Platform capitalism devalued the music industry(blog.usejournal.com)
blog.usejournal.com
Platform capitalism devalued the music industry
https://blog.usejournal.com/how-platform-capitalism-devalued-the-music-industry-30883adf3a15
63 comments
>but part of the overall struggles of print journalism.
which not coincidentally is also related to another platform economy, the shift of advertising revenue from publishers and distributors to the large platforms, Ben Thompson writes about this all the time.
I think it's largely detrimental to independent creators, it treats the independent creator of artistic work as an afterthought in the name of aggregate consumer welfare and price. It's centralizing power in the name of efficiency and people talk gleefully about it because it robs the distributors and taxi companies, and movie studios and so on of their perceived ill-gotten power.
I think that's a huge mistake, the centralization of power streamlines all goods and removes all diversity, takes agency away from everyone but the large platforms, it turns open spaces into proprietary walled gardens because it's the only way for platforms to defend their content, and we're going to really regret it in a few years if we don't already.
which not coincidentally is also related to another platform economy, the shift of advertising revenue from publishers and distributors to the large platforms, Ben Thompson writes about this all the time.
I think it's largely detrimental to independent creators, it treats the independent creator of artistic work as an afterthought in the name of aggregate consumer welfare and price. It's centralizing power in the name of efficiency and people talk gleefully about it because it robs the distributors and taxi companies, and movie studios and so on of their perceived ill-gotten power.
I think that's a huge mistake, the centralization of power streamlines all goods and removes all diversity, takes agency away from everyone but the large platforms, it turns open spaces into proprietary walled gardens because it's the only way for platforms to defend their content, and we're going to really regret it in a few years if we don't already.
> It's centralizing power in the name of efficiency and people talk gleefully about it because it robs the distributors and taxi companies, and movie studios and so on of their perceived ill-gotten power.
I don't agree, because "the movie studios and so on" that you referred were actually the centralizing power, and that power was overthrown by these new platforms in a way that they no longer control and arbitrarily restrict access to the public.
I don't agree, because "the movie studios and so on" that you referred were actually the centralizing power, and that power was overthrown by these new platforms in a way that they no longer control and arbitrarily restrict access to the public.
Exactly my thoughts. Payola was alive and well until Internet distribution took over.
Music Journalists were the "Social Influencers" of their day.
They were given front row seats, overnight stays at 5-star hotels, lavish meals, and flights on private jets with touring bands.
Without Music Journalists, and their access to print, there was just no means to getting the word out. They could make or break any artist.
Music Journalists were the "Social Influencers" of their day.
They were given front row seats, overnight stays at 5-star hotels, lavish meals, and flights on private jets with touring bands.
Without Music Journalists, and their access to print, there was just no means to getting the word out. They could make or break any artist.
> but is probably not related to the rise of "platforms" but part of the overall struggles of print journalism.
This is partially accurate, but I think it's more accurate to say that journalism in general is struggling because the way the attention economy works now: firehose supply, fiercer competition for attention, consumer indifference to being the customer rather than product, and algorithmic/crowdsourced content recommendation. And the rise of platforms figures into some degree of every one of those aspects.
This is partially accurate, but I think it's more accurate to say that journalism in general is struggling because the way the attention economy works now: firehose supply, fiercer competition for attention, consumer indifference to being the customer rather than product, and algorithmic/crowdsourced content recommendation. And the rise of platforms figures into some degree of every one of those aspects.
I don't know if it's a fair takeaway to consider the decline in non-streaming music was unaffected by streaming that early on. Napster launched in 1999 as a first iteration of what could be considered a streaming service at the time. This chart doesn't represent that impact at all since it's focused on revenue, but timing wise I think there could be correlation.
>Napster .. could be considered a streaming service
It was downloads. Anyway the article specifically calls out "streaming platforms" and that's what I take issue with.
The big difference is the newer streaming platforms tend to be subscription-based or otherwise ad-based and share revenue with the music industry.
My point is the decline in music industry revenue is more due to rogue free download sites or user uploads to YouTube, etc. This generated no (direct) revenue to the music industry. Whereas the newer streaming platforms are working with the music industry and are turning back the tide.
It was downloads. Anyway the article specifically calls out "streaming platforms" and that's what I take issue with.
The big difference is the newer streaming platforms tend to be subscription-based or otherwise ad-based and share revenue with the music industry.
My point is the decline in music industry revenue is more due to rogue free download sites or user uploads to YouTube, etc. This generated no (direct) revenue to the music industry. Whereas the newer streaming platforms are working with the music industry and are turning back the tide.
I wouldn't be so certain.
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/streaming-...
https://nowtoronto.com/music/features/artists-vs-spotify/
That music industry money isn't going to the artists.
https://www.dittomusic.com/blog/how-much-do-music-streaming-...
