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The music industry has been the one making the pots and pans.

But it is also the one that has been making it possible for creatives to become obscenely rich. It's actually only fairly recently, in history, that creatives could become independently successful, without having patrons. I don't know of anyone that has become rich, using Patreon (I could be wrong, though, as it has never really been something that I've paid attention to).

Not sure if the patronage model works for creatives.

It's fascinating to see folks in tech, who are obsessed with becoming rich robber barons, get upset at the prospect of other people getting rich, doing non-tech stuff.




A few people becoming obscenely rich is not a good in itself. That is to say, it's not a reason that justifies the music industry existing as it does today. That would be like arguing that it's good (just in general) that smoking is banned because I specifically don't like smoking. A good reason could be that it causes more music to be made, or better music, or it lets more people make music. I honestly have no idea if that's true. Certainly the last one isn't; what lets more people make music is access to technology, not the possibility of getting rich.


This isn’t a good argument since extremely few creatives get obscenely rich and few creatives are even able to generate a decent income to do things like being able to buy a home.

At least in tech, the pot is more evenly distributed and for more types of people. It even contributes to the broader economy as a whole with genuine innovation as opposed to just collecting rent on IP.


Well, as a [former] creative, myself, I don't think that I'd consider what I did, "collecting rent on IP."

In fact, if you look at the behavior of many tech company legal teams, that seems more like what tech corporations do, than individual creatives.

This is the stuff I did in the 1980s, when I was considering making a living at it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40917886


Because you’re not the one doing it. It’s the music labels that are doing it. You’d also be lucky to get fair compensation for your work. Even superstars get cheated.

The behavior of music labels is far worse and less valuable to society than the tech industry


> far worse and less valuable to society than the tech industry

The jury's still out on that.

The music industry can't hold a candle to some of the raw destruction that has been wrought by tech.

It's just balanced by a lot of good (and making tech billionaires isn't really what I consider "good").


At least the tech industry contributes something, which is more than I can say about music labels.




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