To Apple, Love Taylor

Re:To Apple, Love Taylor by anigbrowl on Sunday June 21, 2015 @07:07PM (#9755380)

Labels put up all the capital (in the Techdirt example, they're getting a return of about 1.5:1 on a hypothetical investment of $4.4 million) but a lot of their bets don't work out, so the acts that do sell well are to some degree subsidizing the ones that don't. This doesn't make as much sense in a world of flatened low-cost distribution channels, but many digiterati have never given much thought to the economics of physical media production. IF you look at the balance sheets of media companies you see their profit margins tend to be in line with other industries - looking at it from the perspective of what actually flows back to shareholders rather than from the perspective of an individual band. After all, if a label puts out an album and it bombs, the loss falls on the label - the artist/band doesn't have any further obligation once the terms of the contract are fulfilled. In this sense, publishers act like VCs for the arts.

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Re:To Apple, Love Taylor by tjr on Sunday June 21, 2015 @11:28PM (#9755997)

Labels put up all the capital

For Taylor Swift, sure. But there is an increasing number of musicians owning their own recording equipment and producing pro-level recordings out of their home (just like starting a software business out of your home is increasingly common).

For these people, they put up the capital. While I won't condone piracy of any copyrighted works at all, it's not reasonable to assume that all musical artists are impacted by copyright infringement in the same way.

Home producers may well be absolutely thrilled to make a few thousand dollars in sales a year, in order to continue funding their own work. Why take that away from them through piracy?

[There's also the argument that small act home producers should be thrilled to get the exposure even if nobody is paying for their recordings. As a home producer myself, I find a small amount of comfort in that, but professional-level recording and music equipment isn't cheap... I'll fund it with other income as needed, but I'd rather have my music outfit be self-sustaining.]

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Re:To Apple, Love Taylor by anigbrowl on Monday June 22, 2015 @12:20AM (#9756137)

Totally agree. I just wanted to refute the argument that whether artists go unpaid doesn't matter because more of the pain will fall on the labels, which is a popular but fallacious argument.

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