I don’t even know why I would want to be on a label in a few years, because I don’t think it’s going to work by labels and by distribution systems in the same way. The absolute transformation of everything that we ever thought about music will take place within 10 years, and nothing is going to be able to stop it. I see absolutely no point in pretending that it’s not going to happen. I’m fully confident that copyright, for instance, will no longer exist in 10 years, and authorship and intellectual property is in for such a bashing.
Music itself is going to become like running water or electricity. So it’s like, just take advantage of these last few years because none of this is ever going to happen again. You’d better be prepared for doing a lot of touring because that’s really the only unique situation that’s going to be left. It’s terribly exciting. But on the other hand it doesn’t matter if you think it’s exciting or not; it’s what’s going to happen.
Q: How does an aspiring artist bridge the gap between distribution and commerce?
A: We have to be very clever about those things. You have to remember that it’s only a few hundred years, if that much, that artists are working with money. Artists never got money. Artists had a patron, either the leader of the state or the duke of Weimar or somewhere, or the church, the pope. Or they had another job. I have another job. I make films. No one tells me what to do. But I make the money in the wine industry. You work another job and get up at five in the morning and write your script.
This idea of Metallica or some rock n’ roll singer being rich, that’s not necessarily going to happen anymore. Because, as we enter into a new age, maybe art will be free. Maybe the students are right. They should be able to download music and movies. I’m going to be shot for saying this. But who said art has to cost money? And therefore, who says artists have to make money?
In the old days, 200 years ago, if you were a composer, the only way you could make money was to travel with the orchestra and be the conductor, because then you’d be paid as a musician. There was no recording. There were no record royalties. So I would say, “Try to disconnect the idea of cinema with the idea of making a living and money.” Because there are ways around it.
You have to remember that it’s only a few hundred years, if that much, that artists are working with money.
But is that the way we want the world to work, or just something we've resigned ourselves to because we think it's inevitable?
I'm pursuing a CS PhD; in my free time, I'm working on a science fiction novel. In some ways, I think a PhD is the perfect vehicle for this since I'm free to "explore" intellectually, as long I still publish in my field. And I make things work: I squirrel away bits of time for writing, and still have enough left over to get my work done.
But I look at the industry (especially in Silicon Valley), and I'm not sure I can expect to keep going on my side projects. Work weeks of 50, 60, or more hours are common at companies in the area, and even more so at startups. I did a lot of interviews for internships and such in undergrad and early grad school, and I would ask interviewers whether they worked on any open source projects during their free time. The answer was almost always no. I found it perplexing at the time, but looking back I think it's a relatively straightforward consequence of the environment people are working in. Most people aren't in a position to take up serious hobbies, and a big part of that is work culture and the sorts of hours employers expect.
I think Coppola is very lucky if he has a job where he can do this balancing act. Perhaps I'll be lucky too, I don't know. But I hope we're not driving our society towards a situation where you need to have some sort of exceptionally flexible day job in order to make progress on your other pursuits. And while I wouldn't want to be a professional artist myself (I love CS too much for that), I do hope that it'll be possible to be paid to do art in the next 100 years.
Live performances - theater, concerts, stand-up comedy, sport events, etc. - these would still be paid well (IMHO). It's the things that get copied easily that won't.
Same might happen with software - as more and more software moves "online" you won't be able to "copy-it" - you need to subscribe to a service and use it.
I'm gladly paying for "netflix", as $10 seems not much off our budget, and even it it doesn't have the latest shows I'm satisfied, in case I need to see (say Outlander, or Badlands - there is Vudu, Hulu, Google Play, Amazon, many others..)
But DVD/BluRay copying is gonna get easier and easier, and streaming and trying to save to disk to play later is going to get more cumbersome and cumbersome, to the point no significant amount of people would really bother.
Games fully running behind servers, with the video being streamed, would be impossible to copy - it won't work for Street Fighter, Racing Games and First Person Shooters very well, but there are plenty others for which this would be totally acceptable - heh, especially my favourite genre - Turn Based Games & RPGs :) :) :)
> I don’t even know why I would want to be on a label in a few years,
> because I don’t think it’s going to work by labels and by distribution
> systems in the same way.
>
> --David Bowie, 2002
Something to think about in music that also happens in startups and software:
These are social activities. People don’t judge music solely by some kind of independent metric of appeal. They also judge whether the music is popular within their social circle. Choice of music is one of the mediums people use for communicating.
To listen to something nobody except you likes is a little like programming in a language nobody you know uses. We make up all sorts of stories about how network effects affect the quality of a language, the availability of tools, and so on, and all that is true.
But it’s also true that we self-identify in a tribal way with our choices, and that those choices have social import. Even if you brag defiantly that you’re a pragmatist who doesn’t care who does or doesn’t use a tool: That’s a lot like being a hipster growing a beard and putting on plaid.
So back to music. The vast majority of people wish to belong to the tribe of “The vast majority of people.” They work very hard to study what is and isn’t “mainstream.” There is thus a very natural force by the market to want to have some kind of pop music dominated by just a few superstars at a time.
This, I believe, drives a winner-take-all market for pop music, which in turn is a huge incentive for the existence of massive pop marketing machines. Even if you take all the friction out of distribution and discovery, the mainstream want there to be a massive marketing push for pop artists, it helps them judge who is going to be popular.
It’s not that much different than picking a JavaScript library because some large and well-heeled organization is devoting themselves to support it. You may personally say it has something to do with bug fixes, but for most people that fact helps them judge whether other people will adopt the library, which helps them judge whether they want to belong to that particular tribe.
And most people want to belong to the biggest tribe, and will follow the signals with the biggest boost.
Thus, labels or some other kind of very big, very efficient machine for manipulating pop culture.
If you'll forgive the hyperbole, he is the archetypal outsider, the patron saint of the dispossessed. So for all those who don't feel that they belong, Bowie's activities provided a message - 'It's OK to be an outsider', and, curiously, through that message provided a sense of belonging - I'm going to get all metaphysical and say that that is alchemical / transformative in a very profound way for many people.
While that may have been one of his target markets, make no mistake: Bowie worked his socks off to find a market that worked for him - in addition to quite an incredible musical talent - and it took years and years of hard, often unrecognised work, for his success to come.
I mean - his first hit was a novelty song about garden gnomes, his second was (admittedly, possibly slightly unfair to argue it) cashing in on the space race, and it took a further couple of years for him to figure out his marketing and reach consistent success.
Bowie may have been an outsider, but consider that your exact feelings are social, those feelings of belonging and connection to an icon.
The music industry is just as adept at monetizing those feelings as they are of monetizing teen-age angst or adolescent her-worship of boy bands.
My point being, that while Bowie and many others can stand outside of the industry, I don’t believe the basic dynamics are going to change. Radio may go away. Physical media may go away. Apple may disrupt the labels.
Bt I believe that massive marketing machines will continue to slice and dice the market for music and continue to dominate people’s choices.
Remember, you only heard of Bowie because he played the game.
I totally agree with your points - the market economy finds ways to monetise and that's its job.
I'm not actually a big fan of Bowie, I'm a bit too young, but it's something I'm observing. I'm also aware that those feelings of alienation are keenest for teenagers and that the music industry exploits that.
However, whilst the music machine exploits the latest pop star - if you were to compare and contrast say, Justin Bieber or Taylor Swift with Bowie, then there is a difference in what they symbolise for the fan, and, whilst the outcome of a sense of belonging is effected in both instances, Bieber / Swift do not represent the outsider, they are just more grist for the mill.
