[HN Gopher] Non-Fungible Taylor Swift
___________________________________________________________________
Non-Fungible Taylor Swift
Author : juokaz
Score : 194 points
Date : 2021-04-12 14:17 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (stratechery.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (stratechery.com)
| danhite wrote:
| FWIW, this phenomenon is not new under the sun. I observe that we
| are experiencing a McLuhan Tetrad retrieval of it via our modern
| ~ Internet media artifact.
|
| For example, I experienced (preferentially) buying, in the 1970s,
| LotR paperbacks with Tolkien's picture on the back cover with his
| authorial economic plea -- see his statement, below, in this
| citation ...
|
| from "Tolkien: Lord of the Royalties" at
| https://ansible.uk/sfx/tolkien.html > Eventually the authorized
| edition appeared with Tolkien's stern message: "Those who approve
| of courtesy (at least) to living authors will purchase it and no
| other."
|
| This was bad publicity for Ace, who eventually caved in, paid
| Tolkien royalties, and promised not to reprint. <
|
| also referring to this circumstance is a Library of Congress blog
| post: J.R.R. Tolkien - Paperbacks and Copyright November 24, 2014
| by Margaret Wood https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2014/11/j-r-r-tolkien-
| paperbacks-a...
| frashelaw wrote:
| > Patel wrote about the end of scarcity, so technology that
| brings scarcity back seems like a panacea. Perhaps Swift's 2014
| vision was simply ahead of its time?
|
| If our technology allows us to now distribute media in a post-
| scarcity environment, isn't that a good thing for culture? It's
| absolutely ridiculous that artificially reintroducing scarcity is
| seen as a good thing.
|
| It also serves as yet another example of the reliance of profit
| on artificial scarcity, and the irrationality of the system- as
| well as the lengths to which people will go, just to desperately
| preserve an outdated model.
| browningstreet wrote:
| Def Leppard, to name one artist, did something similar:
|
| https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/def-leppard-re...
| [deleted]
| kosyblysk2 wrote:
| for real?
|
| Taylor Swift an artist?
|
| :facepalm:
| bombcar wrote:
| Nobody ever bought any music "to support the publisher" - the
| middle man is just that, the middle man.
| ppod wrote:
| The middle man is a load balancer for risk. The middleman makes
| a bunch of artists moderately rich, and they lose money on most
| of them and make money on some of them. They take on the risk
| of letting an unproven artist spend a few years doing something
| that could turn out to generate little money, and in return
| they get a big share of the ones that do make money. Now,
| thanks to the internet, the ones that do make it big can cut
| out the middleman.
|
| Now there will be no middleman to take on the small risks of
| many unproven artists, and because of the relentless greed and
| ego of Chapelle and Swift many young artists will never have
| the opportunity that they did.
| bombcar wrote:
| In theory things like YouTube and Patreon could provide that
| gap - but not sure it actually will.
| ppod wrote:
| Don't get me wrong, I like the internet. It is almost free
| to record and publish material now, which probably far
| outweighs the value that is captured by the fat cats.
| bombcar wrote:
| I do think there's a missing ground that is being lost -
| it was incidental to the publishers but they would
| provide production, editors, other various things that
| are seen as "not important".
|
| It takes an exceptionally bright young artist to REALIZE
| they need those things and go out of their way to find
| and pay for them. Neither Patreon nor Youtube is going to
| provide an editor and certainly not force you to use one
| - no matter how valuable it may be.
| m463 wrote:
| But youtube and patreon are the equivalent of the
| publisher. Nobody ever things about them.
| seibelj wrote:
| This is 100% correct. For those that can't understand the value
| of NFTs, it's the same reason a "squares and circles" modern art
| piece can be worth millions - it's the story of who made it, the
| collective belief, the rarity... Ultimately it has value because
| people agree it has value. It's the same reason the Tom Brady
| football rookie card sold for millions despite it being nothing
| more than ink on flimsy cardboard. The actual item itself is
| secondary to the story it tells.
| christiansakai wrote:
| Only when the actual piece of digital art imprinted itself on
| the blockchain and can be viewed with any non-closed source
| viewer for free, then yes. Until that happens, NFT is useless
| apart from supply chain/authorship identification
| LegitShady wrote:
| I call this the MLM approach. The more people you can scam, the
| more you use the size of your scam to pretend you're
| legitimate, while being a scam.
|
| "Look how many people paid money for this/look how much money
| was paid for this, it must be worth that money! The actual
| efficacy of any product sold is secondary to the amount of
| money I've been paid"
|
| I understand the 'tom brady rookie card' argument but it falls
| apart in the digital world. A digital image of Tom Brady as a
| rookie is worth nothing. A print of that digital image is worth
| less than cost of printing it. The value of the card is that
| its official merchandise of limited run with no way to create
| 'new' old cards.
|
| Stop pretending NFTs are physical items, stop pretending they
| can't be infinitely reproduced.
| hobs wrote:
| We understand them, we just think y'all are stupid for doing
| that.
| peytn wrote:
| At the very least, these arguments might be more credible if
| their pushers disclosed their own financial interests in said
| valuable assets.
| apples_oranges wrote:
| However that ink on flimsy cardboard is still somewhat unique.
| The NFT only associates a wallet address with a hash of
| whatever digital document. It's similar, but not quite. It has
| value in human imagination, sure, one can convince oneself
| that's the case. But the token is merely a hash of something
| that can be obtained very easily in full original quality on
| the Internet. The flimsy cardboard is not. At least not in the
| same sense (you could scan it and put a jpg of it online for
| example).
|
| Also the card will stay in this world for a long time if
| protected from weather and light, I assume, where as the NFT
| needs to be constantly kept alive by "mining". I agree it's
| similar, but it's also different. And interesting. At least to
| me. :) Also value is relative, of course. I mean: One man's
| collectible is another woman's trash. It probably needs a
| certain shared set of beliefs/illusions to agree that something
| like that has value.
| twox2 wrote:
| There's a good chance that "mining" will out live some pieces
| of cardboard. Even if the blockchain du jour becomes a thing
| o the past, it might live on in some device in an emulator
| thanks to Moore's Law.
| iamben wrote:
| But sadly the URL the NFT points to will probably be long
| gone.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| You do realize that you're comparing a medium that
| routinely stores information for 350 years versus a field
| where something saved 10 years ago invariably demands
| considerable resources to access?
| tshaddox wrote:
| I think we might disagree on the extent to which the
| collectible sports card is valuable because of its unique
| physical materials, and the extent to which it's valuable
| because of "human imagination."
|
| I think the latter is responsible for the overwhelming share
| of the value of a sports card, and the former is only a
| historical coincidence that creating rare and difficult to
| counterfeit items was only practical by fabricating physical
| items.
| aaroninsf wrote:
| I have been looking for a useful formulation, or metaphor,
|
| for why the NFT premise feels so [preposterously] wrong to
| many including myself.
|
| Here is one idea, for how we intuit value:
|
| As a fraction, in which non-fungibility (~= "authenticity")
| is the denominator; nominal value (whatever that is, a
| function of context etc.) is the numerator.
|
| In the sports card example, a physical object with a
| provenance has intrinsic guarantees of uniqueness.
|
| Low uniqueness means high intuited value.
|
| In the NFT case, a hash has non-intrinsic guarantees. They
| are provable; they are not perceptible.
|
| Uncertain uniqueness means low intuited value.
|
| It's not that it's not provably unique; it's that if we
| don't perceive it, no one cares.
|
| Perceptible and provable for us monkeys is a serious and
| real difference.
|
| That's the general idea. The edges are full of corners, for
| sure, e.g. a counterfeit or reproduction can be exacting
| enough to create a new game for us to play (I am reminded
| of the rabbit hole of reproduction collectible
| watches...)... the quest of authenticity has a fractal
| quality in the case of mass-produced but limited goods
| (what edition number? What pressing? The one with the
| misaligned cyan?)...
|
| ...but in the 80% case, I think it's simply, we monkeys
| like objects; ideas remain a hard sell.
|
| My own belief is this is so deeply baked into the
| relationship between our world modeling that it will not be
| overcome through culture.
|
| A lemma might be, non-fungibility is _less important_ than
| materiality.
|
| Authenticity for fungible goods, like gold, is persistent,
| in part because they are fungible. It's their material
| (perceptible provability) that reassures us.
|
| I believe this is rooted in intuitions about the scale and
| durability of consensus on value containers, which appears
| until recently to have been in the long view winner-take-
| all, in the case of things without pragmatic use-value.
| benlivengood wrote:
| Don't discount humanity's desire for the abstract.
|
| Love, truth, justice, honor, patriotism, status, etc.
|
| So long as there is consensus that a thing exists
| (tangibly or intangibly) and is desirable, there will be
| demand.
