It was musicians who seem to have coined the word "gig" back in the 1920s. The usage of the term is a reference to what they have always been dealing with.

Opera, orchestras, chamber music, the “big band” period, and the 1950s-1990s “music industry” were all products of their respective times’ technological and economic structure, which some people learned to exploit and others did not. Those exploitation models were just passing artifacts.

You just see a particular point in time, a business model, and the life of the then winners and draw a conclusion from that.

I don’t know what the future may be but it is most certainly not a return to any status quo ante. But I do know that apart from a minuscule fraction of people, nobody in “music” (however it was described at a given time) ever made much, if any living from it.

But if we're on the topic of creatives, just look at the pushback that the Jackson 5 received in America or that NWA had in the '90s. Yes it probably was easier to be a white, male artist in the '50s-'90s (like the Beatles), but the case was much murkier for anyone else. And it's not like the establishment went unscathed by technology change either. There's a song titled "Video Killed the Radio Star" after all...

Yes, minority artists might not have made it big in the past, but there was demand in the establishments that were run/supported/patronized by their respective group.

If anything, technology has made success/wealth inequity worse by making music cheap and accessible, thus allowing people to have unlimited music (replays) for little money. This killed a lot of live music and funneled that money to the upper echelon on musicians.

Further improvements in portable audio like the cassette tape, the CD, and eventually digital music only improved the portability of music for individuals but commercial settings have had the ability to replace live music at venues for a century. I don't think the root cause for the decline of live music was technical. I think cultural attitudes toward music changed, that's all.

I do see cultural attitudes playing a role too. My guess is they both play a part.

An abundance of wealth and entertainment. A record number of people are able to eek out a minimal living without having to work in traditional markets. It is not a great life, but not desperate enough to enter the job market.

I'm hoping what comes next is a significant step not forward, and not back, but to the side: an increase in cooperatives and other forms of small-scale communism -- people who get together and do things for each other based on what they can and what they need.

People working for people. Not for layers of middle managers and subcontractors fulfilling meaningless specifications until only 5 % of the effort actually makes it to the person who needs it, with every layer along the way scraping off a bit of their cut.

The benefits of employers to employees has certainly gone down and that’s disgusting but the creator economy that’s been propped up by the internet in a way that was not possible beforehand I think is plenty good, and not a viable career/job for most people.

I don’t think people are going to eschew traditional employment en made to try to make it as creators. It’s not going to happen for most and the pressing needs of survival aren’t going to allow many to pursue it.

Social media influencers are gross for a lot of reasons but people making content for an audience that is willing to pay is a good thing. Structuring a company so that 90% of its workforce aren’t employees to deny having to pay them reasonable wages/benefits is a bad thing. I just don’t think they’re directly connected.

Creative jobs, whether journalism, acting, writing, music, etc. have always been a difficult business.

Creator economy is no different than the poor musicians 30 years ago.

The fall of unions and rise of gig economy is more concerning. But unrelated to entertainment industry, which has always been insecure/underpaid/risky..

Side note: when I heard how taxies used to be rented on per-day basis by the driver, I'll admit I became less sure the gig economy was a step down.

Maybe. 30 years ago you could work a blue collar day job that paid decent money and play gigs at night. More places had live music back then too.

Basically, if you've read Snow Crash you'll be disappointed, and if you haven't read Snow Crash, you should just read it instead.

These people live their lives entirely in the application layer and come up with all these fantasies of Virtual Reality and all the magical stuff it entails. I hate it and everything that comes with this new world and I want to re-live the simpler times of the 90s and the 00s.

I fear that time is long gone though. Just that feeling of millennials now beginning to be brushed aside in favor of the next generation's worldview is jarring because now I have to live in it or disconnect and try to retain the memories of the past. I guess every generation goes through it.

I miss the world of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. That took place during the beginnings of Obama's "Hope and Change". Things were on the upswing. Climate change was not in your face as much as it is now. No coming world war and economic collapse. Just a bunch of hipsters and a guy trying to overcome the baggage of his dream girl the old fashioned way: by battling her seven evil exes via old style 2d video game fighting.

I tend to agree. Although, in Snow Crash, not much happens in the metaverse. Most of the action is in the real world.

I was hoping for a Snow Crash movie. That project has been in and out of development hell for years. (It would have to be heavily censored. "Mr Lee's Hong Kong" would annoy China, "White Columns" would annoy the woke people, and evangelical Christians being a front for a cult created to support a scam would annoy the Trump voters.)

Which is one of its insightful points.

“White Columns” would not only not offend anyone woke, but satisfy their assumptions.

There's some interesting ideas around the dystopian state of the world and whether it is a result of the virtual universe or not, but only a few chapters dig into that.

If they can be more efficient, maybe they could survive.

This comment drastically underestimates the amount of capital spent on suppressing union activity, it's not as if they're operating in a vacuum.

For my coal mining grandfather, it meant safety equipment like respirators so you didn't get black lung, and that the company had to send down a meal for you if you were working a double (before that you had to rely on the next shift to give you items from their lunches, if they were willing to share).

We have OSHA for that today, so I don’t think the primary purpose of a union is to file OSHA complaints…

Who do you think lobbied to start OSHA? It was the unions.

But regardless of the history, it’s not longer especially relevant to the roles of unions today, and certainly adds nothing to the value unions supposedly provide to their members.

The question wasn't about what unions do today. The question specifically asked what unions were for. I stand by my statement that they were formed not only for pay increases, but also for working conditions improvements.