I'm afraid I don't buy that. Music follows rules, rules that we all grew up internalizing. There's no "universal music", just music who's rules you are familiar with. Tweak those rules just enough and in the right way and you are innovative (see: The Beatles). Tweak them too much and you are simply avant garde (see: Captain Beefheart).
That means that music is without question a social construction. Simply look at how non-western music is so radically different from popular western music, yet still appealing within those cultures.
It's very possible Bowie could have been too avant garde or too much of an outsider, but what he excelled at was tweaking the establishment just enough (both musically and performance-wise) to find a huge audience whilst still being "outside" the mainstream.
>Music follows rules, rules that we all grew up internalizing. There's no "universal music", just music who's rules you are familiar with. Tweak those rules just enough and in the right way and you are innovative (see: The Beatles). Tweak them too much and you are simply avant garde (see: Captain Beefheart).
I can enjoy music who's rules I am not familiar with. I don't need to know the rules to enjoy tonal and rythmic arrangements.
> That means that music is without question a social construction
That means it's culturally specific, NOT a social construction.
> It's very possible Bowie could have been too avant garde or too much of an outsider, but what he excelled at was tweaking the establishment just enough (both musically and performance-wise) to find a huge audience whilst still being "outside" the mainstream.
Which is perhaps the point I am trying to make. Within a specific culture, his work (not just his music) had a broad appeal that helped people deal with the human condition. However it was achieved, the world is a better place for it.
>I can enjoy music who's rules I am not familiar with. I don't need to know the rules to enjoy tonal and rythmic arrangements.
You don't need to know the rules, but most people will enjoy music whose rules they are familiar with. It's entirely possible I can put on some Mahori music or Trout Mask Replica and you will enjoy it, but I strongly suspect you are in the minority. Most people (myself included) will need time to adapt to music that is radically different than what they are used to.
Which is why I don't think it's fair to call Bowie a "consummate outsider". There is no question he became a beacon for those who were outside of cultural norms, but he achieved that by working in one of the most culturally constricted artistic mediums available.
This seems like a youthful way to approach music. At some point in your adult life, you have enough of a self-identity that most of this no longer applies... in music, technology choices, or anything. To me, you are just describing how people first learn to engage with the world, not how older folk actually live it.
I guess that does parallel tech, though - the youth follow the trends, while labels/VCs drive certain cherry picked groups to success, while at the same time, us older folk live in quieter places, create our own works, do our own thing, and live satisfying lives, not really being impacted by whatever the tribes currently label as "mainstream".
If you look at the entire group of people who listen to music (and make music on their own), I don't believe this analysis fits very well. It may fit for some part of it, or for parts of the music industry, but music is more like film or theatre than it is TV or video games or other art forms.
You have a group of people who just want to hang out with their friends and whatever is popular with them is "good enough" to meet that need. This is analogous with multiplex viewers. Then you have people with specific tastes or interests. They are often willing to spend more (by an order of magnitude) than "typical" listeners and less likely to care if lots of other people come along with them or not. This is similar to art house film-goers judge what to watch. Finally, you have people who may be amateur or part time musicians themselves and appreciate a different take from everyone else. They can even be trendsetters in whatever new music that comes out. In the film analogy, they could be people who set up, run, review, and/or submit movies to film festivals.
The thing is, you may be able to influence one group of people with your approach to controlling and marketing music even if the music is self is mediocre, but those people also care less and are worth less than the other segments. And the way the music industry is going, they may not be worth much at all individually (which I think was the point of the OPs quote from David Bowie).
In tech, this would be the Bing.com approach to search versus alot of other startups which seek to grab the early adopters first and then pull in more mainstream stuff later. It can work, but not as well over time.
>But it’s also true that we self-identify in a tribal way with our choices, and that those choices have social import. Even if you brag defiantly that you’re a pragmatist who doesn’t care who does or doesn’t use a tool: That’s a lot like being a hipster growing a beard and putting on plaid.
Lol what? That's stupid. Some people listen to the music that sounds good to them, some people listen to music that brings them and their friends together, some people listen to music for other reasons.
Your analysis bad because you think you can group people so simply. Stop that.
I think it's a claim that a majority of people want to be part of a single recognisable mainstream. No idea if it's true. It's conceivable that a majority of people would want to each do their own thing, with only a minority choosing to follow the "mainstream" (which would then still be the single largest "tribe")
If anything labels are more important than ever and music sales are driven by the kind of marketing campaigns that only big records labels can afford. There's a ton of interesting music being made outside their domain but most people will never hear any of it.
"If anything labels are more important than ever and music sales are driven by the kind of marketing campaigns that only big records labels can afford."
That's what record companies would like you to think. Counter-example, Milk Records, Melbourne. It's might be a record company but it looks so much like a startup.
I've been traveling all over the world and all I hear everywhere I go is crap American top 40 pop music. Like I said there's a ton of interesting stuff going on outside their purview but they control the conversation right now.
So your premise is that if it is music that you do not want to hear, it must be the labels pushing it? In no way could that music be on the radio because it is actually popular?
McD's and Coke are popular because people really want what they sell. It's not just a psychological thing, like everyone is a mindless zombie brainwashed by Ronald McDonald. They don't like it because they've been told to like it (if anything, it's the opposite these days), they like it because it's convenient and it has a ton of sugar and other addictive additives in it. People like both convenience and sugar; that's not a secret.
It's the same thing musically (though admittedly there is a bit more, not a huge amount more, of cultural influence here); there is a formula for music that most people find really satisfying. The record companies have software that analyzes songs and scores against the common patterns that produce hits. Of course, the business of music is about more than just the music, it's about the whole package.
People love cocaine too. It doesn't mean you have their best interests at heart in selling it to them. Modern commercial pop music, like junk fast food, is the product of a profit-driven corporation using psychology and focus group research to push your pleasure buttons without actually providing you with any nourishment.
The worst thing about both kinds of products is that they destroy local diversity and teach people to consume things that are worthless at best and actively harmful at their worst.
The issue wasn't whether Coke and McDonald's care about their consumers' health. It was simply that there is more to these brands than marketing. They're providing a product people really like. It is like cocaine. There is substance to the desire, which doesn't mean that its a morally or ethically justified desire, but means that it's not imaginary and it's not simply the product of emotional or psychological manipulation.
Do people want to do drugs as much as possible? Yes. Do people want to pretend that candy is normal food and eat candy for every meal? Yes. Coke and McDonald's are supplying the latter demand. It doesn't absolve them of responsibility and it doesn't mean they're not manipulative or dishonest. It just means that there is a real, physiological desire backing their products that's not artificially created by cartoon clowns or polar bears.
McDonalds contains objectively less nutrition than better foods, as well as objectively more addictive and potentially harmful additives (sugar, etc.). Today's stamped-out low-effort all-sounds-the-same pop contains objectively less novelty or information than, say, Bowie or the Beatles.
It's mostly popular because of the huge budgets (plus a state of extremely low musical and cultural education of the population).
All other things (e.g. marketing budgets) being equal, much better music could be in the top 10. In the 60s and 70s, before MTV and tightly controlled playlist radios, it was.
Is it? Maybe in shopping malls and bars, then I agree. I live in Singapore and a lot of Singaporeans who I meet listen mostly to either Chinese or Indian music. It might be different though in Thailand or Malaysia.
