Re:A brief history of why artists are no longer making a liv...
by buro9 on Friday March 22, 2019 @12:43PM
(#19464283)
I did not say the 10 years was to now, I've been in tech for the last 20, my time spanned late 1980s to late 1990s... the time you speak of.
Re:A brief history of why artists are no longer making a liv...
by snowwrestler on Friday March 22, 2019 @12:47PM
(#19464333)
Got it--bad assumption on my part. Interested in your thoughts on my comment.
Starting even well before Napster, investors and technology companies saw the opportunity to change the allocation of value from artists and producers, to distribution. To be clear, that was not the allocation 30+ years ago. Record stores and radio stations did not make immensely more money than the labels and artists.
Tech companies and investors worked aggressively to "commoditize their complement"--that is, depress the value of art on their platforms, so that they could reallocate consumer spending to their products and services.
"Buy a computer and Internet connection and you can have all the music and movies you want for free" was explicitly advertised by technology companies--see for example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAxtxPAUcwQ
I think this historical perspective is crucial for understanding how we got to today. Music files are small, so the music industry was attacked first. The large size of video files kept them safe for long enough for visual artists and producers to understand what was happening and counteract. That is why you see producer-owned distribution channels for video today (Hulu, HBO Go, Disney+, etc), but not label-owned distribution channels for music. This is why Netflix, Amazon, and now Apple have had to get into original video content. They were not able to beat the movie and TV producers before the producers could figure out the technology themselves.