So, as a musician who recently released a record via both decentralized and legacy services:
I'm seeing so many people in this thread ask why this is happening, eg - is it just greed?
And it seems to me that the answer is very simple: the silly state-propped notion of "intellectual property" has caused an almost unfathomable cottage industry to rent-seek around it.
Have you been to Nashville lately? I'm headed there Monday. And I love a lot of things about Nashville - especially the lovely collaborative bluegrass vibes of East Nashville and Madison. But as much as it's a music town, it's a finance town, and it's depressing how palpable this is. Much of the skyline are bank skyscrapers - literal artifacts of decades of vampiring music profits away from struggling musicians.
The system of copyright is basically, "if you acquire my music through any means other than the legitimate one, I can call the cops to stop you, violently." And believe me when I tell you: none of us have that view of our music or our fans.
Make all bits copyable. No such thing as an illegal number. And watch as the crony systems of UPC/ISRC/CdBaby/Streaming retreat, while massive archives of stellar music, available for free everywhere, bloom. In such an environment, it will be much easier from musicians to make a living, not only from direct contributions from fans, but from our live shows, merch, etc. Obviously something also needs to be done about ticketmaster also, but that's another discussion (that is still unresolved decades after Pearl Jam gave such eloquent and spot-on testimony in congress).
> it will be much easier from musicians to make a living
Do you really believe this? My fear: if I can get an AI, personally reactive, front-seat simulated concert in my living room (with my friends), what value does supporting the artist provide beyond personal connection? The latter is a real market. But it reduces artists to something closer to baristas than what they are now.
Well, obviously the overarching concern here is a bottoming-out of nearly every market for labor related to cognitive or creative tasks.
And I think you're right: that's coming.
And with it, perhaps the most obvious impetus for rethinking the entire economic configuration of things.
The only way that AI is a doomsday is if, in your imagination, you drag along 20th-century monetary and economic paradigms with it.
People seem to like to be the presence of vibrating strings. I don't think that's subject to deprecation just because people can also have meaningful relationships with AI as a creator of art. In fact, the rapid growth of AI as a provider of passionate musical experiences seems to me likely to grow the palette and appetite for such things, not to shrink it.
I don't understand: you think that people are coming to my shows, to be in the presence of vibrating strings, as I say, because of some abstract reflex created by the possibility of violence visited upon them as a result of their listening to other musicians?
Am I reading this correctly?
And I don't think there is evidence that the "economic link between the art and its creator" is strongly correlated to the license used to release the art.
I'm seeing so many people in this thread ask why this is happening, eg - is it just greed?
And it seems to me that the answer is very simple: the silly state-propped notion of "intellectual property" has caused an almost unfathomable cottage industry to rent-seek around it.
Have you been to Nashville lately? I'm headed there Monday. And I love a lot of things about Nashville - especially the lovely collaborative bluegrass vibes of East Nashville and Madison. But as much as it's a music town, it's a finance town, and it's depressing how palpable this is. Much of the skyline are bank skyscrapers - literal artifacts of decades of vampiring music profits away from struggling musicians.
The system of copyright is basically, "if you acquire my music through any means other than the legitimate one, I can call the cops to stop you, violently." And believe me when I tell you: none of us have that view of our music or our fans.
Make all bits copyable. No such thing as an illegal number. And watch as the crony systems of UPC/ISRC/CdBaby/Streaming retreat, while massive archives of stellar music, available for free everywhere, bloom. In such an environment, it will be much easier from musicians to make a living, not only from direct contributions from fans, but from our live shows, merch, etc. Obviously something also needs to be done about ticketmaster also, but that's another discussion (that is still unresolved decades after Pearl Jam gave such eloquent and spot-on testimony in congress).