[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the irrationality of the system- as | well as the lengths to which people will go, just to desperately | preserve an outdated model.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". ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-04-12 23:00 UTC)