(Ironically, Napster's streaming service appears to pay the most out of all of them now)
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/streaming-...
https://nowtoronto.com/music/features/artists-vs-spotify/
That music industry money isn't going to the artists.
https://www.dittomusic.com/blog/how-much-do-music-streaming-...
(Ironically, Napster's streaming service appears to pay the most out of all of them now)
>That music industry money isn't going to the artists.
No argument there! The artists have always been the last to be paid. It may be getting worse for the artists, but the situation for actual creators has always been bad ... on average.
No argument there! The artists have always been the last to be paid. It may be getting worse for the artists, but the situation for actual creators has always been bad ... on average.
It’s been bad, but it’s getting worse.
Buddy Holly was revolutionary for the way he negotiated his contracts and set a precedent for better treatment for a time. There a lot more nuance to that history.
Buddy Holly was revolutionary for the way he negotiated his contracts and set a precedent for better treatment for a time. There a lot more nuance to that history.
Yeah, this is important. I remember reading plenty of screeds about how awful the music industry and record labels are for artists long before streaming took over.
Harsh reality of the internet content is once you start making something available for free somewhere, then it will be worth zero everywhere. This is pretty sad, because at local level you still have to pay real monies to buy bread & milk and nobody of sound mind would ask for freebies just because somewhere else someone is giving bread & milk away for free.
Which explains why the porn industry, music industry and streaming video industry have all collapsed completely.
Not showing the growing live part of it, kind of missing the big picture:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/239276/growth-of-the-glo...
EDM and Techno experiences, unlike Pop, are hardly reproducable at home to begin with, they can't really exist without the events and their PA systems.
Techno is it's own beast, it's most surprising, that it didn't get flogged to death by commercialization. EDM had the stigma to be perceived as a fad by most to begin with, a non-sustainable stardom driven branch-off that has used up it's novelty quite fast.
Music rights themselves still seem super expensive, when they are not meant to lure in customers, when it comes to video games and how they are shut down left and right.
Techno is it's own beast, it's most surprising, that it didn't get flogged to death by commercialization. EDM had the stigma to be perceived as a fad by most to begin with, a non-sustainable stardom driven branch-off that has used up it's novelty quite fast.
Music rights themselves still seem super expensive, when they are not meant to lure in customers, when it comes to video games and how they are shut down left and right.
Growing live performance isn't great news; it's likely driven by the fact that buffet streaming is murder for artist capture of revenue from recordings. Live performing is one of the remaining options. And it doesn't scale.
That SFX Entertainment only is a footnote, underplays how controversial this corperate overexpansion was. If you prep up a whole style of music as a corperate owned bran,d with big advertising budgets, no wonder it can collapse. 2012 to 2016 was an engineered hype.
https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/10/06/445039871/...
Live is scaleable when it comes to the industry, festivals are international brands now, idol bands exist. Artists and performers find themselves again mostly at the short end of the stick.
https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/10/06/445039871/...
Live is scaleable when it comes to the industry, festivals are international brands now, idol bands exist. Artists and performers find themselves again mostly at the short end of the stick.
> Live performing is one of the remaining options. And it doesn't scale.
I would be FINE with that, if it were sustainable.
If you could play one concert a week and somehow pay your 4 band members $50K per year each--that would be okay.
The problem is that it seems to be more typical that you play 3 concerts a week and lose money. You practically need to play every single day to even make ANY amount of money. And that's just not sustainable.
I would be FINE with that, if it were sustainable.
If you could play one concert a week and somehow pay your 4 band members $50K per year each--that would be okay.
The problem is that it seems to be more typical that you play 3 concerts a week and lose money. You practically need to play every single day to even make ANY amount of money. And that's just not sustainable.
Anything which does scale is going to go the same way as recorded music.
We can take bets on how long, either directly using betting markets or indirectly by founding or investing in companies which depend on the profitability of certain kinds of scalable thing, but there's nothing scalable which can magically only be scaled the right way by the right people.
We can take bets on how long, either directly using betting markets or indirectly by founding or investing in companies which depend on the profitability of certain kinds of scalable thing, but there's nothing scalable which can magically only be scaled the right way by the right people.
We had a better model for artists for recorded music before buffet streaming: pay for recordings. The trajectory we're now on was less an inevitability driven by new tech + market forces and more a result of specific policy choices and business plays.
If your generalization applies (and it may well apply), then that's something to consider for anyone who could find themselves as easily exploited by scale as its beneficiary.
If your generalization applies (and it may well apply), then that's something to consider for anyone who could find themselves as easily exploited by scale as its beneficiary.
The introduction of Platform Capitalism to the music industry through streaming services and online media brands more or less reoriented the music industry’s function of supply and quality of demand by flooding the market with valueless content in the form of user-uploaded music and evergreen “click-bait” articles.
