[college_physics]

Art in all its forms had always serious problems getting funded but things only seem to get worse at each iteration. In older times the problem was that most people had other worries, so artist numbers were small and they seeked patronage from the elites that could afford it.

Later we had mass commercialization which "democratized" art but artists got squeezed by the intermediaries / distributors that enabled the mass market. As digital mass reproduction became a thing, this ushered zero marginal cost dynamics which is essentially still an unresolved stalemate.

The "AI" generation of all sorts of combinatoric works without attribution or payment comes to compound the challenges. You now have arbitrary amounts of derivative art that can be reproduced at zero cost.

Never a dull moment in homo sapiens land.

[btown]

The combination of the physical/audible depiction of art + the human artist's biographical experience, together, makes a form of art that cannot be replicated. (That is, until we have sentient AI - and at that point, is its lived experience any less valid?)

There's debate here, of course, about the "death of the author" [0] and whether work should exist independent of its author's intentions and intentionality - but perhaps our social understanding of that question will evolve, at least for works created after the AI explosion.

As a crude example that buoys me somewhat, there are numerous virtual youtubers who one might discount as avatars of a corporate music product - but their fans love them not only for their musical works in isolation, but for the personality and personal journey that the character (and, by extension, their voice actor, as the lines fade quite quickly) streams to the world, baring a pseudonymized version of their lives for all to see. There's real human intent and struggle and perseverance there, and it's appreciated, and that's really cool. Even if the human is hidden, the humanity shines through.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_the_Author

[BeFlatXIII]

Perhaps the lesson is that art ought to be done because it is inherently fulfilling and not a as a profession.

[anigbrowl]

Great, go tell landlords, grocery stores etc.

It takes non-trivial investments of time to develop artistic capability, often with the aid of tuition or materials/equipment which also cost money. This is common knowledge and I frankly don't understand the point of ignoring it.

[necrotic_comp]

One could say the same thing about programming. If I'm playing or writing music for people, and they are enjoying it, I want to get paid.

[nivenkos]

> If I'm playing or writing music for people...

The whole point is that you won't be.

Like a lot of demand for small-time live music died with the record player.