Riiight. Work is work. Art is just something that happens.
It's the distinction between being paid for producing something and selling the product
Artists are (generally) paid for their products, not for their labour in producing the same
Except that part of the cost of the product is the labor that went into producing the product. So there is no distinction in that regard.
This is why the argument that "digital makes marginal costs vanish" is so goosey - you still have to pay for the master, and there's no reason why the cost of the master shouldn't me amortized across all copies. Not to mention that if some piece is successful, why shouldn't the artist get to share in its success?
It's not clear what you're arguing here. Because digital does reduce the marginal cost to near zero, so any argument styled as "digital makes margin costs vanish" is true by definition. Bringing up the cost of development is irrelevant so, either your paraphrasing of the argument is incomplete or everything that follows is a non sequitur.
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
Riiight. Work is work. Art is just something that happens.
It's the distinction between being paid for producing something and selling the product
Artists are (generally) paid for their products, not for their labour in producing the same
Except that part of the cost of the product is the labor that went into producing the product. So there is no distinction in that regard.
This is why the argument that "digital makes marginal costs vanish" is so goosey - you still have to pay for the master, and there's no reason why the cost of the master shouldn't me amortized across all copies. Not to mention that if some piece is successful, why shouldn't the artist get to share in its success?
It's not clear what you're arguing here. Because digital does reduce the marginal cost to near zero, so any argument styled as "digital makes margin costs vanish" is true by definition. Bringing up the cost of development is irrelevant so, either your paraphrasing of the argument is incomplete or everything that follows is a non sequitur.
I think his point, and it is a valid one, is that marginal cost of digital distribution doesn't matter too much, when potential digital distribution profits are already being figured into the decision to produce music and one sector of digital distribution is being found to have a poor return.
They moistly come out at night, moistly.
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
Riiight. Work is work. Art is just something that happens.
It's the distinction between being paid for producing something and selling the product
Artists are (generally) paid for their products, not for their labour in producing the same
Except that part of the cost of the product is the labor that went into producing the product. So there is no distinction in that regard.
This is why the argument that "digital makes marginal costs vanish" is so goosey - you still have to pay for the master, and there's no reason why the cost of the master shouldn't me amortized across all copies. Not to mention that if some piece is successful, why shouldn't the artist get to share in its success?
It's not clear what you're arguing here. Because digital does reduce the marginal cost to near zero, so any argument styled as "digital makes margin costs vanish" is true by definition. Bringing up the cost of development is irrelevant so, either your paraphrasing of the argument is incomplete or everything that follows is a non sequitur.
I think his point, and it is a valid one, is that marginal cost of digital distribution doesn't matter too much, when potential digital distribution profits are already being figured into the decision to produce music and one sector of digital distribution is being found to have a poor return.
Not something that I think is presently in dispute for a given value of "doesn't matter too much".
Riiight. Work is work. Art is just something that happens.
It's the distinction between being paid for producing something and selling the product
Artists are (generally) paid for their products, not for their labour in producing the same
Except that part of the cost of the product is the labor that went into producing the product. So there is no distinction in that regard.
This is why the argument that "digital makes marginal costs vanish" is so goosey - you still have to pay for the master, and there's no reason why the cost of the master shouldn't me amortized across all copies. Not to mention that if some piece is successful, why shouldn't the artist get to share in its success?
It's not clear what you're arguing here. Because digital does reduce the marginal cost to near zero, so any argument styled as "digital makes margin costs vanish" is true by definition. Bringing up the cost of development is irrelevant so, either your paraphrasing of the argument is incomplete or everything that follows is a non sequitur.
Except that the cost of development is relevant, because without the master, no copies can be made. This is why I find the "marginal cost" argument so goosey - it's an attempt to say "the cost of a copy of X should be solely based on the cost of creating that single copy."
Now, of course, the argument then becomes "well, we can fund the production of the master some other way!" Which is great, except that the other models are just as flawed (if not moreso) than the amortization model that we currently use. We moved from traditional patronage systems because of the power they gave the wealthy in shaping the popular media. Crowdfunding has issues with protecting incumbents and the ever-present "seed corn" problem (i. e. how do we develop future artists?)
Not to mention the implicit argument in divorcing development costs from the price of creating copies that the artist is somehow not entitled to share in the success of their work.
i'm with hedgie on this one. there's no compelling reason why consumers should have free convenient access to popular artists' songs when it's counter to the artists' interests.
i do think that major artists abandoning spotify presents a possible opportunity for mid-tier or emerging artists to get ears on their music and hopefully recognized
there's no doubt that it's a blow to spotify, but then again their business model aways relied upon the indulgence of artists balancing losses taken on a substitution market and their pr concerns. so fuck them.
Eh, I think it's pretty important to put a strong weight on consumer's access to music, because the entire industry is ultimately government subsidized in the first place by copyrights. If they want to deal with an actually free market, well, then they can do whatever they want, but since they rely on society chipping in to make their business model work, society gets a large say. I think we've been doing this balance wrong for a long time, though I wouldn't put for profit streaming as a top concern.
Copyright is not a government subsidy. It's government creating the conditions for a market for music to exist.
It's pretty damn close. The major difference is that instead of having the Department of the Arts doling out money, consumers just pay twice as much at the point of purchase, but in both cases the government is effecting a transfer from the general population to a certain class of producers.
i don't think so. without some sort of legal context for ip ownership there is literally no economic value to discovery, invention or creation. certainly the existence of an IP market that encourages these things is an aggregate benefit to consumers?
It's dubious that there's literally no economic value to creation without IP protection; as noted, we did in fact have art and music before we had intellectual property. Of course, we probably don't want to actually go back to, say, a patron model, where new art and music is funded by the super-rich for their own flattery, so your overall point is still fair. I don't doubt that it's in the public interest for there to be some IP regime.
However, I have yet to see any persuasive case that it's in the public interest for there to be some very specific IP regime such that it would give musicians like Taylor Swift, or anyone else, a much stronger bargaining position vis a vie entities like Spotify. What would such a regime look like? Why would we want it and how would it be in the public interest to adopt it? Without even a general picture of an interesting or relevant alternative, it's hard for me to see how this is a matter for any particular moral scrutiny as opposed to just business as usual in yet another market sector.
okay so let's look at this particular model of IP: a music artist has some degree of determination over use of his or her product. if a streaming service like spotify wants to use it, they must come to terms with the legal owner of the music (subject, ofc, to public domain/ parody/ review variances). this strikes me as straightforward. we could, of course, as you suggest, pick our solutions ad hoc in some combination of self-service and with respect to which interested party we prefer.
but i don't think this is, in general, a particularly good approach. i, personally, don't care much about big-market pop music: i get exposed to it passively, some i recognize and some i kind of like and some i kind of dislike and in any case it doesn't really inform much of my life. the billion-dollar industries behind it could go away, and music could be replaced by amateur or regional or niche brands and i'd be just as happy with that.
but
i do like big-budget movies. i like big-budget video games. and the only way that producers can get the kind of money they require for a big team of artists and composers and engineers is with well-established and enforced IP protections. my life would be impacted if bioware and bungie couldn't finance their video games (probably negatively, though my wife might differ). my life would be negatively impacted if wes anderson or pt anderson or the coen brothers couldn't monetize their artwork.
and i ultimately don't think it's a coherent position to extend IP protection to those industries i like and not those i don't.
i also think there's some degree of self-serving in the piracy semi-apologists, who want a primary market to exist but believe that they shouldn't be the ones who have to pay for the product they enjoy - that's for the chumps, the marks, the technologically unsophisticated consumers.
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
Riiight. Work is work. Art is just something that happens.
It's the distinction between being paid for producing something and selling the product
Artists are (generally) paid for their products, not for their labour in producing the same
Except that part of the cost of the product is the labor that went into producing the product. So there is no distinction in that regard.
This is why the argument that "digital makes marginal costs vanish" is so goosey - you still have to pay for the master, and there's no reason why the cost of the master shouldn't me amortized across all copies. Not to mention that if some piece is successful, why shouldn't the artist get to share in its success?
It's not clear what you're arguing here. Because digital does reduce the marginal cost to near zero, so any argument styled as "digital makes margin costs vanish" is true by definition. Bringing up the cost of development is irrelevant so, either your paraphrasing of the argument is incomplete or everything that follows is a non sequitur.
Except that the cost of development is relevant, because without the master, no copies can be made. This is why I find the "marginal cost" argument so goosey - it's an attempt to say "the cost of a copy of X should be solely based on the cost of creating that single copy."
Now, of course, the argument then becomes "well, we can fund the production of the master some other way!" Which is great, except that the other models are just as flawed (if not moreso) than the amortization model that we currently use. We moved from traditional patronage systems because of the power they gave the wealthy in shaping the popular media. Crowdfunding has issues with protecting incumbents and the ever-present "seed corn" problem (i. e. how do we develop future artists?)
Not to mention the implicit argument in divorcing development costs from the price of creating copies that the artist is somehow not entitled to share in the success of their work.
Ok, so granting everything you've just argued there - it doesn't disprove that "digital make marginal costs vanish" that's still true, even though we still need to fund development. All the other parts of your post address an entirely different argument or rather arguments that can utilise the fact that digital reproduction and distribution is very small as a premise. Whether you're following arguments are correct, or not they aren't arguing against that brute fact.
As to how we fund development, no one in the thread has argued that we should not take development costs into account or that the near-zero marginal cost should mean that the cost of the copy should be equivalent to that copy. People have argued that (if we try to map the scarcity of the old systems to the digital environment then) the price per unit should be significantly reduced in response to the dramatically reduced costs of reproduction and distribution.
I don't think anyone has championed any particular production and development funding model, so it's not clear why you think there's significant objection to the system of ammortisation.
Lastly, no one has argued that artists are not entitled to anything and ESPECIALLY not "artists are not entitled to 'share in the success of their work' because the cost of reproduction is so low". It's not even wrong, it's not even recognisable as a strawman of anyone else's positions. It's not even a strawman of MY copyright minimalism (which historically has been the most radical of the D&D denizens) if only because the logic is so broken.
tl;dr - even if I grant everything you say is true it is still the case, as I said above "either your paraphrasing of the argument is incomplete or everything that follows is a non sequitur."
My issue with Spotify has been very much what Taylor Swift is complaining about: it's not been clear that it actually funds musicians, as opposed too simply being a middle man of indemnity against legal prosecution.
