The Death of the Middle-Class Musician

This isn't about any one industry failing, it's about a system designed to funnel value upwards while pretending the rest of us are just not hustling hard enough

I would argue the system is designed for efficiency. Economic solutions to this problem are about introducing legally-mandated inefficiencies, like limiting competition or artificially increasing labor costs

Efficiency for extracting money from poor people to mega corporations? Seems to me there isn't really a lot of competition left since theres a handful of main players that just buy out smaller competitors.

> like limiting competition

I didn't get your point, but we certainly need more competition, not less.

I think “design” is the wrong word. Many systems are unjust by default, and that’s certainly true of hit-driven businesses like music. Justice doesn’t happen unless people make it happen, and often, most people don’t care.

For example, lotteries are inherently unjust, making random people wealthy for no reason, and hardly anyone cares. They just hope to win themselves.

Taylor Swift fans don’t care that she makes far more money than other talented musicians who languish in obscurity. They’re going to keep giving her more money. If you told them they shouldn’t because it perpetuates inequality, they wouldn’t get it.

> It’s easier than ever to make music, and harder than ever to make a living from it

The subhed spells it out. It's a supply and demand world. If it's easy to do things, the supply increases. It's that simple.

That's not to say that the larger system isn't doing what you claim. Just that music is just too easy to make to be valuable.

The poor are richer than ever under the system. They have clean running water and not just light but televisions.

How are lotteries inherently unjust? A bad idea maybe, but I see no reason that people shouldn't be allowed to gamble on a die roll or whatever...

Yes, I think this is broadly following the lines of Nozick's "Wilt Chamberlain" example in his response to Rawls' A Theory of Justice. If Wilt doesn't want to play for less than $N but is happy to play for $N, and his fans are happy to collectively pay $N to see him play, it's arguably a bit weird for the state to step in and say they shouldn't be allowed to or that Wilt should be compelled to play for free.

They're very different visions of what "justice" means: one focused on snapshots of distribution, one focused on processes.

It's unjust in the same sense that some people complain about capitalism being unjust: some people are wealthy who didn't cosmically deserve it, but just got lucky. There is disagreement over in which way they were lucky (random luck, or lucky to have the right parents, education, genes, etc.)

Do you think inequality is unjust? They increase inequality, and there’s no possible argument that a lottery winner did anything to deserve their good fortune.

It’s the opposite effect of insurance, where society works to undo the results of bad luck.

> They have clean running water

They actually don't. Water is contaminated at various levels in many places.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis

Most of them don't even own homes.

Maybe that's what insurance should be. It doesn't seem to be that way now. People build large fancy homes or fancy cars and then off load the risk to insurance. The problem with this is that it tends to increase costs for other in the pool and disincentivizes risk mitigating behavior. If I know that insurance will pay out for my car, then I can drive more aggressively. I want my home to look fancy and be huge instead of being built to survive local natural disasters, but that preference might change if I didn't have insurance.

I think lottery is a great analogy to contemporary society. Although those with the winning tickets have done their darndest to convince others that it was skill and hard work that got them the tickets.

Interestingly, music wasn't hit-driven in 1920. A person could earn a decent but not lavish middle class living as a musician, through things like performance, teaching, theaters, and so forth.

An example was that Miles Davis grew up in a middle class family -- his dad was a dentist -- who thought that becoming a musician was an OK career.

Sure, there were stars -- for instance in sheet music publishing -- but since then the working-class musician jobs have nearly vanished.

But minimal determination over their own lives. Thank God for cheap LCDs, though.

A lot more than ever before. There are no slaves. they have many options - not alwasy good options but there are options.

Nothing to do with rich or poor - they share the same water.

there are rich who don't own their own homes either. Often renting is the choice a mythical rational ecconomic actor would choose.

The rich tend to avoid living in poor communities.

this is true in some urban settings agree. Rural people had barter and fell into patterns of farm labor. A wild guess is that the bar and the church were social magnets where cultural arts and entertainment could be done professionally to some extent. A very large base factor is "humans do culture, how to include monetary compensation for things that people do already" ?

>I think “design” is the wrong word.

it's exactly the right word. Taylor Swift herself is a product. No less artificial than Boy bands and Kpop idol groups. These aren't hit or miss businesses, they're scientifically engineered performances, the music industry is literally that, an industry. Taylor Swift doesn't wake up in her bedroom with disheveled hair writing songs and people just flock around her, every piece of song writing, merch, marketing, and performance is micro-managed by an entire team of people.

And for that reason you can actually design the opposite. You can break up platforms that produce megastars, you can promote local music, local venues and artists, you can make people care and design what kind of artistic culture you want to be in.

I'd describe it more as a system designed to enable capital to better purchase assets built by persons without. Taylor Swift sold her early work to someone with capital, who then owned her as the labels owned the artists in the article.

The answer might be then to disallow capital from buying artists so easily. One option, which Canada does partially have on the books, is a concept of non-divestible "artist rights". If fully implemented, Taylor Swift would be incapable of selling away her works fully, always retaining a degree of control. This would no doubt reduce the value of art but would keep control in the hands of artists. So when the artist feels dissatisfied, they can always walk away no matter what contact they have signed earlier in their career.

NerdCubed did a video recently about similar experiences when publishing a book.

I get what you're saying, though it is nuanced. For example, no insurance company in its right mind would insure a home in San Francisco against earthquake damage if the home isn't actually built to code in terms of its ability to withstand earthquakes. Similarly, car insurance companies charge way higher premiums for drivers with a history of accidents and tickets for reckless driving.

My point being, yes insurance obviously decreases risk for owners, but since insurance companies are the ones inheriting that financial risk, they also inherit the incentive to ensure that things are being done the right way.

Well yes, but isn't it also a search process that discovers new trends? When another kind of performer attracts fans, the music industry will latch onto that trend instead. And that's a function of the music, the promotion, and the audience.

It's true that when they find something that works, it will be exploited.

Consider life insurance. It's about providing for widows and orphans. Before there was insurance, there were mutual aid societies, because it was very important to society to hedge that risk so that people aren't destitute after an accident.

They have clean running water because of the ordinary people who work to provide it and maintain the pipes.

They have light and television because of the ordinary working people who work at and maintain electricity plants and design, sell, assemble electrical products.

These things exist despite the billionaire leeches not because of them.

Having to point out that the middle and lower class aren’t slaves isn’t the win you think it is.

There's social security as well.

Not really. It does when it comes to stuff like code. But none of that address the larger and fancier homes than if they were not insured. Similarly, if other people are buying much more expensive cars, your liability insurance will increase even if your risk stays the same - the likelihood of occurrence is the same but the cost per occurrence is higher.

Water systems generelly cover the whole city, often more than one city in a MSA, not just a community. There are community water systems but most are bigger.

Flint's water has been fixed for more than five years now.

While I agree with the spirit of your message, you picked the wrong artist for this particular line:

> every piece of song writing […] is micro-managed by an entire team of people

No doubt this is true for many many pop artists, where there are literally teams of people with song writing credits, but for Taylor Swift, it is almost always just her and Jack Antonoff credited with songwriting and composition, and not uncommonly just her alone. Say what you will about her, but she writes her own songs.

But even if no one sat down and planned it this way, the system still functions to reward concentration of wealth and attention

I do not think inequality is unjust. Everyone can't have the same thing, it's a fundamental truth of the universe.