It's interesting how she mentions the point of taking a recorded performance and keeping it fresh by introducing guests on stage with each set.
Reminds me of how Louis CK under advise from George Carlin (I believe) throws out his material and starts fresh every year.
For creative people now, the key will be those who continue to be creative, not those attempting to ride on one creation to the end.
The same is happening in the mobile world in app stores now. People expect to get the initial offering, and then see continuous improvement through their free updates for life.
How will people manage to get their continuing creativity and effort supported in this market?
My favorite live comedy set ever was when Louis CK did a show in Brooklyn, for $10 a seat, and brought his notepad of jokes on stage to read from. It was actually funnier than when I saw his polished show at an actual theater. He really is a fine example of non-zero-sum entrepreneurship, where giving away his material (well, for a very discounted price) benefits both his fans and his professional development.
edit: as I recall, the demand for tickets was so great it crashed the bar's website. So Louis added a third show that night to accommodate as many people as possible.
He was testing new material on an audience, most of those notepad jokes ended up in the polished routine. Lot's of comedians will workshop their jokes first on a small crowd, though it does leave you wide open to having them "borrowed" by other comedians before you work them into your act.
> The same is happening in the mobile world in app stores now. People expect to get the initial offering, and then see continuous improvement through their free updates for life.
What's happening in the mobile world is in-app purchase.Where you are coerced into buying digital goods one way or another. And it's coming to non-gaming apps,trust me.That's the future.
As for Taylor Swift,she represents everything that is wrong with the music industry.She is a mass market product,not an artist.
> As for Taylor Swift,she never won real money selling records. She represent everything that is wrong with the music industry.She is a mass market product,not an artist.
But one day she'll be living in a big ol' city and all you're ever gonna be is mean.. :)
I understand the general discontent with in-app purchases, but stop being sensational. No one is "coerced" into buying digital goods.
definition of coerce is "persuade (an unwilling person) to do something by using force or threats." Obviously there are no threats or force applied by the app developers to sell digital goods.
> As for Taylor Swift,she represents everything that is wrong with the music industry.She is a mass market product,not an artist.
Not a fair characterization, IMHO. She writes her own songs, and manages her own career. She might have mass market appeal, but I don't see how you can argue she's not a legitimate artist.
Because he believes what she is producing does not meet the threshold requirement of being deemed as art?
Just because she is referred to as an artist by an industry attempting to profit from her production does not defacto her as such. Perhaps Taylor is just a shrewd business person who has a natural understanding of what has strong social appeal. What if she openly admit that was her intent? Would you still call her an artist? I would not, and I imagine a great many others wouldn't either. There is a lot to being an artist and this automatic labeling is misleading and perhaps, if you are extra paranoid, nefarious in intent.
One of the best things I've ever watched. Another very compelling thing to watch in this vein is that HBO special where Carlin, Seinfeld, Chris Rock and Ricky Gervais discuss their craft: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKY6BGcx37k
> Music is art, and art is important and rare. Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for. It's my opinion that music should not be free, and my prediction is that individual artists and their labels will someday decide what an album's price point is. I hope they don't underestimate themselves or undervalue their art.
Music in the form of a physical or digital copy of a recorded track is not rare. Album pricing is based on supply and demand. The latter has decreased significantly in the past decade. Short of pulling a Wu-Tang[1], it would be futile for artists to try to fight market forces.
If Swift really wants to discuss the value of music in the context of music as an important, rare art form, focusing on what consumers pay for physical and digital copies of recorded music makes about as much sense as valuing Monet's Water Lilies series based on how much Water Lilies posters sell for.
There are several rights associated with music and people have been buying and selling these rights for decades. Royalty Exchange[2] is an online marketplace for these transactions, and there are even focused funds[3] that essentially give investors the ability to treat these rights as an asset class.
Savvy artists focus first and foremost on ownership, not what consumers pay for a song or album.