How quickly we forget the other platforms that used to dominate the music industry -- radio, MTV, distribution networks, music retailers -- that extracted maximum profit from listeners while excluding most artists from profits.
It's a similar story in other media industries. B&N is regarded as a victim of Amazon's dominance of the book industry, but 25 years ago it was regarded as a heartless juggernaut devouring the book industry.
How quickly we forget the other platforms that used to dominate the music industry -- radio, MTV, distribution networks, music retailers -- that extracted maximum profit from listeners while excluding most artists from profits.
It's a similar story in other media industries. B&N is regarded as a victim of Amazon's dominance of the book industry, but 25 years ago it was regarded as a heartless juggernaut devouring the book industry.
In fact, this is the premise of the film "You've Got Mail".
Music Industry failed to adapt. NoFx had a song about this called Dinosaurs will die.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPKQSQSVVos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPKQSQSVVos
Love NOFX! Been a big fan since like 7th grade (circa 1996) They are real a-holes, but they also have some pretty spot on commentary!
The music industry has been fighting against the natural economic theories of capitalism ever since the mp3.
Digital files have infinite supply. Draw a classic supply and demand diagram using that information and look at where the price should be. The supply curve is a vertical line at infinity on the x-axis. The demand curve crosses it at $0. Everyone knows and feels this intrinsically.
The artist is the thing with extremely limited supply. Something like Patreon will end up being the correct model.
Digital files have infinite supply. Draw a classic supply and demand diagram using that information and look at where the price should be. The supply curve is a vertical line at infinity on the x-axis. The demand curve crosses it at $0. Everyone knows and feels this intrinsically.
The artist is the thing with extremely limited supply. Something like Patreon will end up being the correct model.
This argument falls apart because it is using the incorrect definition of “supply”. The “supply” is the amount available on the market. Just because the cost of duplicating a digital file is nearly zero does not mean that the supply is infinite. The supply is limited by laws that restrict who is allowed to duplicate the file and the limited number of people who are willing to break those laws.
The article references some google trends data on electronic dance music, but if you query for EDM instead you get a different picture: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2010-01-01%202....
I don't follow the EDM scene personally, so I don't know if interest has been on the decline in recent years.
I don't follow the EDM scene personally, so I don't know if interest has been on the decline in recent years.
I think the decline is in the term 'EDM' as a blanket reference as the audience matures into the nuances of electronic music.
100%
Youtube created a world where distribution matters more than content because section 230 interpretations allowed them to steal content for a while. And now they pay for it, but that's a new development after years of piracy that drove down the price.
The viacom lawsuit has emails from senior youtube execs saying that stolen music content drove most of their traffic
Youtube created a world where distribution matters more than content because section 230 interpretations allowed them to steal content for a while. And now they pay for it, but that's a new development after years of piracy that drove down the price.
The viacom lawsuit has emails from senior youtube execs saying that stolen music content drove most of their traffic
What's the difference between "platform capitalism" and "collective bargaining" in this case? Seems like Spotify, etc are acting on behalf of their customers to get a better deal from the music industry.
When did this trend of naming things [noun] capitalism start?
In US, since post great recession. (my observation).
I'm not sure this is one of those new-things-under-the-sun:
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=*_NOUN+capital...
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=*_NOUN+capital...
Since the people doing the labeling became desperate to pin negative outcomes to capitalism even when they clearly don't apply at all.
Or did content socialism (mandatory licensing and government-set streaming royalty rates) devalue the music industry?
Government sets minimums, which was absolutely necessary given companies like Spotify couldn't be bothered to pay me (an artist) what I'm worth.
Almost everywhere else in business, if the buyer is not bothered to pay what the seller believes the product is worth, the result is quite simply that the deal is not made and parties go their own ways. Nobody calls for the government to set minimums just because the sellers don’t like what they are offered. Why would your situation be any different?
Minimum wage is a pretty glaring hole in this assertion.
Socialism isn’t when the government does stuff.
I agree with that. But the government forcing property owners to let other people use their property at prices set by the government is pretty socialist: https://completemusicupdate.com/article/us-copyright-royalty.... See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Royalty_Board
Imagine if we had a government board deciding what prices people could charge for App Store/Google Play Store apps. (It's not like we're talking about radioactive waste or something involving externalities, where government regulation might be justified.)
Imagine if we had a government board deciding what prices people could charge for App Store/Google Play Store apps. (It's not like we're talking about radioactive waste or something involving externalities, where government regulation might be justified.)
True - though copyright is a government granted monopoly, so there is a tradeoff. It's not real property. Copyright holders get special privileges granted by the government to control what others do with the copyrighted material, so it only makes sense that it comes with strings attached.