Remember though, that SEA is just part of Asia. China and India are huge music markets. Additionally, Japan and Korea have very strong, local music scene as well.
I would actually call out Japan first, they still have the 2nd largest market by revenue with quite a distance [1]. It's more than half of what the US music market makes.
It seems to me that, strangely enough, Chinese pop culture actually aligns much more to the USA than the Japanese one. Japanese tend to prefer everything domestic first, especially so in games and music, movies a bit less so but it's still a much larger purely domestic film market compared to EU (if you don't count US financed films made in EU countries).
Most people want to hear what most people hear, to be able to talk about it and don't be cut off from their group of friends. Same thing about TV, movies, cloths, phones, books, games etc.
I'm a non-sports person, but I had a dawning realization earlier this week. We crave shared, tribal experiences, and that's why we seek out those shared events.
On the same topic, sports is a religion. If you disagree, or don't yet understand, please compare and contrast the two for me.
What do you mean by 'religion', and why does it matter whether sports is a religion under this meaning?
Here are some differences: sports fans don't think that their team is capable of supernatural feats. I don't think I've ever seen a fan of one team try to convince a fan of another to change allegiance, or proselytizing on a street corner. Sports fans know that the teams of the other fans exist, while religious people usually deny that other gods exist. Similarly, religious people don't have to worry about whether Yahweh could beat up Vishnu, but sports fans get to actually see what happens when their teams compete.
> Here are some differences: sports fans don't think that their team is capable of supernatural feats. I don't think I've ever seen a fan of one team try to convince a fan of another to change allegiance, or proselytizing on a street corner.
thinking that something is capable of supernatural feats is not required for something to become a religion.
Quite on the contrary I present you exhibit A: "forum atheists", non-believers that believe so strongly in the non-existence of anything they haven't personally seen that they will hijack any thread that is remotely near using any religious word.
To be fair, IMO a whole lot of atheists are great people. A few of them though seems to be more religious and more proselyting about it than almost any other religious group. Which is so ironic it would be quite funny if it wasn't so annoying.
> thinking that something is capable of supernatural feats is not required for something to become a religion.
I basically agree, but I think the concept of "religion" invokes a lot of correlated things, and belief in the supernatural is one of the main ones. I expect most religions to differ from the 'prototypical' religion in a few ways, but I think sports differs in lots of ways.
(edit: or perhaps better, "beliefs about the supernatural". Religions say something specific. Atheists believe something specific. Sports teams make no claims one way or the other.)
> non-believers that believe so strongly in the non-existence of anything they haven't personally seen that they will hijack any thread that is remotely near using any religious word.
This seems like another example. I've seen that behavior from atheists and from religious people. I haven't seen it from sports fans.
> Quite on the contrary I present you exhibit A: "forum atheists", non-believers that believe so strongly in the non-existence of anything they haven't personally seen that they will hijack any thread that is remotely near using any religious word.
---
What does this have to do with the supernatural? Secondly what does this have to do with religion. If religion was 'people who feel strongly about something' then the definition of the word would no longer represent what it does.
But I will still argue that whenever I see people proselyting atheism because "big bang, stupid" and it is clear they haven't studied to much of neither physics or biology, then we have:
* proselytizing
* stronger belief than many Christians and Muslims
and I will argue that they qualify as religious even if they don't have a deity.
Is communist Russia objectively worse than the crusades or the Catholic inquisition or ISIS? Let's just be honest here and say that human being are capable of pretty cruel things, regardless of being spurned by religion or not.
And why is atheism a religion. Isn't its definition a lack of religion?
The atrocities committed during these periods were not made in the name of atheism, which is the main difference with ISIS or inquisition. Whatever they did, it was not consequence of their atheistic beliefs.
Religion is about in-group / out-group distinction through shared beliefs and costly, exclusionary displays of membership.
It's a social and organizational concept, not theological or philosophical, relating to gods or otherwise. For example, environmentalism is a type of religion.
It might also has something to do with the fact that not all good music is simply radio-friendly. That is, it's hard to appreciated it in a similar way it's hard to appreciate a good movie unless you're watching it somewhere in a quite place without distractions.
You can always turn the tap on one of the music as running water services, and start listening to whatever the collaborative filter thinks you like best.
The current UI trend in these services seems designed to thwart this. It seems they're going to a model of having the user to select music to list to when I [exercise|drive|relax|study|...]. That's wholly unhelpful, I don't understand why they'd think that my preferences for what to listen to when exercising would coincided with anybody else's, other than maybe an activity being facilitated within a range of BPM counts.
> If anything labels are more important than ever and music sales are driven by the kind of marketing campaigns that only big records labels can afford.
That's just not true. While the very few artists that do sell albums nowadays (Taylor Swift, Adele, Kanye West, etc.) are on major labels and do have promotion from major labels, these artists are also already successful enough to have done their own promotion if they wanted to.
On top of that, these successful artists by todays standards are selling what would have been considered disappointing numbers for artists at their levels 20 years ago. In the 90s Hootie and the Blowfish (an act with no staying power) sold 16 million albums in the US. By comparison Adele's 25 which is a huge hit by today's standards has only sold 3 million copies in the US (though 16 million worldwide.) In the 90s many albums sold tens of millions of copies, nobody does that any more.
Where are your numbers coming from? Wikipedia says 25 has sold 7.6 million in the US, and it's only been out a few months. 21 sold 11 million. In comparison, Thriller, one of the bestselling records of all time, sold 30 million. (All these numbers are US sales only.)
The data says exactly the opposite of what you're saying.
One would think services like Spotify would help, but they only make the music more accessible, they don't help you find it. I don't have pro and only ads I hear (besides the spotify ones that are trying to annoy you into paying) are ones from Universal Music.
I actually use Spotify to discover new music. I take some artist I know, and then I go to some related one, and then to artist related to that one, etc.
Spotify actually made discovering music way easier to me.
BTW there was one website that I used very often. It was called "We are Hunted"[1] and unfortunately it was acquired by Twitter, and as we all know Twitter Music is dead. That website had a playlist of emerging new tracks and I found a lot of good music there (and I heard some artists just 1-2 years before they became very famous)
Not true in my case. (I've had Pro for a long time, not sure which if any of these are Pro-only...) I can audition as much unheard-by-me recommended-by-Spotify music as I want through its Weekly playlist, its various curated genre "browse" playlists, its "trending" playlist (where you will often hear things that only become "visibly" popular MONTHS later, the playlist content is actually determined via algorithm to spot trendings super early)
I don't agree—I use Spotify a lot and it's helped tremendously in my finding new music. The "Discover Weekly" and social playlists features always point me to sources of new music.
Spotify and other streaming services are amazing for discovering new music if you're willing to put in the effort but most people just listen to what they have pushed on them. I doubt most people even realize that top 40 music isn't written by the people that perform it.
The internet continues to make human-curated content (college/community radio, in my opinion unmatched for discovery) more accessible. But very few people listen, and with changes to fee structure, very few stations can afford to continue online broadcasting. [0]
Really? What about the anti-Spotify's like HypeMachine? Fiercely independent, trendspotting/trendsetting, and sustainable. It's a very valuable service to lots of folks.
IMO Spotify/Rdio/Pandora could only ever hope to go the advertising route over subscription because they couldn't crack the much harder distribution problem (e.g. the HypeM's, SoundCloud's, Drip's, etc).