| tshaddox wrote:
| I think your intuition sounds pretty reasonable and
| probably matches most people's intuition including my
| own. But I think it's mistaken.
|
| Even for physical objects like paintings or sports cards,
| the matter of provenance is extraordinarily difficult to
| ascertain. Counterfeiters are really good at what they
| do, and determining authenticity of very valuable items
| is presumably impossible for all but a few experts, to
| the extent that what you're buying can really be thought
| of as a physical object _along with_ some easily-
| verifiable (often through digital means!) claim of
| authenticity from a trusted group. In cases like this
| it's pretty silly to place such emphasis on the
| provenance of the physical object itself!
| benatkin wrote:
| They're quite perceptible. A lower probability of being
| hacked than one divided by the number of grains of sand
| in a billion planets.
| bvaldivielso wrote:
| Thanks. This is exactly my current understanding of the
| situation regarding NFTs, only articulated better than I
| could
| throwawaysea wrote:
| > Ultimately it has value because people agree it has value.
|
| This feels like a pyramid scheme. What makes it different?
| notyourday wrote:
| > This feels like a pyramid scheme.
|
| It is. My Google-fu is failing me but there was a famous art
| dealer in the early part of the 20th century who promised
| that he would buy back the pieces he sold at least for the
| price the buyer originally paid less some minuscule
| percentage if the buyer could not sell the pieces to someone
| else. It made paints he sold significantly go up in price. He
| died. Buyers tried to get his estate to pay for the paintings
| and failed.
| kryptiskt wrote:
| A Swedish gallery called Timeless pulled that scam
| recently, they sold art in galleries in Sweden and Poland
| (and Miami and Dubai) with the promise buy it back N months
| later with a yearly appreciation of at least 20% (I see
| here that Polish customers were promised 36%).
| gmuslera wrote:
| The old object-observer duality. Where is the value in this
| case? It is in the observer, not in the object. It goes in a
| different layer.
|
| The problem there is that culture, social conventions, shared
| fictions and so on can be manipulated/twisted/adapted to some
| agenda or interest, and that includes what we feel valuable
| or not, without minding of what is really behind (like with
| bitcoins and similar). Once we took this route, all kinds of
| mirages can appear. And they can vanish into thin air as fast
| as they appeared.
| politician wrote:
| Tulip Mania
| zabzonk wrote:
| There is a difference between a physical object (painting,
| sculpture, trading card, slice of bread) which cannot with our
| current technology be exactly reproduced, and a digital thing,
| which can be.
| darkerside wrote:
| You can reproduce a trading card such that it's
| indistinguishable to just about every human on the planet.
| zabzonk wrote:
| But not to someone using a few simple scientific tools,
| such as, say, a microscope.
| speedyapoc wrote:
| I've struggled wrapping my ahead around whether this line of
| thinking has merit or not.
|
| I'd argue that everything you listed _can_ be reproduced,
| almost identically. But there 's no value in doing so since
| it is not the original or was never authorized by the
| creator. Why does this change all of a sudden once we go
| digital? Is it because it's so much easier to reproduce
| something that originates digitally?
| zabzonk wrote:
| > almost identically
|
| But not identically. I can get a very nice print of the
| Mona Lisa, with very accurate colours. But it isn't at all
| an exact copy of the original. And I defy you to produce
| anything like a near-exact copy of a specific slice of
| bread.
| rcoveson wrote:
| > But there's no value in doing so since it is not the
| original or was never authorized by the creator.
|
| So the work has no value in and of itself? It seems to me
| like an unauthorized reproduction of a work of art has just
| as much _intrinsic_ value as the same bits labeled
| "original". It evokes the same emotions and forms the same
| memories.
|
| I don't think this is what you actually believe about art;
| you probably have your "investor" hat on. In that sense you
| are right, there is far less _liquid_ value in an
| unauthorized reproduction than there is in an authentic
| original. But the actual value of the work in the eyes or
| ears of a beholder is the same regardless of the legal,
| historical, or social status of a reproduction. There are
| probably lots of great works in art collections that owners
| and viewers believe are original but are in fact illegal
| counterfeits. But a Rembrandt is still a Rembrandt, and
| Bach is still Bach, even if the source is
| The.Well.Tempered.Clavier-xxxWAREZLORDxxx-
| BEST.QUALITY.torrent.
| peytn wrote:
| It's not just "going digital"--the creative act isn't
| there. It's just financialization. The act of taking an
| artwork to an auction house isn't something that'll hold
| value.
| speedyapoc wrote:
| I agree, but I think that's just a short term effect of
| people trying to cash in on the hype.
|
| Suppose I'm an artist that releases a limited digital run
| of an album and that NFTs are used to attribute ownership
| of the digital release. Would this have more, equal, or
| less value than an artist doing the same thing but with a
| physical limited run album release?
|
| The actual music content can be pirated and made
| available just the same, whether or not it was physical
| or digital. The cost of the physical goods themselves is
| negligible. However, I feel like many people argue that
| the digital release via NFTs would be worth less because
| all you have to show for your ownership is a digital
| token, and not some sort of limited release physical
| item.
| zabzonk wrote:
| > Would this have more, equal, or less value
|
| Surely it depends on how much you like the music?
|
| > However, I feel like many people argue that the digital
| release via NFTs would be worth less because all you have
| to show for your ownership is a digital token
|
| Correct. I value my vinyl copy of "Live Dead" by The
| Grateful Dead because I have had it for nearly 50 years,
| have played it countless times, rolled joints on it, and
| even like the scratches. It's also something that cannot
| be exactly copied, given current technology.
|
| Having said that, most of my music is on MP3s, but the
| idea that referring to them via some block chain crap
| will give them "value" is just silly.
| speedyapoc wrote:
| I appreciate the perspective.
|
| > Having said that, most of my music is on MP3s, but the
| idea that referring to them via some block chain crap
| will give them "value" is just silly.
|
| I think the point here is that verifying ownership of
| digital goods is hard, because they are so easily
| reproduced identically. Blockchain technology and NFTs
| are one way to solve this problem because it allows you
| to have a verifiable chain of ownership which cannot be
| modified or faked. (ie. if a music release was as simple
| as the artist distributing an MP3 to 10 people, it would
| be impossible to tell who actually owned the "original"
| MP3).
|
| Is it unreasonable to think that in 50 years, someone
| might look back at the limited digital release they got
| of their favourite album as fondly as you look back on
| your Live Dead record, and then pass that digital
| ownership down to their next of kin? It's a concept
| that's been explored time and time again physically but
| seems weirdly uncharted for anything digital.
| zabzonk wrote:
| I guess I don't understand what "ownership" of a bunch of
| bits means. Can you "own" what is basically a number?
| macksd wrote:
| >> For those that can't understand the value of NFTs ... >> it
| has value because people agree it has value
|
| Yeah but let's be clear it's often just because 2 people _say_
| they agree it has value, and for all we know they 're often
| laundering money. I can look at a motorcycle and understand why
| it has value to someone even though I wouldn't buy one myself
| even for a penny. I'm afraid I'm unable to do the same with
| NFTs and cans of feces from an artist.
| greenshackle2 wrote:
| An important fact to remember about art valuation is that art
| can be bought and sold anonymously through private dealers who
| are not subject to anti money laundering regulations.
|
| The trick is to buy some art at a reasonable price, store it in
| a dark warehouse for a couple of years, then anonymously buy it
| from yourself at an exorbitant price through shell companies
| with dirty money.
| the_local_host wrote:
| Is there anything (other than lawsuits) preventing issuers from
| "printing NFTs" and diluting the value of those already sold?
|
| It seems like a blockchain-based technology that only works
| when backed by the threat of lawsuits combines the worst
| aspects of the art market and the cryptocurrency market.
| darkerside wrote:
| Many modern art pieces could really be recreated. What's the
| difference you are trying to draw?
| the_local_host wrote:
| Digital art can be recreated easily, which is probably one
| reason why few people have been paying money for it.
|
| Physical art, which people have historically paid for, is
| much more difficult to credibly reproduce than NFTs.
|
| Edited to add:
|
| Moreover if the argument in favor of NFTs is that they're
| not worse than what preceded them, then what's the point of
| introducing them? If the same problems in the traditional
| art market (especially for digital works) are recapitulated
| with NFTs, I don't see the point.
| tshaddox wrote:
| You can create copies of digital art easily, of course.
| But you can't create a copy of a particular NFT (assuming
| the blockchain software works as intended).
|
| For most of these famous digital art NFTs, the digital
| work itself is widely distributed online. But of course
| there's only one of each NFT.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| > In the future, artists will get record deals because they have
| fans -- not the other way around.
|
| I'm not in the industry, so I don't grok it too well. Why would
| an artist with an established fan base need a record deal?
