> Sure digital makes it easy to copy and distribute, but musicians keep making less and less and it is harder for them to actually use music as a career.
This is true of every single profession that involves creating digital media. Writing, journalism, video, film, game dev, photography, you name it. The money is falling out.
I think a large part of the problem is that in all of those fields, people love what they do. Of course, they work very hard at it too, but what that means is that there are a large number of people producing media for the sheer joy of it.
As the cost of production goes down, an increasing number of "amateurs" can create media, and as distribution costs drop, that media is more easily disseminated. The end result is that people willing to do stuff for free are crowding out the paid players.
There are some exceptions, of course, creative people who make a ton of money, but they're the narrow end of the power curve. For an increasing number of people, being creative isn't a lucrative gig.
I don't believe that's a good or bad thing, just a thing. What I do think is bad is when people who make great creative works don't have the time or opportunity to do that. It's a waste if a talented musician has to spend 40 hours a week at some lame job to pay their bills and only has a few hours for music on the side.
But that's not a problem with the music not paying the bills as much as it is with the bills themselves. If we lived in some sort of utopia where we all the essentials we needed to get by for free, then there'd be no reason to whine about artists not getting paid. They wouldn't need to.
> I think a large part of the problem is that in all of those fields, people love what they do.
Also, the absolute amount of good content keeps going up. Those old Louis Armstrong albums aren't going away. People still listen to the Beatles and the Stones. And this is true of nearly all varieties of content.
The only timely content (sports, news, contest shows) is partially immune to this, but even then, attention is scarce and more quality entertainment enters the public domain every year. Right now it's mostly (classic!) books, but decades in the future, HD content will be 100% free to use and distribute and the bottom will really fall out of everything.
This is really insightful and not something I'd realized even though, for example, my own reading and music tastes encompass an increasingly long timespan.
This is true of every single profession that involves creating digital media. Writing, journalism, video, film, game dev, photography, you name it. The money is falling out.
I think a large part of the problem is that in all of those fields, people love what they do. Of course, they work very hard at it too, but what that means is that there are a large number of people producing media for the sheer joy of it.
As the cost of production goes down, an increasing number of "amateurs" can create media, and as distribution costs drop, that media is more easily disseminated. The end result is that people willing to do stuff for free are crowding out the paid players.
There are some exceptions, of course, creative people who make a ton of money, but they're the narrow end of the power curve. For an increasing number of people, being creative isn't a lucrative gig.
I don't believe that's a good or bad thing, just a thing. What I do think is bad is when people who make great creative works don't have the time or opportunity to do that. It's a waste if a talented musician has to spend 40 hours a week at some lame job to pay their bills and only has a few hours for music on the side.
But that's not a problem with the music not paying the bills as much as it is with the bills themselves. If we lived in some sort of utopia where we all the essentials we needed to get by for free, then there'd be no reason to whine about artists not getting paid. They wouldn't need to.