Spotify stopped working on Ubuntu a while back so I can't check but I'm pretty sure there is a HypeMachine app for Spotify. So you can get recommendations from them within the Spotify client.
EDIT: it stopped working after 15.04. Something with an old version libgcrypt. I didn't care enough to debug it.
I don't know about whether the spotify app doesn't work for you anymore, but I use mopidy-spotify on arch which gives me full spotify access in the terminal.
Spotify works fine for me, under both Ubuntu and Arch, but they removed support for apps a while ago (on all platforms, IIRC Linux was actually the last holdout).
My music style is far from trendy, but I can't remember the last time I listened (even more so bought something) from the major label. I'd say is much harder to become millionaire rock star now, but for indie bands, that play as a hobby, situation is very favorable as you can contact you audience directly and you don't need to frame yourself into "format" dictated by the labels.
It's an amazing time to be a hobby musician. You can record and produce your own music very cheaply and publish it to the world at the touch of a button. The problem is what happens next, which in most cases is nothing, unless you've got somebody spending money marketing your music or you're willing to work very very very hard to promote it yourself.
The difference between now and the 60s through early 90s was that labels were willing to put their weight behind more oddball artists like Bowie. He wouldn't have a snowball's chance in hell of achieving the same fame if he were starting now. We're in a weird time where mainstream music is the most timid and cynically commercial it's ever been but the fringes are exceptionally vital.
Bowie's first albums didn't catch on at all. It wasn't until he decided to change his presentation and style that he became successful. I recommend seeing "David Bowie & The Story of Ziggy Stardust" which talks about it. It wasn't until Hunky Dory in 1971 that he really got traction. He was dropped by his label (Mercury) after his third album. He signed with RCA for his 4th, Hunky Dory (Ziggy was his 5th). After that, he basically hit single digits for his peak chart position in the UK for in to the 90s for his studio albums.
So, you can look at it as Mercury took a chance, didn't succeed and dropped him. RCA tried again and succeeded. But, he changed his approach and style around this time in an attempt to market himself better. Then, EMI would reap the rewards again in the 80s for Let's Dance which hit number 1 in a half-dozen countries and close to it in a few others.
Even after he made it in the UK Bowie still couldn't crack the States. His US Ziggy tour was a mostly unsuccessful attempt to have him fake it until he made it. He had to nearly go disco to become a commercial success in the US. Bowie seems to have been the beneficiary of a degree of early patience from record labels that was fairly extraordinary even at the time.
Not really. They are important to the ever-shrinking mainstream pop industry ... but here in the Great Cultural Fragmentation, that's a smaller and smaller slice of a larger and larger pie.
It's so funny how people construct narratives. I'm listening to Bloomberg Business on the radio and they're talking about how David Bowie was a pioneer in monetizing future copyright cashflows to finance music production.
Was a pioneer in that when? The two angles aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. Theoretically he could be good at milking copyright while it lasted even if he didn't believe it would be around forever.
David Bowie sold the rights to future royalties from his music, in the form of bonds. Presumably influenced by his thinking that music was going to be napsterised.
this is a travesty. In addition to loving his music he also lived in my neighborhood in nyc and I've been naming our internal applications after his songs. Put up a black banner on Ground Control as we speak :(
If you haven't yet check out the single for that song. It goes really deep into the aesthetics and experiements with Trent Reznor's sensibilities. It's like Reznor shacked up in a cabin for the weekend to bang out some remixes. Warning, they get dark and noisy fast.
Metallica hates you, Major Tom! And you are right - music is becoming a commodity, and I hope to pay not $15/album, but more like $2/album, of which 1.5 goes to the artist and .5 goes to whomever helped them do a professional studio recording. The distribution will inevitably happen on the internet. That's how you end piracy and motivate people to pay artists for their divine gift.
It's funny, these threads always devolve into comparisons to modern day pop stars, how none of them compare.
And you're all right, of course, no one could ever compare. He was the best, period, in my mind, and while he may not be in your mind, but his accomplishments and career are undeniable.
But every rock and pop singer today has something from Bowie. Kanye and Gaga found ways to navigate both pop stardom and the art world; bands like Of Montreal incorporated theatricality blended with musicianship in their records and live shows. I could list, so, so many more, from Janelle Monae to St Vincent, but unfortunately I think a list of every rock or pop musician since 1970 would take up significantly more room than I have in this comment box. They created something new using his life and music as inspiration - and that's fine.
Because we like to act as if Bowie is this fount of perfect originality, ideas springing from the ether - and, don't get me wrong, he certainly was inventive - but to ignore his influences is to create a myth. We talk about him as the chameleon, but he never morphed into truly untread ground - he always found what was there, and improved, innovated, found new ways to incorporate it. Young Americans followed Philadelphia soul. "Blackout" followed "Nite Flights". The man operated a goddamn ISP in the late 90s, as another comment mentioned. Blackstar followed experimental jazz and had inspiration from everyone from Kendrick Lamar to James Murphy.
I wouldn't dare to try to distill his life into a single takeaway, as there's far, far too many angles to cover. But here's the lesson that springs to mind first, which, now that I write it, comes out slightly more inspirational-poster than I'd like, but maybe that's okay:
Creative work isn't made in a vacuum, and to try is futile. Embrace what's next, no matter how different, how weird. Keep your eyes forward and your ears and mind open.
Not because I listened to a lot of Bowie. I mean, I did, but only relatively recently. But because of how insanely influential his stuff is on almost everything we listen to. The ripples of his work are close to incalculable. You don't have to have listened to a minute of David Bowie to go "oh, shit" right now and mean it wholly.
> When in doubt, listen to David Bowie. In 1968, Bowie was a gay, ginger, bonk-eyed, snaffle toothed freak walking round South London in a dress, being shouted at by thugs. Four years later, he was still exactly that – but everyone else wanted to be like him, too. If David Bowie can make being David Bowie cool, you can make being you cool. PLUS, unlike David Bowie, you get to listen to David Bowie for inspiration. So you’re one up on him, really. YOU’RE ALREADY ONE AHEAD OF DAVID BOWIE.
I don't really care beyond it being a point of fact but I thought Bowie was famously bisexual and that he had marketed himself at various points as homosexual.
In 1968 Bowie was 2 years off getting married and 3 years from having a son by his wife.
The video and song for Blackstar are even more astonishing.
For various reasons I was never a big Bowie fan, but Blackstar was one of the few tracks from anyone ever that made me think "WTF did I just hear/watch?!" - and I mean that in a good way.
Some people make music. Bowie invented mythologies, turned them into sung performance art, and put them out on vinyl and CD.
Bowie's music meant a lot to me. He was a weirdo that made it cool to be a weirdo. His music was always on while I was coding, running, having a drink, taking to my daughter. Everyone in the house are asleep - they will be heartbroken tomorrow morning. His music was part of the soundtrack to our lives. My sister got me into Bowie and my older daughter and wife love his music. I thought that Bowie would somehow live forever.
Such sad news. Given the Golden Globes is just over, it might be timely to rewatch the classic Extras segment in which Bowie roasts Gervais - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jv6mEv_rDdE
Silly governments and corporations who think the internet can have borders ;)
Use a browser plugin like ProxFlow/ProxTube and never have this problem again :)
I bought my first Bowie album probably 35 years ago, I still carry Bowie music around on my phone. Back then buying music seemed like such an important thing. It was both a choice, you could only afford one record out of many, and a statement, your record collection said something about you to your peers. I guess social media takes it's place in that you use it to express who you are and what you like.