| dakial1 wrote:
| Before streaming, the label owned the means of production
| (professional studios and professionals), means of distribution
| (Vynil, CDs etc), means of promotion (deals with radios,
| magazines, channels etc) and it sort of operated like a bank.
| So it would give lots of money upfront and the artist would
| sign the deal to x amount of albums to be distributed by the
| label (which was kept very non transparent by design, so that
| the artists who were not business savvy always did a bad deal.
| There were all kinds of other shenanigans, like underreporting
| sales (to pay less for the artist) etc. Today labels lost a lot
| of their power in distribution (Spotify, Youtube, etc), a
| little in recording (recording is easier) but still have the
| promotion power. So they operate in a similar way but with
| deals focused on production and promotion. So an artist with
| fans would make a deal with a big label to get the
| promotion/production power they have and the bank function. So
| he/she would leverage on that to become a global star betting
| that this will bring more money that he/she owes the label.
| andrewzah wrote:
| They may have some fans, but not a lot of money. The label
| steps in to give money to fund creating a new album, creating
| music videos (these can easily run up to millions of dollars),
| issuing new LP pressings, doing concerts, advertising them,
| etc.
| Spivak wrote:
| Because the record label handles all the business aspects which
| is all the actual work of monetizing an artist. You can DIY but
| you will end up becoming a record label as you scale in the
| process.
|
| They handle the marketing, merch, venues, social media,
| distribution, retail relationships, deals with studios,
| relationships with radio, relationships with personalities to
| do interviews, all the video production staff for music videos,
| like this could on forever.
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| I feel like the author is missing a trick here, there's an
| epilogue to write. The power of brigading is terrifying and
| fierce and this is part of marking the transition into personal
| brigading where an individual uses the hammer of their fans to
| beat reality into their will. Its not entirely dissimilar to
| Trump's relationship with his followers to an extent.
|
| Pans out just fine with Taylor Swift because I figure she might
| have a modicum of respect for her fans as opposed to someone like
| Jake Paul who treats his like dirt. The difference between the
| ages is that fans that were gatekept by organisations had many
| levels of PR, admin and marketing to wade through, today we have
| direct, raw and visceral which also can result in corrupt,
| unethical and even evil.
|
| This is a pattern that could define the coming decades as society
| coalesces around a few chosen figures and lends them their might
| directly. Many of them will be found undeserving and the debris
| they leave might be impactful.
| coredog64 wrote:
| Something similar happened recently with Dave Chappelle. He
| asked his fans to stop watching Chappelle Show on Netflix. This
| depressed the value of the asset low enough that he was able to
| buy back the rights.
| theNJR wrote:
| Chappelle was brought up in the article ;)
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Chapelle Show doesn't drive subscriptions. Holding out on any
| more comedy specials is what made them capitulate.
| eric_b wrote:
| Sort of tangential to the main point but - I find the new version
| of Fearless to be utterly lacking in "soul", "energy", "magic" or
| whatever you want to call it. The unquantifiable things that made
| the original so good are missing.
|
| Sure, the remakes are competent and perhaps even better
| technically, but after listening to both side by side (song by
| song, new then old) - to me there is no comparison. I went online
| looking for reviews of the "new" album and I only found critics
| gushing over how great the remakes are. Did they even listen? Did
| they compare? Sounds like it was just a money grab justified with
| a healthy dose of moral outrage.
| IneffablePigeon wrote:
| I think it's possibly a bit rich to say that they didn't listen
| to it just because they had a different opinion.
|
| I found the same thing on first listen, because a few things
| were subtly "wrong" (different). On second or third listen I
| love the new version, the production and vocals are just that
| little bit more polished in a fair few ways and I've gotten
| used to the slightly different mix. The new bonus tracks are
| pretty decent and it's nice to rediscover one of my favourite
| albums again.
|
| It wasn't at all dissimilar to the effect I get when trying new
| headphones - I hate them for a little while, invariably. Then I
| get used to the new tonal balance and I learn to love the sound
| (if they're good headphones)
| eric_b wrote:
| No, the problem isn't that the critics disagreed with me -
| the problem is that every critical write up I found said this
| new release was amazing, breathtaking, incredible, brave,
| [insert extreme superlative here] etc.
|
| Not one review I found had the guts to say "eh, 15 is abysmal
| on the new record, especially compared to the raw energy and
| feeling of the original". It's OK to like the new version,
| but to say it's _brave_ is really stretching belief.
|
| It's like if a bunch of art critics fawned over Da Vinci
| making an exact copy of the Mona Lisa again. Sure, he might
| knock it out of the park the second time, but it's not the
| same.
| bombcar wrote:
| I would be suspect of reviews in general - you'd need to
| find a group of experts without bias (if you want a review
| of the technical aspects) or of fans who have had enough
| time to "digest" both versions.
|
| Amusingly enough someone like Apple could get answers over
| time by watching play counts of both for people who have
| both versions.
| soperj wrote:
| I've had the same thing happen with live versions. The Pixies
| play "Where is my mind" very differently live, the vocal
| lines especially. First time I heard it was jarring because
| of the expectation and I didn't think it was good as the
| recorded version. Recorded version feels much worse now.
| protomyth wrote:
| I hate, just hate, the album version of Kiss's God of
| Thunder, but they speed it up live and it sounds amazing.
| STP was amazing in the Fargo Civic Center which makes me
| think the person who mixed their album just hated life
| because it is noticeably inferior. On the other hand,
| Aerosmith has sounded like crap the two times I've seen
| them in concert.
|
| It gets weird when you buy the import (for the US) versions
| of some songs. A lot of the Seattle bands sounded better to
| my ear on the versions sold in Europe. Japan is always an
| odd duck.
| [deleted]
| lm28469 wrote:
| This phenomenon happens when you compare anything similar
| side to side.
|
| Every time I fire up my calibrated color profile for my pc
| screen the colors look all wrong for a few minutes, even
| though I know they are the absolute "right" colors. So when
| it comes to topics with no rights or wrongs it's even more
| subjective, try with wine or whisky, TV screens, driving
| sensations in a car, sitting on a chair &c.
|
| You'll always find someone to argue X is right and Y is wrong
| but in the end it's 100% subjective, you know you're in for a
| ride when people start talking about missing "soul", "magic",
| "unquantifiable and unmeasurable qualities"
| packetslave wrote:
| I wouldn't call it a money grab (TSwift already has a net worth
| of over $400 million. She's not worried solely about money).
|
| I think it's more of a giant, public middle finger to Scooter
| Braun: "you won't sell me my masters? Fine, I have enough money
| and spare time to re-record them AND it won't hurt my career a
| bit, because my fans love me enough to buy something I've
| literally already released."
|
| _edit: TS probably worries some about money like most rich
| people, but it 's likely not her primary motivation_
| imwillofficial wrote:
| "Person has a net worth of over $xxx million, they are not
| worried about money." Stop and think that through. If this
| were true the banking industry as we know it would not exist.
| I'd like to think above some dollar amount I'd stop worrying
| about money and just do what I love, but who knows? I'll tell
| you when I make my first $400 million.
| packetslave wrote:
| Fair. I'm just saying she's probably not ONLY motivated by
| earning more money to feed her cats. If it was all about a
| cash grab, she'd be releasing more new music, which would
| (presumably) sell better than re-treads of her first 6
| albums. She's already released two new pandemic albums,
| it's not like she's likely to run out of things to say
| anytime soon.
| [deleted]
| maxerickson wrote:
| I think there are probably more people that make ~$5-10
| million and chill out than there are people north of $100
| million. Lots of people likely do keep doing productive
| things that they enjoy, without the number mattering much.
|
| People at the top of banking are likely motivated by things
| like status and winning as much as by how many millions
| they have.
| bombcar wrote:
| If you're the type to chill out when you've hit a certain
| amount you're unlikely to climb to $100m - as you've
| already chilled out long before. Bill Waterson vs Jim
| Davis.
| maxerickson wrote:
| My intended meaning was that I believe it is likely that
| people motivated primarily by money tend to run out of
| that motivation once they have $10 million. It doesn't
| buy a yacht or a mansion in the most famous places, but
| that's about it.
| eric_b wrote:
| She was given the opportunity to purchase her masters and she
| thought the price was too high. So they sold them to someone
| who would pay more.
|
| It's definitely about the money to some extent - she wasn't
| willing to pony up what it would take to buy them.
| packetslave wrote:
| That's one side of the story. TS's side is that Big Machine
| refused to sell her the rights unless she signed a new
| contract with them, which she didn't want to do.
| samatman wrote:
| Specifically, they wouldn't even negotiate unless she
| signed an NDA with a nondisparagement clause.
|
| Which she wouldn't do, and I wouldn't either: never agree
| to nondisparagement without substantial consideration.