I'm confused by your post. What makes these royalties valuable is that they are tied to the revenues generated by the sales of the same physical and digital copies of the music that you point out are technically not rare. But without the false scarcity created by copyright and the associated constellation of laws which surround it, these artifacts would not create revenue and then wouldn't the royalties also be worthless?
First, while it's true that the rights I refer to are generally valued based on the strength of the royalty streams, this does not mean that buyers and sellers value these rights in a strictly formulaic manner. As with any asset, there are a variety of factors that might result in buyers paying a premium. An investor with the ability to purchase rights associated with an Elvis Presley song, for instance, would probably pay substantially more for each dollar in royalties than they would for rights associated with a song by a less famous artist.
Second, and most importantly, not all royalties are tied to CD and digital music sales. These are mechanical royalties. There are also performance and synchronization royalties, which can be significant. It's is entirely possible, for instance, for a song that generates little in the way of mechanical royalties to generate eye-popping performance or synchronization royalties.
I think the point that Swift fails to make is that music should be treated as a service, not as a good.
The point she does make, though, is that art IS rare, and I agree with her. Sure, there's lots of art. But the moment when you find someone who makes something that really means a lot to you for no particular reason, that's valuable in the new music era.
Especially since one of the changes of the network age is that music is no longer resellable like a CD/tape/record. That means it no longer has value once you buy it.
That's evidence that net music IS a service, like water or gas, just something you pipe into your house to get consumed and used. (You can't practically re-sell the water from your tap, nor your gas or electricity).
On the flip side though, it has to be more than that, because different glasses of water don't tell stories like songs do. Hmm Deep Thoughts.
I mean, I grew up pirating music and movies. I haven't for years now, because the vast majority of what I listen to is free mixtapes and CC movies. But I used to download discographies -- an artist's entire catalog. Or I would go and download every movie availiable from an artists IMDB page.
Art is a service. You might view an individual movie as a "Good" but I view a director's filmography as a living, breathing thing. If you want a technical term, you can consider an oeuvre a form of Marshall McLuhans's cool media.
In addition, if I'm paying for media, I want the rights to remix, reuse, and sell derivative work. Period. No DRM, no license restrictions. Just freedom.
I'm curious what kinds of solutions are in the works in a post scarce music industry? I'm skeptical of the authors solutions. I'm also ignorant of the music industry but if I understand correctly, things like Spotify and Youtube are a broken model, usually only paying out the label and disregarding the artist or paying them in change. What kind of business model can/will focus on the artist, or are artists and their fans on their own in the future?
The model that runs the internet: advertising. Fans and followers will make one an artist, not art. It has already happened. T. Swift is one of its greatest beneficiaries.
Paul Graham's nightmare scenario...the entire adult world becomes a high school popularity contest, forever.
The notion that Taylor Swift is not an artist is demonstrably absurd. She may be an artist whose art is overoptimized for commercial success, but that is irrelevant.
Let's talk semantics. Who is an artist?
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts, and/or demonstrating an art. -Wiki
"The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination,... to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power:" - New Oxford American Dictionary
So then one could say that art is simply the human expression of beauty.
So, if someone doesn't find any beauty if the work of Taylor Swift, perhaps she's not an artist to them. Not that absurd considering beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Ah, a careless omission on my part. What I meant to say was:
Fans and followers will make one an artist, not art alone.
The creation of art is a necessary, but not sufficient requirement to becoming a successful modern artist. For that, you need art and fans, both of which TSwift has in abundance.
Spotify already tells me on an artist page when they're playing my city next. The next step may be actively pushing shows on you the way they push music that you're algorithmically likely to enjoy?