Back then you listened to every album you bought hundreds of times and really made a connection with the ones you liked. One of my Bowie LP's developed a skip and I still expect to hear it jump when I hear the track now on the radio or spotify.
Your comparison between this kind of behaviour to social media seems fairly insightful. Is this a realisation you came up with just now, previously, or picked up somewhere?
I was just thinking of the Bowie vinyl that I had and remembered what the experience of buying it was like. Having 'cool' albums was a thing, it said something about you. Now that I have teenagers myself I don't see that with them. Music is not something they own, it's free (if you don't mind the ads) and anyone can have anything they like. No effort is required and maybe because of that They don't seem to appreciate it the same way.
I wouldn't claim that any idea I had was original but for sure I see a similarity between the way people seem to curate their social media profile so that they appear in a certain light to others to the way my peers and I used to curate our record collections to portray something about ourselves as kids
There used to be a show on American TV Saturday night called the Midnight Special. In 1973 they turned the entire show over to David Bowie who did a special from London. It was hosted at a seminal rock palace called the Marquee Club. I remember it as one of the best hours of rock on television.
Among the artists he invited to perform with him was Marianne Faithful. It made such a deep impression on me that when I visited London for the first time two years later I made certain to visit the Marquee Club. It looked one hell of a lot smaller in person than it ever did on TV.
the full recording survives in mixed quality, but his performance of I Got You Babe with Marianne is relatively-well preserved. great hidden gem in his back catalogue :)
And these children that you spit on /
As they try to change their worlds /
Are immune to your consultations /
They're quite aware of what they're going through
His influence extended well beyond music. He was the first to make use of Celebrity Bonds. [1] While it's true that Bowie Bonds didn't ending doing very well for investors, the principle behind them is sound. By bringing in investors to share his financial risk, Bowie was able to buy the rights to his songs.
David Bowie was one of the greatest entrepreneurs ever. He singlehandedly changed the direction of the entire music industry - repeatedly - for decades. He pulled in ideas and imagery from the most avant-garde corners of culture, and made it accessible and popular. There's hardly a musician out there in rock music or many other forms that hasn't been influenced directly by him.
David Bowie relentlessly delivered bold, daring new products. He never, ever sat on his laurels, never was content with what he'd done before. He produced the best work he possibly could, with the best collaborators. So, so many artists had their finest moments playing on his records or in his bands.
His only peer, as far as I'm concerned, is Miles Davis.
I'm a musician myself, and it's hard to even describe how I feel about Bowie's music. "Role model" is woefully insufficient. I think I feel about him the way priests feel about saints.
In the early 70s, he was the leader of the glam movement, introducing androgyny and bisexuality to the music industry, bringing in visuals from the decidedly underground drag and cabaret scenes. In the mid-70s, he crossed American soul into British pop, creating an image that has been used ever since by thousands of lesser pop musicians.
Besides making his own records, he produced albums for barely-controllable outsiders like Lou Reed and Iggy Pop, helping them achieve pop crossover success and survive their own demons.
In the late 70s, he went to Berlin and cranked out three albums of ambient, experimental music that kicked open doors for radical new sounds that fueled the New Wave movement (again with shallow imitation). But he ignored New Wave himself, and instead made fresh, soulful, pop with Let's Dance. In the 1990s, he got heavily involved in the early internet, putting multimedia content on cds and even founding an ISP.
He dialed things back in the 2000s, as age and health took their toll. His two most recent albums were his first in many years. The Next Day was a throwback to his 1970s rock styles. Blackstar brought in jazz and modern hip-hop ideas.
One of the most amazing things about his output, besides how many times he forged new sounds and new visuals for the entire industry, is how timeless it all is. Pretty much all of his records, especially the best ones, sound timeless and modern, even decades later.
Me too, on July 2 1990 in New Brunswick. I won't ever forget it not just because Bowie was awesome but because a woman that climbed on stage to grab Bowie's arse leapt over the barriers and landed on my girlfriend, knocking her out.
I had to lift Em over the barrier so the roadies could take her off to get medical treatment and I spent the rest of the concert trying to find her. Poor Em was a bit stunned by the blow so when they asked her if she wanted to meet Bowie, she said, "no, I need to find my boyfriend."
She was fine, the doctors kept her for observation. Of course, back then we didn't have cellphones so it was tough to reconnect, but eventually the concert staff tracked her down.
She and I dated for a few more months but kinda drifted apart as teenagers do, though we're still keep in touch. That's always a fun memory to relive.
The first and last time I was fortunate enough to see him live was The Glass Spider Tour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_Spider_Tour which was performance art like I'd never experienced.
Very glad managed to see Blackstar released, it's a fascinating, eerie album. The eponymous track was playing when I read the announcement he had passed.
I saw him live for his Sound + Vision tour. That was pretty incredible. It truly was a blend of the two as he put together some great visuals to go with each of the songs. Plus, it was a "greatest hits" kind of tour so you got a wide range of songs. I still regularly listen to my Sound + Vision box set. Unfortunately, I don't have anything that can play the video from my CD-V now.
As easy that joke was, I'm very often wondering about generations these days. I often feel this generation is really cheap. Now, surely most people feel this way about how the new one isn't worth their own, but really there were such iconic periods from the 50s to the 90s (in a westerner point of view) .. and this makes his leaving (among other peers who shaped the 70s) as powerful as hurting.
The "50s to the 90s"--which is so laughably general, that's four generations of music, if not more--had The Beatles and David Bowie and it also had The Monkees and Men Without Hats. We have the artists who it's funny to make fun of, like Bieber, and we have Jack White, we have Kanye West, we have Radiohead--and we had David Bowie, he's a modern artist today, have you listened to Blackstar, which openly tips its cap to Kendrick Lamar?
Twenty years from now, Bowie and Kanye will be spoken of in the same breath (and sure, that happens today, but that's by the people who pay attention), and that's fine. Great work is done today just as much, if not more, as it was in the past, and you're being That Guy and you should never, ever, ever be That Guy.
For what it's worth Kanye West is still regarded like a sort of a joke in most of Europe, at least for people like me, who are over 30.
> and we have Jack White
At first I said to myself "who's that?", then I saw that he used to sing for the White Stripes. It's a so-and-so band, at least one of their songs got pretty popular among the football ultras, as did the Pet Shop Boys' "Go West!" back in the 90s.
> we have Radiohead
This is a late '90s - early 2000s band. Some say (at least I say) that they haven't been able to produce anything quite as good as the albums from that time in the last 10+ years. At the very least they are not as influential as they used to be back then.
I wasn't born and always assumed they weren't just pop star of the moment. As a kid later, even without knowing anything, I felt these song were infectious. When I criticize today's mainstream it's that this quality isn't there anymore. I could say the same about movie score too.
>When I criticize today's mainstream it's that this quality isn't there anymore.
No, it's because you don't like it and can't feel superior any longer if you were to enjoy it. It's just incredibly elitist to assume the music you don't like doesn't have any quality.
One of the best "mainstream" albums in recent times was Kanye's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. A record with such masterful production, songwriting and depth that is absolutely high quality.
In 40 years people will look back on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy much in the same way we look back on Ziggy Stardust now. Likewise it will be remembered for it's fearlessness, creativity and influence.