And that seems like a raw deal, doubly so as the music I want to listen to becomes more niche. In which the monetization model seems worse: I pay money, but the artists and styles I like to not receive appreciable compensation?
i'm with hedgie on this one. there's no compelling reason why consumers should have free convenient access to popular artists' songs when it's counter to the artists' interests.
i do think that major artists abandoning spotify presents a possible opportunity for mid-tier or emerging artists to get ears on their music and hopefully recognized
there's no doubt that it's a blow to spotify, but then again their business model aways relied upon the indulgence of artists balancing losses taken on a substitution market and their pr concerns. so fuck them.
Eh, I think it's pretty important to put a strong weight on consumer's access to music, because the entire industry is ultimately government subsidized in the first place by copyrights. If they want to deal with an actually free market, well, then they can do whatever they want, but since they rely on society chipping in to make their business model work, society gets a large say. I think we've been doing this balance wrong for a long time, though I wouldn't put for profit streaming as a top concern.
Copyright is not a government subsidy. It's government creating the conditions for a market for music to exist.
It's pretty damn close. The major difference is that instead of having the Department of the Arts doling out money, consumers just pay twice as much at the point of purchase, but in both cases the government is effecting a transfer from the general population to a certain class of producers.
i don't think so. without some sort of legal context for ip ownership there is literally no economic value to discovery, invention or creation. certainly the existence of an IP market that encourages these things is an aggregate benefit to consumers?
It's dubious that there's literally no economic value to creation without IP protection; as noted, we did in fact have art and music before we had intellectual property. Of course, we probably don't want to actually go back to, say, a patron model, where new art and music is funded by the super-rich for their own flattery, so your overall point is still fair. I don't doubt that it's in the public interest for there to be some IP regime.
However, I have yet to see any persuasive case that it's in the public interest for there to be some very specific IP regime such that it would give musicians like Taylor Swift, or anyone else, a much stronger bargaining position vis a vie entities like Spotify. What would such a regime look like? Why would we want it and how would it be in the public interest to adopt it? Without even a general picture of an interesting or relevant alternative, it's hard for me to see how this is a matter for any particular moral scrutiny as opposed to just business as usual in yet another market sector.
okay so let's look at this particular model of IP: a music artist has some degree of determination over use of his or her product. if a streaming service like spotify wants to use it, they must come to terms with the legal owner of the music (subject, ofc, to public domain/ parody/ review variances). this strikes me as straightforward. we could, of course, as you suggest, pick our solutions ad hoc in some combination of self-service and with respect to which interested party we prefer.
but i don't think this is, in general, a particularly good approach. i, personally, don't care much about big-market pop music: i get exposed to it passively, some i recognize and some i kind of like and some i kind of dislike and in any case it doesn't really inform much of my life. the billion-dollar industries behind it could go away, and music could be replaced by amateur or regional or niche brands and i'd be just as happy with that.
but
i do like big-budget movies. i like big-budget video games. and the only way that producers can get the kind of money they require for a big team of artists and composers and engineers is with well-established and enforced IP protections. my life would be impacted if bioware and bungie couldn't finance their video games (probably negatively, though my wife might differ). my life would be negatively impacted if wes anderson or pt anderson or the coen brothers couldn't monetize their artwork.
and i ultimately don't think it's a coherent position to extend IP protection to those industries i like and not those i don't.
i also think there's some degree of self-serving in the piracy semi-apologists, who want a primary market to exist but believe that they shouldn't be the ones who have to pay for the product they enjoy - that's for the chumps, the marks, the technologically unsophisticated consumers.
I'm confused. Who's saying there should be no IP protection? The closest I see in MrMister's post is the statement that music doesn't need additional protection.
So, to make sure I understand the arguments currently present:
Point A: Spotify appears to offer less value to artists than just about any other digital distribution method (short of piracy). Functionally no one in the thread argues that an artist, given an existing system like we have, doesn't have or shouldn't have bargaining power with available distribution streams.
Point B: Highest profit pop artists make inordinately more money than functionally any other artists. There is some debate over... what? To me, one of the points to debate here is thus: The current system is structured such that it enriches the top percent of musicians without really benefiting the rest of them to any great extent. Is there a different system which would still profit the "best" musicians, but would also have more room for middle-grade musicians to make a living. I would think that @Apothe0sis position is closer to this than @AngelHedgie as Hedgie appears to defend the system as is.
In fact, I think Point B is the most salient. The current system, and the record system before it, were all "Rich get richer" and "Middle man gets rich as hell too" systems.
Point C: Socialism of music. I can't figure out a good way to summarize this point. Apothe0sis, could you offer an argument in a few sentences that could be debated on this one?
Darkewolfe on
What is this I don't even.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
edited November 2014
I used to buy CDs, then I signed up for my first streaming service (yahoo music) in 2005, bought a compatible MP3 player and never looked back. I have little doubt that I have spent more in total on streaming subscriptions than I would have on CDs, but I have also discovered much more music this way. Unfortunately, despite spending more money on music than I otherwise would have, it looks like I have also supported artists less than I otherwise would have. I rely don't like that outcome. Good for T Swizzle for standing up to spotify. As my first album purchase in a decade, I'm going to buy her album right now.
Edit: does anyone know what online store is the best for supporting artists?
spacekungfuman on
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Irond WillWARNING: NO HURTFUL COMMENTS, PLEASE!!!!!Cambridge. MAModeratormod
i'm with hedgie on this one. there's no compelling reason why consumers should have free convenient access to popular artists' songs when it's counter to the artists' interests.
i do think that major artists abandoning spotify presents a possible opportunity for mid-tier or emerging artists to get ears on their music and hopefully recognized
there's no doubt that it's a blow to spotify, but then again their business model aways relied upon the indulgence of artists balancing losses taken on a substitution market and their pr concerns. so fuck them.
Eh, I think it's pretty important to put a strong weight on consumer's access to music, because the entire industry is ultimately government subsidized in the first place by copyrights. If they want to deal with an actually free market, well, then they can do whatever they want, but since they rely on society chipping in to make their business model work, society gets a large say. I think we've been doing this balance wrong for a long time, though I wouldn't put for profit streaming as a top concern.
Copyright is not a government subsidy. It's government creating the conditions for a market for music to exist.
It's pretty damn close. The major difference is that instead of having the Department of the Arts doling out money, consumers just pay twice as much at the point of purchase, but in both cases the government is effecting a transfer from the general population to a certain class of producers.
i don't think so. without some sort of legal context for ip ownership there is literally no economic value to discovery, invention or creation. certainly the existence of an IP market that encourages these things is an aggregate benefit to consumers?
It's dubious that there's literally no economic value to creation without IP protection; as noted, we did in fact have art and music before we had intellectual property. Of course, we probably don't want to actually go back to, say, a patron model, where new art and music is funded by the super-rich for their own flattery, so your overall point is still fair. I don't doubt that it's in the public interest for there to be some IP regime.
However, I have yet to see any persuasive case that it's in the public interest for there to be some very specific IP regime such that it would give musicians like Taylor Swift, or anyone else, a much stronger bargaining position vis a vie entities like Spotify. What would such a regime look like? Why would we want it and how would it be in the public interest to adopt it? Without even a general picture of an interesting or relevant alternative, it's hard for me to see how this is a matter for any particular moral scrutiny as opposed to just business as usual in yet another market sector.
okay so let's look at this particular model of IP: a music artist has some degree of determination over use of his or her product. if a streaming service like spotify wants to use it, they must come to terms with the legal owner of the music (subject, ofc, to public domain/ parody/ review variances). this strikes me as straightforward. we could, of course, as you suggest, pick our solutions ad hoc in some combination of self-service and with respect to which interested party we prefer.
but i don't think this is, in general, a particularly good approach. i, personally, don't care much about big-market pop music: i get exposed to it passively, some i recognize and some i kind of like and some i kind of dislike and in any case it doesn't really inform much of my life. the billion-dollar industries behind it could go away, and music could be replaced by amateur or regional or niche brands and i'd be just as happy with that.
but
i do like big-budget movies. i like big-budget video games. and the only way that producers can get the kind of money they require for a big team of artists and composers and engineers is with well-established and enforced IP protections. my life would be impacted if bioware and bungie couldn't finance their video games (probably negatively, though my wife might differ). my life would be negatively impacted if wes anderson or pt anderson or the coen brothers couldn't monetize their artwork.
and i ultimately don't think it's a coherent position to extend IP protection to those industries i like and not those i don't.
i also think there's some degree of self-serving in the piracy semi-apologists, who want a primary market to exist but believe that they shouldn't be the ones who have to pay for the product they enjoy - that's for the chumps, the marks, the technologically unsophisticated consumers.
I'm confused. Who's saying there should be no IP protection? The closest I see in MrMister's post is the statement that music doesn't need additional protection.
specifically i was talking to "I have yet to see any persuasive case that it's in the public interest for there to be some very specific IP regime such that it would give musicians like Taylor Swift, or anyone else, a much stronger bargaining position vis a vie entities like Spotify". Naturally, the contours of what he is describing are vague, so I picked out the (apparently objectionable) status quo - in which Spotify has to come to terms with Taylor Swift Inc. in order to stream her music - to talk about.
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
So, to make sure I understand the arguments currently present:
Point A: Spotify appears to offer less value to artists than just about any other digital distribution method (short of piracy). Functionally no one in the thread argues that an artist, given an existing system like we have, doesn't have or shouldn't have bargaining power with available distribution streams.
Point B: Highest profit pop artists make inordinately more money than functionally any other artists. There is some debate over... what? To me, one of the points to debate here is thus: The current system is structured such that it enriches the top percent of musicians without really benefiting the rest of them to any great extent. Is there a different system which would still profit the "best" musicians, but would also have more room for middle-grade musicians to make a living. I would think that @Apothe0sis position is closer to this than AngelHedgie as Hedgie appears to defend the system as is.
In fact, I think Point B is the most salient. The current system, and the record system before it, were all "Rich get richer" and "Middle man gets rich as hell too" systems.
Point C: Socialism of music. I can't figure out a good way to summarize this point. Apothe0sis, could you offer an argument in a few sentences that could be debated on this one?
Hard to say what point C is - as the 'socialism' tag was applied to my first counter argument, I think inappropriately, but could probably appropriately be applied to one of the aspects of my affirmative argument.
So, the latter is the easiest, so I'll tackle that first - a fair or equitable remuneration scheme is exponentially more complicated to balance with three players than it is with two. While content delivery schemes provide value and thus extracting profits is not inherently rent seeking it would be far easier for all involved if the middle men did not exist - if the artists were operating as a collective and distributing the funds proportionately. So that's sort of an addendum to B.
