[HN Gopher] Musicians wage war against evil robots (2012)
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Musicians wage war against evil robots (2012)
Author : scifibestfi
Score : 78 points
Date : 2023-01-02 18:16 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.smithsonianmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.smithsonianmag.com)
| jansan wrote:
| Who would have thought that musicians would become Luddites one
| day.
| EamonnMR wrote:
| We're all going to be luddites at this rate.
| SethMurphy wrote:
| There is no one type of musician. Many do it to carry on a
| tradition, while others do it to blaze their own path, for the
| next generation to carry on. I myself see the first as natural
| luddites, even with the younger generations, possibly more so.
| blondin wrote:
| what a fantastic piece of history! curious why there is no
| parallel with streaming music. streaming has changed music so
| much (for the worse in some cases) and yet, everyone seemed to
| have embraced it.
| jefftk wrote:
| Streaming was very controversial when it was introduced. For
| example: http://thetrichordist.com/2013/06/24/my-song-got-
| played-on-p...
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Everyone has embraced it now. That was certainly not the case
| early on.
| ed-209 wrote:
| Amusing and yet I worry it's a straw-man for the contemporary
| issue of automation replacing human workers more generally (which
| I find decidedly less amusing).
| [deleted]
| DeWilde wrote:
| Has there ever been a case when such movements successfully
| halted some technological progress?
| fullshark wrote:
| MLB umpires calling balls/strikes instead of machines. Probably
| the most absurd situation as viewers at home can see clearly
| when they are wrong/right immediately.
|
| I'm sure there's lot of other (better) examples where unions
| are strong and/or experimental technology carries risk and the
| market is heavily regulated (e.g. healthcare).
| mjr00 wrote:
| > MLB umpires calling balls/strikes instead of machines.
|
| Hah true but this is more of a "spirit of the game" rule than
| anything. Same idea with football/soccer, there's certainly
| no technological barrier preventing the use of an accurate
| game clock to get an exact amount of stoppage time, or even
| pausing the clock during play, but they keep on out of
| tradition I guess.
| tremon wrote:
| A predetermined game time is much easier for TV broadcasts:
| they don't have to schedule filler content for when the
| game ends earlier or later than anticipated. I've already
| been hearing complaints around the last World Cup that all
| the VAR-induced injury time was eating into the ad blocks.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Why not have a pitching machine? And a hitting robot?
| fullshark wrote:
| Do you watch baseball for the umps? To see them show their
| 99percentile talent at calling balls/strikes?
| williamcotton wrote:
| Joe West thinks you do!
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| Right. The same goes for other sports. I'm sure one could
| build a machine that would bowl strikes all day long, and
| if bowling were part of an industrial manufacturing
| process, that would be awesome. But it isn't... bowling is
| a _sport_. The whole point of sports is the challenge. No
| challenge, no sport.
| dntrkv wrote:
| Except nobody plays or watches sports for the refs. They
| are a necessity because that's been the only possible way
| to enforce rules.
|
| I play a sport at a pretty competitive level and would
| love it if we didn't have a human ref. Refs can be
| assholes and they make bad calls all the time. It can
| really ruin a game. Having a machine make the calls
| removes a lot of the bias (and genuine mistakes) in those
| calls.
| williamcotton wrote:
| Or a robot crowd? Or a robot watching the game at a robot
| bar? Or a robot talking about the good old days of human
| umpires in the comment section of a tech blog for robots?
| MisterTea wrote:
| This sounds like a scene from Futurama.
| mitchbob wrote:
| The movement inspired by the book Silent Spring [1] is
| certainly one.
|
| [1] http://www.rachelcarson.org/SilentSpring.aspx
| moffkalast wrote:
| Okay, any examples where said 'technological progress' wasn't
| literally spraying everything with deadly poison and giving
| everyone cancer?
| jefftk wrote:
| What about the anti-nuclear movement?
| moffkalast wrote:
| Maybe? There are apparently ~430 active reactors
| worldwide today but the number has been practically
| constant since the 90s.
