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The Artists' Road To Serfdom: The Commoditization Of Creative Content
Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,
This is the net result of commoditization: there's no premium for commoditized capital, labor, goods, services or content.
As I noted in Our New Robot Overlords & The Third Type of Capital, profits flow to whatever inputs are scarce. Unfortunately for musicians, writers, filmmakers and others producing creative content, creative content is no longer scarce: it's been commoditized and is now available in unlimited quantities for $10/month.
The model is simple: unlimited content for a few bucks per month.This is the model of music services such as Spotify and Pandora (which offer advert-supported services for free) and iTunes Radio, Amazon Prime for borrowing Kindle ebooks and various film/video distribution services.
The model effectively commoditizes all creative content. Commoditization makes all inputs interchangeable. Global labor has been commoditized because it no longer matters which workers assemble the goods, global capital has been commoditized because it no longer matters where the capital comes from, and globally produced goods, services and resources have been commoditized because it no longer matters where they come from or who produces them.
Services that offer unlimited streaming/borrowing commoditize all content: the content is interchangeable to the buyer, and the creator of the content earns next to nothing when the content is streamed.
A recent article in the S.F. Chronicle (ITunes is in need of a tune-up to keep up with streaming) explains:
Digital music sales recently fell for the first time ever, with the number of digital songs purchased plummeting 13 percent to 594 million in the first half of 2014, compared with the same period a year ago, according to research firm Nielsen, which has tracked music sales since 1991. Meanwhile, the amount of music streamed online rose 50 percent, the firm said.While streaming sites have helped big online music spenders save money, they have also cut into the money that musical artists make per song.ITunes sells songs for 69 cents to $1.29 each. For a song that costs $1.29, Apple takes 30 percent of the sale and the rest goes to the record label and artist, Stewart said. If the artist is on a record label, they would get a royalty of about 20 cents for that track, she said.That might not seem like a lot, but the money could be even less in streaming music for free with ads. In general, a song must be streamed 75 to 80 times in order for a music label to make the same amount of money as from a single online song purchase, according to MIDiA Research.
The unlimited-streaming/borrowing model is great for consumers and the companies collecting the fees every month, but it's a rocky road to serfdom for content creators. 80 downloads are needed for the musicians to collect a lousy 20 cents for their creative efforts? Let's be generous and note that self-produced/distributed artists could collect as much as 50 cents of an iTunes purchase, and presumably the same from 80 downloads.
So it only takes 8 million downloads to earn a median middle-class income of $50,000 a year. Musicians (those signed to labels) who receive 20 cents from 80 downloads would need 20 million downloads annually to earn $50,000--roughly the median household income in the U.S.
How many musicians get 20 million downloads?
The distribution of creative-content rewards tends to follow a power law, i.e. the Pareto Distribution, where the "vital few" (the very apex of the pyramid) reap most of the rewards.
So a handful of artists, writers and independent filmmakers collect most of the shrinking pool of money paid for creative content, and the vast majority earn chump-change.
As a writer with a number of Kindle ebooks available for purchase or borrowing by Amazon Prime members, I do a little better than the musicians whose songs have been commoditized; I earn about 25% of an ebook sale when someone borrows one of my Kindle ebooks.
Nonetheless, this is a 75% haircut in earnings from the everything's been commoditized model of unlimited access to content. And the sum I earn from borrowed ebooks changes, depending on the funds Amazon places in the pool and how many Prime customers borrowed ebooks.
Numerous articles promote work-arounds for the desertification of earnings wrought by commoditization of content: sell more T-shirts at your gigs, work the loyalty of your fans to encourage them to buy your stuff even though they could stream it for free, etc.
But the reality is the pool of money being distributed to content creators is shrinking. Work-arounds may work for the handful of people who master 24/7 marketing, but this is just another iteration of the power law: a tiny handful of content creators reap most of the profits from the full-court-press of marketing.
My friend Richard Metzger of the excellent Dangerous Minds website and I discussed this trend of artistic serfdom years ago, and the only thing that's changed is the velocity of the decline in creators' incomes.
This is the net result of commoditization: there's no premium for commoditized capital, labor, goods, services or content. Those with the big idea of controlling the distribution of content are collecting an enormous premium for figuring out how to scale up this model, and the vast majority of content creators are left with the nickels and dimes that fall through the commoditizing blades of the distribution machine.
But hey, you might get famous on YouTube, and that might open a trickle of advert revenue.
