
Platform capitalism devalued the music industry - laurex
https://blog.usejournal.com/how-platform-capitalism-devalued-the-music-industry-30883adf3a15
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Isamu
Seems to be actually a complaint about the decline of music journalism. Which
I agree is sad, but is probably not related to the rise of "platforms" but
part of the overall struggles of print journalism.

Also the graph in the beginning shows the long linear decline in non-streaming
music sales that started decades before streaming became viable, hence not
caused by streaming, and in fact streaming platforms are now propping up the
mainstream music industry which otherwise would be really circling the drain.

~~~
Barrin92
>but part of the overall struggles of print journalism.

which not coincidentally is also related to another platform economy, the
shift of advertising revenue from publishers and distributors to the large
platforms, Ben Thompson writes about this all the time.

I think it's largely detrimental to independent creators, it treats the
independent creator of artistic work as an afterthought in the name of
aggregate consumer welfare and price. It's centralizing power in the name of
efficiency and people talk gleefully about it because it robs the distributors
and taxi companies, and movie studios and so on of their perceived ill-gotten
power.

I think that's a huge mistake, the centralization of power streamlines all
goods and removes all diversity, takes agency away from everyone but the large
platforms, it turns open spaces into proprietary walled gardens because it's
the only way for platforms to defend their content, and we're going to really
regret it in a few years if we don't already.

~~~
rumanator
> It's centralizing power in the name of efficiency and people talk gleefully
> about it because it robs the distributors and taxi companies, and movie
> studios and so on of their perceived ill-gotten power.

I don't agree, because "the movie studios and so on" that you referred were
actually the centralizing power, and that power was overthrown by these new
platforms in a way that they no longer control and arbitrarily restrict access
to the public.

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DrNuke
Harsh reality of the internet content is once you start making something
available for free somewhere, then it will be worth zero everywhere. This is
pretty sad, because at local level you still have to pay real monies to buy
bread & milk and nobody of sound mind would ask for freebies just because
somewhere else someone is giving bread & milk away for free.

~~~
boublepop
Which explains why the porn industry, music industry and streaming video
industry have all collapsed completely.

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mxfh
Not showing the growing live part of it, kind of missing the big picture:
[https://www.statista.com/statistics/239276/growth-of-the-
glo...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/239276/growth-of-the-global-music-
revenue-by-type/) EDM and Techno experiences, unlike Pop, are hardly
reproducable at home to begin with, they can't really exist without the events
and their PA systems.

Techno is it's own beast, it's most surprising, that it didn't get flogged to
death by commercialization. EDM had the stigma to be perceived as a fad by
most to begin with, a non-sustainable stardom driven branch-off that has used
up it's novelty quite fast.

Music rights themselves still seem super expensive, when they are not meant to
lure in customers, when it comes to video games and how they are shut down
left and right.

~~~
wwweston
Growing live performance isn't great news; it's likely driven by the fact that
buffet streaming is murder for artist capture of revenue from recordings. Live
performing is one of the remaining options. And it doesn't scale.

~~~
msla
Anything which does scale is going to go the same way as recorded music.

We can take bets on how long, either directly using betting markets or
indirectly by founding or investing in companies which depend on the
profitability of certain kinds of scalable thing, but there's nothing scalable
which can magically only be scaled the right way by the right people.

~~~
wwweston
We had a better model for artists for recorded music before buffet streaming:
pay for recordings. The trajectory we're now on was less an inevitability
driven by new tech + market forces and more a result of specific policy
choices and business plays.

If your generalization applies (and it may well apply), then that's something
to consider for anyone who could find themselves as easily exploited by scale
as its beneficiary.

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ilamont
_The introduction of Platform Capitalism to the music industry through
streaming services and online media brands more or less reoriented the music
industry’s function of supply and quality of demand by flooding the market
with valueless content in the form of user-uploaded music and evergreen
“click-bait” articles._

How quickly we forget the other platforms that used to dominate the music
industry -- radio, MTV, distribution networks, music retailers -- that
extracted maximum profit from listeners while excluding most artists from
profits.