Ignoring blips like Google's current bender of destruction of advertising revenue streams for small labels, I can see larger labels becoming a thing of the past. What is the purpose of a label in the digital age, now that it can no longer include physical manufacturing and physical distribution in its value proposition? To consumers, it's quickly becoming no more than a guarantee that associated artists are curated and are of "high enough" quality to the ears and eyes of some hidden tastemaker. And to producers, they're increasingly a glorified PR firm. The largest labels' business models don't match up with these value propositions; they function as gatekeepers in an age where unlocked gates are plentiful. This is not to say that all labels will disappear; smaller, niche labels such as Monstercat, Neon Gold, and even Roadrunner Records (in the 90s) function[ed] like well-branded aggregators, exactly meeting those needs and having a well-defined target audience. Perhaps we'll see small labels turn to subscription models, allowing access to exclusive content from their members? Imagine iTunes with tons of small label-run channels one could subscribe to for a monthly fee, and get access to all the music within? Lots of chicken-egg problems here, but it's interesting to think about.
Labels are useful for recording,, mixing and marketing. They are not just factories of CDs. Artists may manage without them but it is quite complicated as it costs a lot.
When it comes to a lot of electronic music, there is no recording necessary and the artist is the person who mixes/masters. No need for money there
Side ramble: I've never understood why people paint "real" bands as being lo-fi, guttural, punk and romantic. It's a goddamn privelege to afford all that equipment. Here's your true punk: pirate Ableton and upload a tune to YouTube for free.
Back to the point, for a lot of styles, the only point of a label is marketing. But this can be a very useful tool -- even just acting as a quality filter is useful.
You are wrong on the fact that musicians doing electro do the mix/master.
I know people doing electro, and they pay people to do this job. It is really hard to do it correctly.
Even people like DeadMau5 and Daft Punk do not do the mix/master by themselves. They just monitor the people doing it (look at some of their interviews).
> Imagine iTunes with tons of small label-run channels one could subscribe to for a monthly fee, and get access to all the music within?
This is happening on Bandcamp already. A smaller label called Jade Tree put their entire catalog up there and as a fan of the label it was awesome to see them do this.
Back to your point with labels, they do benefit the artist despite it seeming like they don't. While 360 deals may be worse for the artist the labels provide them with a recording studio, mixer, producer, distribution, endless supply of industry contacts, merchandising companies, etc.
Interesting article indeed. Although it lost me a bit with this near the end:
> We all know that bootleg DVD stands are doing something illegal, but the internet literally went black to protest SOPA, a law designed to crack down on digital bootleggers.
That paragraph completely misses the point about the SOPA protests.
She seems nice. The tone was more remarkable than the content (the content was also interesting). It seems we've been inundated with this grotesque idea that every single young artist is a boring dark repetition of the same old paradigm ('wilder' than the last).
Her point re: 'people bonding with an artist over a lifetime' may well be salient. I must admit a touch of that with zeppelin / prodigy etc.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 92.3 ms ] threadReminds me of how Louis CK under advise from George Carlin (I believe) throws out his material and starts fresh every year.
For creative people now, the key will be those who continue to be creative, not those attempting to ride on one creation to the end.
The same is happening in the mobile world in app stores now. People expect to get the initial offering, and then see continuous improvement through their free updates for life.
How will people manage to get their continuing creativity and effort supported in this market?
edit: as I recall, the demand for tickets was so great it crashed the bar's website. So Louis added a third show that night to accommodate as many people as possible.
What's happening in the mobile world is in-app purchase.Where you are coerced into buying digital goods one way or another. And it's coming to non-gaming apps,trust me.That's the future.
As for Taylor Swift,she represents everything that is wrong with the music industry.She is a mass market product,not an artist.
But one day she'll be living in a big ol' city and all you're ever gonna be is mean.. :)
definition of coerce is "persuade (an unwilling person) to do something by using force or threats." Obviously there are no threats or force applied by the app developers to sell digital goods.
Not a fair characterization, IMHO. She writes her own songs, and manages her own career. She might have mass market appeal, but I don't see how you can argue she's not a legitimate artist.
Just because she is referred to as an artist by an industry attempting to profit from her production does not defacto her as such. Perhaps Taylor is just a shrewd business person who has a natural understanding of what has strong social appeal. What if she openly admit that was her intent? Would you still call her an artist? I would not, and I imagine a great many others wouldn't either. There is a lot to being an artist and this automatic labeling is misleading and perhaps, if you are extra paranoid, nefarious in intent.
