I apologize for putting the word work in quotes. It was not my intention to imply that making music does not involve labor. At least for some.
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Anyway: I really think most of my issues with the music industry are related to bigger issues with capitalism in general. The people getting the biggest rewards are not the ones deserving them, and the proportions are all askew.
I find the differences in how music distribution has changed music, vs. how self-publishing has affected publishing, kind of interesting to look at. Thousands of self-published authors donât really make it harder for J.K. Rowling, or⌠whoever churns out lots of suspense novels every year, I donât know. Does it affect mid-tier authors? Thereâs some audiobook streaming out there but not like with music. There wasnât the kind of outcry over PDFs being torrented in the 90s, etc.
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Maybe I"m wrong about that, but I donât think it is. I also donât think that our own personal networks are probably going to be very productive in understanding how the culture in general treats mass culture. Iâd suggest that weâre both probably outliers in that respect and probably move in circles that are also full of similar outliers. Maybe not, but thatâs my own experience - people I regularly interact with engage pretty constructively with culture, in part because many of them are themselves producers of culture in various forms.
I think itâs much more common a position for people to view mass culture as entirely disposable, made by faceless corporations, and that itâs perfectly acceptable to skirt norms such as paying for such entertainment. If people think of mass culture produced by large corporations (who can take the economic hit more readily than an indie artist) in those terms, why wouldnât they treat indie culture as such? Not everyone is aware of the differences between major label artists and indie artists and if they donât understand that distinction, why would they treat major label artists different than indie artists? Wouldnât Madonna and Grimes be one and the same to someone who doesnât know the difference between being on Warners and being on 4AD? Again, you and I know what the difference is, but someone who isnât a music geek might not.
First, I think thatâs really apples and oranges. Second, who said I was arguing for the RIAA/BPI position here? Iâm really not sure how much I need to keep making that distinction, but I think that freely available downloads benefit labels that are in bed with the RIAA/BPI more than it does artists trying to get out of that model, primarily because they have an easier go monetizing alternative options to sound recordings. they have deeper pockets and ready access to the American Congress, British Parliament, EU parliament, and to influence international treaty making in a way that indie artists just canât.
I think the average recording artists salary is about $40,000. given that probably many live in big cities (to be near places to record), and that some of the top selling artists in their field are multi-millionaires, thatâs saying something. I donât see that as overcompensated. Depending on where you live, thatâs either a decent living or barely scraping by. Some artists are very much overcompensated, but thatâs in part because the industry has never had much in the way of salary regulation like some other fields of labor.
I also donât think that Metallica is the people weâre really talking about here, or who we should be talking about here.
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Can you name an artist who doesnât actually do work of some variety?
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I was talking about Metallica, because they were the first band to sue a p2p filesharing service:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallica_v._Napster,_Inc.
Thatâs blaming technology if there ever was. Not that I feel that they should blame themselves for not being more popular 
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I think, ultimately, what puts the final nail in the coffin of recording artists is the advent of rental music. Services like Google Play Music allow - for a monthly flat fee - you to download as many albums as you please, to listen to as much as you want. Iâm currently carrying around a bunch of (somewhat) difficult-to-otherwise-obtain albums thanks to big G.
Adrian Johnâs book, Piracy: a history of the intellectual property wars from Gutenberg to Gates chronicles copyright from inception, and the related ups and downs of the music industry. An interesting thing to note is that weâve had this debate back in the sheet music piracy days, when the Jolly Roger Corp distributed pirate sheets cheap. Or when the advent of the player piano occurred. Etc, etc.
This century, music itself has been devalued by oversaturation. No longer is it novel to hear tunes. Itâs ubiquitous. Any building you go to has music. The only reason to own an album was and is to support the artist (and to be able to play it whenever, as opposed to waiting for it on the radio).
Speaking of oversaturation: last yearâs SXSW conference saw 1,201 songs released online, for free, by the artists present. 7.86GB. Thatâs a freaking lot, considering I only listen to music for about an hour a day at most.