| nickysielicki wrote:
| I agree, but I feel you've missed the biggest part: if anyone
| wants to license the song for usage in a commercial / TV show
| / whatever, she can undercut Big Machine at any price she
| wants. There's a market now where there otherwise wouldn't be
| one. It's more like, "You won't sell them to me? I'll
| introduce a viable alternative to them and drive the value of
| both to zero."
| packetslave wrote:
| IIRC, she can already deny licensing for her music -- even
| though Big Machine owns the publishing, she still owns the
| songwriter rights. There are about 9,000 exceptions (music
| law is hard), though, so I'm not 100% sure.
|
| But you're right that she can regain licensing rights AND
| screw Big Machine at the same time by re-recording. I'm
| sure that crossed her mind.
| sodality2 wrote:
| I think it was more than a money grab- I think it was a giant
| middle finger as well to the company.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| > giant middle finger as well to the company.
|
| How dare the people who supported, developed, and promoted a
| young performer get a return on their investment.
| axython wrote:
| Uh, the people who supported developed and promoted her
| got, 300 mln when they sols the company and 11 years of
| revenue of her. Ive seen the rest of their artists and Ill
| assume like 90% of revenue came from T.Swift. A smart move
| is to not piss off the client who basicly is your whole
| cashflow.
| sodality2 wrote:
| Hey man, I don't have a horse in this race. But I asked my
| friend, she says you are dead wrong >:(
| samatman wrote:
| I've listened to Glenn Gould's first and last Goldberg
| Variations dozens of times each, probably hundreds for the
| first one (I had a CD back when that was a thing).
|
| I still couldn't tell you which one I like better. I'm very
| glad they both exist.
|
| I haven't listened to the new Fearless, more of a Reputation
| guy anyway, so I don't know if it's directly comparable.
|
| But what she's doing is smart. More power to her.
| bigtones wrote:
| I agree - they're definitely different from the Big Machine
| versions and no where near as lively or enjoyable (and I'm a
| Taylor fan). Seems like they were all recorded in one day one
| after the other just to pump them out.
| greenshackle2 wrote:
| She wears high heels I wear sneakers She's
| Cheer Captain, and I'm on the bleachers
|
| Doesn't quite hit the same when sung by a 30 something.
| dsr_ wrote:
| [Not a Taylor Swift fan or hater]
|
| There is a common sequence of events in creator-driven popular
| entertainment, where an author or musician becomes too big to
| edit (or produce, if you prefer). The later works have a
| tendency to be bigger, looser, and lacking the focus that
| characterized the earlier works.
|
| Oft-cited examples: Steven King, Anne Rice, Tom Clancy, Alanis
| Morrissette, Tori Amos, Maroon Five, Aerosmith.
|
| I don't know whether this has happened to Taylor Swift, but
| it's certainly a plausible explanation.
| ska wrote:
| This cuts both ways. In music particularly, inexperienced
| acts may not have much choice in producer, and production can
| radically change things. Sometimes what you hear later is the
| artists own voice, for good or for ill. Possible example,
| strings arrangements on Tom Waits early albums.
| jedberg wrote:
| George Lucas.
| [deleted]
| anonymouse008 wrote:
| You Belong With Me... wow
|
| There's such a difference in a young up and coming begging for
| a guy to acknowledge they love the outcast, to Taylor Swift
| singing the same song.
|
| They always tell you in vocal lessons that so much of a song
| has to do with feeling. For people like most of us on HN, that
| makes absolutely 0 sense, and for many decades I've never been
| able to understand that... until now. Same person, different
| life experiences tugging on the same song, and it hits like a
| ton of bricks.
| nickysielicki wrote:
| I gave both a listen after reading this comment. To my ear,
| the difference is just that her voice much more mature as a
| 31 year old than it was when the song released 12 years ago
| and she was 19, and that naturally makes it harder to believe
| the small-town highschool themed lyrics. Her voice is too
| deep to sound like a teenager anymore.
| donpott wrote:
| I've always found this apparent in Johnny Cash's covers, like
| "Hurt", "One", "Big Iron", or "If you could read my mind". He
| manages to add a different feeling to the song that changes
| the backstory it's suggesting. I recommend a listen and
| comparison against the originals if you're interested in the
| phenomenon.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| Johnny Cash's Hurt is one of my fav. songs/versions ever. I
| listened to the original, and many other versions, but that
| one is just a few steps above
| gxqoz wrote:
| Ultimately any re-creation is going to have differences from
| the original. Many fans are going to be attached to that
| original for various reasons. Even seemingly objective
| "improvements" are going to grate against the nostalgia for the
| original.
|
| One example I'm familiar with is the Catch-22 album Keasbey
| Nights. This was a ska-punk album recorded in 1998 and is one
| of my favorite albums of all time. The songwriter and lead
| singer from the band, Tomas Kalnoky, left the band shortly
| after the album was released. He eventually formed the group
| Streetlight Manifesto. In the mid-200s, Victory Records was
| going to re-release the album. Instead, Streetlight Manifesto
| re-recorded the album to fix all the things Kalnoky didn't like
| about the original. It's still very similar but has less charm
| to me than the original.
| kin wrote:
| The thing is, Taylor's version sounds completely different. Did
| Ben Thompson actually look at streaming numbers? All her fans
| didn't flock to the new version. They listened to it, but it's so
| different that the old version is still consistently streamed
| likely by the same fans.
|
| Further, the new version isn't on some new platform or anything.
| It's not like Taylor Swift asked fans to fork extra money to
| listen to "Taylor's version" so nothing is really proven here
| regarding Taylor's so called power. In terms of accessibility,
| the tracks exist side by side with the original on Spotify.
|
| The idea of NFTs is incredibly appealing to artists because the
| technology could allow for artists to sell music that can only be
| played by some client if the NFT for a track or album was
| authentic. Ultimately this is bad for consumers and you bet your
| bottom dollar that some new form of music piracy will be born if
| music tried to go this direction.
| exolymph wrote:
| The new Fearless _just_ dropped, it 's not like the streaming
| numbers are going to equalize overnight. Can you link the data?
| Sounds like it's interesting
| 627467 wrote:
| In a practical sense, you'd pay for music in pre-internet day
| because you want to listen to that song/album. Then, people on
| internet started paying for music because it was easy and
| accessible (for some, it was easier to just download things off
| the "dark web" of that day). Now people pay music subscriptions
| because you don't have to think about where a specific song is:
| it's just there on Spotify/etc.
|
| Note that nowhere do I mention artists. Certainly (some people)
| also pay for art because they want to compensate for what the
| artist _did_ but I think that increasingly, people pay artists to
| keep doing what they are doing. Not for what they did.
|
| So, no, I don't think the value that people pay an artist derives
| from a work that exists today, but derives from the value
| (speculatively) they will create on the future.
|
| And ultimately, I don't think any contract can enforce this, even
| a smartone.
| SloopJon wrote:
| I've always found the idea of master recordings curious. Once a
| song becomes a hit, the band may perform it almost every day for
| the rest of their career, but what we listen to through our
| headphones or speakers is this one particular moment in time.
| Yes, there are live recordings and bootlegs, but by and large
| it's this one master recording, which may get dusted off every
| couple of decades for a remaster.
|
| Some masters are guarded jealously by their owners. For example,
| I've heard that some of the Stevie Wonder releases aren't even
| from the masters, because he won't part with them. Some masters
| may truly capture something irreproducible; say, John Lennon's
| hoarse voice in "Twist and Shout."
|
| In this particular case, at least, Taylor Swift has put the lie
| to the uniqueness of the masters. If she has the right to
| rerecord everything, the old masters aren't so special. But I
| think the article is also right. After this exercise, she may
| have made her point, and may force Shamrock Capital to make a
| deal.
| bombcar wrote:
| It's also interesting in that if you hear a version that is NOT
| the master you can easily notice it, even if it's a very close
| version.
|
| I suspect for lots of "hearing but not listening" as long as
| you hear the "normal master" version you don't notice, but if
| it were subtly different it would be noticeable (perhaps only
| subconsciously).
|
| I wonder if you could do studies on Muzak at stores (original
| "radio" masters vs live versions vs lounge vs remaster vs ...).
| NotSammyHagar wrote:
| The original masters led to the song sounding "the right way"
| when you hear it on the radio, instead of sounding different.
| Sometimes that difference sounds good too, like your favorite
| live album from some band. But other times that song doesn't
| sound right, the live version or alternative take just loses
| that magic. So the original has a lot of value if it hits.
|
| But I think you missed another aspect, the real value is the
| original master plus the tweaks and additions to make it into
| what became popular. That production of the song probably
| wouldn't sound the same if you applied those processes to a
| slightly different version, say the singer or band's best
| efforts later.
| microtherion wrote:
| That can be a big problem for some Pop/Rock bands, in that
| their fans expect them to play their hits exactly the way
| they were recorded, down to the exact solos, for decades on
| end.
|
| In contrast, Jazz vocalists don't get taken as seriously if
| they reproduce their recordings too exactly, and Jazz
| instrumentalists don't get taken seriously at all. In that
| genre, you're expected to bring something new to each
| performance.
| klelatti wrote:
| The concept of the master is unhelpful in inhibiting artists
| from setting out a version of a song in studio conditions once
| they've had chance to live with it and play it live for a
| while. Live recordings are more spontaneous but we all know
| that the sound can be less than ideal.
|
| I've been listening to a few recordings of Little Feat's
| Rock'n'Roll Doctor [1] - a wonderful song but one where I'm
| convinced by far the least interesting version is the 'master
| recording'. How many songs languish because the master is not
| that great?