The other option was essentially to observe that the language of "a pittance" and judgements about what level of incomes were deserved are value neutral only if in a business sense, and rely upon a number of moral principles that have been largely unarticulated. However, insofar as I can identify those moral principles I think they fail - they run counter to our intuitions, don't follow from the principles likely to be espoused or are inconsistently applied. I don't know if this attempt to be concise helps or is even less clear due to being vague. Maybe the best way to describe it would be like so: "I don't think that the intuition that 'if mega popstar doesn't get at least X amount of money then something is wrong with the system' is an intuition that has been or could be adequately justified'.
EDIT: Also, I haven't really addressed the question of whether there are economic or IP schemes that will reward a broader section of the artistic community except to say that contra Hedgie the information I've read is that success for smaller and middle tier acts is easier (provided you don't define success as lucrative mega-pop star status and income).
Riiight. Work is work. Art is just something that happens.
It's the distinction between being paid for producing something and selling the product
Artists are (generally) paid for their products, not for their labour in producing the same
Except that part of the cost of the product is the labor that went into producing the product. So there is no distinction in that regard.
This is why the argument that "digital makes marginal costs vanish" is so goosey - you still have to pay for the master, and there's no reason why the cost of the master shouldn't me amortized across all copies. Not to mention that if some piece is successful, why shouldn't the artist get to share in its success?
It's not clear what you're arguing here. Because digital does reduce the marginal cost to near zero, so any argument styled as "digital makes margin costs vanish" is true by definition. Bringing up the cost of development is irrelevant so, either your paraphrasing of the argument is incomplete or everything that follows is a non sequitur.
Except that the cost of development is relevant, because without the master, no copies can be made. This is why I find the "marginal cost" argument so goosey - it's an attempt to say "the cost of a copy of X should be solely based on the cost of creating that single copy."
Now, of course, the argument then becomes "well, we can fund the production of the master some other way!" Which is great, except that the other models are just as flawed (if not moreso) than the amortization model that we currently use. We moved from traditional patronage systems because of the power they gave the wealthy in shaping the popular media. Crowdfunding has issues with protecting incumbents and the ever-present "seed corn" problem (i. e. how do we develop future artists?)
Not to mention the implicit argument in divorcing development costs from the price of creating copies that the artist is somehow not entitled to share in the success of their work.
Ok, so granting everything you've just argued there - it doesn't disprove that "digital make marginal costs vanish" that's still true, even though we still need to fund development. All the other parts of your post address an entirely different argument or rather arguments that can utilise the fact that digital reproduction and distribution is very small as a premise. Whether you're following arguments are correct, or not they aren't arguing against that brute fact.
As to how we fund development, no one in the thread has argued that we should not take development costs into account or that the near-zero marginal cost should mean that the cost of the copy should be equivalent to that copy. People have argued that (if we try to map the scarcity of the old systems to the digital environment then) the price per unit should be significantly reduced in response to the dramatically reduced costs of reproduction and distribution.
I don't think anyone has championed any particular production and development funding model, so it's not clear why you think there's significant objection to the system of ammortisation.
Lastly, no one has argued that artists are not entitled to anything and ESPECIALLY not "artists are not entitled to 'share in the success of their work' because the cost of reproduction is so low". It's not even wrong, it's not even recognisable as a strawman of anyone else's positions. It's not even a strawman of MY copyright minimalism (which historically has been the most radical of the D&D denizens) if only because the logic is so broken.
tl;dr - even if I grant everything you say is true it is still the case, as I said above "either your paraphrasing of the argument is incomplete or everything that follows is a non sequitur."
Here's the thing - the argument that digital reducing marginal costs should result in a significant reduction in cost only works if the costs that are reduced make up a significant portion of the price given. If they don't, then the argument becomes nothing more than a backdoor argument for reducing the amount of money that the artist takes home.
Here is a breakdown of the costs of producing a physical CD for a small band. Note that the production of the CDs is one of the smallest costs, and mastering the album (which, mind you, would still be necessary for a digital release - the only thing that wouldn't be needed is creating the master for the CD press) is a close second.
So the point is that before you can start arguing that prices should be significantly reduced because you've reduced the cost of creating the copy, you need to show that those physical costs are actually a significant portion of the price. And the only way to make that argument is to divorce the cost of development from the cost of manufacture, as the vast majority of the cost comes from development.
So, to make sure I understand the arguments currently present:
Point A: Spotify appears to offer less value to artists than just about any other digital distribution method (short of piracy). Functionally no one in the thread argues that an artist, given an existing system like we have, doesn't have or shouldn't have bargaining power with available distribution streams.
Point B: Highest profit pop artists make inordinately more money than functionally any other artists. There is some debate over... what? To me, one of the points to debate here is thus: The current system is structured such that it enriches the top percent of musicians without really benefiting the rest of them to any great extent. Is there a different system which would still profit the "best" musicians, but would also have more room for middle-grade musicians to make a living. I would think that @Apothe0sis position is closer to this than @AngelHedgie as Hedgie appears to defend the system as is.
In fact, I think Point B is the most salient. The current system, and the record system before it, were all "Rich get richer" and "Middle man gets rich as hell too" systems.
Point C: Socialism of music. I can't figure out a good way to summarize this point. Apothe0sis, could you offer an argument in a few sentences that could be debated on this one?
The thing though was that it was possible to develop a niche following and make a comfortable living under the old system. The new system, on the other hand, carves out that middle space, so that the only viable points are the two extremes. That's not to say that the old system was great, because it wasn't - but the new system isn't really better either.
EDIT: Also, I haven't really addressed the question of whether there are economic or IP schemes that will reward a broader section of the artistic community except to say that contra Hedgie the information I've read is that success for smaller and middle tier acts is easier (provided you don't define success as lucrative mega-pop star status and income).
Yeah, as we move into new business models, I kind of expect things to be rocky. I would not at all be surprised if we get cases where mega-pop stars make the mistake of looking back at the old regime and assume they should be making gobs of money in comparable amounts that record companies got off a a single album. Where they forget that record companies fucked over artists by keeping the successful talent pool small, fucked consumers by over charging them and where distribution costs were higher. I'm not saying that making that kind of money is impossible, but it's going to be much harder and not something they can do off of just album sales. They are going to have more competition because it's harder for one group of assholes to be the gate keeper, picking the winners and losers. The consumer is much more discerning, they don't want to buy a 15 dollar CD, that only has 1-3 songs they actually want to listen to, while the rest are mediocre at best. It's far cheaper to distribute music, no one is going to claim they shouldn't be allowed to profit or recoup production costs, but it's much harder to argue this should cost X because there is a need to build in a safeguard in the even that the album doesn't sell well. If someone is concerned about physical discs not moving well, they can test the waters with a initial digital release to determine how many physical disks they want to risk creating. Hell, have we moved to the point to where someone doesn't send physical copies or not that many to brick and mortar stores, preferring instead to make physical copies only if someone places an order for a physical copy (I know we already see this in the printing industry, I figure it's only a matter of time until we start seeing in other entertainment sectors because why eat losses on discs that don't move or spend money to warehouse shit, when you can just create the physical copies on demand, when someone decides they want more than a digital copy).
You like your shitty examples. That "article" is about five seconds away from talking about having to buy a house and hookers to play Crystal Chronicles with you.
Yes, when you make a 100 sales of something the marginal costs are minimal and the non-marginal costs are enormous. What, they were up to 4000 for studio costs and CDs?
The second 100 sales will have a marginal cost of 250. All the shit that went to pay for that 4000 on the first run is now pure profit.
Now obviously this become a giant complicated issue of justifying capital expenditures versus expected sales returns.
EVERYBODY DOES THIS.
Every business has to do this stuff. I don't see how musicians not being immune to this is shocking, surprising or unjust.
Riiight. Work is work. Art is just something that happens.
It's the distinction between being paid for producing something and selling the product
Artists are (generally) paid for their products, not for their labour in producing the same
Except that part of the cost of the product is the labor that went into producing the product. So there is no distinction in that regard.
This is why the argument that "digital makes marginal costs vanish" is so goosey - you still have to pay for the master, and there's no reason why the cost of the master shouldn't me amortized across all copies. Not to mention that if some piece is successful, why shouldn't the artist get to share in its success?
It's not clear what you're arguing here. Because digital does reduce the marginal cost to near zero, so any argument styled as "digital makes margin costs vanish" is true by definition. Bringing up the cost of development is irrelevant so, either your paraphrasing of the argument is incomplete or everything that follows is a non sequitur.
Except that the cost of development is relevant, because without the master, no copies can be made. This is why I find the "marginal cost" argument so goosey - it's an attempt to say "the cost of a copy of X should be solely based on the cost of creating that single copy."
Now, of course, the argument then becomes "well, we can fund the production of the master some other way!" Which is great, except that the other models are just as flawed (if not moreso) than the amortization model that we currently use. We moved from traditional patronage systems because of the power they gave the wealthy in shaping the popular media. Crowdfunding has issues with protecting incumbents and the ever-present "seed corn" problem (i. e. how do we develop future artists?)
Not to mention the implicit argument in divorcing development costs from the price of creating copies that the artist is somehow not entitled to share in the success of their work.
Ok, so granting everything you've just argued there - it doesn't disprove that "digital make marginal costs vanish" that's still true, even though we still need to fund development. All the other parts of your post address an entirely different argument or rather arguments that can utilise the fact that digital reproduction and distribution is very small as a premise. Whether you're following arguments are correct, or not they aren't arguing against that brute fact.
As to how we fund development, no one in the thread has argued that we should not take development costs into account or that the near-zero marginal cost should mean that the cost of the copy should be equivalent to that copy. People have argued that (if we try to map the scarcity of the old systems to the digital environment then) the price per unit should be significantly reduced in response to the dramatically reduced costs of reproduction and distribution.
I don't think anyone has championed any particular production and development funding model, so it's not clear why you think there's significant objection to the system of ammortisation.
Lastly, no one has argued that artists are not entitled to anything and ESPECIALLY not "artists are not entitled to 'share in the success of their work' because the cost of reproduction is so low". It's not even wrong, it's not even recognisable as a strawman of anyone else's positions. It's not even a strawman of MY copyright minimalism (which historically has been the most radical of the D&D denizens) if only because the logic is so broken.
tl;dr - even if I grant everything you say is true it is still the case, as I said above "either your paraphrasing of the argument is incomplete or everything that follows is a non sequitur."