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/263945/number-of-
| nuclear...
|
| Likely more to do with the massive expense of building
| them than any movement though.
| lofatdairy wrote:
| If I recall Germany's anti nuclear movement is very
| successful and got a few shut down after Fukushima and in
| recent history.
| EamonnMR wrote:
| Antinuclear activism was incredibly successful. We may get
| there soon with infectious disease research. Also, we have
| (mostly) successfully enforced a convention against using
| CRISPR to create transhuman monster embryos.
| throw892398 wrote:
| [dead]
| moffkalast wrote:
| "Geneticists shouldn't make any superhuman embryos."
|
| "Geneticists should get to create one CRISPR monster, as a
| treat."
| fooooobarbaz wrote:
| The clipper chip comes to mind. Of course "progress" is a
| relative term, but NSA surely saw it as progress. Companies
| like Uber are now leaving some European cities[0] after facing
| a more adversarial political environment than they do in the
| states.
|
| I've also heard stories about places like Uruguay, which have
| laws that apparently protect some workers from automation and
| self-service (i.e. attended gas stations, etc.)
|
| 0: https://thenextweb.com/news/uber-forced-leave-brussels-
| what-...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The clipper chip comes to mind.
|
| But...technological progress on cryptographic hardware didn't
| stop just because that particular attempt to foist a
| precompromised system onto the market failed. (Neither did
| the social technology of the NSA manipulating the market to
| adopt their precompromised systems.)
|
| So how is that a movement stopping technological progress?
| rowan_mcd wrote:
| Train / metro conductor unions have successfully blocked
| automation, multiple times in multiple cities
| bitwize wrote:
| I saw the title and thought "I'm KILROY! KILROY! KILROY! Kilroy."
| jaggederest wrote:
| musicians:phonograph::writers:gpt3
|
| I think it's interesting that people are panicking now that it's
| beginning to intrude on "intellectual" pursuits, even though
| automation has already had a substantial effect on most other
| parts of society. I am not sure there's anything different, for
| better or worse, about "creative" professions.
| nuc1e0n wrote:
| In one of the quotes from this article "We think the public will
| tire of mechanical music and will want the real thing". It seems
| to me the public is now tiring of CGI explosions at the expense
| of character based stories in films. 3D was a fad also.
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| >It seems to me...
|
| I have no doubt that it "seems to you", but do you have any
| actual evidence?
| nuc1e0n wrote:
| I don't really care enough to gather it. Even if I did it
| would likely be suppressed. Do a straw poll of some random
| teenagers near you and ask them to tell a story of how
| they've been wowwed at the movies. Or perhaps the last time
| they paid to see one at the cinema even?
| rockemsockem wrote:
| There are many good movies that use CGI explosions. You can't
| just look at the movies that are bad and say that people don't
| like them because of the CGI. Also the public doesn't seem to
| tired of them based on how well marvel movies still do.
| nuc1e0n wrote:
| Tell me without looking it up, What was the name of the one
| after infinity war?
| legerdemain wrote:
| And it's true. Recoded music ravaged the ranks of movie organists
| and other accompanists to the point that providing incidental
| music has not been an occupation in many decades. In more recent
| decades, being a session musician for regional or mid-tier bands
| has stopped providing a living, following the huge consolidation
| in radio and music publishing in the 90s and 00s. There is far
| less live music today, at least in the US, than there has ever
| been in my lifetime.
| mjr00 wrote:
| > Recoded music ravaged the ranks of movie organists and other
| accompanists to the point that providing incidental music has
| not been an occupation in many decades. In more recent decades,
| being a session musician for regional or mid-tier bands has
| stopped providing a living, following the huge consolidation in
| radio and music publishing in the 90s and 00s.
|
| And yet it's never been easier for a musician to share their
| music on Soundcloud, use Bandcamp for album sales, put their
| music on Spotify/Beatport/etc and collect streaming royalties,
| and set up a Patreon to get recurring revenue from fans.
|
| Musicians who refuse to adapt won't succeed, and those who do
| thrive. Would you feel bad for a software developer who learned
| Visual FoxPro in the 90s, refused to learn any new tools, then
| complained that their occupation was no longer relevant?
|
| > There is far less live music today, at least in the US, than
| there has ever been in my lifetime.
|
| Is there any data to support this? I would be _shocked_ if this
| were true outside of the COVID years. There 's certainly more
| music readily available to people now than at any point in
| history.