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-r-qi_cJs0
| jtbayly wrote:
| What this piece leaves out is that given this reasoning, Taylor
| Swift can simply declare another piece of art the "New Taylor
| version," thus completely devaluing the previous "Taylor
| version."
| chejazi wrote:
| It's not like the "New Taylor version" will be valued
| completely independently of the previous "Taylor version."
|
| Her reputation underwrites the transaction; any transaction
| contributes to her reputation.
| gretch wrote:
| Exactly. Doing this would 'dilute' her and the "new new
| taylor version" would be next to worthless
| paxys wrote:
| The entire point of the saga was that she wants to own the
| masters herself (which she does with the rerecorded versions),
| so she would be devaluing her own asset.
| the_local_host wrote:
| If we're invoking theoretical possibilities, anyone can declare
| another piece of are to be the new version.
|
| I don't think re-recording albums for the purpose of attacking
| former business partners, who priced the intellectual property
| at roughly all the money that she had been paid in their
| previous arrangement, indicates a willingness to keep re-
| recording things.
| hnbad wrote:
| I thought this was kinda the point by comparing it to NFTs.
| NFTs can be trivially devalued if you derive the value from
| that attributed to it by the author of whatever it references.
|
| It's probably even truer for NFTs as often the NFT itself
| merely represents a JSON payload which itself references URLs
| managed by a third party and trusted to continue referencing
| the original work. Once that third party goes away, the
| reference chain breaks. The value is not only reliant on
| everyone agreeing that the third party "owns" (whatever this
| might mean) the "work" (whatever that might be) but also that
| the NFT continues to represent this ownership by proxy even
| when the proxy goes away.
|
| There's nothing stopping a new middleman claiming authority
| over the ownership of a work and issuing an NFT for it. But its
| value entirely hinges on a shared understanding that this claim
| is valid.
|
| Of course this would break down if an artist really did devalue
| earlier NFTs for the same work by issuing new ones because the
| value largely comes from the expectation that the non-fungible
| token's authority is also non-fungible, i.e. permanent.
| throw7 wrote:
| I suppose we'll see contracts include the artist not "de-valuing"
| their "own" works in such future where they are super-stars able
| to shape a story to direct their fans on what to believe.
| satyrnein wrote:
| A non-compete, basically.
| jedberg wrote:
| I suspect a lot of young artists will have learned their lesson
| and attempt to retain some control over their masters, either
| with first right of refusal or requiring the current owner to
| sell it back to them at some sort of market rate at any time.
| rayiner wrote:
| The quote from Nilay Patel's Vox article hits on one of my pet
| peeves.
|
| > Nilay Patel wrote in Vox:
|
| > "Taylor makes a nice little argument in favor of paying for
| music. 'Music is art,' she says, 'and art is important and rare.
| Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be
| paid for.'
|
| > This is an impressively-constructed syllogism. It is also
| deeply, deeply wrong.... On the internet, there's no scarcity:
| there's an endless amount of everything available to everyone.
|
| How does such an obvious fallacy command such purchase among
| smart people? Swift is talking about "music" as an original work.
| Patel responds with an irrelevant point about digital _copies of
| music_. Obviously these are two different things! If you tell
| your mom "I made a song" she will be quite unimpressed if what
| you actually mean is "I made a digital copy of a song." A book or
| a song or a movie is more than the bits that make up any
| individual copy of it.
|
| There is a like-with-like comparison in there, but it actually
| hurts Patel's argument. There is no scarcity of music on the
| Internet--not referring to digital copies, but because the
| Internet has made it trivial to create and widely distribute
| original music (often for free). If consumers were unwilling to
| pay much for Swift's music because of the vast quantity of
| alternatives available on the Internet, Patel would indeed have a
| point. But consumers still want Swift's music, not other peoples'
| music. Even in the face of huge amounts of free alternatives,
| consumers still want Swift's music. That only proves Swift's
| point!
| croes wrote:
| Maybe he is referring to music as such, too. Nobody is special,
| the internet showed there are lots of talented artists and it's
| just a matter luck who's got to be the next superstar. For
| every superstar there are dozens if not hundreds of similar
| talented singers that go down nearly unrecognized.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > How does such an obvious fallacy command such purchase among
| smart people? Swift is talking about "music" as an original
| work. Patel responds with an irrelevant point about digital
| _copies of music_.
|
| Your quotes don't support this analysis. There's plenty of
| original music available on the internet. Enough to call it an
| endless amount. Weirdly, you point this out yourself
| immediately after accusing Patel of a fallacy.
|
| The fact that people will pay for Taylor Swift's music against
| a landscape with other music does not actually support the idea
| that Taylor Swift's music deserves to be paid for, either.
| People will pay for all kinds of things.
| https://satwcomic.com/clean-living
| munk-a wrote:
| I'm not a huge taylor swift fan but people who work in an
| industry with market disruption and the networking effect
| shouldn't throw stones. I'm a big fan of a number of artists
| personally - some headliners like RTJ and The Prodigy, and
| some less well known folks like m|o|o|n and bioxeed - there's
| a lot of good music out there but it can be quite hard to
| promote music and actually get it into peoples ears. That is
| a part of the business of music, as much as we might wish it
| wasn't - and it's exactly the same with other forms of art.
| Notoriety does help drive value since it will force people to
| take your production more seriously than someone hawking
| paintings at a farmers market - even if their paintings are
| technically excellent and moving.
|
| Record labels often try to stand up rando pop groups -
| sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but those groups
| that manage to stay around for more than a few months do have
| talent that supports the large marketing campaigns being
| thrown behind them - they may not be the most talented out
| there, but a large number of people genuinely enjoy their
| music.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| There's certainly an endless amount of content on the
| internet, but it's not an endless amount of content you enjoy
| or seek out, so paying for the content you like is a way to
| incentivize the creation of more content that you like in a
| sea of content that you don't.
|
| 720,000 hours of new content is uploaded to Youtube every
| day, and none of it is the 90 minute movie I want to watch
| right now.
| selykg wrote:
| I think there's a limited amount of good entertaining (to me)
| music available on the internet.
|
| Look, I can record a song and release it on iTunes (and all
| the others) using Distrokid.
|
| This doesn't mean it's good music that people will listen to,
| or would sell at all.
|
| Art is subjective obviously, but when you like something you
| know you like it, and when you don't like something you know
| you don't like it.
|
| But just because there's a ton of music out there doesn't
| make it good, or therefore valuable.
| [deleted]
| a1369209993 wrote:
| > Swift is talking about "music" as an original work. Patel
| responds with an irrelevant point about digital copies of
| music.
|
| No one wants Swift's music as an original work; that doesn't
| even make sense, because it's not possible to retroactively
| make someone else the creator of given song. They want digital
| copies of Swift's music, the thing that is _not_ scarce.
| Y_Y wrote:
| What about when the "free alternatives" are identical copies.
| Good songs are rare, bad songs are plentiful, but digital
| copies of both are limitless.
| mattnewton wrote:
| I don't even think good songs are exceptionally rare anymore.
| The number of incredibly talented artists who can be
| discovered over the internet direct to consumers now is
| pretty high.
| johnwheeler wrote:
| I thought the exact same thing. I think Taylor's real error was
| in saying anything at all. When someone rich and famous (or
| even just famous) makes a case for making money, no matter how
| sound, they open themselves up for attack. I'm not saying
| they're wrong to do so, just that the populace isn't inclined
| to understand.
| paul7986 wrote:
| So some people believed in her and gave her a chance...
| backed her with their money ..invested in her and she re-pays
| them by attacking them and their investment.
|
| I used to be a fan of her and her persona but now comes off
| as spoiled and unappreciative!
| hamstercat wrote:
| It's a business arrangement, not an emotional relationship.
| They backed her because they thought they'd make a profit,
| and they did. They owe each other absolutely nothing else.
|
| Most people can't afford to stand up for themselves, I'm
| glad she's doing it.
