hq/basspistol.com
hq/basspistol.com
4
0
Fork 0
Code Issues Pull requests Packages Projects Releases Wiki Activity

Updated '_posts/2020-10-22-streaming-to-the-masses.md' via CloudCannon

Browse source
This commit is contained in:
Set Hallstrom 2020-10-22 14:05:21 +00:00 committed by CloudCannon
parent db06389adf
commit dc5d483987
1 changed files with 1 additions and 1 deletions
Show stats Download patch file Download diff file Expand all files Collapse all files

2
_posts/2020-10-22-streaming-to-the-masses.md
View file

@ -34,6 +34,6 @@ It's a fairly simple and common story. It wasn't a dream but an illusion\! We th
The music market is shady. But it's not the shadiness of the music market that sets it apart from others. It's how it's value is being created. In that sense, making music is a bit like any art: it can be compared to printing money. You do something with a couple of tools and little funky shit. And boom\! Well... if it was that simple right? It has to be determined by some marketing chief that the music may generate profit first. Sure, there are many acts that are being blown up by the marketing department of a major record label, who never see any real success in the usual megastar sense. But it's out there and known. Not first because of any particular musical value, but because millions of people were made aware of it. Music doesn't have to bring any actual value to society to become valuable: it will not transport goods, build housing, make food... Sure, it might motivate someone to do all those things, but that's about where it stands. This means the value of music is organic and arbitrary at the same time. Like a living-dead [Schrödinger cat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_cat){: target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"}. Or a ticket to an upcoming lottery. Yet entire buildings of people depend on it to pay their rent... The music market is shady. But it's not the shadiness of the music market that sets it apart from others. It's how it's value is being created. In that sense, making music is a bit like any art: it can be compared to printing money. You do something with a couple of tools and little funky shit. And boom\! Well... if it was that simple right? It has to be determined by some marketing chief that the music may generate profit first. Sure, there are many acts that are being blown up by the marketing department of a major record label, who never see any real success in the usual megastar sense. But it's out there and known. Not first because of any particular musical value, but because millions of people were made aware of it. Music doesn't have to bring any actual value to society to become valuable: it will not transport goods, build housing, make food... Sure, it might motivate someone to do all those things, but that's about where it stands. This means the value of music is organic and arbitrary at the same time. Like a living-dead [Schrödinger cat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_cat){: target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"}. Or a ticket to an upcoming lottery. Yet entire buildings of people depend on it to pay their rent...
And the shadiness remained, worse it got amplified on the Internet. Now music isn't only a mean of motivating workers to produce, it also became a tool of surveillance. The industry abandoned sales and opted for rectification. Why sell an album for 9$ when you can rent it out for 9$ per month? Centralizing the source also means now we can monitor exactly what plays, when, by whom and if we correlate that with a social media profile, we also know of what age, gender and religion. And the shadiness remained, worse it got amplified on the Internet. Now music isn't only a mean of motivating workers to produce, it also became a tool of surveillance. The industry abandoned sales and opted for [rentification](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Giovanni_Dosi){: target="_blank" rel="noopener"}. Why sell an album for 9$ when you can rent it out for 9$ per month? Centralizing like this comes with added benefits: there is no need to risk capital in printing a bunch of packages that might end-up in a pile collecting dust. And the nature of the central source of the music being a database, it also enables for exact monitoring of what plays, when, by whom\! Better yet\! If we correlate that with social media profiles, we also know what age, gender and religion responds better to what.
## But did the dream really die though? ## But did the dream really die though?