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| >Is there any data to support this? I would be shocked if
| this were true outside of the COVID years. There's certainly
| more music readily available to people now than at any point
| in history.
|
| It's hyperbolic BS, as per usual when it comes to emotionally
| charged arguments with no basis in reality. According to
| every statistic I can find, live entertainment and concert
| ticket sales have been on a steady uptrend until (as you
| mentioned) 2020. Here's one source:
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/306065/concert-ticket-
| sa...
| Retric wrote:
| Concert tickets represent a small slice of the music scene.
| Parties, bars, etc don't pay that well, but there are
| vastly more people at the bottom of the music pyramid
| making near minimum wage than superstars.
| stemlord wrote:
| To be fair the modern concert experience can be very not-
| live
| pleb_nz wrote:
| But I would hazard to say that the quality of well written
| likable music that will stand the test of time and keeps
| people interested has nose dived with the progression you
| outlined.
|
| Or at least, what is popular doesn't highlight the good music
| any longer.
|
| Being easier to write, produce and release didn't seem to
| have made music better from what I can see and what I have
| read.
|
| I'm sure there is still good stuff being produced, but by
| Jebs, it's very hard to find now.
|
| Edit. Quality isn't just my measure. As mentioned, I've read
| about the topic a few times as well articles and studies
| showing what music gets listened to the most, the complexity
| of music, how the simpler music gets the less it remains in
| listenership for long periods etc etc etc. Even playlists
| show that music pre 2010s, maybe 2000s can't remember now, is
| preferred by even people in their 20 to 30 year olds with
| some questioned stating new music is too simple or is
| rubbish.
|
| And by no means does it mean all modern pop music is bad,
| this is not a blanket statement. There is still good stuff,
| it's probably just getting drowned out by the weekly flavour
| changes.
| mjr00 wrote:
| > But I would hazard to say that the quality of well
| written likable music that will stand the test of time and
| keeps people interested has nose dived with the progression
| you outlined.
|
| People have felt this way since time immemorial: the music
| they grew up listening to in their formative years was just
| better than whatever exists now.
|
| Your dad's dad, or his dad depending on your age, thought
| that Led Zeppelin was just a bunch of talentless idiots
| making noise.
| pleb_nz wrote:
| People probably have, but now it seems to be getting some
| backing by statistics.
|
| This isn't me just saying something random, it's
| something I've read about recently and had come out of
| studies of changes in music over the last 60 years.
| filoleg wrote:
| Unless those studies have managed to verifiably predict
| the future and quantifiably measure how a particular
| album would affect the industry decades down the road, I
| wouldn't put much salt into those "studies". And if they
| have somehow managed to successfuly accomplish that, I
| think that only raises way more questions.
|
| There have been quite a few examples of albums that were
| bombed on release by both critics and the audience, but
| then ended up as critically (+publicly) acclaimed and
| massively influential (+still standing the test of time)
| many many years later just from the past 2 decades. That
| alone tells me that whoever claims they have a method to
| predict the future influence and "standing the test of
| time" on aggregate is just playing around.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| How do you measure "quality", though? To my ear there's a
| _ton_ of great new music being made today, rivaling music
| from basically any point in recording history.
|
| As for whether it will stand the test of time, well, only
| time can tell that. But most people are forever stuck
| waiting for more music that sounds like it did when they
| were in high school and college, which is a mindset
| destined for disappointment.
| pleb_nz wrote:
| As I mentioned, good music is out there. But finding it
| seems to be harder now as a lot of it doesn't make it
| into the charts and stays hidden except to those who know
| about it.
| slyall wrote:
| Unlike the great music that was produced when you were aged
| between 12 and 22 ?
| pleb_nz wrote:
| Personally I like music regardless of when it was made.
| If it sounds good then I like it. Time has nothing to do
| with it.
|
| And I can't remember exactly what dates the studies
| focused on as there have been a few I've read. One was
| over the last 60 years of music if I remember right and
| across all age brackets in 2022
| [deleted]
| nuc1e0n wrote:
| Rubbish. I have many friends who play instruments. Paying to
| hear certain sounds is the aberration of history.
| cik2e wrote:
| What exactly are you even saying? What is "rubbish" and
| what do you mean by "certain sounds"?
|
| People have been paying for live performances of music,
| i.e., "certain sounds", throughout all of recorded history.
| So it's the opposite of an aberration. "Paying to hear
| certain sounds" is a time-honored human tradition. If we
| broaden our definition of "paying" to include barter, I
| would guess it goes back to the invention of musical
| instruments.
| nuc1e0n wrote:
| I meant that the idea there is little live music any
| more. Historically people have paid for the time of
| musicians, not for music. If you want to hear more live
| music, pay for someone to play at your venue. If you want
| to be heard as a musician yourself, take your instrument
| down the pub or onto the street and just start playing.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > And yet it's never been easier for a musician to share
| their music on Soundcloud, use Bandcamp for album sales, put
| their music on Spotify/Beatport/etc and collect streaming
| royalties, and set up a Patreon to get recurring revenue from
| fans.