> One of the best "mainstream" albums in recent times was Kanye's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJae2OpoHeE , his latest YT video is basically an ad. And while I tried listening to some of his other melodies I found out that most of them are about his material accomplishments, and that's about it. Or maybe this is all a post-modernist thingie where this is a veiled critique about today's society, in which case I'll pass.
For comparison, take this IAM piece: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uQ_X6nQ8xk , which talks about real people with real problems from the real world. They're miles ahead in terms of artistic performance and impact.
It's an incredible album indeed. I can also recommend To Pimp A Butterfly by Kendrick Lamar. Just watch his live performance on The Colbert Report and tell me there's no quality anymore!
I don't think Radiohead's earlier albums were as influential as they were released to an audience who was influenceable. They had influence because young people listened to them, and now the people who listened to them a lot aren't up-and-coming musicians anymore.
Jack White isn't a great singer, but he might just be one of the 5 greatest guitarists alive today. I'd argue he is the best guitarist alive. As I read somewhere, Jack White is in his own personal genre.
Yup. His music isn't even my thing (as it happens, neither are the other two artists I mentioned), but...if you can't recognize it, you aren't paying attention.
For every one of those decades I could name several rock bands who were commercially successful and whose music also represented a major, youth-oriented cultural movement which challenged the status quo. I am hard pressed to name a single band like that which started recording in the 21st century. Interpret it as you will but I think he has a point that the stuff that gets into the top 40, certainly within the rock genre, is not as politically or culturally relevant as it used to be. If that kind of music is still out there, people aren't buying it anymore.
>> "For every one of those decades I could name several rock bands who were commercially successful and whose music also represented a major, youth-oriented cultural movement which challenged the status quo."
Take a look at some of the big EDM acts. It may not be your thing (and it's not really mine) but it's undeniable that acts like Swedish House Mafia and Avicii changed youth culture. If you take a listen to popular music from the 2000's it was all indie rock and then there was this dramatic shift late in the decade.
Yup. And in terms of politics, there are a pretty decent selection of young rap and hip-hop artists (similarly--with rare exceptions, not my thing either) who are speaking to the concerns of an unheard segment of the population in the United States. Limiting this to "rock" cuts out a lot of people, both in the U.S. and out.
"Rock" has essentially transformed to any music that sits in popular culture, and particularly youth-oriented culture. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame thankfully recognized this and have now inducted several artists who wouldn't fit into the traditional definition of "rock".
It also has to do with cultural and social boundaries. Every time a new "genre" came (no odd new music genre came since long ago AFAIK) it was felt. Every time a new medium (from radio to LP, Video Clips, CD) came it was felt.
The odd part is that the web didn't recreate that. I feel this generation is diluted by too large market, too much technology, not enough structural pressure (limited places and market means competition, not always bad even with the drawbacks) and maybe the shadow of the past media hysteria around multimillion albums artists.
But rock is the status quo; with anything rock-like, you run the risk that your parents will like it. That makes it hard for rock to challenge the status quo.
When I hear "major, youth-oriented cultural movement which challenged the status quo" I think about house, hip hop, and rap.
The problem there is that young parents now like rap, too. People that were kids when It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back or Run-DMC's first album have families now.
Isn't the situation reversed ? were men without hats big ? the good music today is in the shadow while the mainstream pours industrialized music overwhelmingly.
I don't understand how Kanye West is anything but an arrogant dude, but I'm biased against Hip Hop nowadays. Radiohead is very much a 90s in my eyes.
Well, it's fortunate that Kanye West isn't a "hip-hop" musician, he is a musician, and pulls in influences by the wheelbarrowful. Even were that an adequate definition--congratulations: you know your biases. Now overcome them, because if you can't draw a barely kinked line between David Bowie and 808s and Heartbreak, that is on you.
But I don't think that's the problem here, is it? :) He's "arrogant"--and my, but your choice of adjective here is so interesting!--so, well, that's all she wrote.
> > I'm biased against Hip Hop nowadays Congratulations: you know your
> biases. Overcome them. Because if you can't draw a straight line
> between David Bowie and 808s and Heartbreak, that is on you. But he's
> "arrogant" (my, but the coded language, isn't that interesting!), so
> that doesn't matter I guess. Bowie was just a shrinking violet, right?
I don't get what you mean about drawing a straight line ? you mean judging fair ? I admit it's difficult to understand why I would say "Let's dance" is good iconic music while West is tasteless Pfip Pop. And Let's dance isn't Bowie most beautiful music. I just discovered Space Oddity .. well.
I just heard '808s' and I quit before half. I never heard anything from West that was worth being arrogant that what I meant. Most of what I heard from him was just mundane flat post 2000s hip hop that I can't bear anymore. It's far from my definition of music, flat, processed, easy. It's barely even music to my ears.
People should dig in Jazzy Jeff, Dilla, D'angelo then reflect on todays mainstream.
>I never heard anything from West that was worth being arrogant that what I meant
I think you're getting caught up in marketing. While you're not the target it still effects you and how you enjoy music. I've started to ignore what artists say or do and it's really allowed me to appreciate a lot more music because I can just enjoy it for what it is instead of thinking about the image they're trying to sell.
Fair point. But in West's case, it's not even marketing, his running into Swift to rage about Knowles award loss was him entirely. Unless it was his PR team that gave him the idea. I'll keep your idea in mind though.
He drank an entire bottle of Hennessy before that incident. It's not like he planned to do what he did on stage. It was an unfortunately public mistake, and I'm sure anyone who had been drinking that much would have done something stupid even if it wasn't that specifically.
My conspiracy theory would be that Swift (or her people) put him up to it. Sympathy sells, and a whole lot of people heard of her as a result. And she has shown herself to be extremely savvy.
Kanye's music is HUGE. I don't think you quite understand. Every album he's put out has been a certified classic (with the exception of Yeezus, which was very polarizing).
You don't win 21 grammys for no reason. He really is that influential and responsible for a generation of music and a generation of artists that took after him (and continue to do so). I don't think anyone comes close to being a "rockstar" in the classic sense in the modern era than Kanye.
There's a ton of interesting, adventurous music being made by young people right now but you will never hear it because the music labels still dominate pop music and they've become more conservative than ever.
So don't judge the current generation by what you see in the top 40. Dig around on Bandcamp instead and be amazed.
It's funny, Bowie did speak about Labels disappearing. As I said above, the top before had more interesting stuff (if you consider The Police, or Dire Straits interesting that is).
I'll seek through bandcamp, I rarely hear things intersting these days but maybe I'm under a passeist phase.
Bowie got as big as he was because of labels pushing him down a captive audience's throats. Was he good? Sure. But there were many other really good artists who never got much attention because the only place to hear music during Bowie's era was on the radio or in a record store. "This generation" has wider tastes and a broader selection than any before it. That they can't be defined by a single sound or genre is a good thing.
"The future is not only going to be about hard-edged people with metal faces. There will be broken hearts in the future."
That's a Bowie quote I think of with unusual regularity. It appeared 16 years ago in Spin Magazine. He was asked why his then newest album wasn't as contemporary sounding as his previous album, Earthling.
It's advice that may be applicable to the projects worked on by many here as well.
Everyone here has probably heard Space Oddity. Until recently that was the only song of David Bowie I've known. But then, thanks to The Martian, I found this one, Starman:
Really, go listen to it. It's just beautiful. It captures imagination and hope for the future. And I think it has a perfect message for us, about both his legacy and our responsibility.
There's a starman waiting in the sky
He's told us not to blow it
Cause he knows it's all worthwhile
So, "Let the children lose it", and let's build a better world for them.
