And if you didn’t know it was for “Howard E Butt” now you know and can enjoy them even more.

I fucking miss HEB.

I said multiple times “lots of folks do music for fun.” You said “you’re undervaluing their labor.” That’s why everyone thinks you think money is the point.

You also seem to not understand market saturation. If a fair value for a recording is $20 (just pretend for a minute), consumers are happy to pay $20, and artists sell for $20, why aren’t musicians getting rich? It’s because there are more musicians producing an incredible volume of work than the consumers can completely support. Nowhere in that statement is an attack on the value of that labor just an acknowledgment that there’s too much to consume.

In addition, you seem to fail to understand the difference between value to the artist and value to the consumer. Physical and digital radio provide incredible value to the consumer. They don’t really provide value to the artist unless you have an incredible amount of fame. A very good question to ask is “how do we create a solution that’s good for the consumer and the artist?” I have no idea. Making music about money (like you continue to do) instead of about fun (like a good number of artists who aren’t topping charts do) makes it very difficult to balance what an artist should get paid against what consumers can afford to pay (assuming we remove all middle layers).

This isn’t new. Check out Yasha Levine’s Surveillance Valley. It’s a nice primer. Most of our internet tech was built for the military or funded by the military for military ideas (no matter what MIT or Berkeley theoreticians might try to convince you of).

At least 50% of the bands I’ve seen, toured with, or heard don’t record music to make money. There’s just too much music for it to be dependable income. They do it because they wanna share something neat with their friends. They upload it to sites like Spotify or a decade ago MySpace or a decade before that zines so other people can find cool shit. If they get lucky, that stumble upon nets a shirt sale which actually nets the band some income.

The sweeping generalizations you’re making do not apply. Stop trying to make music about money.

Edit: mailing tapes was a thing a few decades ago. Are you saying I ripped off those folks because I wanted friends on one coast to hear shit friends on the other coast recorded? That’s a really fucking hard DIY tour to build. You’re fucking Skinner saying all us kids are wrong.

Who the fuck has a label? Do you know anything about music that isn’t already incredibly corporate? When was the last time you went to a DIY show and bought handmade merch off a band touring in their minivan? Compare that to the last time you bought a record from a label or merch from an online store run through not the band.

There are more than likely 300+ bands in a 20 to 50 mile radius around you. Do you support all of them as much as you’re pushing people on the internet to support all music? What about the really bad cover bands? Them too?

Your statements paint a picture that you have no idea what I meant by “levels of fame” because fucking no one makes money off music unless you get lucky. There’s just too much because music is fun.

The thread you linked says what I said.

I’ve been doing DIY music since I was a kid. The vast majority of bands are never going to make any money ever. Spotify didn’t change that. Streaming didn’t cause that. The reality of every kid with a guitar thinking music is about making money not having fun is what did that.

Walk me through this.

Before Spotify, I’d buy a record (physical or digital) and listen to that. I pay the artist once. After Spotify, I buy a record and listen to it on Spotify. I pay the artist the normal record price and there’s a long tail from stream payouts (unless they don’t reach the payout threshold).

Before Spotify, if someone heard a song and didn’t buy the record, they didn’t pay the artist. After Spotify, if they still don’t buy a record, the artist now earns from stream payouts.

Finally, before Spotify, if someone bought a record but stopped buying after Spotify, the artist loses that record purchase. This is definitely bad. Was Spotify the real reason? Would something other than Spotify have pulled them away? What levels of fame are materially affected by this?

Do artists have to pay to be on Spotify? Is that the issue?