|
| This just means that it is far more complex to be far less
| likely to make a living.
| nuc1e0n wrote:
| >Would you feel bad for a software developer who learned
| Visual FoxPro in the 90s, refused to learn any new tools,
| then complained that their occupation was no longer relevant?
|
| Indeed I wouldn't
| fooooobarbaz wrote:
| > And yet it's never been easier for a musician to share
| their music on Soundcloud, use Bandcamp for album sales, put
| their music on Spotify/Beatport/etc and collect streaming
| royalties, and set up a Patreon to get recurring revenue from
| fans.
|
| People love to say stuff like this, but having gone through
| that grind myself, it's not nearly as easy or accessible as
| you describe. These platforms also make it easier than ever
| for artists to face things like copyright strikes and
| takedowns, which people are more than happy to abuse.
|
| Additionally, streaming royalties pay peanuts for the vast,
| vast majority of artists and they get to determine how
| artists are paid based on calculations they determine. For
| example, Spotify pays artists by calculating their "stream-
| share", not a fixed amount per stream.[0]
|
| Sure, it's easier to platform your music, but that doesn't
| necessarily make it any easier to generate meaningful income,
| particularly when you need the service to be priced as
| cheaply as possible in order to get reach. In the long run, I
| think this is going to further incentivize entertainment that
| is created passively and augmented by things like AI, which
| I'm personally not that excited about.
|
| 0: https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/2022/10/22/how-much-
| per-...
| post-it wrote:
| > For example, Spotify pays artists by calculating their
| "stream-share", not a fixed amount per stream.
|
| Well, obviously. I don't pay Spotify per stream, I pay them
| per month. So my $10 must get split up across every song
| I've listened to that month. No other model is possible
| given a monthly subscription.
| bjelkeman-again wrote:
| Your money goes to the most played music on that
| platform. The artist you played may get nothing.
|
| > The Pro Rata model, currently used by all major
| streaming platforms, means that monthly revenue from
| premium subscription costs and advertisement revenues is
| collected into one pool of money. Spotify takes 30% of
| that revenue and distributes the rest based on artist's
| total listening numbers, rather than the listening times
| of individual users. Meaning that, even if a user never
| listens to the most streamed artists on the platform, a
| percentage of the money they pay will be given to the
| most streamed artists.
|
| https://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2019/10/a-breakdown-of-
| music...
| amelius wrote:
| This is outrageous.
| Chinjut wrote:
| What's the difference between whether my money is
| individually given to the artists I personally listened
| to and similarly for all other subscribers, or whether
| all subscribers' money is pooled and then re-apportioned
| out based on the cumulative listening tallies of all
| subscribers? Aren't these the same results in the end?
| jefftk wrote:
| Imagine we are the only two subscribers:
|
| * You spend an hour a day listening to A during your
| commute
|
| * I spend 9 hours a day, my whole workday, listening to
| B.
|
| In the current system, B gets 90% and A gets 10%, but
| some people would prefer to see a system in which they
| each get 50%.
|
| Additionally, I believe they use total streaming time and
| not total streaming time for paid subscribers. So an
| artist who is popular among paid subscribers doesn't earn
| any more than an artist who is popular only among free
| subscribers.
| spacemadness wrote:
| I can't tell if this is sarcasm.
| int_19h wrote:
| But, conversely, how many more people got easy access to music
| in form of "canned music", where previously they had none at
| all because they couldn't afford to regularly hire live
| players?
| lachlan_gray wrote:
| It's true that it's possible to reach a wider audience than was
| every possible, but now a handful of musicians take up all of
| the listening time. My parents are both blue collar musicians
| and use to make good money. before recorded music was as
| popular as it is now, being a musician was a viable career path
| because anytime anyone wanted music at the wedding or the
| holiday party, or any party really, there needed to be a band.
| Now it's more common to hire a DJ or just make a Spotify
| playlist and hear recordings of the tiny minority of top
| musicians.
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| >There is far less live music today, at least in the US, than
| there has ever been in my lifetime.
|
| Objectively, this is a complete fabrication (barring Covid).
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/306065/concert-ticket-sa...