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You didn't download that !
Same as it ever was...
Artistis have always gotten screwed by media distributors.
That's why we refer to them as Starving Artists...
Doesn't help that a vast majority of "creative content" is utter crap. Very, very glad to see the whole system burn - that's what the music industry gets for dumping trash on us for the past 40 years. (Edit: And though I offer my condolences to independent artists that are also getting burned by this, I'll helpfully point out that now's a great time to change your career track.)
The artists never made jack unless they self produced anyways. Record labels always took the lion's share of record sales.
So now you have Apple taking a bite out of them? Cry me a river.
Real musicians always seem to get by. The bubble gum bands that have the life of a bottle rocket? Not so much.
pods
A tomcat tumbling in a clothes dryer is much more pleasant to listen to than 97% of the thumping and screeching that is considered music today.
Thumping and screeching is tolerable compared to the monotonous unintelligible rap-like syllabic constructs. That monotony... *head essplodes*
Skateboarder:
That's racist. /sarc
1. People consume much more content now than ever before
2. Artists have new/other income streams aside from content retail (e.g. concerts)
3. The free flow of information does not stifle creation, it emancipates it (see Wikipedia, Linux, all open source software, etc.)
Dumb article.
Just like those in 'adult entertainment', the money is in 'providing services', Live music, for musicians, for 'adult entertainers', I think you know what I am referring to.
And its not web cam shows.
Actually, I think 'commoditization' is wrong word in this context, particularly as it pertains to music. Why is gold not a commodity (unlike silver)? Because it doesn't get consumed and used up. It is hoarded.
Well, the same with music; whereas in the past it literally was a commodity, vanishing the moment it was produced/consumed, now it can be recorded and reused infinitely.
And there's thousands of hours of music being produced every day all over the world. Demand can't possibly keep up; a person could spend most of the rest of their lives listening to ten new good tunes a day on YouTube and still not hear them all. There is a glut of high quality music (and an even bigger glut of crap music, but that's a different story).
Throughout history most musicians made diddly squat; making a fortune from recordings was a brief flash in the pan, due to a brief coincidence of being able to distribute to a world-wide audience and limit its reproduction. No more.
In future, if you want to make money out of music, you'll have to perform live. And even then - unless you get very lucky - you're unlikely to make much.
Most of us play an instrument for pleasure and to increase our status and get laid.
Unless you're the modern equivalent of Mozart, face it - as a musician, your skills no longer command a decent salary. Most artists throughout history faced the fact that they'll probably be poor, but have a satisfying life...
(and lots of poontang)
I was in a signed band. Our records sold for about $15-16. The band got $1.40 per disc. Not me mind you, the band as a whole.
Record labels are useless these days and they hate that their dinosaur business model is dying. Fuckers...
Everyone knows that the only way to actually give more than a dollar to a band is to go to their shows and buy merch directly from them.
Well, maybe not everyone...
I still think some independent labels are okay. Debemur Morti Productions, for example, is a killer underground black metal label from France.
There are some good smaller independent labels. They mostly are into promoting the music they like. I see them as a different model than the large labels.
Record companies are dying, and f'ing over artists in ways they didn't used to. Now they take a bigger cuts of tour profits which used to be the only way the artists made money. They are also taking a cut off of merchandise sales which used to go to the artists. Too bad these musicians can't figure out a way to cut out these f'ing parasites, charge $8 for an album and keep the $8 for themselves.
My son is a musician. He makes good money on live shows still. That's where the money is for him.
Agreed. The only money we ever made (mostly) was touring. But there is a lot of overhead...
Musicians should live to make music and not become wealthy. Sorry, if you want to become wealthy, pick another profession.
-part time musician
If you knew what music we played you would know we were not seeking wealth,
Mind if I ask what music you played?
If anything, I think the internet has been a great vehicle for Artist to offer their works to the public. As long as we have protection that our work cannot be stolen and sold, then talent will always win.
That is the dumbest f'ing thing I've ever heard. So who do you deem should be allowed to get wealthy? "Athletes should play sports for fun, not to make money. Doctors should treat people out of the good of their heart, not to make money, teachers should teach because it's the right thing to do, not to make money". Go back to North Korea f'head.