I was saddened to hear this when I woke up this morning. I've listened to his music my entire life and can't remember a time without him. Cancer sucks!
He also voiced (and digitally portrayed) one of the characters in the game. Additionally, there are three secret concerts which you can attend after finding their fliers at which original songs are played.
and here I just got down watching him as Tesla from the movie The Prestige; a very good movie about old time stage magicians starring people you would not expect let alone Bowie
Ah, man. This probably shouldn't make me sad (I never knew the guy), but it does. I've listened to his music for years and years, seen his songs permeate pop culture and leave his mark upon the world. The guy was a consummate artist and I regret never seeing him live. :-(
> 2) We give the guest a critically acclaimed album they've never listened to.
> 3) The guest explains why they've never listened to it, laying out any potential prejudice in advance. i.e. "I've never liked the cut of Pink Floyd's jib" or "Mark E Smith frightens me".
> 4) The guest has to listen to the album at least three times, this acclaimed album that they've never bothered listening to, and then tell us whether it was worth it or not.
It's cliche to say someone like Bowie was timeless, but it is really true in his case. He was not only ahead of his time, but he was behind his time. The man was able to find new trends but also take old and existing ones and turn them into his own.
I remember listening to Earthling for the first time and feeling those hyperkinetic d'n'b beats and thinking "How does this 50 year-old man continue to make himself so relevant?"
I tend to have momentary sadness when a celebrity I appreciate passes away, but it feels like this one will last for a bit longer.
"The day will come when David Bowie is a star and the crushed remains of his melodies are broadcast from Muzak boxes in every elevator and hotel lobby in town."
So shocked to see Bowie passed this morning. Although I wasn only a casual fan, I appreciated his musical talent and most of the musicians in my favourites list were influenced by him. Without any doubt, the 1980s wouldn't have been the same without him. A household name for 50 years, still making music right to the end. I don't think anyone could ask for more.
He was the inventor of continuous public self-reinvention. He saw the job of re-imagining and then sculpting his own public identity as being inseparable from the musical inspiration that propelled it. For him, if any new musical idea he had felt unique enough, he would feel driven to create a new persona to perform it.
It seems like HN's content is becoming less and less technical over time and much more political and social, and this thread is a great example. I've also noticed more and more "agenda pushers" posting here, people who can't contribute on the technical threads but aggressively upvote and comment on the non-technical threads.
I was about to suggest new, clearer guidelines restricting much of this non-technical content to reverse the decline, but according to the current guidelines, it seems like it's already prohibited:
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon.
Maybe stricter enforcement would be in order (dang? jascquesm?)
I don't think the mix of stories has changed much. Drawing conclusions about HN based on limited sample sizes is usually fallacious, because there's a lot of fluctuation. A thread about Bowie dying is an outlier; when Michael Jackson died the reaction was similar.
Comparing the stories about Bowie, Naur, and Amdahl isn't valid. Their fame is of different orders of magnitude, even among a sophisticated technical audience.
A passing comment about the impact of technology on the music industry is enough to make someone's death relevant here?
But you're correct; if I consider HN to be heading inexorably in a direction I dislike, I shouldn't waste my time here. Have fun posting and commenting on celebrity news, articles from the The Guardian and The Intercept without me.
I disagree. More to the point, you don't find 50 articles about any pop, music, or celebrity here. This is an outlier that is only appearing because David Bowie had an outsized impact in larger culture.
So basically, you're complaining about a problem/trend that doesn't exist. Your proposed solution isn't really helpful as this article will likely have traveled down to the bottom of the list in a week, and your quoting the guidelines also isn't relevant since this is not about "politics, crime, or sports".
Anyone else remember BowieNet? The man had his own ISP back in 98, for crying out loud...
A true visionary of an artist. He really understood technology, and what changes would be wrought by it for people, the arts, social systems, the music business, etc.
Dance, magic dance, Mr. Bowie. Dance, magic dance.
Of course you understand. The media are businesses. As such they provide what the customers want and what they know about. As a personal view, it isn't until one looks at alternative news coverage (which I'll define as 'that which is not one's usual bill of fare') that the partiality of journalists and media empires becomes apparent.
Right, but the OP is likely questioning why HN, which is supposedly a medium at least slightly immune to the vagaries of normal celebrity worship, is covering it.
The chances that anyone here hasn't seen it are almost zero, but just in case, if you haven't seen Chris Hadfield's cover of Space Oddity, recorded on the ISS, you really should:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaOC9danxNo
I don't have a source but I heard that David preferred this version to the original.
I heard that they arranged a deal for a 1 year lease, and after that year had to take it down. I didn't know that it was back either, that's great news.
Doesn't this quotation strongly apply to software engineers? I find engineers have more trouble applying the same logic to software engineering, while applying it to artists, especially musicians, without much reflection.
Not as readily as you might naively think. Software engineers largely work in a bespoke manner. We don't expect to get paid because someone copies our software, we expect to be paid because we produced the software someone else wanted.
Engineers have always been compensated for custom production. There's nothing new about that. We have more in common with tailors than with tycoons of imaginary property.
There's such a pervasive notion, especially among techies and other white collar types, that artists and musicians either don't deserve a good living or should be happy just to get to do what they do, regardless of income. It's a tremendous sense of entitlement on the one hand, to express contempt for the individual while expecting unlimited access to their work. I believe Astra Taylor made an interesting point about how this idea of the artist as the mandatorily broke but (ideally) self-fulfilled creator is also increasingly extended as a metaphor in recent business press when discussing the plight of graduates, interns and freelancers.
> that artists and musicians either don't deserve a good living or should be happy just to get to do what they do
They don't; that's simply a fact, no one is owed or deserves a living, you have to work for it like everyone else. If there is demand for what you do, monetize it, if you can't, then pick another career because the market has spoken. You can't mandate that X career deserves to be paid, the market does that naturally via demand.
> It's a tremendous sense of entitlement on the one hand, to express contempt for the individual while expecting unlimited access to their work.
Stating facts about their lack of being entitled to anything isn't expressing contempt. If they don't want people accessing their work, they don't have to publish it, but expecting perpetual payment anytime anyone looks at what you put out is absurd; intellectual property is a flawed notion that only worked well when distribution was a challenge. With virtually free distribution, you cannot prevent information being free, i.e. copying, and thus you cannot rely on making money from distribution; you better learn how to make money performing live, as has been done historically.
It's funny how tech companies are making money from the distribution of this supposedly valueless content that the market supposedly has no demand for.
I think you may have missed the core of the notion. It's not about who "deserves" what at all. It's about providing value. Techies and other white collar types generally provide value by doing bespoke work. Demanding payment to copy non-custom bits because they have a certain color is not providing value in any readily apparent way.
What you've also missed is how sick and tired techies are of artists and musicians seeking to "deserve a good living" by controlling techies. To express contempt for our work while expecting unlimited cringing subservience.
Why is it that so-called "artists" are so quick to demand creative control over the work of others who work in different mediums? I have a few guesses.
Not at all. Rather, it's that your heuristic of "providing value" breaks down spectacularly in the face of even the most casual observations of consumer demand. Whether value is provided by copying bits is arguable, that artists add value to society is not even worth debating. Producing an album is bespoke labor as well, just work that, as such, typically goes uncompensated. And to the extent that these are merely symptoms of a market in flux, as opposed to the stratifications of a class system, it undermines that analysis to make the tired assertion that poverty wages are the price one pays for "following one's passion" (albeit very specific passions).