Here's the thing - the argument that digital reducing marginal costs should result in a significant reduction in cost only works if the costs that are reduced make up a significant portion of the price given. If they don't, then the argument becomes nothing more than a backdoor argument for reducing the amount of money that the artist takes home.
Here is a breakdown of the costs of producing a physical CD for a small band. Note that the production of the CDs is one of the smallest costs, and mastering the album (which, mind you, would still be necessary for a digital release - the only thing that wouldn't be needed is creating the master for the CD press) is a close second.
So the point is that before you can start arguing that prices should be significantly reduced because you've reduced the cost of creating the copy, you need to show that those physical costs are actually a significant portion of the price. And the only way to make that argument is to divorce the cost of development from the cost of manufacture, as the vast majority of the cost comes from development.
Man, that is like the crappiest of crappy examples. In fact the comments section is actually better than the article, which is something that should never happen
Using his methodology :
How Much Does It Actually Cost to Commute To Work? ($20,105)
Riiight. Work is work. Art is just something that happens.
It's the distinction between being paid for producing something and selling the product
Artists are (generally) paid for their products, not for their labour in producing the same
Except that part of the cost of the product is the labor that went into producing the product. So there is no distinction in that regard.
This is why the argument that "digital makes marginal costs vanish" is so goosey - you still have to pay for the master, and there's no reason why the cost of the master shouldn't me amortized across all copies. Not to mention that if some piece is successful, why shouldn't the artist get to share in its success?
It's not clear what you're arguing here. Because digital does reduce the marginal cost to near zero, so any argument styled as "digital makes margin costs vanish" is true by definition. Bringing up the cost of development is irrelevant so, either your paraphrasing of the argument is incomplete or everything that follows is a non sequitur.
Except that the cost of development is relevant, because without the master, no copies can be made. This is why I find the "marginal cost" argument so goosey - it's an attempt to say "the cost of a copy of X should be solely based on the cost of creating that single copy."
Now, of course, the argument then becomes "well, we can fund the production of the master some other way!" Which is great, except that the other models are just as flawed (if not moreso) than the amortization model that we currently use. We moved from traditional patronage systems because of the power they gave the wealthy in shaping the popular media. Crowdfunding has issues with protecting incumbents and the ever-present "seed corn" problem (i. e. how do we develop future artists?)
Not to mention the implicit argument in divorcing development costs from the price of creating copies that the artist is somehow not entitled to share in the success of their work.
Ok, so granting everything you've just argued there - it doesn't disprove that "digital make marginal costs vanish" that's still true, even though we still need to fund development. All the other parts of your post address an entirely different argument or rather arguments that can utilise the fact that digital reproduction and distribution is very small as a premise. Whether you're following arguments are correct, or not they aren't arguing against that brute fact.
As to how we fund development, no one in the thread has argued that we should not take development costs into account or that the near-zero marginal cost should mean that the cost of the copy should be equivalent to that copy. People have argued that (if we try to map the scarcity of the old systems to the digital environment then) the price per unit should be significantly reduced in response to the dramatically reduced costs of reproduction and distribution.
I don't think anyone has championed any particular production and development funding model, so it's not clear why you think there's significant objection to the system of ammortisation.
Lastly, no one has argued that artists are not entitled to anything and ESPECIALLY not "artists are not entitled to 'share in the success of their work' because the cost of reproduction is so low". It's not even wrong, it's not even recognisable as a strawman of anyone else's positions. It's not even a strawman of MY copyright minimalism (which historically has been the most radical of the D&D denizens) if only because the logic is so broken.
tl;dr - even if I grant everything you say is true it is still the case, as I said above "either your paraphrasing of the argument is incomplete or everything that follows is a non sequitur."
Here's the thing - the argument that digital reducing marginal costs should result in a significant reduction in cost only works if the costs that are reduced make up a significant portion of the price given. If they don't, then the argument becomes nothing more than a backdoor argument for reducing the amount of money that the artist takes home.
Here is a breakdown of the costs of producing a physical CD for a small band. Note that the production of the CDs is one of the smallest costs, and mastering the album (which, mind you, would still be necessary for a digital release - the only thing that wouldn't be needed is creating the master for the CD press) is a close second.
So the point is that before you can start arguing that prices should be significantly reduced because you've reduced the cost of creating the copy, you need to show that those physical costs are actually a significant portion of the price. And the only way to make that argument is to divorce the cost of development from the cost of manufacture, as the vast majority of the cost comes from development.
That article is not very enlightening, because it shows a mixture of startup expenses and per record expenses without clearly differentiating them.
This is a good thing for consumers. The marginal cost of everything digital is about $0, so it's all marginal profit. Now, artists still need to eat, as they always have, but the savings of digital distribution have far exceeded cost of living increases by magnitudes of order.
Hell, look at the infographic. Out of the $10 cd sale, the music people got $2 in the past, and now they are up to $6.28. Over 3x, and the mp3 store is making a mint at the same time, despite the drastically lowered percentage.
As I noted, according to one of the sources linked early on, the amount of money that goes from the consumer to the music industry for a given purchase is over 3x higher than in the past, and has gone from a minority of the total cost paid for music, to the majority. So, yes, the marginal cost of manufacturing has dramatically dropped in a way which has obvious real world effects (substantially more cash per CD sold digitally vs. physical CDs).
Now, Spotify pays little on a per play basis, but on the flip side, as I noted before, almost all that money is also going to music people (I say "music people" as defined by the recording company, the artist, whomever else is involved on that end).
Riiight. Work is work. Art is just something that happens.
It's the distinction between being paid for producing something and selling the product
Artists are (generally) paid for their products, not for their labour in producing the same
Except that part of the cost of the product is the labor that went into producing the product. So there is no distinction in that regard.
This is why the argument that "digital makes marginal costs vanish" is so goosey - you still have to pay for the master, and there's no reason why the cost of the master shouldn't me amortized across all copies. Not to mention that if some piece is successful, why shouldn't the artist get to share in its success?
It's not clear what you're arguing here. Because digital does reduce the marginal cost to near zero, so any argument styled as "digital makes margin costs vanish" is true by definition. Bringing up the cost of development is irrelevant so, either your paraphrasing of the argument is incomplete or everything that follows is a non sequitur.
Except that the cost of development is relevant, because without the master, no copies can be made. This is why I find the "marginal cost" argument so goosey - it's an attempt to say "the cost of a copy of X should be solely based on the cost of creating that single copy."
Now, of course, the argument then becomes "well, we can fund the production of the master some other way!" Which is great, except that the other models are just as flawed (if not moreso) than the amortization model that we currently use. We moved from traditional patronage systems because of the power they gave the wealthy in shaping the popular media. Crowdfunding has issues with protecting incumbents and the ever-present "seed corn" problem (i. e. how do we develop future artists?)
Not to mention the implicit argument in divorcing development costs from the price of creating copies that the artist is somehow not entitled to share in the success of their work.
Ok, so granting everything you've just argued there - it doesn't disprove that "digital make marginal costs vanish" that's still true, even though we still need to fund development. All the other parts of your post address an entirely different argument or rather arguments that can utilise the fact that digital reproduction and distribution is very small as a premise. Whether you're following arguments are correct, or not they aren't arguing against that brute fact.
As to how we fund development, no one in the thread has argued that we should not take development costs into account or that the near-zero marginal cost should mean that the cost of the copy should be equivalent to that copy. People have argued that (if we try to map the scarcity of the old systems to the digital environment then) the price per unit should be significantly reduced in response to the dramatically reduced costs of reproduction and distribution.
I don't think anyone has championed any particular production and development funding model, so it's not clear why you think there's significant objection to the system of ammortisation.
Lastly, no one has argued that artists are not entitled to anything and ESPECIALLY not "artists are not entitled to 'share in the success of their work' because the cost of reproduction is so low". It's not even wrong, it's not even recognisable as a strawman of anyone else's positions. It's not even a strawman of MY copyright minimalism (which historically has been the most radical of the D&D denizens) if only because the logic is so broken.
tl;dr - even if I grant everything you say is true it is still the case, as I said above "either your paraphrasing of the argument is incomplete or everything that follows is a non sequitur."
Here's the thing - the argument that digital reducing marginal costs should result in a significant reduction in cost only works if the costs that are reduced make up a significant portion of the price given. If they don't, then the argument becomes nothing more than a backdoor argument for reducing the amount of money that the artist takes home.
Here is a breakdown of the costs of producing a physical CD for a small band. Note that the production of the CDs is one of the smallest costs, and mastering the album (which, mind you, would still be necessary for a digital release - the only thing that wouldn't be needed is creating the master for the CD press) is a close second.
So the point is that before you can start arguing that prices should be significantly reduced because you've reduced the cost of creating the copy, you need to show that those physical costs are actually a significant portion of the price. And the only way to make that argument is to divorce the cost of development from the cost of manufacture, as the vast majority of the cost comes from development.
Man, that is like the crappiest of crappy examples. In fact the comments section is actually better than the article, which is something that should never happen
Using his methodology :
How Much Does It Actually Cost to Commute To Work? ($20,105)
$5 - gas
$100 - car insurance
$20,000 - car
I don't know about you, but most businesses (and if you're a band working professionally, you are one) factor in their physical property as part of their business costs. Depreciation is a very real thing.
Riiight. Work is work. Art is just something that happens.
It's the distinction between being paid for producing something and selling the product
Artists are (generally) paid for their products, not for their labour in producing the same
Except that part of the cost of the product is the labor that went into producing the product. So there is no distinction in that regard.
This is why the argument that "digital makes marginal costs vanish" is so goosey - you still have to pay for the master, and there's no reason why the cost of the master shouldn't me amortized across all copies. Not to mention that if some piece is successful, why shouldn't the artist get to share in its success?
It's not clear what you're arguing here. Because digital does reduce the marginal cost to near zero, so any argument styled as "digital makes margin costs vanish" is true by definition. Bringing up the cost of development is irrelevant so, either your paraphrasing of the argument is incomplete or everything that follows is a non sequitur.
Except that the cost of development is relevant, because without the master, no copies can be made. This is why I find the "marginal cost" argument so goosey - it's an attempt to say "the cost of a copy of X should be solely based on the cost of creating that single copy."
Now, of course, the argument then becomes "well, we can fund the production of the master some other way!" Which is great, except that the other models are just as flawed (if not moreso) than the amortization model that we currently use. We moved from traditional patronage systems because of the power they gave the wealthy in shaping the popular media. Crowdfunding has issues with protecting incumbents and the ever-present "seed corn" problem (i. e. how do we develop future artists?)