All property is a government granted monopoly. The government threatens violence to keep people from copying music. The government also threatens violence to keep people from copying apps, from farming in your back yard, from copying all the JS assets from your website, etc. All business models are built on the government preventing people from doing what they could naturally do.
Your argument is seriously flawed - there is a fundamental difference between 'intellectual property' and property -- I hope you can acknowledge that.
And as for all business models are based on government, well that's absolutely wrong. For example the existence of black markets -- those in violation of the government seem to show that they they don't rely on the government. Let alone any type of service business.
If you want to argue that government is necessary for property rights to exist, that's a resource saving measure - people protect their property all the time when governments fail them.
And as for all business models are based on government, well that's absolutely wrong. For example the existence of black markets -- those in violation of the government seem to show that they they don't rely on the government. Let alone any type of service business.
If you want to argue that government is necessary for property rights to exist, that's a resource saving measure - people protect their property all the time when governments fail them.
Well, if there were no government, people's first instinct is still to defend their property. They might lose or decide it's a losing battle, of course.
> Well, if there were no government, people's first instinct is still to defend their property.
No, it's to fight for what they want (or perhaps think they are entitled to) to control.
“Property” is simply what the government says you are entitled to control.
No, it's to fight for what they want (or perhaps think they are entitled to) to control.
“Property” is simply what the government says you are entitled to control.
Eh, by that logic "murder" is simply who the government says you're not allowed to kill. In the absence of all other criteria, that would be true, but theories of rights still exist in the absence of laws.
> theories of rights still exist in the absence of laws.
Sure, everyone had their own theory of rights. And if by people acting to defend their property you mean “people will fight to secure access to those things to which their own personal theory of rights holds them to be entitled”, well, you’ll notice that's exactly what I described, but not at all what people mean when discussing “property” normally.
Sure, everyone had their own theory of rights. And if by people acting to defend their property you mean “people will fight to secure access to those things to which their own personal theory of rights holds them to be entitled”, well, you’ll notice that's exactly what I described, but not at all what people mean when discussing “property” normally.
Sure. But there is such a thing as a group of people with similar theories of right, or negotiated theories of rights. An example might be a not-entirely-tyrannical tribe.
Our current systen descends from such things.
Natural law is the same thing as natural products. Impossible to define at best. Law needs enforcement to be law, otherwise it’s just words.
So if the government collapses, is murder still murder, or do we have to use different words? I posit that something need not be objectively defined to be meaningful. We have the intersubjective for that.
If there is no government, only the strong will have any property. We'll go back straight to cavemen times, especially if you have some kind of social disadvantage such as minorities, women, etc.
Looking at how wealth and opportunities to create it are distributed around the world and among different people, I'd say we are on the right track for a reality with all the disadvantages of no government paired with all disadvantages of too much government.
The main problem I see is the change in ideology that the rich have been able to implement. After WWII, government was supposed to promote the growth of the whole country. But in recent decades the elite convinced everyone that looking for the rich is all that matters. Being against this is now considered to be a "radical" or "communist". The rich have dismantled much of the democratic systems build since the French Revolution.
Yes, and sadly the issue would be really easy to explain to anyone: we live in a world with limited resources, but population is increasing while the few rich are becoming more richer at the expense of the many poor. All it needs is connecting dots by reasoning in 4 dimensions. This will lead to an era of disasters where most countries armies will turn themselves into private police protecting the 1% rich against the 99% poor.
Capitalism and consumerism (these capitalism and consumerism) did work only when there were still free resources available, and pretty much stopped being viable when the last uncharted land was explored, mapped and exploited. Today taking control of a resource always means it is being taken from somebody else, that is, we can't make someone rich anymore without also creating like a thousand poors in the process.
It doesn't work anymore, and simply painting critics as communists is so 1950-ish and so blatantly wrong.
The poor have gotten richer in the past 10 years at a faster rate than ever occurred in history. The economy is not a zero sum game - raw resources are important, but that is not where the value comes from.
In the united states, the biggest things affecting the poor are healthcare and housing costs and remarkably those aren't what most people consider to be the 'rich'. They're systemically broken with corruption and waste.
In the united states, the biggest things affecting the poor are healthcare and housing costs and remarkably those aren't what most people consider to be the 'rich'. They're systemically broken with corruption and waste.
Mostly right, but I disagree that there was ever in America a time when you could take "free" resources. All resources in America were stolen from the original people inhabiting the land. Instead of coming to help improve the land, Europeans came to steal the resources for themselves.
disintegore(2)
Also the graph in the beginning shows the long linear decline in non-streaming music sales that started decades before streaming became viable, hence not caused by streaming, and in fact streaming platforms are now propping up the mainstream music industry which otherwise would be really circling the drain.