Ultimately, the brief window wherein it was viable for a (relative) handful of performers to make a living as recording artists is over. Even if the state were to salary musicians, there are now far too many to financially support (whereas, in the Netherlands, there are relatively few artists, so the state can indulge and support them). Novelists long ago reached that point, and soon, gaming companies will join that list. Only an even smaller handful will take home sizes of the pie. And in the end, nobody creates just for the wealth; creation is expression.
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Because you canât sell that same woodworking project to 10,000 other people, then sell it to them again in different packaging in 5 years, then sell it again as part of a greatest hits compilation, then license it out to a TV show and again to a commercial. Itâs a very different structure from being paid hourly or salary or piecework and only getting paid once for something.
I could see how the concept of doing something once and getting paid for the rest of your life, coupled with media portrayal of the rock star celebrity lifestyle distorts that to sound enviable. Especially if you think that they actually get a sizable part of the retail price.
But Iâve seen how small royalties checks can be and also the travel costs and expenses vs revenues of touring bands (where breaking even can be cause for celebration). And then thereâs all that time that theyâre working - creating, rehearsing, etc. - but not performing, and therefore not getting paid. I donât envy that.
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I reserve the right to hold manufactured bands in low regard.
yeah: the re-normalization of the value of music
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Sure. My point was that these questions have less of an impact on a band as successful as Metallica and that focusing on the elites like them misses the larger story, I think.
And that is part of the argument in the Wu-Tang book in fact the core argument. But that is related to the rise of sound recording in general.
Itâs still a creative process that involves a form of labor. And given how little that the initial run might net a performer/artist, itâs not unreasonable to expect monetization in other forms (licensing deals).
But thatâs not the reality, thatâs the mythology⌠as Dire Straight said, the perception is that itâs âmoney for nothingâŚâ But itâs not. In some cases, a label may never recoup itâs costs for the initial promotion of an artist, and hence the artist never gets paid, and in fact end up paying the label for profiting off their intellectual labor.
And of course, as others pointed out, people do it because they genuinely love it.
Thatâs youâre right, of course. But whatâs a manufactured band, and doesnât it still involve labor. Japanese idols are a great example. They are built by the labels, from the ground up, but that doesnât mean people arenât doing real work in the process. I think we can argue about the artistic merits of such bands, but that I think is a separate, aesthetic question from economic value and labor, isnât it?
Works for me! Have you read the Wu-Tang book yet? Seems like it would be right up your alley.
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Thats not really an invention of xbox live or PSN it is a continuation of older practices.
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nah, I didnât know about it. I read this one, though. it was dope.
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Iâll have to pick that up.
The âOnce Upon a Time in Shaolinâ book came out a couple of months ago and just discusses the entire project.
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There are similar studies showing the exact same effect for video games.
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I might be an outlier, but I have a number of CDs and concert ticket stubs that I wouldnât have had otherwise, in addition to a patreon subscription or two.
Similar regarding games, although in that case it was the switch between someone thinking âmeh, this is old, we canât sell itâ and âhey maybe we could sell it on GOGâ that made the difference. Of course there were a couple of games that I bought but which didnât work properly until I cracked the DRM. 
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These days I just crack the DRM because itâs nore convenient. (And in some cases, better for system performance)
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I have also downloaded (or listened somewhere) to a lot of music that I have then purchased. The availability of single songs to buy is nice, because I rarely like everything on an album. All neat stuff I like that I would never have know about had I not been able to sample it. And with my weird tastes thatâs something.
I remember the âgood olâ daysâ (not) when I had to guess what I might like from album covers in record stores. Some purchases I made I didnât like. And back then you were not able to play them (vinyl, then CDs) first. CDs sometimes they had headphones for popular stuff, but generally not the stuff I like.
Yay internet.
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You miss 45s? Or, possibly, you missed them altogetherâŚ
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Tell that to Big Mama Thorton, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller; the original artist and songwriters of (You Aint Nothing but a) Hound Dog.
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No, the things I like rarely came out on 45s. I never paid any attention to them, and I donât even know when they disappeared (if ever).
I was always an album aficionado or something like that there.
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