Comment by xhkkffbf | Hacker News Reader

Comment by xhkkffbf | Hacker News Reader

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How? Set up your own record label and implement your wish list of better terms. If you're reading hacker news, there's a good chance you can do most of the coding for free/stock/spec. Then you can be like totally cool about piracy and drink all of the kool aid about how piracy is just a different form of promotion.

My guess is that you'll come to the same conclusion as me: piracy destroys marketplaces. It forces the honest people to subsidize the free riders. If it were about something like food, I can understand a Jean-Val-Jean argument, but can anyone say with a straight face that they're stealing these fresh cuts just so their baby can listen to ccool music?

I think you'll also come to a grudging recognition of just how expensive it can be to market music. I've always thought the percentages demanded by record companies were outrageous, but when I tried to duplicate their services on my own I quickly learned where the money goes.

The IA is on a crash course to destroy the livlihood of artists, writers and other content creators. Don't ask me why. It doesn't make sense. They provide a nice service for society but now they're out on some crusade.

A couple of fallacies in there.

Distributors have

- bended creative work property laws/precedents to maximise profits.

- Been using marketing as barrier of entry.

- many times used anti competitive practices.

Paying consumers are not subsidising free riders. Given zero or an infinity of pirates the ticket price woụld not change. An effective anti piracy solution doesn't imply pirates would convert into paying consumers, some would of course, and ticket prices would most likely increase rather than decrease. Dubious parallel and nobody is forced. Taxes are forced subsidies. Aside those that's business models and market response.

There's more between "being cool with piracy" and "thinking copyright should hold indefinitely". This is about 78rpm records ffs. All the artists are probably dead by now.

The artists were probably paid a one-off $50 to come into the studio and record, and the rentiers have profited off them ever since.

> how expensive it can be to market music.

Did you write this comment in 2001? The cost to produce and promote music has dropped to near zero. SoundCloud rappers have become millionaires. Billie Eilesh recorded her first album in her bedroom.

Recording album is not marketing.

If you think there is no marketing and PR people behinds those "grassroots superstars", you're utterly naive.

I'm dating someone who has visions of fame through his music. These "soundcloud rapper millionaires" and Billie Eilesh have so much more marketing spent on them than you might believe. It is hard to make it anywhere in that business without a lot of promotion, and that requires a lot of money. Initially often in the form of small payments that add up. A few hundred dollars here to be added to a playlist, a few hundred there for gig promotion...over time that turns into tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. For one artist. To even get a tiny start that may not lead anywhere.

Almost every business out there has costs associated with it.

Yes. It seemed to me the GP's comment implied that those "rapper millionaires" and Billie Eilesh just made it big without having to pay those costs (or at least, not to the same degree). My point was a counterargument.

> The IA is on a crash course to destroy the livlihood of artists, writers and other content creators

Every single artist mentioned by name here has long since passed away, and in some cases even their children have passed away.

i grew up downloading everything from music to games, and windows xp, anything i could get my hands on

these days i do pay for everything, music(spotify), movies(netflix, apple tv), games(steam, gog, itch.io, playstation), to software(app store, gh sponsor, opencollective) – i still pirate though; if netflix has an anime but happens to be dubbed on the wrong language, i'll hit the high seas and get me a copy dubbed in english, no regrets

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