+100
@ part time musician - i guess music doesn't require any talent, investment in education, dedication, study, practice, investment of time, investment of capital (gear), devotion?? etc...
i don't need to be fucking wealthy - just earn a fair buck for the time and money i've spent over the past 40 years honing my craft and skills and trying to develop the talent i was blessed with to its fullest potential. i'm pretty sure that i've studied enough and put in as much time, if not more, than any lawyer, doctor, or other 'professional'.
i've worked in the corporate world for years not because i'm not good enough at music, but getting paid LESS for a new years gig than my dad did in the 60's makes it pretty difficult to justify busting my ass for so little. why? people think music should be free and as a result, making a living as an honest gigging musician is very difficult. And to provide some perspective, probably 1% of 1% of musicians ever become wealthy. just like professional athletes.
most non-musicians and many part-time musicians know absolutely nothing about what it means to be a true professional musician. most non-musicians and part-time musicians lack the discipline to truly 'master' an instrument. they see videos or the end product of someone performing live...having fun (if they're doing it right) - but don't consider ANY of the work that went to get them to that point - whether you care for their music or not, most musicians have not just gotten there because of sheer 'luck'.
i'm realistic in that i know in today's world making a 'living' as a musician is nearly impossible. i stopped whining about the plight of the musician long ago. i revel in the irony of the number of times i've been asked to play for free because it will be great promotion for me or my band. i would love to walk into a restaurant and tell them they should give me free food, or walk into a lawyer's or doctor's or a financial advisor's office and try to convince them to provide free services because i'll 'promote' them at my next live gig and see what kind of response i get. haha
as such, i'll keep plugging away at the day gig. make great music that very few will ever hear. was it a waste? no - learning a craft and making art is never a waste. making great music is a fucking blast. it is a disappointment, however, that the majority of folks don't really give a shit about music even though they listen to it all day long. not to mention that fact that many of these same people won't think twice to throw down $150 to go see the stones, beyonce, springsteen, and other mainstream acts or a football, basketball, or hockey game, but think it's an outrage when a local bar charges a $5 cover charge because they have live music or think it's a disgrace to pay $15 for CD that a local band may have spent $thousands to produce.
don't worry - soon everything is going to be done by robots and you'll all be shit out of luck just like we musicians and the authors and the journalists and the photographers! at least the artists & content providers will have, for once, gotten a head start on all the squares because we already how to survive on fucking peanuts. good luck!
Throughout most of history the arts paid poorly. There was a brief blip where technology enabled the selling of art to the masses while simultaneously enabling gatekeepers to control its distribution. That time is past.
There's a glut of good music, and - like most arts - people will pay a premium for the stuff they really want, in this case Springsteen, The Stones, etc... just as most painters won't see anything like the income from their toils that would come close to the price commanded by one of Picasso's minor works.
Your skills as musicians have been circumvented by technology; you're the new buggy-whip manufacturers.
He might be trying to say that since artists and athletes provide a luxury - entertainment. They do not produce that by which people need to live. As such, in a rational system, they would be compensated after all other needs are met.
It is obscene that an artist or athelete might make $100M/yr while other people starve. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that is EXACTLY like how things are in North Korea - the useless but favored eat and get fat while the plebs starve.
A lot of musicians are or were trust fund babies. Many in the California "scene" were trust fund babies or children with parents who were MIC and See Eye Aye.
http://www.mygen.com/Laurel_Canyon-David_McGowan_report.htm
yep that's me - trust fund baby. living high off the hog just like all the other musicians. have you ever actually seen a musician or met one?
Great article, glad people are still passing it around.
Good money? I live in nashville, my neighbor is Taylor Swift's producer, and I know members in two touring first rate rock bands and members of the bands of the biggest names in country music, and their industry is REALLY struggling. Record labels are now taking more and more from tour ticket sales and merchandise, something that used to go almost exclusively to the artists. They pay the session drummers and guitars I know HALF of what they did 5 years ago.
buddy of mine, played with (and this is a partial list): Jeff Beck, Al DiMeola, Aretha Franklin, David Letterman Band, toured with George Duke, Chaka Khan, Esperanza Spalding, Erika Badu, DeAngelo, Sonny Sharock, recorded with Billy Joel, Cecil Taylor, Mariah Carey, produced 9 of his own CDs, had his music on TV and in Films, and I could go on and on and on. he was what is referred to as a 'world-class' musician. in his best year he may have made $75k.
and if someone can tell me this particular musician's name - I'll send them $50.
The big question should be did he leave a big hand print on Mariah Carey's behind?