Not to mention the implicit argument in divorcing development costs from the price of creating copies that the artist is somehow not entitled to share in the success of their work.
Ok, so granting everything you've just argued there - it doesn't disprove that "digital make marginal costs vanish" that's still true, even though we still need to fund development. All the other parts of your post address an entirely different argument or rather arguments that can utilise the fact that digital reproduction and distribution is very small as a premise. Whether you're following arguments are correct, or not they aren't arguing against that brute fact.
As to how we fund development, no one in the thread has argued that we should not take development costs into account or that the near-zero marginal cost should mean that the cost of the copy should be equivalent to that copy. People have argued that (if we try to map the scarcity of the old systems to the digital environment then) the price per unit should be significantly reduced in response to the dramatically reduced costs of reproduction and distribution.
I don't think anyone has championed any particular production and development funding model, so it's not clear why you think there's significant objection to the system of ammortisation.
Lastly, no one has argued that artists are not entitled to anything and ESPECIALLY not "artists are not entitled to 'share in the success of their work' because the cost of reproduction is so low". It's not even wrong, it's not even recognisable as a strawman of anyone else's positions. It's not even a strawman of MY copyright minimalism (which historically has been the most radical of the D&D denizens) if only because the logic is so broken.
tl;dr - even if I grant everything you say is true it is still the case, as I said above "either your paraphrasing of the argument is incomplete or everything that follows is a non sequitur."
Here's the thing - the argument that digital reducing marginal costs should result in a significant reduction in cost only works if the costs that are reduced make up a significant portion of the price given. If they don't, then the argument becomes nothing more than a backdoor argument for reducing the amount of money that the artist takes home.
Here is a breakdown of the costs of producing a physical CD for a small band. Note that the production of the CDs is one of the smallest costs, and mastering the album (which, mind you, would still be necessary for a digital release - the only thing that wouldn't be needed is creating the master for the CD press) is a close second.
So the point is that before you can start arguing that prices should be significantly reduced because you've reduced the cost of creating the copy, you need to show that those physical costs are actually a significant portion of the price. And the only way to make that argument is to divorce the cost of development from the cost of manufacture, as the vast majority of the cost comes from development.
Man, that is like the crappiest of crappy examples. In fact the comments section is actually better than the article, which is something that should never happen
Using his methodology :
How Much Does It Actually Cost to Commute To Work? ($20,105)
$5 - gas
$100 - car insurance
$20,000 - car
I don't know about you, but most businesses (and if you're a band working professionally, you are one) factor in their physical property as part of their business costs. Depreciation is a very real thing.
Okay, they can claim ~50 cents a mile like everybody else does for business travel.
Until they do something reasonable like that it is still a shitty example.
Riiight. Work is work. Art is just something that happens.
It's the distinction between being paid for producing something and selling the product
Artists are (generally) paid for their products, not for their labour in producing the same
Except that part of the cost of the product is the labor that went into producing the product. So there is no distinction in that regard.
This is why the argument that "digital makes marginal costs vanish" is so goosey - you still have to pay for the master, and there's no reason why the cost of the master shouldn't me amortized across all copies. Not to mention that if some piece is successful, why shouldn't the artist get to share in its success?
It's not clear what you're arguing here. Because digital does reduce the marginal cost to near zero, so any argument styled as "digital makes margin costs vanish" is true by definition. Bringing up the cost of development is irrelevant so, either your paraphrasing of the argument is incomplete or everything that follows is a non sequitur.
Except that the cost of development is relevant, because without the master, no copies can be made. This is why I find the "marginal cost" argument so goosey - it's an attempt to say "the cost of a copy of X should be solely based on the cost of creating that single copy."
Now, of course, the argument then becomes "well, we can fund the production of the master some other way!" Which is great, except that the other models are just as flawed (if not moreso) than the amortization model that we currently use. We moved from traditional patronage systems because of the power they gave the wealthy in shaping the popular media. Crowdfunding has issues with protecting incumbents and the ever-present "seed corn" problem (i. e. how do we develop future artists?)
Not to mention the implicit argument in divorcing development costs from the price of creating copies that the artist is somehow not entitled to share in the success of their work.
Ok, so granting everything you've just argued there - it doesn't disprove that "digital make marginal costs vanish" that's still true, even though we still need to fund development. All the other parts of your post address an entirely different argument or rather arguments that can utilise the fact that digital reproduction and distribution is very small as a premise. Whether you're following arguments are correct, or not they aren't arguing against that brute fact.
As to how we fund development, no one in the thread has argued that we should not take development costs into account or that the near-zero marginal cost should mean that the cost of the copy should be equivalent to that copy. People have argued that (if we try to map the scarcity of the old systems to the digital environment then) the price per unit should be significantly reduced in response to the dramatically reduced costs of reproduction and distribution.
I don't think anyone has championed any particular production and development funding model, so it's not clear why you think there's significant objection to the system of ammortisation.
Lastly, no one has argued that artists are not entitled to anything and ESPECIALLY not "artists are not entitled to 'share in the success of their work' because the cost of reproduction is so low". It's not even wrong, it's not even recognisable as a strawman of anyone else's positions. It's not even a strawman of MY copyright minimalism (which historically has been the most radical of the D&D denizens) if only because the logic is so broken.
tl;dr - even if I grant everything you say is true it is still the case, as I said above "either your paraphrasing of the argument is incomplete or everything that follows is a non sequitur."
Here's the thing - the argument that digital reducing marginal costs should result in a significant reduction in cost only works if the costs that are reduced make up a significant portion of the price given. If they don't, then the argument becomes nothing more than a backdoor argument for reducing the amount of money that the artist takes home.
Here is a breakdown of the costs of producing a physical CD for a small band. Note that the production of the CDs is one of the smallest costs, and mastering the album (which, mind you, would still be necessary for a digital release - the only thing that wouldn't be needed is creating the master for the CD press) is a close second.
So the point is that before you can start arguing that prices should be significantly reduced because you've reduced the cost of creating the copy, you need to show that those physical costs are actually a significant portion of the price. And the only way to make that argument is to divorce the cost of development from the cost of manufacture, as the vast majority of the cost comes from development.
Man, that is like the crappiest of crappy examples. In fact the comments section is actually better than the article, which is something that should never happen
Using his methodology :
How Much Does It Actually Cost to Commute To Work? ($20,105)
$5 - gas
$100 - car insurance
$20,000 - car
I don't know about you, but most businesses (and if you're a band working professionally, you are one) factor in their physical property as part of their business costs. Depreciation is a very real thing.
Even a Stradivarius doesn't depreciate $5,000 in the amount of playing required to record a song.
Riiight. Work is work. Art is just something that happens.
It's the distinction between being paid for producing something and selling the product
Artists are (generally) paid for their products, not for their labour in producing the same
Except that part of the cost of the product is the labor that went into producing the product. So there is no distinction in that regard.
This is why the argument that "digital makes marginal costs vanish" is so goosey - you still have to pay for the master, and there's no reason why the cost of the master shouldn't me amortized across all copies. Not to mention that if some piece is successful, why shouldn't the artist get to share in its success?
It's not clear what you're arguing here. Because digital does reduce the marginal cost to near zero, so any argument styled as "digital makes margin costs vanish" is true by definition. Bringing up the cost of development is irrelevant so, either your paraphrasing of the argument is incomplete or everything that follows is a non sequitur.
Except that the cost of development is relevant, because without the master, no copies can be made. This is why I find the "marginal cost" argument so goosey - it's an attempt to say "the cost of a copy of X should be solely based on the cost of creating that single copy."
Now, of course, the argument then becomes "well, we can fund the production of the master some other way!" Which is great, except that the other models are just as flawed (if not moreso) than the amortization model that we currently use. We moved from traditional patronage systems because of the power they gave the wealthy in shaping the popular media. Crowdfunding has issues with protecting incumbents and the ever-present "seed corn" problem (i. e. how do we develop future artists?)
Not to mention the implicit argument in divorcing development costs from the price of creating copies that the artist is somehow not entitled to share in the success of their work.
Ok, so granting everything you've just argued there - it doesn't disprove that "digital make marginal costs vanish" that's still true, even though we still need to fund development. All the other parts of your post address an entirely different argument or rather arguments that can utilise the fact that digital reproduction and distribution is very small as a premise. Whether you're following arguments are correct, or not they aren't arguing against that brute fact.
As to how we fund development, no one in the thread has argued that we should not take development costs into account or that the near-zero marginal cost should mean that the cost of the copy should be equivalent to that copy. People have argued that (if we try to map the scarcity of the old systems to the digital environment then) the price per unit should be significantly reduced in response to the dramatically reduced costs of reproduction and distribution.
I don't think anyone has championed any particular production and development funding model, so it's not clear why you think there's significant objection to the system of ammortisation.
Lastly, no one has argued that artists are not entitled to anything and ESPECIALLY not "artists are not entitled to 'share in the success of their work' because the cost of reproduction is so low". It's not even wrong, it's not even recognisable as a strawman of anyone else's positions. It's not even a strawman of MY copyright minimalism (which historically has been the most radical of the D&D denizens) if only because the logic is so broken.
tl;dr - even if I grant everything you say is true it is still the case, as I said above "either your paraphrasing of the argument is incomplete or everything that follows is a non sequitur."
Here's the thing - the argument that digital reducing marginal costs should result in a significant reduction in cost only works if the costs that are reduced make up a significant portion of the price given. If they don't, then the argument becomes nothing more than a backdoor argument for reducing the amount of money that the artist takes home.
Here is a breakdown of the costs of producing a physical CD for a small band. Note that the production of the CDs is one of the smallest costs, and mastering the album (which, mind you, would still be necessary for a digital release - the only thing that wouldn't be needed is creating the master for the CD press) is a close second.
So the point is that before you can start arguing that prices should be significantly reduced because you've reduced the cost of creating the copy, you need to show that those physical costs are actually a significant portion of the price. And the only way to make that argument is to divorce the cost of development from the cost of manufacture, as the vast majority of the cost comes from development.
I have no stake in this argument, I think the entire Taylor Swift/Spotify thing is just business as usual and is being blown excessively out of proportion. That said, this post and the article you linked are making almost the exact opposite of the argument you seem to be trying to make.