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| I would bet that increase in revenue has much more to do with
| the skyrocketing ticket prices than actual attendance.
|
| For example, U2 ticket prices have gone from $17 in 1985 to
| around $130 today. That's way more than can be accounted for
| by inflation (if inflation alone were responsible, you'd
| expect ticket prices around $44).
|
| https://gametime.co/blog/how-u2-concert-ticket-prices-
| have-c...
|
| I know I rarely go nowadays, and that's entirely due to the
| outrageous ticket prices.
| the_only_law wrote:
| Personally, there's just rarely any shows I want to go to.
| A large majority of stuff seem to be cover bands, or just
| something I'm not that much a fan of. Venues have also been
| falling off, I know at least one local place I've been to
| hear had to shut down because of covid. And then, at the
| last show I went to, they charged you for goddamn cups of
| water at the bar.
| Retric wrote:
| Concert ticket sales represents a tiny slice of the total
| number of paid musicians.
|
| A band playing at bars and bar mitzvah's are just as much
| live music as someone playing in front of 50,000 fans at a
| major venue.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| Is this sufficient to call it a "complete fabrication"?
| Climbing concert revenue is plausibly consistent with a
| disappearance of lower-overhead non-ticketed live music, like
| at a bar. In fact, those two are very compatible with each
| other: where I live now, it 's harder to see live music
| casually, so my bar for whether I want to go to a ticketed
| concert is lower.
| jnovek wrote:
| "There is far less live music today"
|
| Subjectively it doesn't feel like less than when I was in high
| school and college (late 90s early 2000s), it feels like
| substantially more. Especially as pandemic precautions have
| wound down, I can't seem to walk into a bar without running
| into a live band.
|
| I think there's quite a bit more studio music coming out, too,
| as people can self-release on Spotify, etc.
| GCA10 wrote:
| We've probably made it easier for people to have "half a
| career" in music -- getting paid a modest amount of money on
| weekends, evenings, etc. to do what they love. In my own
| circle, I've got friends who earn $5,000 to $30,000 a year
| playing live music -- and then round out their earnings doing
| some amount of teaching, bookkeeping or whatever. Ditto for
| actors, writers, semi-pro athletes, etc.
|
| The more I think about these tradeoffs, the harder it is to
| see them as unilaterally good or evil. It's a second-best
| solution for dealing with the gap between what people love to
| do, and what pays the bills.
|
| Not sure if there is a first-best solution. Some countries
| have created "artists' cartels," which provide subsidized
| higher incomes for people in the club. That does make it
| easier to make a living as an approved artist. But the
| jockeying about who gets into the club, who pays the
| subsidies and what it takes to stay in -- argh! it all gets
| really protracted and ugly.
| cik2e wrote:
| Probably, UBI is the best first solution. In the sense that
| it acts as a collective bargaining system for all citizens
| who are forced to trade their time for income.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| It's not a silver bullet, but an expanded social safety net
| would make it significantly less risky to pursue art (or
| open source software or whatever) as more than just a
| "nights and weekends" thing.
| kiba wrote:
| That just mean that you don't make a living making art
| since the safety net provide a living for you.
| robocat wrote:
| > an expanded social safety net would make it
| significantly less risky to pursue art
|
| Paraphrased: workers should be taxed so that we can 100%
| subsidise some other people's dreams.
|
| Fuck that.
|
| I accept our society should subsidise _some_ : art (I do
| like the BBC, especially so because I don't pay for it),
| or music (I like CreativeNZ videos), or sports, or
| hobbies (HAM radio spectrum), or open source (yayyy), or
| even subsidise sitting around doing nothing (society
| should not demand all our time just for us to survive).
|
| But the idea that society should subsidise everyone to
| follow their dreams is simply unworkable. And if you want
| to start ranking which dreams are worthwhile, well,
| society ends up with systems such as we already have.
| lordfrito wrote:
| Thank you.
|
| It feels like lately more and more people somehow believe
| it's a societal/structural failure that their dream life
| isn't handed to them.
|
| Maybe it has something to do with a generation raised on
| endless immediate gratification via free (you're the
| product) digital products. FOMO, whatever.
|
| Then again, maybe it has something to do with me getting
| old.
|
| Anyway thanks for some sanity today!
| kiba wrote:
| Some of our greatest scientific achievement come from
| aristocratic or independently wealthy folks who don't
| need to earn a living.
|
| So I wouldn't knock these subsidies.
|
| I think we could rearrange society to provide such
| subsidies on a sustainable basis if we choose to.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| That's not an accurate paraphrasing; many social programs
| actually cost less than the alternative.
