[Jeslijar]

Is this really a problem?

Revenue based on selling copies of a recording is down. The cost of reproducing copies is less than ever. The barrier to creating your own music and distributing it to everyone in the world is less than ever.

All the middlemen cranking out wasteful copies of just one thing are not necessary since music is trivially reproduced with digital copies.

How much should music make as an industry? Who should be making the money from the music that is made? how much money should you make off of a single song that is performed a single time?

This is always a controversial issue. The loudest opinions typically say "they need to make more", which is the same opinion about nearly any profession in the entire world aside from the ones that make the very most money. Some musicians still fall into that category.

At the end of the day the lion's share of revenue doesn't go to a performer anyway, it goes to middlemen who add no value to the actual performance - they just make it be distributed and decide the winners and losers based on arbitrary gatekeeping. The contracts are predatory and the whole thing seems f'd to me.

I know many people with primary and side gigs as performance artists who don't make superstar money, there's no shortage. Live musical performance is all over the place and the ticket prices are outrageously high for any in-demand performance.

Most of us don't have the option for income in perpetuity for work performed - we just get paid for hours worked. Is there an argument around payment in perpetuity vs pay for work performed that should apply across the board?

[barbariangrunge]

Artists need to buy groceries and retire some day--almost none of them successfully pull this off, it's like one in a million--but every day there's a dozen posts on here about how greedy the arts industries are for trying to charge money for things.

Well, no problem, in the near future you can just get a personal AI to make everything for you. The Arts will be wiped out completely. Time to celebrate? No human artist need ever get paid again, starting in 20 years, or will it be 50? Maybe it will take 75 and you won't get to personally enjoy it? All the money can go to amazon and to ISPs because they provide the REAL value, that of providing sharing or generation infrastructure

Mix in the constant posts on here claiming that these tech companies get to make derivative works off of everyone's art, without compensating those artists, and, I don't know what to say

[indymike]

> Artists need to buy groceries and retire some day--almost none of them successfully pull this off, it's like one in a million--but every day there's a dozen posts on here about how greedy the arts industries are for trying to charge money for things.

I know a lot of artists, musicians, actors and even a painter or two who actually make a living from what they love. You know what none of them do? Make their living from people buying recordings or reproductions of their work. They all make money by playing gigs, performing and doing commissions. Some of them do really well, too.

Oh, and AI is not going to replace the band on the patio, or the actress in a local production of "Crazy for You" any time soon.

[yowlingcat]

I don't like the posts castigating artists for trying to charge for things, but I do think that the financial woes from artists don't come from their pricing model or unfairness from middlemen distributors. Rather, I think they come from simple supply and demand economic imbalances.

Because of how many more people want to be professional artists than have the capability to competitively operate at a professional level (inclusive of both raw artistic and second order marketing talent), there will never be enough demand to support anything but the very best of the artists who would like to make a living off of their product.

But I also think that conflicts with the idea you just mentioned, that of being able to get a personal AI to make everything for you. AI has shown the ability to make a mediocre product that one can tolerate, but not a great product for personal consumption that would lead you to become a loyal fan.

If anything, I think AI will take the grunt work out of all the tasks a great work an artist has to do, and let them focus on the parts that cannot be outsourced -- coming up with and distributing a great, differentiated product.

[commandlinefan]

> almost none of them successfully pull this off, it's like one in a million

That's pretty much always been the case, no matter how art was distributed, though - yet people still love creating it enough to take the gamble.

[MichaelZuo]

One in a million still implies over 8000 successful artists at any given time.

Assuming an average tenure of 20 years in the limelight, that's 32000 over the course of a 80 year lifespan, which is probably more than anyone will bother to listen to in a lifetime.

Not to mention the tens of thousands of historic and famous artists.

When put in that perspective it actually makes total sense why no one will bother paying to listen to the 50 000th most popular artist, the chances of any given person being more interested in the other 49 999 at any given time is approaching 100%.

[jononor]

Assuming 100 different styles of music, there can then be 80 paid artists per style? Just 20 bands if a typical 4-piece. That is not so great for those that primarily listen to one or two styles. Today there are nearly 100'000 active bands within the metal genre alone.

[MichaelZuo]

Did you really read just the first sentence of my comment?

[pessimizer]

We've fallen into decadence, and with it has come the desire to freeze society as it existed somewhere around 1965, when baby boomers turned 20. I've had conversations with people asking how new Marvel movies could be made if some political or legal change happened. Who cares?

Don't care if no one ever writes a novel again, there's plenty to read. It'll never happen, though, because people will write novels for free, and people will sponsor people who create things that they want or that they want to be seen sponsoring. Don't care if there's never another piece of recorded music, and we're stuck playing music with each other or being in the same room with people playing music for us. Of course, this will never happen, because the vast majority of music is made for free, and the rest nearly for free after the record companies recoup.

The state doesn't need to keep encouraging the production of art through police action. If the state wants to encourage art, give everybody a tax credit that they have to send to an artist.

[EGreg]

Yup! And the same can be said for your work also, if you produce digital content

It will all become hobbies

[TimPC]

I think the big difference is some digital content has an exact audience and needs to be highly customized for them. For example, companies don't buy web apps and then modify them into the web app they want they program what they want from the frameworks they choose up. So while code is digital content, it's quite resistant to having its value lowered by copying.