Seems everyone else did. And the best part is that none of the handprints overlap.
pods
Clarence Clemons or David Sancious? :)
this is gonna piss me off .... ( in great part 'causei really need 50$)-
1) starting with beck- steve gadd or vinnie colliuta comes to mind , but doesn't really apply to letterman or
cecil taylor. narada michael walden ( my favorite back in the day)jumps way up there because of aretha, but i'm still not getting a letterman fix. i don't wanna say david sanborn 'cause i've never really liked him.
anthony jackson springs to mind from outta nowhere. but no letterman again. immediately makes me miss hirum bullock. and i've never known will lee to work with jeffbeck or cecil taylor. and you would mentioned miles if it was john scofield.
so, moving on to 2) and having been through too many drummers, bassists and guitarists on acount of will lee and anton fig , damn that letterman reference!, anthony summers? ndugu? mtume?
pissin' me off. will someone send me 50$ .01btc? ... a couple of good coupons fer sumpin?
ok. googled it. RIP. learn of greatness everyday, never heard of him before. definitely great.
http://www.thegearpage.net/board/showthread.php?t=1208382
You win! PM me (if there is such a thing here on ZH and i'll PayPal you or something.
FYI I had the great fortune to work with this guy, record with him, etc...he could blow away nearly any guitar player on the planet. There's a pretty ridiculous clip of him in the studio with Jeff Berlin.
no pm's here, but- antonyjames_331@hotmail.com - if your serious, and just 'cause i am broke....
otherwise, no worries - i always like to know about a talent i was unaware of. i do remember him from
letterman, pre- hiram bullock, his signature was bright yellow runners .... from the stuff i was unaware of-
i dig the jams with blood ulmer's black rock period band.
umm it's crap because the good artists get fucked while the 'stars' get paid. but whatever, if you think it's crap now...give it another 10 years. but look on the upside - it will be free crap!
what is going on with the math here? if you're making $0.20/download you need to have 8 million downloads to make $50,000? try 250,000.
Exactly. The money has always been shit bar the select few at the top.
A good metaphor for life.
"That's why we refer to them as Starving Artists..."
Ironically the Arts arena, which is typically leftist and often rallys for liberal collectivist politics and causes, has the most
dog eat dog, top down pyramid of any industry.
Its horrible, but it is the way it is. Touring, book signings, art receptions--it is like selling ass on the street corner.
my neighbor's half-sister makes $63 /hour on the internet . She has been out of work for 10 months but last month her pay was $16551 just working on the internet for a few hours. More Info... www.job-reports.com
Chicks for free ... money for nothing
"Money too tight to mention"
So... you're saying it might not be a good time for me to ask the Tylers for a raise?
"Hey, Tylers, how about a little something..... you know, for the effort?" (Bill Murray, Caddyshack, talking to the Dalai Lama)
Here ya go Debt:
"Oh, uh, there won't be any money, but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness."
"So, I got that going for me."
+1 for bringin' it home.
There'll be nothing now, but rest easy knowing in your coffin I'll throw in a couple $FRN's.
I'll stick to vinyl. Love the sound. Love the chase. Love knowing a lot of the money goes to the artists.
LPs? A wonderful collecting opportunity. In thrift stores, anywhere from 5 cents to 50 cents apiece. And a huge Sanyo stereo/tape player combination with speakers for $40...works PERFECTLY.
Everytime they introduce a new, higher-cost technology, the uptake rate of that technology FALLS.
The secret is to buy up for pennies what the fad-chasers and tech-chasers leave behind.
I was shocked to find there are a lot of artists pressing their music on vinyl (again, or for the first time). I'm talking about stuff for high end audiophiles, but it's out there. I listened to one from John Mayer at a local high end shop on vinyl just a couple weeks ago. Also a remastered copy of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of The Moon on vinyl.
No "Dolby 5.1", no digital anything. Just two channels, vacuum tubes, pre/post amps, a turtable and some tasty tunes. The equipment looks like it's straght out of the 1970s. But WOW, does it sound good! (And considering how much it costs, it should.)
Audiofools and their money are easily seperated, same as it ever was.
There is no replacement for tubes.
There is no replacement for the good ol tubes, because a lot of that industry knowledge was lost when everyone thought transistors meant no need for tubes any longer. My buddy's guitar amp, newest tube in there is mid 1960s. We pepsi challenged the shit out of hundreds over the years, and new ones do not even come close!