|
| Sounds like you live in the UK, so maybe you take the NHS
| for granted. It would be a vast improvement from what we
| have in the US, where we have amongst the most expensive
| health care system in the world with far from the best
| outcomes. Group insurance is generally negotiated by
| employers; access to affordable healthcare is a huge
| obstacle to pursuing anything other than a traditional
| job.
|
| Even loftier goals like ending homelessness don't turn
| out to require the financial tradeoffs you're talking
| about. Study after study, we've seen that simply giving
| people homes is costs less than shelters, police raids
| and a Kafkaesque system of requirements to prevent people
| who Don't Deserve Help from getting it.
|
| Consider that US workers are taxed in order to subsidize
| the dreams of the second wealthiest man in the world, for
| not one but _two_ of his businesses. Would SpaceX or
| Tesla have succeeded without government handouts? We're
| never asked to question that, but as soon as we suggest
| that people be able to make art without worrying about
| medical bankruptcy or homelessness, people start looking
| at the balance sheet with a magnifying glass.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| [dead]
| robocat wrote:
| You appear to be introducing three new tangential topics,
| and I don't think you are addressing the point you
| originally raised.
|
| Your original comment says that we should take a system
| that is there to provide insurance for the unfortunate
| (social safety net) and use that system to fund people's
| desires (art, open source, or whatever).
|
| I very strongly disagree with that idea: different
| systems have different purposes and commingling a safety
| net with creative goals will likely lead to very unfair
| outcomes.
| tpush wrote:
| > Paraphrased: workers should be taxed [...]
|
| No, the richest people should be taking most of the tax
| burden.
| robocat wrote:
| Yeah, I would like to have phrased it better. However I
| am struggling to think of a clear alternative.
|
| If we assume that the rich get their wealth from the
| workers, then taxing the rich is now just _indirectly
| taxing_ the workers.
|
| If we talk about taxing everyone in society, then how do
| we tax an artist or anybody else spending time on their
| dream? How do we measure an artist's contribution to
| society? Should we pay anyone highly if they contribute
| great artistic wealth to society? Should we pay someone
| whose art or hobby has no merit to society? Do we treat a
| rich artist like you seem to want to treat a financially
| rich person - tax the value of their art until they are
| "equal"? If someone has worldwide status or high renown,
| should we somehow share that wealth of status with the
| less fortunate? What if some high art is immensely
| valuable to a small number of people - how do you fairly
| manage that?
|
| Our society has a huge variety of different means to deal
| with the conflicting goals above. One of those is money
| which often _equalises_ competing unmeasurable needs so
| that as individuals we get to value incomparable things
| (catching polio vs. a Van Gogh vs. an apricot vs. playing
| Mario Brothers vs. reading a book vs. a massage).
|
| We all have huge disagreements about how the wealth of
| society should be divided - and our society has many
| radically different solutions for that problem. Should
| the average wage of a US citizen be allowed to be
| radically higher than a citizen of Haiti? What about an
| artist in Haiti?
| slyall wrote:
| The Podcast "One Year" had an Episode about the 1942-1944
| musicians' strike.
|
| Most US musicians stopped recording music for nearly a year.
|
| Podcast: https://slate.com/podcasts/one-
| year/s4/1942/e3/recording-ban...
|
| Wikipedia Article
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1942%E2%80%931944_musicians%27...
| teddyh wrote:
| I stand with Compressorhead.
| Animats wrote:
| _" The time is coming fast when the only living thing around a
| motion picture house will be the person who sells you your
| ticket. Everything else will be mechanical."_
|
| Mission accomplished.
| timoth3y wrote:
| I'm kind of surprised that this article did not mention John
| Philip Sousa, who was both one of the most successful "recording
| artists" of that time and one of the most outspoken opponents of
| recorded music.
|
| (If you are American, you definitely know Sousa. Think of any
| patriotic march you've ever heard. Sousa probably wrote that.)
|
| Sousa was not so much worried about the economic effects, but
| about how the new technology would change the social function of
| music. It would change what music was. He worried that instead of
| people gathering around the family or neighborhood pianist and
| singing together, they would be alone in their own rooms
| passively listening.
|
| He worried that children would no longer gather on neighbourhood
| stoops to make up their own little songs and sing them together,
| but would all start passively consuming the same music as every
| one else in the country.
|
| Sousa was worried that recoding technology would change music
| from active social interactions where we create music together
| into isolated, passive consumption.
|
| Sousa was right.
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