It's a similar story in other media industries. B&N is regarded as a victim of
Amazon's dominance of the book industry, but 25 years ago it was regarded as a
heartless juggernaut devouring the book industry.

~~~
cmiles74
In fact, this is the premise of the film "You've Got Mail".

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aphextim
Music Industry failed to adapt. NoFx had a song about this called Dinosaurs
will die.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPKQSQSVVos](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPKQSQSVVos)

~~~
j2bax
Love NOFX! Been a big fan since like 7th grade (circa 1996) They are real
a-holes, but they also have some pretty spot on commentary!

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twohearted
The music industry has been fighting against the natural economic theories of
capitalism ever since the mp3.

Digital files have infinite supply. Draw a classic supply and demand diagram
using that information and look at where the price should be. The supply curve
is a vertical line at infinity on the x-axis. The demand curve crosses it at
$0. Everyone knows and feels this intrinsically.

The artist is the thing with extremely limited supply. Something like Patreon
will end up being the correct model.

~~~
klodolph
This argument falls apart because it is using the incorrect definition of
“supply”. The “supply” is the amount available on the market. Just because the
cost of duplicating a digital file is nearly zero does not mean that the
supply is infinite. The supply is limited by laws that restrict who is allowed
to duplicate the file and the limited number of people who are willing to
break those laws.

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dummydata
The article references some google trends data on electronic dance music, but
if you query for EDM instead you get a different picture:
[https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2010-01-01%202...](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2010-01-01%202020-02-07&geo=US&q=EDM).

I don't follow the EDM scene personally, so I don't know if interest has been
on the decline in recent years.

~~~
budgi4
I think the decline is in the term 'EDM' as a blanket reference as the
audience matures into the nuances of electronic music.

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awinter-py
100%

Youtube created a world where distribution matters more than content because
section 230 interpretations allowed them to steal content for a while. And now
they pay for it, but that's a new development after years of piracy that drove
down the price.

The viacom lawsuit has emails from senior youtube execs saying that stolen
music content drove most of their traffic

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throwaway894345
What's the difference between "platform capitalism" and "collective
bargaining" in this case? Seems like Spotify, etc are acting on behalf of
their customers to get a better deal from the music industry.

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Camas
When did this trend of naming things [noun] capitalism start?

~~~
sremani
In US, since post great recession. (my observation).

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rayiner
Or did content socialism (mandatory licensing and government-set streaming
royalty rates) devalue the music industry?

~~~
profunctor
Socialism isn’t when the government does stuff.

~~~
rayiner
I agree with that. But the government forcing property owners to let other
people use their property at prices _set by the government_ is pretty
socialist: [https://completemusicupdate.com/article/us-copyright-
royalty...](https://completemusicupdate.com/article/us-copyright-royalty-
board-confirms-44-increase-in-streaming-royalty-on-songs). See also:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Royalty_Board](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Royalty_Board)

Imagine if we had a government board deciding what prices people could charge
for App Store/Google Play Store apps. (It's not like we're talking about
radioactive waste or something involving externalities, where government
regulation might be justified.)

~~~
dantheman
True - though copyright is a government granted monopoly, so there is a
tradeoff. It's not real property. Copyright holders get special privileges
granted by the government to control what others do with the copyrighted
material, so it only makes sense that it comes with strings attached.

~~~
rayiner
All property is a government granted monopoly. The government threatens
violence to keep people from copying music. The government also threatens
violence to keep people from copying apps, from farming in your back yard,
from copying all the JS assets from your website, etc. All business models are
built on the government preventing people from doing what they could naturally
do.

~~~
antepodius
Well, if there were no government, people's first instinct is still to defend
their property. They might lose or decide it's a losing battle, of course.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Well, if there were no government, people's first instinct is still to
> defend their property.

No, it's to fight for what they want (or perhaps think they are entitled to)
to control.

“Property” is simply what the government says you are entitled to control.

~~~
Matticus_Rex
Eh, by that logic "murder" is simply who the government says you're not
allowed to kill. In the absence of all other criteria, that would be true, but
theories of rights still exist in the absence of laws.

~~~
dragonwriter
> theories of rights still exist in the absence of laws.

Sure, everyone had their own theory of rights. And if by people acting to
defend their property you mean “people will fight to secure access to those
things to which their own personal theory of rights holds them to be
entitled”, well, you’ll notice that's exactly what I described, but not at all
what people mean when discussing “property” normally.

~~~
antepodius
Sure. But there is such a thing as a group of people with similar theories of
right, or negotiated theories of rights. An example might be a not-entirely-
tyrannical tribe. Our current systen descends from such things.