Maybe it's part of a trend toward things that are real, ie physical vs digital.
Just buy a Jews harp for $1 and make all the free music you want, serf.
So what? Commoditization simply means that creative content will be in short supply - or marketed differently. That's all.
Hey there's no short supply of great talented content in these our times....just check out Justin Beber for example! Motown had nothin on our society's talent today!
I TRUST you're joking.
but,if your kids insist on their beiber .... turn 'em onto the "dirty loops".
Notice that this is just a continuation of the New Serfdom; the consumptive debt ponzi that commoditizes humanity.
In other words, the value of our lives is being pushed to zero at a geometric pace.
yup, so now the road is,
get a regular job, and stay happy with your hobby - at least now you can make good sounding recordings instead of relying on an old 4-track. kinda forgot to mention the exponential increase in availability of production software.
which still will not ever completely take the place of the real thing, I dont care how good it gets, plugins do not sound exactly like the real thing, no matter how much the company tells you its congruent.
kinda like tubes, they say the new replicas sound just like the old vintage ones - BS, gotta be listening through a tin can to say that.
the pareto distribution is just a reflection of human distribution, if I can figure shit out that nobody else can, that's valuable.
Good thing then that Bob Carver could make transistors sound like the vintage tubes ... so now we doubly don't need them (for audio at least, there are still some high voltage niches where they are appropriate).
detached.amusement: replying to your post because you are absolutly correct about analog and tubes vs digital. but that's a distraction to the article.
I am an independent musician that sells music through the various on-line sources. To give some perspective, I get $0.0013 for each stream on Spotify. Other streams are roughly the same. I get $0.65 for each sale, but, as the article makes the point, who buys a song when you can stream it anytime you want for as many times as you want for a fixed monthly fee, or nothing with advertising. Or you can bittorrent for nothing.
As egregious as that sounds, if you consider getting a song played on the radio, you MAY get a royalty, depending on a lot of factors, the primary one being you are already a well known artist. As a regional, independent artist that may get regular airplay on a couple local radio stations, you are likely to see $0.00 royalties, even though the station would pay royalties. The royalty distribution model is totally skewed to popular, nationwide acts.
Even then, if you consider a digital stream is to an audience of 1, vs a radio spin to an audience in the 10's of thousands or more, by comparison, that single stream is not worth very much. I wish it was worth more, but the world does not owe musicians (or artists more generally) a living.
The reality is that creative content is a commodity. There are millions of artists flogging content, many times more supply than demand. And frankly, most of it is worth nothing. As much as technology has seemed to destroy artist revenue streams, it also enables any aspiring artist to distribute their art for nothing.
If you are a musician unhappy with streaming royalties, don't distribute digitally. Don't put your music and videos up on Youtube for nothing and let Google collect ad revenue. Don't put it up on SoundCloud. Hold out to be fairly paid for what you create. And rather than $0.0013 per stream, you will end up with nothing, other than the satisfaction that Pandora or Google are not making anything off your content either.
Which is why I gave up on caring long ago about distributing my music. Its enough I get the shit recorded these days :) For the love of it, is all I get out of that - and I'm good with that.
And when your regular job is automated you will still have your hobby to give you satisfaction.
The world is changing radically. The economic model of goods distribution through jobs for everyone with rising wages the norm so that more goods can be sold is basically dying fast.
yep - nearly EVERYONE's job will be threatened and transformed in the coming years...not just content creators. but at least everything will be free! haha - except for the stuff you really need.
Tell it to WB7.
.
Nominal GDP is not real (and is really tiny), Scott Sumner | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty
If you are trying to trade something for money, that something is a commodity, no matter how you fetishize it. Laws of supply and demand in full effect. Art, like all information, wants to be free. Claiming "ownership" of an artistic creation is the first step in degrading it to commodity status.
So you'll clean my bathroom for free?
no, but i'll defecate expressively all over the floor and walls.
and eventually there will be no content - because it won't be worth it to create it. everyone will be their own content creators. we'll everyone have our own Iblog, create our own iTVshow, and create our own iMusic. And we'll be our own iDoctors, and iLawyers. back to a world of jack of all trades ... master of none. and it will all be fucking free!!
or as it was said in the Twilight Zone episode 'To Serve Man': We're everyone of us on the menu. To serve man is a cookbook.
So what's the impact of commoditizing Ebola?
