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The Death of the Middle-Class Musician

(thewalrus.ca)
300 points pseudolus | 8 comments | 28 Jun 25 22:06 UTC | HN request time: 0.977s | source | bottom
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parpfish ◴[28 Jun 25 22:58 UTC] No.44408859[source]▶
How many financially self-sustaining musicians should there be? Streaming has caused the number to fall, but recorded music before that likely made it fall as well.

Should we stop thinking about music as a job and start thinking about it as a hobbyist art form? Nobody is out there lamenting that you can’t make a living off of landscape painting. It’s a fun form of self expression that people will do regardless of the economics, so maybe the problem was ever thinking you could make a profession out of it?

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1. jleyank ◴[29 Jun 25 03:51 UTC] No.44410229[source]▶
How many financially self-sustaining software developers should there be? AI code generation has caused the number to fall, but FOSS before that likely made it fall as well.

I can keep playing this game, as can others. Why do we need all that money invested in data collection and disseminating cat videos, political unrest, etc.

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2. GLdRH ◴[29 Jun 25 06:58 UTC] No.44410864[source]▶
Well in this case someone seems to employ and pay these software developers.

We can only speculate about the future having more AI-code or the repercussions thereof (as many do).

3. Ekaros ◴[29 Jun 25 07:06 UTC] No.44410895[source]▶
Answer is enough to sustainably run needs of modern society. And that number is probably significantly lower than we now have.

And for me with musicians the number is zero.

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4. ringeryless ◴[29 Jun 25 10:29 UTC] No.44411906[source]▶
? you are suggesting that zero musicians are required by society in order for society to function?
5. jleyank ◴[29 Jun 25 11:09 UTC] No.44412130[source]▶
I would rather musicians get paid in genres that I can’t stand than see the legion of programmers employed in “social media” and “on line marketing” and other things that keep people isolated and usually angry. Hell of a lot better things re personal and social interaction than having my phone glued to my wallet or my amygdala.
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6. Ekaros ◴[29 Jun 25 11:32 UTC] No.44412244{3}[source]▶
Neither musicians or social media is needed for modern life. Or even online marketing...

You probably want digital payment systems like banking and warehouse management. But I am thinking those sort of areas are only fraction of modern software industry.

7. orangecat ◴[29 Jun 25 18:51 UTC] No.44415381[source]▶
AI code generation has caused the number to fall

Not at all clear.

FOSS before that likely made it fall as well

Almost certainly false. Imagine a world where the concept of open source never happened, so if you want a website you have to pay thousands of dollars for web servers, compilers, databases, etc. Would the demand for software developers be higher or lower than in our world?

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8. jleyank ◴[30 Jun 25 15:03 UTC] No.44424222[source]▶
That world existed and we all lived through it. Hobbyists really hated paying for software, as did academics. Fair number of people being paid to write code as there was nothing commercial that didn’t require customization. Or, smaller sites did it with a few programmers rather than renting software. No web though, nor phones so it’s not a fair comparison to today. But there were really skilled hackers doing open software in the 60’s.