To anyone who had a computer in the past 5 years, recorded music is not worth anything. Sorry, but that's just the way it is.
If you want to make a pledge to keep paying for buggy whips, go right ahead. I'm sure there are people who would argue that buggy whips have intrinsic value -- but the market for a buggy whip right now is basically nil.
Same thing with recorded music. If you want to make money as a musician, you don't make it through recordings, you make it through extortionate "public performance" licenses, by doing concerts (and selling $30 t-shirts), or by offering experiences that people can't get elsewhere (pay $50 a year and get access to my website where I post about my tour and post unreleased samples and occasionally mail you a trinket, or whatever.)
I also don't understand the undertone of righteous indignation at Spotify's existence. I can listen to the radio, where songs are played gratis. I can record those songs (legally!) for my own personal use as much as I want. The only difference with Spotify is that I don't physically push "record", and that's the kind of semantic difference only a lawyer would love.
> To anyone who had a computer in the past 5 years, recorded music is not worth anything. Sorry, but that's just the way it is.
It wasn't always that way, and it doesn't need stay that way either. If no-one values the music, then maybe it will; if people do value music, then maybe it won't.
> I also don't understand the undertone of righteous indignation at Spotify's existence. I can listen to the radio, where songs are played gratis
The difference is that radio play was used to promote albums, which people then bought. Recording a song on the radio came with many disadvantages: DJ interruptions, missing the start/end of the song, lower sound quality, no album art etc.
With Spotify, there's no need to purchase the album, as there are no such disadvantages, the whole album is usually online, and you can play songs whenever you want to listen to them, not when the DJ feels like playing them. This makes in less economically interesting to be an artist. The righteous indignation against spotify is probably due to the fact that artists actually make very little money out of their content, whereas the spotify owners are probably going to make a lot of money out of the artists' content.
If you want to make a pledge to keep paying for buggy whips, go right ahead. I'm sure there are people who would argue that buggy whips have intrinsic value -- but the market for a buggy whip right now is basically nil.
Same thing with recorded music. If you want to make money as a musician, you don't make it through recordings, you make it through extortionate "public performance" licenses, by doing concerts (and selling $30 t-shirts), or by offering experiences that people can't get elsewhere (pay $50 a year and get access to my website where I post about my tour and post unreleased samples and occasionally mail you a trinket, or whatever.)
I also don't understand the undertone of righteous indignation at Spotify's existence. I can listen to the radio, where songs are played gratis. I can record those songs (legally!) for my own personal use as much as I want. The only difference with Spotify is that I don't physically push "record", and that's the kind of semantic difference only a lawyer would love.