Wouldn't that cause the extermination to proceed at extraordinary speed and lethality?
Seems like we have a lot more vectors in the West than anywhere else perhaps save China.
Obviously there is no such thing as being "Ebola free.". The plucking lies are pretty much criminal at this point yes,yes?
First of all, let us not confuse ART with what is called "content". Art is the creative endeavor of an individual, the creative expression of the artist.
Content is the 'filler' required by those attempting to bundle and 'sell' the creative endeavors of others. Content is not Art, will never be Art.
Years ago, I decided to try my hand at romance writing. I contacted a well-known company for their guidelines, and received a big packet in the mail.
It was an outline of what they expected. Well, actually it was more of a 'formula' for writing. The 'formula' was so detailed, so exacting, that my first thought was, "Hey, they already WROTE the book, what do they need ME for?"
They didn't want writers...they wanted "content'. They weren't peddling Art, they were looking for drones who could crank out generic story lines according to a formula they calculated as being saleable.
What do you want? A library full of Rosemary Rodgers bodice-rippers, or would you prefer a little LITERATURE in your library?
Could Upton Sinclair have gotten a publisher for "The Jungle" today? Or would the publisher, perhaps afraid of Monsanto's response, politely returned his manuscript, telling him his theme was a bit of a downer, and not marketable?
Holy shit man, that's some thickly veiled sarcasm at the end there ...
(The Jungle had to be initially self published because it kept being rejected, same as it ever was.)
many years ago i took a course an extension course in erotic writing, for $50, and i pumped out the letters and stories for the next year. it was the only time in my life that education ever paid tangible results. as you say the guidelines are strict, they know just what they want, the role of the writer was to humanize the content, make it seem natural, and true. in other words you had to forget your education skills talent and ability and write it from the point of view of someone else.
ah, you mean some idiot 'rapper' isn't going to get $500 million dollars to rhyme words like a 5 year old.??? damn.
Commodity = Creativity + Replication .
"England expects every artist to do his Duty" simply does not have that zing .
"Lie back and think of England" would'nt have done much for Michelangelo wiping the paint out of his eyes under the Sistine Ceiling .
The culprit here is old style distribution of surplus .
See
http://andreswhy.blogspot.com/2008/10/human-capitalism.html
http://andreswhy.blogspot.com/2014/05/nova-luddites.html
For good measure , see
http://andreswhy.blogspot.com/2012/03/reduced-chinese-economic-growth-ra...
and http://andreswhy.blogspot.com/2008/09/job-and-duty.html
At my Ad Agency I decided to give away our creative services years ago. The money is in the distribution and media not the creative these days. To me, creative is a loss leader that I use to attrack clients to the table and they pay for the results of the overall campaign. When Creative Directors bitch to me about this model they just remind me of walking talking Compact Disks.
so let me get this right, the talent is what you sell the ad buyer, and the public buys the ads (or means of distribution)?
There was a good New York Times OpEd about this subject last summer. It is matter close to my heart, since I've been writing "voluntary" contributions to internet publications for many years now. The long and the short of is, if people expect high quality content, especially in the field of journalism, they have to be willing to pay for it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/27/opinion/sunday/slaves-of-the-internet-unite.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&
i'm paying for cable and i get some of the worst journalism imaginable. what's the upside?
Hilarious videos on YouTube show the writers at the NY Times talkings about how they deserve pensions and top pay because their writing is so amazing. LOL!
They are paid propagandists. I would not cry is they and their families starved. They have spewed endless lies and garbage for a century or more especially Walter Duranty. They have killed endless endless trees to spew their lies.
The movie the Three Days of the Condor's ending were hysterical. Libturd Robert Redford takes his whole story about the CIA to the NY Times. Cliff Robertson (not a libturd in real life) was a CIA man in the film. The joke is Reford could have sent his story to Langley, VA as the NY Times is controlled by MIC/intel/zio.
uh when did artists leave serfdom in the first place? the rich ones are con men, the real ones learn to starve...as in starving artist...
naw. i saw the fire killed circa the early 80's. the immediate circle of miles davis' electic disciples ( chick, john, joe and wayne) were making money and the fire was spreading to audiences and a new generation of musicians. the industry killed it by trying to grow it bigger and faster than the movement itself .
Ultimately this is a good thing. What this article calls "commoditization" is really just free and open distribution.
