The Decline of the Working Musician

[kidslow]

You used to be able to make a living playing in a band.

This is a book review. My interest is piqued, and also in the referenced The Humorless Ladies of Border Control which starts with a great title ...

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024 ... ook-review

Anyone care to discuss?

[BertKoor]

It was a good read. But not really surprising.

In 1980, highschool, I had two hobbies. Making music and programming computers. I knew which had better prospects of paying the bills. So music is still a hobby. And for me that is fine.

But I feel sorry for the kids these days. We, humanity, has ruined it for them.

[kidslow]

We, humanity, have ruined it in more ways than one Bert. The article rightly refers to musicians as the canary in the coal mine.

[mjolnir]

interesting read, and thanks for that.
streaming has NOT been kind to musicians.

[zerocrossing]

Companies have always pushed a tiny fraction of into fame and fortune to give the illusion that such a thing was possible. I’ve met many great musicians in my days and few of them earn a decent living at it.

[shadowthrone]

It's sad but not surprising.

[mixyguy2]

But I feel sorry for the kids these days. We, humanity, has ruined it for them.

I think mostly technology has ruined it for them, and for better or worse, advancing technology over time is inevitable. I feel sorry for them too. Not just how it's harder to make a living at it, but how fragmented and diluted music is and how kids today seem to know less and less about music and opt for music which is more about showmanship than the quality of music. Do you think a hack like Taylor Swift would be popular if she weighed 200+ lbs?

[elxsound]

I don’t know why people single her out or call her a hack. I still respect her for re-recording her own albums. That was a bold move.

Her fan base is full of young kids who are not likely drooling over her looks so yeah, maybe she would have the same success weighing 200+ pounds.

Lizzo blew it up until the non music stuff bit her. She is not a traditional model type but still successful.

Anyway, nothing like seeing a bunch of old folks talk about what young people do without knowing what they do.

But, yeah on the topic… music is gonna be f**ked for a while.

[bermudagold]

democratization, business process reform, or technologification of any vertical always results in bloodletting...every change involves tradeoffs...and most people rarely adequately or fully evaluate them beforehand...especially technology...for every problem you use tech to solve, you usually create 2 or 3 new problems you didn't foresee...plus newtons 3rd law and all that

tax reform has been agreed upon by consensus of economists in USA for decades...never gets done because of bloodletting amongst tax attorneys and tax accountants...germany doesn't agree to europe date for electrification of cars, because significant % of GDP comes from auto industry, and since electric cars require many less workers to make,...germany doesn't want to trigger that bloodletting without knowing what jobs or UBI they are going to replace that reduced labor demand with

these 3 forces are no different in music...there has been and will continue to be much bloodletting...music went from an access to distribution problem for creators, ...to an access to trusted/valuable curation problem for consumers...solving the first problem created the second problem as democratizing the production process raised the noise floor...with 60k songs uploaded per day to spotify, how are you going to cut through the noise?...and with so much supply, how will you create demand?...with no demand to leverage, how will you charge a revenue creating price?...without revenue how will you maintain availability of specialized skilled labor?

which is why I think its funny how comments to the beato videos and threads here downplay the arguments about changes to the beliefs on intrinsic and inherent value when it comes to music...as Spotify execs are now justifying their non existent revenue sharing with the creators of the content they distribute, by saying "the cost of creating content is now close to zero"...essentially saying if it cost you zero to produce it has no value, and therefore why should I pay you for something that has no value

yet people cheered Matt having a free tier for vital, companies abandoning products as shareware, and waves leveraging the breadth of their catalog in driving the whole industry to the 29$ price point...choices have consequences

[mjolnir]

i've noticed that as time goes by, the younger generations mostly don't know about the previous generations' favorite tunes and styles and the internet mainly only remembers about a year or so. so all those excellent tunes and styles and bands and artists from previous decades or years are quickly lost away from the zeitgeist. i feel that this also has an effect on the decline of music appreciation. people like us are actually rather important because we still remember and still produce and still purchase. and we talk about the technical stuff too. we are the music industry to a degree.

[mjolnir]

this video is really cool and actually helpful I hope you guys like it. it's about the same topic flavor as we've been talking about, but with some tips on how to counteract the downward trend. pretty cool. enjoy

[musicartist99]

I think the main effect of streaming platforms and maybe AI on music is in the loss of perceived value.

The easier it gets to obtain something, the less value it has, the more people can make something, the less valuable that something gets.

And it's a shame that now it's music.

"Democratization" has that effect, making only the ones "democratizing" the thing getting most of the gains, and not the "democratized".

By democratization I don't mean the political term, but the tech bros buzzword.