In any event, I suspect that you don't know many "so-called artists". May you have a long and prosperous career, and retire young before the market value for your passions is reduced to zero.
Artists, as a group, unquestionably add value to a society. Whether or not a given individual artist adds sufficient value to society to justify them "deserving a good living" is a very different question. A question that is not to blithely glossed over with vague assertions about sizable classes of people.
An album in which an artist has key creative control is not bespoke labor. It's self-expression, a very different form of work. Software engineers generally perform bespoke, custom, specified labor for others who control what that labor looks like and produces. For this, said engineers are compensated for their time and labor. Said engineers do not generally expect to own the result, just as a portrait artist does not expect to own the commissioned piece.
May you have a long and prosperous career in which you fit your business model to the times in which you live. With luck, you'll even manage what the rest of us have - a way to profit from your passions.
As kenneth rexroth put it: the value of something is proportional to its loss. To live is to take up and hold some measure of ultimate value. In dying we give up and release _everything_ we hold and love. This is the poetic essence of life: Each breath is dying, and each death a rebirth--always intangible and inaccessible, except as we experience it in that continuing instant.
Life is not safe. At each moment we tumble forward into the unknown. Can you take comfort in that?
No, of course you don't have to share it. If you don't care about him, it's fine. About 150,000 other people will die today, none of them inherently less worthy than this one.
However, if you don't care about this particular death, don't barge into a comment thread and humblebrag about it. Ignore it and move on. It's not heartless if you don't care, but it's pretty rude to come in and post a comment like this.
I think people find it a little too easy to forget that people in startups, and consequently on HN, are human beings with actual feelings. If a slightly off topic thread can remind us of that occasionally then that's not such a bad thing. HN can be about more than just startups without losing what makes it useful and interesting.
Plus...
I fail to see what this is doing on HN
Bowie was a serial entrepreneur in the music industry (and others). He was masterful at looking forward at what was coming next and innovating and iterating his musical art to stay relevant. I'm absolutely certain there's a great deal that startups could learn from how Bowie lived and worked.
> Also, I fail to see what this is doing on HN, sorry.
It's currently #1 on HN. Think
about that. Just because you don't care about Bowies death doesn't mean it's not important to a lot of people on here. There's a ton of articles (especially sociology and science focused) that I wouldn't think belong here but they're interesting and I'm glad people post them.
Not just #1. Right now, it has 863 upvotes; that's a ton for a story that broke in the middle of the night on a Sunday. The next highest has 347, and has been around for a day-plus. This pretty clearly hits home for a lot of people, and I really, really hate the faux-above-it-all "I don't see what this is doing on HN" mini-modding. It's here because people believe it should be here.
I am just hearing about him now that he has died. I don't see why it is SO relevant to HN community. I don't see any similarities here whatsoever. Nor do I see a hacker theme.
Would appreciate if someone would enlighten me on this.
The fact that you did not know about his existence does not change his impact on music and culture or undermines his significance. There are a lot of people that you do not know that had huge impact on different aspects of culture.
>>Nor do I see a hacker theme.
I am not sure who defines what is "hacker theme" and what is not. Number of up-votes shows that people on HN want to see this topic here. If person of huge cultural significance dies, that impacts all subcultures, including "hackers".
Bowie Bonds, BowieNet, his foresight regarding the music industry with regards to data sharing, the future copyright battles, his use of electronic instruments, self-production, etc.[0]
I like to think of such "strange" highly voted posts as revealing a hidden correlation. Yes, there may not be any obvious prior reason to expect that people who frequent HN find David Bowie or his death significant. And yet they do. There doesn't have to be a cause-and-effect or "logical" explanation. It is what it is.
People who frequent HN are likely to be part of the set of people who have been influenced by popular culture, which is a superset of David Bowie fans.
This would imply that all/most posts about popular culture figures are highly upvoted in HN but I doubt this is the case (no data, just subjective impression).
I think it just implies that HN users are informed by popular culture. Not every cultural figure is likely to be as important to HN users as every other, but some[0] clearly are, and posts about deaths are of a different sort.
Other people may remember him as a soundtrack to important bits of their lives. And he was a major music hacker. You are not supposed to care or weep or anything ; in fact it's an excuse to celebrate his music today (thanks David). Does it bother you that some other people care?
No, Yes. You just don't happen to feel a close connection to this particular person who has died. That doesn't mean that other people here aren't being similarly honest and do feel a connection.
> Do we all have to share this culture of mourning and condoleances?
Don't, if you don't want to. Nobody's making you care, nobody's going to judge you if it didn't matter to you. But you could do a lot worse than to take that urge to tell everyone how much you don't care and shove it down somewhere deep and dark. And, as it happens, you did.
God, you're more Asperger than me. When it's like that, I often download the last album, and I appreciate what the person gave to the world, whatever the way I feel, or don't feel. Some are more involved than others, but this is like an appreciation, and a global thanking to people who had notably a global impact. I just listened to the album and personally I'm actually in a 'good' mood, when I think he couldn't have ended it on a better note. Probably it's the artist in me speaking. It's like he died like a music
Not sure what Asperger is. I am very sensitive: I cry at almost all movies I'm watching even the silliest ones, when the guy kiss the girl, or the father finds his son back. Maybe I'm weird, or just too influenced by Eastern philosophy, but when someone old dies I feel it is ok, it is supposed to be like that, it is the normal course of nature.
My preferred living writer died some time ago. It was ok too, even if I read all his books more than once and often refer to what I think he would say about a topic. He was old enough to pass away (and was apparently too old to write more interesting pieces), so it was ok. I think the same about David Bowie. No need to display an excess of [edit: affliction], he had his good time, let him let some room to younger musicians. No?
>"[...]it is supposed to be like that, it is the normal course of nature."
Just because it is the normal course of nature doesn't mean it's okay. Nor does it mean that we should not be upset about it, or mourn it.
A person accumulates a life-time's worth of knowledge and experience and insight. And in an instant, it's taken away from the world. It's a loss in every sense of the word.
Well, it the case of Bowie this is especially untrue: he let a lot for us to read and listen. It is acutally much sadder when someone unknown dies young, before having the time to leave a deep enough footprint behind.
HN's guidelines suggest things hackers would find interesting; Bowie's genius, non-conformity, and willingness to experiment with musical form are certainly characteristics hackers would find interesting. His loss is a loss to the entire world of art and music, and he was one of my favorite musicians — my single favorite for a very long time. May he rest in peace.
How is dying not unfortunate? You have an exact 50/50 chance of making the next day. So a death is unfortunate, as you might as well have lived another day.
While making it to the next day may be binary, the odds of 0 coming up for the average healthy person is not 50%. Otherwise only 2% of children would live more than one week after being born.
It is wildly known that hackers don't like music geniuses. And geek culture was not shaped by the music of the 70-s and 80-s. And Labyrinth. As long as there is crowd big enough to mourn, it belongs. Otherwise it will just slip from front page.
And Bowie was such an artist that he shaped multiple generations.
Music itself is going to become like running water or electricity. So it’s like, just take advantage of these last few years because none of this is ever going to happen again. You’d better be prepared for doing a lot of touring because that’s really the only unique situation that’s going to be left. It’s terribly exciting. But on the other hand it doesn’t matter if you think it’s exciting or not; it’s what’s going to happen.
~ David Bowie, 2002