Look at books. In the past power blocks set-up gateways and controls on distribution so that they could maximize revenue. Big publishers picked a few hack writers, guys like Grisholm and Patterson, and spent big money on publicity. Then they used a controlled distribution channel to push the books out to expensive brick and mortar stores and sold hardcover versions of new releases at $30 bucks or so with a cheaper paperback version to follow once the initial big dollar sales taper off.
But there's nothing special about these "bestselling" authors. Tens of thousands of aspiring authors can now write their own mystery novels on their own time, a few hundred of them will be better than the big-name authors anointed by the publishing industry. If somebody writes something truly exceptional it can be sold for a buck to ten million readers with essentially zero cost of distribution. The same thing for music.
Right now people are over-paying for ebooks and music because the legacy power publishers and their pet legislatures are working frantically to cling to their control mechanisms. Ultimately some musicians can make some money from live performance but authors are basically going to be out of luck. But, in the end, the only forms of "art" that will retain any real value are those that have a physical cost of goods like a canvas you hang on the wall or a vase. Anything that can be digitized will have virtually infinite supply which means virtually infinitessimal value.
whatever you do Binko - eventually it will be mostly likely be automated. you won't have to work because there won't be any work for you to do because everything will be freely distributed and you'll get to spend your time writing your mystery novels! how cool is that?!?
Of course there's "no premium", that's what "commoditization" means. Homogenized, pasturized, and sold with a smiling cow on the package, until it passes the sell-by date.
What I think you wanted to say is that there is no premium for NON-commoditized product when commoditization comes along. Gresham's Law, don't you know.
Fiat music is dissolving as fast as fiat money. I guess these artists will have to go out and play live again instead of sitting in a champagne filled bathtub waiting for their check to be delivered.
yep - because that's all they do. just sit in the tub and wait for those checks to show up. you obviously have an extremely solid grasp of how the music biz works. i salute you for bringing your intelligent insight to this topic.
"…within the capitalist system all methods for raising the social productiveness of labour are brought about at the cost of the individual labourer; all means for the development of production transform themselves into means of domination over, and exploitation of, the producers; they mutilate the labourer into a fragment of a man…"
— Karl Marx - Capital Vol 1 Ch.25 1867
if you want good journalism perhaps we should log onto our favorite news anchors blog, and download the premium content, the layering of information (while somewhat incompatible with the notion of truth) is no where more obviously corrupt than in gambling (or stock picking) selection sites, where you can buy the analysts $100 pick, $200 pick or $500 pick. journalists could use a similar ad campaign, you can't handle the truth.. well maybe for $500... call 1-800-tru-news
OT, but speaking of Serfdom... A Japanese man got 2 years in jail, for 3D printing his own gun.
source = http://rt.com/news/197448-japan-jail-3d-gun/
he should have told them it was 'ART' then no one would have cared.
Been working in film and television for over 10 years. Well familiar with commoditization aspect of the business. Glad the jobs still pay the bills. Don't expect it to last forever. Why? Because of the internet. It changes everything - not just the business model I'm in but everything.
Watch any lecture by Alexander Bard on how the internet is reshaping life. It'll be an eye-opener.
What happens with bi-directional interaction that internet enables is it kills mass produced unidirectional media. That media is print, radio, television and... you'll never guess - money! Money, as Bard puts it, is a form of mass media. Something originating from a single source and distributed in one direction - down the pyramid. Those at the top reap most of the benefist, while everyone at the bottom get skimmed.
Anything that prevents you from giving feedback to the source of content suffers. Anything that is non-interactive disappears. Money, being an attribute of since source mass distribution that is itself a monopolized commodity has limited value in an attention based economy that the internet is establishing.
The internet allows people with virtually no start capital and only an idea to become famous, and once they get there, a barter-like exchange between similar content producers take place. People expand their influence by trading audiences with eachother. You introduce your followers to me, I'll do the the same to mine.
Attention is "currency". It is the commodity. What pays the bill then? It is the old dinosaurs - those who all of the sudden find themselves irrelevant and uninteresting. What do they do then? Like the dying aristocracy of the 17th and 18th century they attempt to buy popularity with their capital. They're (quoting Bard) the paid search goole results appearing at the top of every list that nobody ever clicks on. They're the former giants who attempt to bribe their way into this new attention economy, and through that transfer their wealth, just as aristocracy gave away their last pennies and their land to the emerging power class of the industrialist.
