestyle with their passion.

Same as it is currently and ever was.