| Negitivefrags wrote:
| > They owe each other absolutely nothing else.
|
| So hang on, why should Taylor Swift be demanding more
| then?
| jessaustin wrote:
| She isn't demanding what she is owed. She's demanding
| what she chooses to demand. TFA indicates she is well-
| placed to have her demands satisfied.
| elliekelly wrote:
| People "attack" (read: criticize) their investors publicly
| all the time. Do you have a problem with _all_ criticism of
| investors? Because that seems silly. Certainly they aren't
| all above criticism. And contract disputes and negotiations
| play out in the public eye every single day.
|
| And if you aren't opposed to the WhatsApp or Instagram
| founders criticizing Facebook but you _are_ opposed to
| Taylor Swift criticizing various stakeholders in the music
| industry you might ask yourself why you're holding Taylor
| Swift to a different standard.
| paul7986 wrote:
| Ummm Facebook was the acquirer of those companies not
| it's investors. I said investors not acquirers..
| acquirers bought something of value your investors
| invested and believed in you when you were nothing.
| Helped you make it valuable! Believed in you!
|
| I have never would never spat on any or would spit on any
| investor of mine even if we didnt see eye to eye. The
| acquiring company sure as they bought something valuable
| my investor help me create.
|
| No double standard here and if Justin Bieber did the same
| thing I'd feel the same way ... so no gender double
| standard here.
| paul7986 wrote:
| Im not one to bite the hand that feeds me. Even if I became
| rich and powerful...
|
| There are 1,000s and more artist out there that want to be
| in her shoes and those who had the cash had
| confidence/believed in her outside of the other 1000s. I
| would be gracious, humble and appreciative!
|
| Also, I'm not aware of any startups on the level of a
| Taylor Swift who publicly spat on their investors (not the
| companies who bought them)? Can anyone name such startup
| now mega-popular companies (as big as Swift) who publicly
| spat on it's investors?
| techsupporter wrote:
| Nothing says that just because one person paid another
| person--even at a risk to the person doing the paying--that
| the person who got paid owes them undying gratitude and
| appreciation forever.
|
| Look at how many of us got hired as an employee or who got
| investment to try doing a startup and that relationship
| ended poorly. Are we, because we are not famous, obligated
| to always speak kindly of the person who paid us? Even if
| we perceive that the relationship turned out to not be
| good?
|
| Just because someone is rich and famous doesn't mean they
| don't have the same human emotional responses as the rest
| of us; it just means theirs are more visible and open to
| attack.
|
| I will never claim to know what Taylor Swift truly thinks
| of the Big Machine purchase of her masters. But, having
| made art of my own before, I do very much understand the
| emotional attachment to that art and the incredible
| difficulty in separating the art from the business
| transaction of making money from that art. That's something
| that the "money men" in the artistic endeavors don't
| usually seem to get.
| paxys wrote:
| Taylor Swift has made very successful arguments in favor of
| making money throughout her career. She made Apple Music pay
| artists during a user's trial period. She has the clear moral
| and financial win in the whole album rights affair. She has
| always advocated for bigger payouts for streaming.
|
| Two things she does right:
|
| - she is always fighting on behalf of every artist, not just
| herself
|
| - her beef is always with much larger companies (Apple,
| Spotify, record labels) so it's easy for people to take her
| side
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| > On the internet, there's no scarcity: there's an endless
| amount of everything available to everyone.
|
| This got me thinking: in a post-scarcity civilization, what
| would people do? Probably invent new ways to create artificial
| scarcity.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| You don't have to speculate. That's what people _already_ do.
| If there 's any chance for something to become ubiquitous,
| someone always swoops in to make it artificially scarce
| again.
|
| (To be honest, if all someone does is take an unlimited good
| and make it scarce to extract rent, I consider that to be
| deeply immoral.)
| criddell wrote:
| Non-fungible tokens are one way to create artificial
| scarcity.
|
| However, just because something isn't scarce any more doesn't
| mean it isn't valuable. Lots of people want to support
| artists whose work is important to them. Platforms like
| Patreon may be much more important in the future.
| pessimizer wrote:
| The entire discussion is headache-inducing.
|
| 1) "Music is art," _...by definition._
|
| 2) "Art is important and rare." _A particular piece of art may
| be important and rare. The quality of being art does not make
| things either important and rare._
|
| 3) "Important, rare things are valuable." _Tautologically.
| Valuable things are important and rare. Value is defined by
| relative scarcity and relative desire._
|
| 4) "Valuable things should be paid for." _My mother 's love is
| valuable (and important and rare - I can't get it from anyone
| else.)_
|
| Patel is stating the obvious - the scarcity of Taylor Swift's
| music is a government-granted monopoly aided by technology that
| is largely unenforceable on the internet. He's being
| patronizing in even pretending like Swift was making a coherent
| argument, and he's not addressing it, but ignoring it.
|
| > If consumers were unwilling to pay much for Swift's music
| because of the vast quantity of alternatives available on the
| Internet, Patel would indeed have a point. But consumers still
| want Swift's music, not other peoples' music. Even in the face
| of huge amounts of free alternatives, consumers still want
| Swift's music. That only proves Swift's point!
|
| Not really. The mean price paid to listen to a Taylor Swift
| song has got to be at the sub-cent level. The average price
| paid to listen to obscurities that 99.99% of people have never
| heard of is going to be significantly higher.
| michalu wrote:
| That may be right but her music is neither art nor important or
| rare (there are hundreds of pop songs that sound like carbon
| copy) ... people pay for junk food and they also pay for junk
| entertainment. Taylor Swift, for the worth of her work, is
| obviously beyond overpaid. That statement is just hypocrisy.
| Supermancho wrote:
| > there are hundreds of pop songs that sound like carbon copy
|
| ie 4-chord songs -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I
| mattnewton wrote:
| > Swift is talking about "music" as an original work. Patel
| responds with an irrelevant point about digital copies of
| music.
|
| I didn't read it as such, I read it as "art" - new, good music
| I find enjoyable - being produced by so many artists in such
| quantities to not be rare anymore. There may be only one Taylor
| Swift but there are hundreds of pop artists around the world
| who continuously produce music I enjoy comparably (sometimes
| with the help of the same team that produces Swift songs) and
| many thousands more with 1 hit or so I enjoy more.
|
| People want Swift's music at a price, but not necessarily at
| more than that because they have alternatives to listen to that
| are cheaper. Demand at a current price doesn't prove that the
| actual value of something is higher.
|
| I think where Swift is unique and rare has just as much to do
| with the timbre and size of her brand.
| ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote:
| For what it's worth on my first reading I understood the part
| you're quoting to mean precisely that there's no scarcity of
| art, not in the digital sense but in the same sense you use in
| your final paragraph.
|
| And I'm not sure I'm convinced by what you're saying, I think
| people mostly pay for Taylor Swift because she has a brand with
| a lot of marketing and everything that comes with it, you hear
| her on the radio, on TV, then you're familiar with her work and
| style so you buy it to hear it again because it's convenient
| and music discovery is hard, the art is just the minimum
| requirement to enable the marketing. That's only my opinion as
| a consumer, I have no industry knowledge.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| I don't think Patel was saying that there are an endless amount
| of copies of Swift's music on the internet. He was saying that
| there is an endless _selection_ of music available, which you
| agree with in your second paragraph.
|
| And that hurts Swift's point - if music implies art, and art
| implies important and rare, and important and rare implies
| valuable, and valuable implies it should be paid for - that
| doesn't explain why so much music is _not_ paid for. It also
| doesn 't explain why some people create music for free.
