[afavour]

I wouldn’t over index in the artist side of things. A lot of people don’t really think about that at all, just look at how readily Spotify was adopted despite taking a ton of money away from artists.

But “AI is coming for your job” is very resonant.

[Twirrim]

Kids of varying ages that I've spoken to often talk about the environmental impact (mind you, I live in a fairly liberal/left leaning part of the country), among other things.

At the risk of over generalising, I mostly hear a lot of shit talk from younger generations, distrust from millennials, and more excitement and interest from Gen-x-ish and older.

As with many things, there's a certain level of hypocrisy to the shit talking, because teachers are at the schools are complaining to parents about the kid's use of AI, and pointing out that they will automatically fail any writing that seems to be using AI.

[TheOtherHobbes]

AI has been a culturally radioactive PR disaster of truly epic proportions. Aside from whether or not it works, there are so many established catastrophically negative talking points - steals from creators, destroys the environment, is coming for your job - I'm not sure its reputation can be recovered.

[thatguy0900]

Does it's reputation even matter? Everyone with money is pushing it, heavily. The government is even stepping in to stop any kind of punishment when it's factually shown that they are stealing water. The people will learn to tolerate it whether they like it or not, eventually.

[TheOtherHobbes]

The data center roll-out is weird, and far beyond anything that can be justified rationally. But this administration is aggressively pro-grift and anti-reality, so I would suspect that's as likely to be about some kind of corruption/grift/Ponzi as about real capability.

I try to distinguish between the actual tech, which spans light and dark, and the financial and economic engineering around it, which is definitely a darker shade of black.

[thatguy0900]

Even describing the tech as light and dark seems a stretch, it exists solely due to the wholesale theft of virtually all copyrighted works in existence. Where would Ai be if they had to aquire every scrap of training data legally and with the informed consent (not legalese buried in esoteric terms of service documents) of everyone who created it?

[diegolas]

if the internet did AI will as well. after all the internet was (and is) full of scams and p*dos, yet people use it the whole day, for everything.

[Aurornis]

> how readily Spotify was adopted despite taking a ton of money away from artists

Spotify was praised as an alternative to piracy that gave some money to artists at a price that consumers wouldn’t complain too much about.

You don’t have to look at Spotify, though. Look at all of the people who won’t even pay Spotify or Netflix rates for content because they know they can pay $0 to pirate it.

[dh2022]

Sorry my friend, but Netflix is not a good product. It has a limited selection and, at least for my account, a lot of commercial ads. I am not pirating but I calculated that if I were to pirate I would spend less time downloading the movie than the cumulative time spent watching commercials on Netflix.

bTW - I stopped watching Netflix.

[Aurornis]

Netflix was just an example.

> I calculated that if I were to pirate I would spend less time downloading the movie than the cumulative time spent watching commercials on Netflix.

I don’t know what plan you were on, but mine doesn’t have ads.

This kind of proves my point, though: People don’t want to pay for things (including the ad-free level) so they use it to justify piracy as being superior for various reasons.

[dh2022]

The selection is still shitty though, even with no ads. Piracy is a superior choice.

[__MatrixMan__]

Given that Netflix invests heavily in DRM, Piracy is at least the more ethical choice.

[Aurornis]

> Piracy is a superior choice.

And there it is.

Netflix was just an example. There are other services.

[dh2022]

Sorry, my post was not clear. Today piracy is a superior choice. The bedt product Netflix offered me was when they shipped DVDs - their selection was immense (on par with Blockbuster). I could have pirated then (I was going once a year to my home country where DVDs were sold on open air markets) but I did no do that because was too much trouble.

When Netflix started to be online only I tagged along, and it was OK-ish - selection was not that great but but price was not big either and once in a while I would watch a movie. Today ads are very intrusive and the cost for no ads is $20 / month- which is not worth it for me. Compared to this, piracy is clearly a superior choice.

[red-iron-pine]

spotify still pays artists. it's just a shitty deal.

most big ai will never compensate anyone

[happymellon]

Is it really much different to how much artists got from radio?

Most artists never got radio money because it went into a label slush fund and was spent retaining the tent pole artists.

[jasonlotito]

The big difference was radio wasn't on-demand. You couldn't just listen to a complete album. If you wanted to listen to your favorite artist, you couldn't do that on the radio without listening to a lot of other stuff.

[happymellon]

Most artists didn't make money from album sales.

They received some money up front in a contract to record the album, and the label make the money from sales.

There is a reason the bands toured and sold teeshirts.

[mukbangpervert]

The overall economics are wildly different.

Radio didn't pay much, but it was promotion for the album.

Spotify doesn't pay much, and it _replaces_ the album.

[happymellon]

CD sales didn't pay much, because it all went to the labels.

[mukbangpervert]

A million album sales generates $2-3m for the artist under a typical label deal.

150,000,000 streams typically generates $560k _before_ the label cut.

Your posts make clear that you're a wildly immoral person -- not just because you repeatedly lie and distort to defend your position -- but the crux of your argument is "artists had a mediocre deal, so it is fine that the new deal is dramatically worse".

There's no way to respond to that.

[happymellon]

> but the crux of your argument is "artists had a mediocre deal, so it is fine that the new deal is dramatically worse".

No it's not. I'm saying that artists have always had a shit deal, singling out Spotify doesn't help the systematic problems. I don't use Spotify, I purchase via Bandcamp but that's also because long term its cheaper for me.

> Your posts make clear that you're a wildly immoral person

I'm immoral because I don't think that artists have ever had it good? Alright Mr. RIAA.

https://sociallifemagazine.com/the-archive/90s-record-deals-...

[inigyou]

Spotify pays artists the smallest amount they can possibly get away with without getting sued. Which is a tiny amount. Spotify is owned by music industry giants who needed a new money-grabbing scheme when the older schemes of the 70s-90s failed in the internet era.

[afavour]

For a lot of artists they’re paid a rounding error. The core question is whether they’re paid enough to make a living from and the answer is no.