> Patronage is... a thing. Better than nothing. But obviously a weaker form of economic systematizing than a model where you pay to listen to a performance or a recording.
> I mean, if you're designing a system function, do you want it to reliably tie outputs to inputs, or optionally tie outputs to inputs?
> Paying for things supports the enterprise that goes into providing them. Diluting or disconnecting payment from the music is another way of saying "in order to make music, you should be spending time doing things that aren't making music."
So when you pay for a copy of a recording of a piece of music, do you feel that you are more directly paying for someone to make music?
In the exact sense that you describe here, paying for copies of recordings has a very weak tie to the actual production of music. I'd have to pay for a copy of a recording even if the recording artist has been dead for decades and can't possibly create more music. It's not payment for "making music". It's rent on some work that may have been performed in the last century. No one needs to make music to sell me a copy of a recording.
As a patron, however, I'd be paying people to create music. If they didn't and I didn't trust that the investment was worth it, I wouldn't. If they were dead, there'd be no sense in supporting them. It would be like sending paychecks to a dead employee. Someone needs to make music to receive my patronage.
If the output I expect of a "system function" is for someone to make music, paying into a function where the output is copies of recordings is worse than paying into a system function where the output is the labor of creating music. I can see why this view would be confusing, though. Vague abstractions have a tendency to obscure actualities, and of course there is a more complex relationship with more inputs, outputs and feedback loops.
> I mean, if you're designing a system function, do you want it to reliably tie outputs to inputs, or optionally tie outputs to inputs?
> Paying for things supports the enterprise that goes into providing them. Diluting or disconnecting payment from the music is another way of saying "in order to make music, you should be spending time doing things that aren't making music."
So when you pay for a copy of a recording of a piece of music, do you feel that you are more directly paying for someone to make music?
In the exact sense that you describe here, paying for copies of recordings has a very weak tie to the actual production of music. I'd have to pay for a copy of a recording even if the recording artist has been dead for decades and can't possibly create more music. It's not payment for "making music". It's rent on some work that may have been performed in the last century. No one needs to make music to sell me a copy of a recording.
As a patron, however, I'd be paying people to create music. If they didn't and I didn't trust that the investment was worth it, I wouldn't. If they were dead, there'd be no sense in supporting them. It would be like sending paychecks to a dead employee. Someone needs to make music to receive my patronage.
If the output I expect of a "system function" is for someone to make music, paying into a function where the output is copies of recordings is worse than paying into a system function where the output is the labor of creating music. I can see why this view would be confusing, though. Vague abstractions have a tendency to obscure actualities, and of course there is a more complex relationship with more inputs, outputs and feedback loops.