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| > How does such an obvious fallacy command such purchase among
| smart people? Swift is talking about "music" as an original
| work. Patel responds with an irrelevant point about digital
| copies of music. Obviously these are two different things!
|
| Yes, they are two different things.
|
| The problem is that artists (and record labels) want to get
| paid for the non-scarce thing: the copies, and not for the
| actually scarce thing: the artists time and effort. This is why
| people don't see pirating music as stealing, while at the same
| time they are more than willing to pay a small fortune for a
| concert ticket.
|
| The solution then would be to find a way to charge not for the
| copies, but for the time effort that the artist put into the
| production of the music.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| I don't really see how this is possible for an independent
| artist unless I go the route of "Once this Kickstarter
| reaches $10k I'll release my song for free"
| lupire wrote:
| That's called a bounty and it's one of the open source
| software business models.
|
| It has a freeloader problem, though.
|
| An alternative is to drop price over time but give
| refunds/royalties to earlier buyers, so they always lay a
| little less than later buyers.
| analog31 wrote:
| The time and effort of artists isn't exactly scarce either,
| if you treat it as a commodity. In my view, artists of every
| generation have had to figure out a hack that lets them earn
| a living while also pursuing their art. Possibly the greatest
| threat to the income of rank-and-file musicians right now is
| the decline in church attendance.
|
| I know a lot of musicians, and virtually all of them who earn
| a decent middle class living earn more than half of their
| income from teaching classical music to children. The other
| half comes from a spouse with a day job. ;-)
| majormajor wrote:
| > The solution then would be to find a way to charge not for
| the copies, but for the time effort that the artist put into
| the production of the music.
|
| That's literally what charging for the copies does, though.
| People just want something for nothing.
|
| Claiming you want to "take the copy for free but pay
| separately for the time" when you aren't willing to pay for
| the copy so that there is some reimbursment for the time is
| an exercise in wankery.
|
| (You aren't just paying for the time, anyway. You're paying
| for talent, etc. A genius who creates something better in 5
| minutes than someone else does in a year is still someone
| you'd rather compensate...)
| samatman wrote:
| That's fine, and you're right about the economic incentive
| to charge for copies.
|
| I happen to resent the use of legal force to do so, and I'm
| not alone. I belong to the Napster generation, where the
| muscle arm of the copyright industry destroyed one of the
| most promising new applications for the Internet, instead
| of rolling with it and reaching some kind of mutually-
| beneficial arrangment. We're all still pretty mad about
| that when we think on it.
|
| Like it or not, NFTs represent a way out of this. Taylor
| Swift has trufans, she could easily cut a limited-issue NFT
| for her new recording of Fearless, with a smart contract
| which pays a residual every time it's resold.
|
| If she wanted to. Probably not the right time in the hype
| cycle for her to get on board, there are unsolved questions
| in terms of user experience.
|
| But the option is there, and if it becomes sufficiently
| widespread we can do away with the whole tawdry cycle of
| DMCA requests and randomly penalizing music enjoyers with
| ruinous fines and lawsuits. That would be all to the good.
| prox wrote:
| What's your take on BitClout?
| andrewzah wrote:
| > randomly penalizing music enjoyers with ruinous fines
| and lawsuits
|
| That's a weird spelling of "people who want to listen to
| music -without- paying for it". Napster started a
| conversation about IP and copyright, but I for one am
| glad it is dead.
|
| DCMA is monumentally stupid in its -implementation-, but
| the idea is not a bad one. There need to be protections
| for people who make a living by creating music, art, etc.
| Yes, that means repercussions for people who reproduce
| digital content and redistribute it without a license. I
| think that we can all agree that how these things are
| currently enforced via the DCMA is rather bad, though.
|
| What I'm saying is, we need to pay people for their work.
| This includes artists making music that you want "to
| enjoy". In 2021 there isn't really an excuse, with
| spotify/apple music/etc existing for streaming, and
| things like bandcamp for outright buying cds/lps, and
| discogs for the secondary/used market.
| pydry wrote:
| >What I'm saying is, we need to pay people for their
| work.
|
| Most musicians don't get paid for their work or get paid
| a token amount.
|
| I don't see what the point is in fighting for Taylor
| Swift's right to make millions from making music if the
| average person can't make a living.
|
| It's not about quality either. It's about distribution
| channels.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| The sense of entitlement in this comment is pretty
| shocking. The only justification I see in here is "I
| want". That's it. You ("and I'm not alone") want certain
| things and so the world needs to accommodate you. If it
| doesn't---you are telling us you'll just do what you want
| anyway.
|
| How is this anything other than sociopathic?
| boomlinde wrote:
| _> That 's literally what charging for the copies does,
| though. People just want something for nothing._
|
| I pay about 10EUR/mo for Spotify. A significant portion of
| my use of the service is devoted to artists that are dead.
| They can't put time and effort into producing music. They
| can't be reimbursed for the time and effort they've already
| put into it. I could bury the gold with them, but they
| wouldn't have any use for it because they're dead.
|
| The difference is especially important because options are
| cropping up for actually funding artists and other
| creatives by paying for their work, not copies of the
| results. Kickstarter, Patreon etc.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| > _I pay about 10EUR /mo for Spotify._
|
| Consider not; the majority of that money just goes to
| Spotify. If, every month, you paid 10EUR to a random
| artist you liked (or split 10EUR between all of them),
| the artists would receive probably more than two orders
| of magnitude more money. (If I remember correctly,
| anyway.) Of course, this assumes you can get the music
| elsewhere.
|
| If Spotify's too convenient to give up, there are several
| Spotify download tools you can use to get the music onto
| a device that doesn't support Spotify (e.g. MP3 players).
| Lots of them seem to actually grab from YouTube, but
| perhaps if you use the Spotify API, you might be able to
| do it?
| dahfizz wrote:
| A quick google says that spotify pays at least $0.003 per
| stream to an artist. So your $10 pays for 3333 streams
| per month, or just over 100 a day. I probably don't
| average 100 streams per day, but I definitely average
| over 10. I'm not sure its as bad a deal for the artist as
| you may think. It's not two orders of magnitude bad, at
| least.
| barrkel wrote:
| Spotify pays a lot more than radio plays, and radio plays
| reach a lot more people. From this POV, artists aren't
| that hard done by.
|
| Spotify plays a lot less per play, on average, than most
| albums sold. From this POV, artists are pretty hard done
| by.
|
| If you're a fan, buy the album (i.e. pay even for the
| music you don't like as much). If you only listen to the
| music ambiently, stream and don't feel too guilty about
| it.
| hansvm wrote:
| > the majority of that money just goes to Spotify
|
| Last I checked, Spotify's cut is 30%. That's a lot, but
| even with a significant error it's nowhere near the
| "majority."
|
| > If, every month, you paid 10EUR to a random artist you
| liked (or split 10EUR between all of them), the artists
| would receive probably more than two orders of magnitude
| more money.
|
| That's a function of how popular your favorite artists
| are and how much you listen to them. No matter how
| unknown they are, if you listen to an average number of
| streams per month then they'll get at least 70% of your
| 10EUR/mo -- a far cry from two orders of magnitude. If
| your favorite artists are much above average popularity
| then they'll make more with the Spotify arrangement than
| if you gave them cash even if you don't listen to them at
| all.
|
| There's still a kernel of truth in what you're pointing
| out -- at some point in the fairly recent past you had to
| buy the music outright no matter how often you would
| listen to it, so if there exists a long tail of musicians
| who aren't listened to much but whose music would have
| been paid for in a record/tape/CD/itunes market (and I
| suspect there does) then Spotify is going to be much
| worse for them.
| karpierz wrote:
| Artists want to be paid proportional to impact; how many
| people are interacting with the work. I'd love to move to a
| world where media is funded in advance (regardless of effort)
| and then released for free, but I don't think that pricing
| music based on effort, as though it were a factory good is
| desirable.
| lopis wrote:
| That's the reason why many youtubers on patreon switch to a
| monthly subscription rather than charging per video. It makes
| it clearer that we are supporting the creator's livelihood,
| not buying a token that they produced. Would anyone pay for a
| Taylor Swift subscription if that meant she could relax and
| produce music as she sees fit? Higher subscription tiers
| could include merchandising and concert tickets.
| stuart78 wrote:
| Bandcamp offers a subscription service [0] for just this
| purpose. I've thought about it for one or two, and $5/mo or
| whatever doesn't sound much, but it pretty quickly adds up
| across music, newsletters, patreons, etc... i need an
| aggregator for paying all of my content aggregators.
|
| [0] https://bandcamp.com/subscriptions
| TylerE wrote:
| Neil Young has done pretty much exactly that.
|
| https://neilyoungarchives.com/
| chihuahua wrote:
| I think with an estimated net worth of $360,000,000 Taylor
| Swift could just relax and produce music as she sees fit,
| without any need for subscriptions.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> Would anyone pay for a Taylor Swift subscription if that
| meant she could relax and produce music as she sees fit?_
|
| I have a (completely speculative) theory that the "support
| the artist to keep creating the work they're giving away
| for free" model has a ceiling when artists become visibly a
| lot richer than their fans.
|
| After all, what kind of sucker would charitably donate to a
| multimillionaire's private jet running costs?
| pedrosorio wrote:
| That does not seem to be the case in Twitch, for example.
| The largest creators just amass larger and larger numbers
| of subscribers ($5/month) even though it is public
| knowledge that these people are making >$1M/month in some
| cases.
| llbeansandrice wrote:
| That sounds like a feature, not a bug.
| eindiran wrote:
| Even if this is true, the ceiling is very high. Look at
| the current top earners on Patreon, with a known per
| month figure:
|
| https://graphtreon.com/top-patreon-creators
|
| * Chapo Trap House, 3 hosts - 170k/month
|
| * The Tim Dillon Show, 1 host - 121k/month
|
| * AdeptusSteve (I couldn't figure out how many people,
| possibly 1 guy making some sort of porn game?) -
| 103k/month
|
| * Flagrant 2, 2 hosts - 98k/month
|
| * Tiny Meat Gang, 2 hosts - 82k/month
|
| * Cum Town, 3 hosts - 81k/month
|
| Note that the dollar amounts of most of the people on
| that list aren't visible and I cut them off at 80k/month.
|
| People are willingly chipping in to help creators making
| 1M/year, not including sponsorships, live shows, etc.
|
| And there are some multimillionaires that could likely
| make it work. If the Spotify deal hadn't happened, Joe
| Rogan almost certainly could have.
|
| Unrelated comment about the list: of the Patreon
| categories, podcasters are predictably over-represented.
| But I am surprised by the number of "adult games" on the
| list. I didn't realize how popular these were.
| remram wrote:
| How much of that is _really_ charitable? Patreon allows
| creators to lock access to some content behind a set
| monthly amount, which makes the transaction more like a
| regular subscription than a donation. How many of those
| top earners use that feature?