From the article, the total costs for making their CD were $8590 (I made some approximations since they listed an "each" price for several items without listing a quantity), broken down into the following:
First, we determined Pangea's (approximate) equipment costs:
Erik's drum kit: $400
William's Squire guitar: $500
William's amp: $500
Danny's Squire bass: $200
Danny's bass amp: $600
Chad's Fender guitar: $900
Chad's guitar amp: $1,000
Then we added up the small things (approximately):
-Effects pedals: $50-100 each
-Patch cables: 5 each
-Mic stand: $20
-Mic cable: $20
-Instrument cables: $50 each
-Drum sticks: $10
-Guitar tuner: $50
-Guitar picks: $5 pack
-Gas money to get to studio: $15
-Copyrighting song(s): $45
When you reach the studio, you're going to have to pony up at least $450/day, so if you're lucky, you can have an album recorded in a week, which will cost roughly $3,150 in the studio. Mastering your album will cost about $500 and duplicating the CDs will cost about $250, for 100 CDs.
Of that $8590, the only costs that are actually specific to making this particular CD total $3960. I bolded the portion of the list that I'm including in this. The only way you could include the remainder of what they did is if they are buying brand new equipment that they will only ever use for this one CD recording, which is a nonsense assumption. Now, this cost is lower than what it realistically should be, because unless this is a vanity project that they just wanted physical CD's for and don't care about making money, you would want a lot more than 100 CD's. Keeping with the idea that this is a small band, let's say they wanted 1000 CD's, which brings the total actual production costs to a total of $6210. Cost per CD is then $.62, of which .25 of that is for the physical media.
So, of the actual, direct, cost of producing a physical CD, the physical media component is 40%. And as you make more CD's, that percentage just keeps getting larger, even if economy of scale drops the absolute cost per CD.
I'm actually having a fair amount of fun with the math involved, as there are some interesting conclusions that can be drawn from this. For instance, the band could sell each of those 1000 physical CD's for just $1 and make a profit, and then any digital sale, at any price, is just pure profit (minus any costs inherent in the digital sale, such as an iTunes cut or what have you).
Also, relevant to a point that you/others were trying to make, the band didn't include a value for their time/effort. This would likely be the biggest addition, but is harder to quantify. Just to throw a number out there though, for the week of recording, you have 4 band members, working theoretically 8 hours a day for that 5 day week to do the recording. If they had instead been working minimum wage jobs, they would have earned $5800 between them. So for just that one week, assuming a minimum wage, the labor cost is just shy of the rest of the costs added together. If you factor in even just a week's worth of songwriting and practice sessions, it eclipses the rest of the costs quickly.
That last part there would have actually been helpful to the point you were trying to make, but the article you linked completely ignores that aspect. But based on the numbers provided, by the time you hit 10,000 CD's, the cost per CD of the physical media is over 90% of the total cost per CD.
Finally, the marginal cost of any album format is going to decrease with each increment, whether you include the labor/effort value or not. With the physical CD though, the percentage of the marginal cost attributable to the physical media itself is going to rise with each increment. As unrealistic as it is, you could take it to the limit of a nigh infinite number of albums sold, at which point the only cost that still exists is that of the physical media, as all the other costs would be divided across all of the albums sold and would be effectively nothing on a per album basis.
In fact, your post really did go the worst possible case route, as the costs of album production through an actual recording label would be significantly higher, particularly if you include marketing costs. With high enough static costs, the price of the physical media gets drowned out on a per unit basis until you get to a truly obscene number of physical album sales, which just isn't possible anymore.
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This has probably been said, but my take is this:
If Swift is doing this to help her fellow artists to get their "worth", then kudos to her. If she's doing this because 500k isn't enough profit from a passive resource, well, uh, my 24k/year salary with a Bachelor's degree are so, so sad for her.
If Swift is doing this to help her fellow artists to get their "worth", then kudos to her. If she's doing this because 500k isn't enough profit from a passive resource, well, uh, my 24k/year salary with a Bachelor's degree are so, so sad for her.
It's the first one.
She doesn't like the idea that young people are raised to believe that music is something that just happens because of internet magic and doesn't require actual money.
She can get buy on endorsement deals and other sources of income. But future artists who depend mainly on streaming for sales are going to get hosed if something doesn't change.
Youtube isn't being used to watch music videos equivalent to how MTV used to function. Which is why they are now launching a paid version of it, just like spotify, and why there are upteen million apps to strip the video out and just stream the audio.
Youtube isn't being used to watch music videos equivalent to how MTV used to function.
And movie trailers are no longer simply watched at the beginning of movies. Heck, some movie trailers are ad supported! You have to watch an ad before you can watch an ad.
That doesn't change the fact that they're still primarily a promotional tool to push the sale of albums. People link to Taylor Swift's new video on Facebook, and then some of the people who click that link might then decide to buy her album. No one is posting links to Spotify. And even if anyone did, no one would bother to click those links, much less buy an album.
And while youtube allows on-demand viewing, it also allows for on-demand buying. When people watched music videos on MTV, you had to actually walk to the store later on to buy the album. Now you don't have to.
Which is why they are now launching a paid version of it, just like spotify, and why there are upteen million apps to strip the video out and just stream the audio
The people who do that probably weren't going to pay for music in the first place.
Taylor Swift is looking at the people who are willing to pay for music, but who now believe that they don't need to.
If Swift is doing this to help her fellow artists to get their "worth", then kudos to her. If she's doing this because 500k isn't enough profit from a passive resource, well, uh, my 24k/year salary with a Bachelor's degree are so, so sad for her.
This is the shit I don't understand. Like where do you think their 'worth' comes from. The worth fairy? No it comes from your salary.
I know enough of the other posters in here are old enough to remember paying $15-$20 in the 90's for a CD. The music industry isn't about people getting their worth, it's built like every other industry. Trying to extract the maximum amount of cash possible from the consumer.
No one talks about their cable bill in terms of making sure the actors on the 300 channels no one watches 'gets their worth'. But for whatever reason, the music industry has managed to create the idea in consumers that they have a duty to support its bloated corpse of a business model, against their own self interest.
No one talks about their cable bill in terms of making sure the actors on the 300 channels no one watches 'gets their worth'.
Yeah, it's not like there's any sort of Guild for Actors who work on Screen.
But for whatever reason, the music industry has managed to create the idea in consumers that they have a duty to support its bloated corpse of a business model, against their own self interest.
Are you completely unfamiliar with the history of the labor movement?
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Irond WillWARNING: NO HURTFUL COMMENTS, PLEASE!!!!!Cambridge. MAModeratormod
If Swift is doing this to help her fellow artists to get their "worth", then kudos to her. If she's doing this because 500k isn't enough profit from a passive resource, well, uh, my 24k/year salary with a Bachelor's degree are so, so sad for her.
This is the shit I don't understand. Like where do you think their 'worth' comes from. The worth fairy? No it comes from your salary.
I know enough of the other posters in here are old enough to remember paying $15-$20 in the 90's for a CD. The music industry isn't about people getting their worth, it's built like every other industry. Trying to extract the maximum amount of cash possible from the consumer.
No one talks about their cable bill in terms of making sure the actors on the 300 channels no one watches 'gets their worth'. But for whatever reason, the music industry has managed to create the idea in consumers that they have a duty to support its bloated corpse of a business model, against their own self interest.
i spent a shitload on music in the 90s. i was in college and this was how you listened to music and it seemed important to me that i did so.
but you know it's not like anyone had a gun to my head. i could have spent that money on different things that weren't music cd's.
how do you reckon that this was somehow an unfair-to-the-consumer transaction?
It's the second one, She still puts her singles on the #1 ad-supported free streaming service, it just happens to include video's.
Music videos have always been seen as mainly a promotional tool to push the sell of albums.
If you click on her youtube videos, you'll see links to "Google Play • iTunes • AmazonMP3"
"Hey, do you think this song is cool? Then you should buy a copy and listen to it while you workout."
This doesn't apply to Spotify. where people have the option to simply listen to Spotify directly when they workout.
Always? Always includes a time when video content wasn't available on-demand to anyone with an internet connection. The music videos of 1999 have little to do with what youtube is today. I know plenty of people for whom youtube is a primary music source, and I'm sure I can find more than anecdotal evidence to support this.
If Swift is doing this to help her fellow artists to get their "worth", then kudos to her. If she's doing this because 500k isn't enough profit from a passive resource, well, uh, my 24k/year salary with a Bachelor's degree are so, so sad for her.
This is the shit I don't understand. Like where do you think their 'worth' comes from. The worth fairy? No it comes from your salary.
I know enough of the other posters in here are old enough to remember paying $15-$20 in the 90's for a CD. The music industry isn't about people getting their worth, it's built like every other industry. Trying to extract the maximum amount of cash possible from the consumer.
No one talks about their cable bill in terms of making sure the actors on the 300 channels no one watches 'gets their worth'. But for whatever reason, the music industry has managed to create the idea in consumers that they have a duty to support its bloated corpse of a business model, against their own self interest.
i spent a shitload on music in the 90s. i was in college and this was how you listened to music and it seemed important to me that i did so.
but you know it's not like anyone had a gun to my head. i could have spent that money on different things that weren't music cd's.
how do you reckon that this was somehow an unfair-to-the-consumer transaction?
I didn't say it was, though with how a handful of large corporations controlling an entire industry tend to act...it probably was in some way. But that's besides the point, it was worse for the consumer than the current distribution model is. Even if you discount streaming services entirely, the $10 LP price on itunes is a ~50% discount on what consumers were paying, even after 20 years of inflation.
And consumers should be worried about what is best for themselves, this whole 'the artist worth' shit is a smokescreen. It's about trying to roll back the changes to what were the good old days, for the record companies.
It's the second one, She still puts her singles on the #1 ad-supported free streaming service, it just happens to include video's.
Music videos have always been seen as mainly a promotional tool to push the sell of albums.
If you click on her youtube videos, you'll see links to "Google Play • iTunes • AmazonMP3"
"Hey, do you think this song is cool? Then you should buy a copy and listen to it while you workout."
This doesn't apply to Spotify. where people have the option to simply listen to Spotify directly when they workout.
Always? Always includes a time when video content wasn't available on-demand to anyone with an internet connection. The music videos of 1999 have little to do with what youtube is today. I know plenty of people for whom youtube is a primary music source, and I'm sure I can find more than anecdotal evidence to support this.
Music videos for MTV and the other pre-Internet stone age were all about promotion of the songs to sell shit as well.
We can debate back and forth about whether or not music is overpriced, but Taylor's point is simply that it shouldn't be priced at $0.
Actually using Hedgie's sources she's saying it shouldn't be ~.002 or there abouts. I think she's fine with the ~.01 she gets from the streaming sources she hasn't broken ties with.