We are witnessing here the death of the industrialist and the banker (who by now have become the part of the same organizaiton). We're witnessing the end of vitrually everything old, deeply weaved into the old mass production single-source paradigm. We're progressing towards an economy that tolerates none of the freeloaders and middle men the old system rewarded.
In the old system if you made a product, to deliver it to people, you had to go through marketers, retailers, deliverers. You had to feed them all and bake the overhead into the cost of the product. Nowdays, because of direct communication, you no longer need middle men. You can talk directly to other producers whose product you're interested in and who themselves are interested in your product. You can bypass marketing departments. You don't have to stock shelves. You make and distribute the exact amount of product needed only where it's needed. You put less in, you get less out, maybe (with increased competition), but the ratio of input to output is far superious to anything that has existed before.
You are able to barter, bypassing the monetary system all together - trading things that used to cost money. Instead of 2 companies paying for advertising, to ensure others would know of their existence, internet takes that whole experience away. You simply recommend something and if that generates interest in the product its own manufacturer is likely to recommend you.
Attention is money. It doesn't mean the one with most attention will earn most cash. It means attention itself is the most important part, or according to Bard, Attention*Credibility is the only formula that matters going forward. People have to know you exist and they have to trust you. Then all of their power will gradually flow into your hand where you'll get to decide what to do with it.
Look at TV hosts - Kimmel, Conan, Degeneres, Fallon etc. They (or more specificlaly, their networks) are terrified of losing relevance. They know the net is where all the cool kids spend time these days. They see their shrinking revenues and think that chasing the common folk is the best way to get it back. They put up lame attempts at migrating, while preserving the actual business model. The networks tell their hosts to run online gigs. They tell actors to have twitter accounts, advertising each product they're involved in. They think the money has shifted elsewhere where the reality is that money has actually disappeared from the equation.
The money everyone is chasing hasn't simply migrated. It disappeared, because many of the former paid jobs are no longer needed in the internet economy. There is no longer a need to feed the society made up primarily of servicemen and freeloaders. The "services" are no longer needed.
My services as a paid content manufacturer/processor will no longer be needed either. I'm just glad to be working. Glad the education I spent money on paid for itself. I would under no circumstances recommend the same career path to my kids. I can't even justify them going to high school learning skills that will be obsolete by the time they graduate. I'd rather tell'em to waste no time, learn to code, make a web site, go on youtube and start figuring out where this whole thing is going.
Things are chaging fast and the worst thing a person can do is waste time, or dream of renaissance. That's what the aristocrats thought to themselves as they watch the population once again migrate to cities to seek fortunes. Before the industrial revolution, cities were hardly liveable. Quite often large populations were wiped out by fast-spreading diseases. City life was dangerous. Mechanizaiton and the use of fossil fuels changed all that.
The internet is changing once again what the world looks like, and who holds the power. It changes media. It changes money. Focus too much on the monetary aspect and you will indeed loose relevance and vanish. Use money to buy popularity and you'll end up with neither. Instead be an active producer and communicate directly with other producers who find the old way of running business restrictive, who, just as you, may be tired of all the parasites, freeloaders and bankers, hell-bent on taking advantage of everything that moves or doesn't.
Want to fight the banks likea typical ZH'er? Be fine with earning less and spending less, while actually getting more out of it.
good read, I'll look into Alexander Bard. similar thing has been happening in software industry, open source code is a form of such barter of code contributions. code has been comoditized too but software professionals are far from servitude
Look at what has happened to photography; billions upon billions of pictures snapped to the point that nothing is exceptional anymore - mass it to trash it.
Indeed. In this mass garbage environment power goes to search giants like Google that help people plow through mountains of crap to hopefully find what it is they're looking for. Machine processing is where it's at. A side effect of this convenience is that the search engine provider may begin to tweak results for a modest contribution - exactly as they've been doing. I believe the bear chunk of their revenue comes not from open advertising, but from ad words and meta filters. In countries like China they don't even get paird to show content. They're paid to make it disappear.
When everything is mass produced, you'll be happy with the first thing you find and google will determine what that thing is.
Sorry kids but money has to go to tax and interest.
so Creative Content is no longer source of income again, as it had been that way for millenias before that short period of commercialization of arts in 20th cetntury.
So, is this communism or capitalism? Oh, yeah, it doesn't matter. In any economic system you're one of the proles or one of the plutocrats.
"I fought the cartels and the cartels won. I fought the cartels and the cartels won."