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| Part of me finds it ironic that so many leftist podcasts
| rake in big bucks on Patreon.
| [deleted]
| runarberg wrote:
| Why? Do socialists not deserve to earn the value of their
| work?
| savanaly wrote:
| It's not that they don't deserve it, it's that it's
| ironic.
| optimuspaul wrote:
| it's not ironic if you really understand socialism.
| parineum wrote:
| Patreon seems like a very libertarian environment to me.
| I'm not sure how I could see it any differently.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Many socialist-adjacent philosophies are anticapitalist.
| Hence, the irony.
|
| Yes, yes, I know that it's not hypocrisy for
| anticapitalists to use money. I also know that not all
| socialists are anticapitalist. Still ironic.
| false-mirror wrote:
| A not-anti-capitalist socialist is not a socialist. TLDR:
| Capitalism is when production is determined by people
| holding capital. Socialism is when production is
| determined by the members of society. So the question
| being, should an economy be democratic or run by the
| rich.So long as socialists workers work democratically,
| there is no hypocrisy in earning money.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Even the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_socialism
| says you're right. Huh. TIL.
| jessaustin wrote:
| Some people seem to conflate capitalism with free
| enterprise. A deeper study would reveal them to be near
| opposites.
| TrainedMonkey wrote:
| That sounds pretty rational, however it does not mesh
| with reality of most popular streamers getting literally
| showered with money. There is definitely some rational
| subset of population that will stop donating once it's
| clear the artist has made it. My theory is that when you
| give money to someone it's a commitment that you like
| them. And once you like them, you are more likely to
| contribute more money. I'd wager for top artist this
| effect will dominate the rational people curbing
| donations effect.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| It doesn't have to be pure charity. I was a subscriber to
| Deadmau5's livestreams back when he was doing that.
| Monthly subscription and you had access to a private
| stream that was almost always live when he was producing
| in the studio. That particular example is boring if
| you're not into music production, but there are certainly
| things an artist can do to make a subscription
| worthwhile. Will it make a superstar artist more money
| than the usual means? Probably not. But it also doesn't
| have to include zero rewards.
| WillDaSilva wrote:
| I think that would be great. If the artists are being
| paid enough to support them* and their craft, and they're
| being paid enough to help motivate others to become
| artists, then they shouldn't get any more money. That
| money would be better spent elsewhere.
|
| * "support them" would also include leaving them with
| enough money to retire on after their career, if they
| live in a country where retirement savings are important
| to have, or otherwise are a strong motivating factor for
| those who are considering this as a career.
| yks wrote:
| Suckers or not, but people do donate to visibly rich
| people, e.g. Trump.
| jasode wrote:
| _> The solution then would be to find a way to charge not for
| the copies, but for the time effort that the artist put into
| the production of the music._
|
| But this method would be anti-consumer for many buyers of
| music because the final _quality_ of a song does not always
| correlate with effort.
|
| - low effort but high value: a musician can have a flash of
| inspiration and come up with a catchy chorus melody and great
| intro hook on a synth in 15 minutes. They then record the
| vocals in 2 or 3 takes and thus the whole song is done in
| less than a day. This ends up being a hit song.
|
| - high effort but low value: an artist struggles for weeks
| and months on composing a song with many rewrites. The
| producer brings in a dozen other co-writers to help finish
| it. When they go to record, they record 100 different takes
| of the vocal and then construct the final vocal by splicing
| in syllable-by-syllable from the different takes. Very
| laborious. And yet, the final result is music that's heavily
| produced but lacks an addictive chorus and does not compel
| repeat listens.
|
| A lot of movies and its sequels are like that. The original
| on a shoestring budget had a better story and a magic quality
| but the new sequel with a $200 million budget and an army of
| special fx artists ends up creating a dud.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| Also, repeatability does not necessarily correlate with
| quality. John Cages works or an AAA movie are surely of
| high quality, but it's fine experiencing them once. Compare
| that to quite a few (even cheap) songs, which I've listened
| to hundreds of times
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >The problem is that artists (and record labels) want to get
| paid for the non-scarce thing: the copies,
|
| of course one could argue that the way to gauge the value of
| the artist's time and effort is by how many copies people
| want of what they produced.
|
| I am not arguing this is a good way of estimating value, but
| there are lots of people who do make this argument, and it
| should be addressed.
|
| note - I guess it should be time and ability, effort is
| generally another measure of time.
| lucideer wrote:
| > _How does such an obvious fallacy command such purchase among
| smart people?_
|
| Because Swift is not talking about music (by your definition).
| Swift _is_ also talking about digital copies of music.
|
| And with your differentiation you've made Patel's point very
| well: Swift is taking a valid argument for paying for _music_
| and through conflation of the two, she is arguing that it
| should also apply to _digital copies of music_. This is the
| actual fallacy here.
| megaman821 wrote:
| I don't think Nilay was talking about digital copies. The
| abundance of music on the internet has hurt artists like Taylor
| Swift. Taylor Swift's album wouldn't even be in the top 10
| sales of 80's albums. It looks even worse if you consider the
| US had 100 million less people than now (nearly a third less).
| rchaud wrote:
| Taylor Swift will have her music reviewed and cultural impact
| discussed on NYTimes, LA Times, and numerous major
| publications that do not ordinarily review music.
|
| Increased supply of music via Bandcamp/Spotify/Soundcloud has
| almost no impact on artists that already dominate the charts.
| They can simply pay Spotify to blanket their app with ads for
| their new music. Spotify took some flack for their OTT
| promotion of Drake's 2018 album [0], but long term, Drake and
| the other 'market leaders' came out on top.
|
| Some small band hit languishing in the middle of a 100-song
| playlist is never going to be able to win against that.
|
| [0] https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/03/spotify-users-push-
| back-at...
| majormajor wrote:
| It does read like that, but it's hurt the stars far less than
| the second-level folks. While (slightly) helping the long
| tail.
|
| The abundance of meh on the internet makes it harder to
| charge for mid-level stuff that you used to be able to make a
| living off of, but the money still finds the trancedental
| stuff.
| villasv wrote:
| Yes, and considering Ben's past writing on Stratechery, this
| is also a constant argument of his. The Internet is abundant
| of alternative-but-same-quality content, not just copies of a
| single original source.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| Can not remember where I heard this theory but it goes
| something like this. As more music is created the value of
| existing music goes down. Basically the idea is adding 1 more
| song to the pool of millions of others has little value no
| mater how good/bad that particular song is. As lets say it is
| the most amazing song ever. I still have a library of
| millions of other songs to pick from. It is an interesting
| economic theory.
|
| The other problem for music is 4 fold. 1) many people use
| 'radio' basically spotify or some streaming service like it.
| 2) Most people buy songs not albums 3) many times people 'age
| out'. 4) I can choose from a catalog that is decades old all
| of the previous years of top 100s and get something good to
| listen to.
|
| Now there are exceptions where there are collectors in that
| they must buy everything. But most people are not collectors
| they are renters or listeners. Many people just want that one
| song they like and maybe a couple of others. So you can not
| make 10-15 off them, you make _maybe_ 1-2 dollars, and
| depending on your contract much less. Also people 'age out'.
| For example most of the artists I like most are 'done'. They
| have either disbanded or just not making anything new and
| going on concert sales. I also have little interest in newer
| stuff (because I no longer have the inclination or time to
| devote to it that I used to). Sure I buy a bit here and there
| or listen to something from streaming but nothing like what I
| used to do and own hundreds of CDs.
| boredumb wrote:
| You wouldn't download an NFT
| politician wrote:
| Technically, you cannot download an NFT. It's a distributed
| consensus that you cannot ever truly put your arms around
| (unless you're running a testnet and operate all of the nodes).
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Wait. Isn't the blockchain operating on the assumption that
| everyone can, and _should_ , download _all_ NFTs? That 's the
| "distributed" part in "distributed consensus".
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