Music in the form of a physical or digital copy of a recorded track is not rare. Album pricing is based on supply and demand. The latter has decreased significantly in the past decade. Short of pulling a Wu-Tang[1], it would be futile for artists to try to fight market forces.
If Swift really wants to discuss the value of music in the context of music as an important, rare art form, focusing on what consumers pay for physical and digital copies of recorded music makes about as much sense as valuing Monet's Water Lilies series based on how much Water Lilies posters sell for.
There are several rights associated with music and people have been buying and selling these rights for decades. Royalty Exchange[2] is an online marketplace for these transactions, and there are even focused funds[3] that essentially give investors the ability to treat these rights as an asset class.
Savvy artists focus first and foremost on ownership, not what consumers pay for a song or album.
[1] http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/for-5-mi...
[2] http://www.royaltyexchange.com/
[3] http://rhmusicroyaltypartners.com/
Second, and most importantly, not all royalties are tied to CD and digital music sales. These are mechanical royalties. There are also performance and synchronization royalties, which can be significant. It's is entirely possible, for instance, for a song that generates little in the way of mechanical royalties to generate eye-popping performance or synchronization royalties.
The point she does make, though, is that art IS rare, and I agree with her. Sure, there's lots of art. But the moment when you find someone who makes something that really means a lot to you for no particular reason, that's valuable in the new music era.
Especially since one of the changes of the network age is that music is no longer resellable like a CD/tape/record. That means it no longer has value once you buy it.
That's evidence that net music IS a service, like water or gas, just something you pipe into your house to get consumed and used. (You can't practically re-sell the water from your tap, nor your gas or electricity).
On the flip side though, it has to be more than that, because different glasses of water don't tell stories like songs do. Hmm Deep Thoughts.
Art is a service. You might view an individual movie as a "Good" but I view a director's filmography as a living, breathing thing. If you want a technical term, you can consider an oeuvre a form of Marshall McLuhans's cool media.
In addition, if I'm paying for media, I want the rights to remix, reuse, and sell derivative work. Period. No DRM, no license restrictions. Just freedom.
Paul Graham's nightmare scenario...the entire adult world becomes a high school popularity contest, forever.
Let's talk semantics. Who is an artist?
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts, and/or demonstrating an art. -Wiki
"The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination,... to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power:" - New Oxford American Dictionary
So then one could say that art is simply the human expression of beauty.
So, if someone doesn't find any beauty if the work of Taylor Swift, perhaps she's not an artist to them. Not that absurd considering beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Fans and followers will make one an artist, not art alone.
The creation of art is a necessary, but not sufficient requirement to becoming a successful modern artist. For that, you need art and fans, both of which TSwift has in abundance.
Side ramble: I've never understood why people paint "real" bands as being lo-fi, guttural, punk and romantic. It's a goddamn privelege to afford all that equipment. Here's your true punk: pirate Ableton and upload a tune to YouTube for free.
Back to the point, for a lot of styles, the only point of a label is marketing. But this can be a very useful tool -- even just acting as a quality filter is useful.
I know people doing electro, and they pay people to do this job. It is really hard to do it correctly.
Even people like DeadMau5 and Daft Punk do not do the mix/master by themselves. They just monitor the people doing it (look at some of their interviews).
This is happening on Bandcamp already. A smaller label called Jade Tree put their entire catalog up there and as a fan of the label it was awesome to see them do this.
Back to your point with labels, they do benefit the artist despite it seeming like they don't. While 360 deals may be worse for the artist the labels provide them with a recording studio, mixer, producer, distribution, endless supply of industry contacts, merchandising companies, etc.
> We all know that bootleg DVD stands are doing something illegal, but the internet literally went black to protest SOPA, a law designed to crack down on digital bootleggers.
That paragraph completely misses the point about the SOPA protests.
Her point re: 'people bonding with an artist over a lifetime' may well be salient. I must admit a touch of that with zeppelin / prodigy etc.