Comment by ketzu
7 years ago
The problem is that when you talk only about "distribution is effectively zero" it's already a totally forgone conclusion that you are biased. It's getting worse when you imply all data is just numbers and regulating numbers is silly and stupid. Those numbers have context, that's why they are not just numbers.
Labels are not only distributers, not all artists are interested in marketing, distribution, mixing, etc. And at some point you need to get those investments back.
If you remove payments or restrict it to special ways like patreon people will still produce music, that's obvious. But it's not clear that it's the same music we get today.
Art will not vanish, but it will change the arts, probably in a major way. But what it will be like is up for discussion.
> But it's not clear that it's the same music we get today.
So what? We're just trending back towards the long-tail. The whole "super star" phenomenon only exists because producing/distributing music was expensive and so corporations were able to exert control over music consumption and (more importantly) music discovery. Most of my favorite bands fund their albums via Kickstarter/Patreon/etc, I listen to it on Spotify, and I drop $20-$40 on tickets when they come to town. My money is still there, I just spend it on the services that provide the most value to me.
"Art will not vanish, but it will change the arts, probably in a major way. But what it will be like is up for discussion."
I believe that current situation favors indie artists as anybody can form a band, record an album in their basement, upload it to Basecamp, Youtube etc. and if they are really good, expect a success. That's how an open system should work imho. In an old system, you would have to pass that middleman (and agree to pay huge part of money made from your music) before somebody even hears you. The difference is that it is hard/impossible to strike super-rich now as a musician, "success" often means taking donations for song/albums downloads and getting paid for live concerts to make a living. That makes musicians much like any other profession, and that's how it should be; we had super-rich musicians only because there were bubble in music industry in the past century (other comments have written more detailed on this topic). If all pop-stars would disappears overnight, I wouldn't mind either as there's probably enough indie music to discover than I have enough time in my whole life.