If Swift is doing this to help her fellow artists to get their "worth", then kudos to her. If she's doing this because 500k isn't enough profit from a passive resource, well, uh, my 24k/year salary with a Bachelor's degree are so, so sad for her.
This is the shit I don't understand. Like where do you think their 'worth' comes from. The worth fairy? No it comes from your salary.
I know enough of the other posters in here are old enough to remember paying $15-$20 in the 90's for a CD. The music industry isn't about people getting their worth, it's built like every other industry. Trying to extract the maximum amount of cash possible from the consumer.
No one talks about their cable bill in terms of making sure the actors on the 300 channels no one watches 'gets their worth'. But for whatever reason, the music industry has managed to create the idea in consumers that they have a duty to support its bloated corpse of a business model, against their own self interest.
i spent a shitload on music in the 90s. i was in college and this was how you listened to music and it seemed important to me that i did so.
but you know it's not like anyone had a gun to my head. i could have spent that money on different things that weren't music cd's.
how do you reckon that this was somehow an unfair-to-the-consumer transaction?
I didn't say it was, though with how a handful of large corporations controlling an entire industry tend to act...it probably was in some way. But that's besides the point, it was worse for the consumer than the current distribution model is. Even if you discount streaming services entirely, the $10 LP price on itunes is a ~50% discount on what consumers were paying, even after 20 years of inflation.
And consumers should be worried about what is best for themselves, this whole 'the artist worth' shit is a smokescreen. It's about trying to roll back the changes to what were the good old days, for the record companies.
so i think this is what this all comes down to. are we arguing "what things would redound most strongly to my personal benefit, as an internet-savvy consumer without particular investment in mega-pop music"? because if so then i think you've seized on the absolute best situation: one in which you can get whatever you want without inconvenient copyright concerns or countermeasures to get in your way. and if this ultimately fails to support a mega-pop music industry and the industry devolves to amateur regional or gig-supported or genre niches? well who cares? i didn't really give a shit about mega-pop music anyways.
(probably) like you, i don't particularly care about taylor swift's music or financial success. i do, though, think it's important that IP enjoys enforced financial protections, since economic drivers are what enable the video games and movies i enjoy to be made.
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It's not clear what you're arguing here. Because digital does reduce the marginal cost to near zero, so any argument styled as "digital makes margin costs vanish" is true by definition. Bringing up the cost of development is irrelevant so, either your paraphrasing of the argument is incomplete or everything that follows is a non sequitur.
I think his point, and it is a valid one, is that marginal cost of digital distribution doesn't matter too much, when potential digital distribution profits are already being figured into the decision to produce music and one sector of digital distribution is being found to have a poor return.
Not something that I think is presently in dispute for a given value of "doesn't matter too much".
Except that the cost of development is relevant, because without the master, no copies can be made. This is why I find the "marginal cost" argument so goosey - it's an attempt to say "the cost of a copy of X should be solely based on the cost of creating that single copy."
Now, of course, the argument then becomes "well, we can fund the production of the master some other way!" Which is great, except that the other models are just as flawed (if not moreso) than the amortization model that we currently use. We moved from traditional patronage systems because of the power they gave the wealthy in shaping the popular media. Crowdfunding has issues with protecting incumbents and the ever-present "seed corn" problem (i. e. how do we develop future artists?)
Not to mention the implicit argument in divorcing development costs from the price of creating copies that the artist is somehow not entitled to share in the success of their work.
okay so let's look at this particular model of IP: a music artist has some degree of determination over use of his or her product. if a streaming service like spotify wants to use it, they must come to terms with the legal owner of the music (subject, ofc, to public domain/ parody/ review variances). this strikes me as straightforward. we could, of course, as you suggest, pick our solutions ad hoc in some combination of self-service and with respect to which interested party we prefer.
but i don't think this is, in general, a particularly good approach. i, personally, don't care much about big-market pop music: i get exposed to it passively, some i recognize and some i kind of like and some i kind of dislike and in any case it doesn't really inform much of my life. the billion-dollar industries behind it could go away, and music could be replaced by amateur or regional or niche brands and i'd be just as happy with that.
but
i do like big-budget movies. i like big-budget video games. and the only way that producers can get the kind of money they require for a big team of artists and composers and engineers is with well-established and enforced IP protections. my life would be impacted if bioware and bungie couldn't finance their video games (probably negatively, though my wife might differ). my life would be negatively impacted if wes anderson or pt anderson or the coen brothers couldn't monetize their artwork.
and i ultimately don't think it's a coherent position to extend IP protection to those industries i like and not those i don't.
i also think there's some degree of self-serving in the piracy semi-apologists, who want a primary market to exist but believe that they shouldn't be the ones who have to pay for the product they enjoy - that's for the chumps, the marks, the technologically unsophisticated consumers.
Ok, so granting everything you've just argued there - it doesn't disprove that "digital make marginal costs vanish" that's still true, even though we still need to fund development. All the other parts of your post address an entirely different argument or rather arguments that can utilise the fact that digital reproduction and distribution is very small as a premise. Whether you're following arguments are correct, or not they aren't arguing against that brute fact.
As to how we fund development, no one in the thread has argued that we should not take development costs into account or that the near-zero marginal cost should mean that the cost of the copy should be equivalent to that copy. People have argued that (if we try to map the scarcity of the old systems to the digital environment then) the price per unit should be significantly reduced in response to the dramatically reduced costs of reproduction and distribution.
I don't think anyone has championed any particular production and development funding model, so it's not clear why you think there's significant objection to the system of ammortisation.
Lastly, no one has argued that artists are not entitled to anything and ESPECIALLY not "artists are not entitled to 'share in the success of their work' because the cost of reproduction is so low". It's not even wrong, it's not even recognisable as a strawman of anyone else's positions. It's not even a strawman of MY copyright minimalism (which historically has been the most radical of the D&D denizens) if only because the logic is so broken.
tl;dr - even if I grant everything you say is true it is still the case, as I said above "either your paraphrasing of the argument is incomplete or everything that follows is a non sequitur."
And that seems like a raw deal, doubly so as the music I want to listen to becomes more niche. In which the monetization model seems worse: I pay money, but the artists and styles I like to not receive appreciable compensation?
I'm confused. Who's saying there should be no IP protection? The closest I see in MrMister's post is the statement that music doesn't need additional protection.
Point A: Spotify appears to offer less value to artists than just about any other digital distribution method (short of piracy). Functionally no one in the thread argues that an artist, given an existing system like we have, doesn't have or shouldn't have bargaining power with available distribution streams.
Point B: Highest profit pop artists make inordinately more money than functionally any other artists. There is some debate over... what? To me, one of the points to debate here is thus: The current system is structured such that it enriches the top percent of musicians without really benefiting the rest of them to any great extent. Is there a different system which would still profit the "best" musicians, but would also have more room for middle-grade musicians to make a living. I would think that @Apothe0sis position is closer to this than @AngelHedgie as Hedgie appears to defend the system as is.
In fact, I think Point B is the most salient. The current system, and the record system before it, were all "Rich get richer" and "Middle man gets rich as hell too" systems.
Point C: Socialism of music. I can't figure out a good way to summarize this point. Apothe0sis, could you offer an argument in a few sentences that could be debated on this one?
Edit: does anyone know what online store is the best for supporting artists?
specifically i was talking to "I have yet to see any persuasive case that it's in the public interest for there to be some very specific IP regime such that it would give musicians like Taylor Swift, or anyone else, a much stronger bargaining position vis a vie entities like Spotify". Naturally, the contours of what he is describing are vague, so I picked out the (apparently objectionable) status quo - in which Spotify has to come to terms with Taylor Swift Inc. in order to stream her music - to talk about.
Hard to say what point C is - as the 'socialism' tag was applied to my first counter argument, I think inappropriately, but could probably appropriately be applied to one of the aspects of my affirmative argument.
So, the latter is the easiest, so I'll tackle that first - a fair or equitable remuneration scheme is exponentially more complicated to balance with three players than it is with two. While content delivery schemes provide value and thus extracting profits is not inherently rent seeking it would be far easier for all involved if the middle men did not exist - if the artists were operating as a collective and distributing the funds proportionately. So that's sort of an addendum to B.
The other option was essentially to observe that the language of "a pittance" and judgements about what level of incomes were deserved are value neutral only if in a business sense, and rely upon a number of moral principles that have been largely unarticulated. However, insofar as I can identify those moral principles I think they fail - they run counter to our intuitions, don't follow from the principles likely to be espoused or are inconsistently applied. I don't know if this attempt to be concise helps or is even less clear due to being vague. Maybe the best way to describe it would be like so: "I don't think that the intuition that 'if mega popstar doesn't get at least X amount of money then something is wrong with the system' is an intuition that has been or could be adequately justified'.
EDIT: Also, I haven't really addressed the question of whether there are economic or IP schemes that will reward a broader section of the artistic community except to say that contra Hedgie the information I've read is that success for smaller and middle tier acts is easier (provided you don't define success as lucrative mega-pop star status and income).
Here's the thing - the argument that digital reducing marginal costs should result in a significant reduction in cost only works if the costs that are reduced make up a significant portion of the price given. If they don't, then the argument becomes nothing more than a backdoor argument for reducing the amount of money that the artist takes home.
Here is a breakdown of the costs of producing a physical CD for a small band. Note that the production of the CDs is one of the smallest costs, and mastering the album (which, mind you, would still be necessary for a digital release - the only thing that wouldn't be needed is creating the master for the CD press) is a close second.
So the point is that before you can start arguing that prices should be significantly reduced because you've reduced the cost of creating the copy, you need to show that those physical costs are actually a significant portion of the price. And the only way to make that argument is to divorce the cost of development from the cost of manufacture, as the vast majority of the cost comes from development.
The thing though was that it was possible to develop a niche following and make a comfortable living under the old system. The new system, on the other hand, carves out that middle space, so that the only viable points are the two extremes. That's not to say that the old system was great, because it wasn't - but the new system isn't really better either.
