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The Death of the Middle-Class Musician

(thewalrus.ca)
300 points pseudolus | 3 comments | 28 Jun 25 22:06 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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blindriver ◴[28 Jun 25 23:45 UTC] No.44409137[source]▶
Streaming is the biggest scam to have perpetuated the entertainment industry. The way the money is divided among the content creators is absurd and the prices are both too high and too low at the same time.
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johnnyanmac ◴[29 Jun 25 00:30 UTC] No.44409331[source]▶
It's even more of a scam because none of these companies were making such services with a way to actually profit in mind. It got customers spoiled on unrealistically cheap media; cheap media that was a result of skilled labor that only got more expensive over time. The bubble was going to burst one day.

In some regards, the ZIRP era ending was needed; companies can't just make money by relying on hype for years, even decades before the piper needs to be paid. But of course it couldn't have ended in a worst time.

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1. bethekidyouwant ◴[29 Jun 25 15:18 UTC] No.44413804[source]▶
It’s cheap because I can carry a terabyte in my pocket not because of anything else. If somehow we went back to selling 700 MB CDs of uncompressed music I would still fill my pocket with a terabyte of every song to not pay $30 a CD.
replies(1): >>44415589 #
2. johnnyanmac ◴[29 Jun 25 19:21 UTC] No.44415589[source]▶
Space is cheap, talent is not cheap. That was my point. It's not expensive to fill your terabyte with slop, is it?
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3. bethekidyouwant ◴[30 Jun 25 18:59 UTC] No.44426668[source]▶
Maybe I was not understood. Once MP3 players became a thing it was inevitable that the price of music would approach zero