[acdha]

> Artists need to remember the alternative isn't 2-4x higher payouts - it's piracy.

It’s more complicated than that. The music industry has famously abused artists almost since the beginning so there’s also room for artists to dramatically increase their income by cutting into the share that the middlemen have been taking. This was true even before most people had computers or went online:

https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-problem-with-music

One big change, however, is that the alternatives have dried up. A musician used to be able to make more of their income from live performances and merch sales but since the early 90s Ticketmaster/live nation has dramatically removed competition from that market and jacked up their share of what fans pay. These aren’t “hit pieces” (let Spotify PR earn their paychecks, don’t do it for free) but rather the latest in a long story of creators seeing increasingly low returns for their work, and now everyone is wondering how likely they are to get sandbagged by AI splurge being used to drive down their income even further.