Yeah, as we move into new business models, I kind of expect things to be rocky. I would not at all be surprised if we get cases where mega-pop stars make the mistake of looking back at the old regime and assume they should be making gobs of money in comparable amounts that record companies got off a a single album. Where they forget that record companies fucked over artists by keeping the successful talent pool small, fucked consumers by over charging them and where distribution costs were higher. I'm not saying that making that kind of money is impossible, but it's going to be much harder and not something they can do off of just album sales. They are going to have more competition because it's harder for one group of assholes to be the gate keeper, picking the winners and losers. The consumer is much more discerning, they don't want to buy a 15 dollar CD, that only has 1-3 songs they actually want to listen to, while the rest are mediocre at best. It's far cheaper to distribute music, no one is going to claim they shouldn't be allowed to profit or recoup production costs, but it's much harder to argue this should cost X because there is a need to build in a safeguard in the even that the album doesn't sell well. If someone is concerned about physical discs not moving well, they can test the waters with a initial digital release to determine how many physical disks they want to risk creating. Hell, have we moved to the point to where someone doesn't send physical copies or not that many to brick and mortar stores, preferring instead to make physical copies only if someone places an order for a physical copy (I know we already see this in the printing industry, I figure it's only a matter of time until we start seeing in other entertainment sectors because why eat losses on discs that don't move or spend money to warehouse shit, when you can just create the physical copies on demand, when someone decides they want more than a digital copy).
Yes, when you make a 100 sales of something the marginal costs are minimal and the non-marginal costs are enormous. What, they were up to 4000 for studio costs and CDs?
The second 100 sales will have a marginal cost of 250. All the shit that went to pay for that 4000 on the first run is now pure profit.
Now obviously this become a giant complicated issue of justifying capital expenditures versus expected sales returns.
EVERYBODY DOES THIS.
Every business has to do this stuff. I don't see how musicians not being immune to this is shocking, surprising or unjust.
Man, that is like the crappiest of crappy examples. In fact the comments section is actually better than the article, which is something that should never happen
Using his methodology :
That article is not very enlightening, because it shows a mixture of startup expenses and per record expenses without clearly differentiating them.
I did already address this point, here:
http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/31216740/#Comment_31216740
As I noted, according to one of the sources linked early on, the amount of money that goes from the consumer to the music industry for a given purchase is over 3x higher than in the past, and has gone from a minority of the total cost paid for music, to the majority. So, yes, the marginal cost of manufacturing has dramatically dropped in a way which has obvious real world effects (substantially more cash per CD sold digitally vs. physical CDs).
Now, Spotify pays little on a per play basis, but on the flip side, as I noted before, almost all that money is also going to music people (I say "music people" as defined by the recording company, the artist, whomever else is involved on that end).
I don't know about you, but most businesses (and if you're a band working professionally, you are one) factor in their physical property as part of their business costs. Depreciation is a very real thing.
Okay, they can claim ~50 cents a mile like everybody else does for business travel.
Until they do something reasonable like that it is still a shitty example.
Even a Stradivarius doesn't depreciate $5,000 in the amount of playing required to record a song.
I have no stake in this argument, I think the entire Taylor Swift/Spotify thing is just business as usual and is being blown excessively out of proportion. That said, this post and the article you linked are making almost the exact opposite of the argument you seem to be trying to make.
From the article, the total costs for making their CD were $8590 (I made some approximations since they listed an "each" price for several items without listing a quantity), broken down into the following:
Erik's drum kit: $400
William's Squire guitar: $500
William's amp: $500
Danny's Squire bass: $200
Danny's bass amp: $600
Chad's Fender guitar: $900
Chad's guitar amp: $1,000
Then we added up the small things (approximately):
-Effects pedals: $50-100 each
-Patch cables: 5 each
-Mic stand: $20
-Mic cable: $20
-Instrument cables: $50 each
-Drum sticks: $10
-Guitar tuner: $50
-Guitar picks: $5 pack
-Gas money to get to studio: $15
-Copyrighting song(s): $45
When you reach the studio, you're going to have to pony up at least $450/day, so if you're lucky, you can have an album recorded in a week, which will cost roughly $3,150 in the studio. Mastering your album will cost about $500 and duplicating the CDs will cost about $250, for 100 CDs.
Of that $8590, the only costs that are actually specific to making this particular CD total $3960. I bolded the portion of the list that I'm including in this. The only way you could include the remainder of what they did is if they are buying brand new equipment that they will only ever use for this one CD recording, which is a nonsense assumption. Now, this cost is lower than what it realistically should be, because unless this is a vanity project that they just wanted physical CD's for and don't care about making money, you would want a lot more than 100 CD's. Keeping with the idea that this is a small band, let's say they wanted 1000 CD's, which brings the total actual production costs to a total of $6210. Cost per CD is then $.62, of which .25 of that is for the physical media.
So, of the actual, direct, cost of producing a physical CD, the physical media component is 40%. And as you make more CD's, that percentage just keeps getting larger, even if economy of scale drops the absolute cost per CD.
I'm actually having a fair amount of fun with the math involved, as there are some interesting conclusions that can be drawn from this. For instance, the band could sell each of those 1000 physical CD's for just $1 and make a profit, and then any digital sale, at any price, is just pure profit (minus any costs inherent in the digital sale, such as an iTunes cut or what have you).
Also, relevant to a point that you/others were trying to make, the band didn't include a value for their time/effort. This would likely be the biggest addition, but is harder to quantify. Just to throw a number out there though, for the week of recording, you have 4 band members, working theoretically 8 hours a day for that 5 day week to do the recording. If they had instead been working minimum wage jobs, they would have earned $5800 between them. So for just that one week, assuming a minimum wage, the labor cost is just shy of the rest of the costs added together. If you factor in even just a week's worth of songwriting and practice sessions, it eclipses the rest of the costs quickly.
That last part there would have actually been helpful to the point you were trying to make, but the article you linked completely ignores that aspect. But based on the numbers provided, by the time you hit 10,000 CD's, the cost per CD of the physical media is over 90% of the total cost per CD.
Finally, the marginal cost of any album format is going to decrease with each increment, whether you include the labor/effort value or not. With the physical CD though, the percentage of the marginal cost attributable to the physical media itself is going to rise with each increment. As unrealistic as it is, you could take it to the limit of a nigh infinite number of albums sold, at which point the only cost that still exists is that of the physical media, as all the other costs would be divided across all of the albums sold and would be effectively nothing on a per album basis.
In fact, your post really did go the worst possible case route, as the costs of album production through an actual recording label would be significantly higher, particularly if you include marketing costs. With high enough static costs, the price of the physical media gets drowned out on a per unit basis until you get to a truly obscene number of physical album sales, which just isn't possible anymore.
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If Swift is doing this to help her fellow artists to get their "worth", then kudos to her. If she's doing this because 500k isn't enough profit from a passive resource, well, uh, my 24k/year salary with a Bachelor's degree are so, so sad for her.
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It's the first one.
She doesn't like the idea that young people are raised to believe that music is something that just happens because of internet magic and doesn't require actual money.
She can get buy on endorsement deals and other sources of income. But future artists who depend mainly on streaming for sales are going to get hosed if something doesn't change.
Music videos have always been seen as mainly a promotional tool to push the sell of albums.
If you click on her youtube videos, you'll see links to "Google Play • iTunes • AmazonMP3"
"Hey, do you think this song is cool? Then you should buy a copy and listen to it while you workout."
This doesn't apply to Spotify. where people have the option to simply listen to Spotify directly when they workout.
And just as streaming on demand isn't equivalent to a radio format, singles are not equivalent to whole albums or discographies.
Music videos have always been a promotional tool.
And movie trailers are no longer simply watched at the beginning of movies. Heck, some movie trailers are ad supported! You have to watch an ad before you can watch an ad.
That doesn't change the fact that they're still primarily a promotional tool to push the sale of albums. People link to Taylor Swift's new video on Facebook, and then some of the people who click that link might then decide to buy her album. No one is posting links to Spotify. And even if anyone did, no one would bother to click those links, much less buy an album.
And while youtube allows on-demand viewing, it also allows for on-demand buying. When people watched music videos on MTV, you had to actually walk to the store later on to buy the album. Now you don't have to.
The people who do that probably weren't going to pay for music in the first place.
Taylor Swift is looking at the people who are willing to pay for music, but who now believe that they don't need to.
This is the shit I don't understand. Like where do you think their 'worth' comes from. The worth fairy? No it comes from your salary.
I know enough of the other posters in here are old enough to remember paying $15-$20 in the 90's for a CD. The music industry isn't about people getting their worth, it's built like every other industry. Trying to extract the maximum amount of cash possible from the consumer.
No one talks about their cable bill in terms of making sure the actors on the 300 channels no one watches 'gets their worth'. But for whatever reason, the music industry has managed to create the idea in consumers that they have a duty to support its bloated corpse of a business model, against their own self interest.
Yeah, it's not like there's any sort of Guild for Actors who work on Screen.
Are you completely unfamiliar with the history of the labor movement?
i spent a shitload on music in the 90s. i was in college and this was how you listened to music and it seemed important to me that i did so.
but you know it's not like anyone had a gun to my head. i could have spent that money on different things that weren't music cd's.
how do you reckon that this was somehow an unfair-to-the-consumer transaction?
Always? Always includes a time when video content wasn't available on-demand to anyone with an internet connection. The music videos of 1999 have little to do with what youtube is today. I know plenty of people for whom youtube is a primary music source, and I'm sure I can find more than anecdotal evidence to support this.
I didn't say it was, though with how a handful of large corporations controlling an entire industry tend to act...it probably was in some way. But that's besides the point, it was worse for the consumer than the current distribution model is. Even if you discount streaming services entirely, the $10 LP price on itunes is a ~50% discount on what consumers were paying, even after 20 years of inflation.
And consumers should be worried about what is best for themselves, this whole 'the artist worth' shit is a smokescreen. It's about trying to roll back the changes to what were the good old days, for the record companies.
.00022c per play(and that's just her cut as the performer), isn't 0.
Music videos for MTV and the other pre-Internet stone age were all about promotion of the songs to sell shit as well.
Actually using Hedgie's sources she's saying it shouldn't be ~.002 or there abouts. I think she's fine with the ~.01 she gets from the streaming sources she hasn't broken ties with.
so i think this is what this all comes down to. are we arguing "what things would redound most strongly to my personal benefit, as an internet-savvy consumer without particular investment in mega-pop music"? because if so then i think you've seized on the absolute best situation: one in which you can get whatever you want without inconvenient copyright concerns or countermeasures to get in your way. and if this ultimately fails to support a mega-pop music industry and the industry devolves to amateur regional or gig-supported or genre niches? well who cares? i didn't really give a shit about mega-pop music anyways.
(probably) like you, i don't particularly care about taylor swift's music or financial success. i do, though, think it's important that IP enjoys enforced financial protections, since economic drivers are what enable the video games and movies i enjoy to be made.