We are in the middle of the biggest explosion in human creativity, culture and art. Ever. Generally, when things become less scarce they cost less money. You can complain about your buggy whip business being made obsolete. Or you can do something people want to pay you for.

That's it. Sorry to break the news. I've been writing this, in many forms, since I was a teenager in the 90s. It was true in the 80s as well and it hasn't gotten any less true since then. If people aren't paying you for your work, you aren't doing anything they want to pay you for.

This isn't about making more musicians. We don't need more musicians. We need music, performances and all the experiences that come with them. There is scarcity here that artists can profit from. There is scarcity of time, of location and of experience.

Every single day we step closer and closer to death. If you can't sell someone something based on the idea that if they pay a couple bucks that they support you as an artist, or that you save them some time from getting a copy from a friend, or that the experience they get by doing X is something they will treasure forever, or that this item is something only a few people will have, then you don't have a business model that works today.

People break copyright law every day in the knowledge that they won't be able to profit from their work, just so they can make something. We don't need to give anyone an unlimited monopoly on their dent in the universe. The people standing in the way of art aren't those people that dare to use their computers to copy things. It's the people that profit from an obsolete monopoly propped up by the government.

tl;dr if you could download a car it would be a wonderful thing

I want to download a car

"We are in the middle of the biggest explosion in human creativity, culture and art. Ever. Generally, when things become less scarce they cost less money."

I see your point. It's similar to the way that the industrial revolution represented an unprecedented explosion in manufacturing. Since manufactured products became less scarce, they cost less money. The result was that manufacturers did not make any money.

Bullshit.

@3

Even today you need to make a large capex to manufacture something, or pay someone that already has, even if it has gone down over the years. IP is different. I can copy several copies of the library of congress onto a hard drive that costs less than $100.

So no, not bullshit. But please do try again.

@2: Working hard to avoid grasping the concept. Good job!

OP: Go tell it to Million-Dollar Amanda Palmer. Sam Levine is right.

gotta get that sailor jerry's money!

@4: I confess that I'm having a hard time following your post. How is making music a "buggy whip business" if it is still consumed en masse? The article is about how people keep using buggy whips, but the guys who craft buggy whips aren't getting paid anymore. & in fact, some others are profiting by giving away those buggy whips which they didn't create. Right? and yes, I had to look up 'Capex'.

You say, "If people aren't paying you for your work, you aren't doing anything they want to pay you for." If the YOU means musicians, then it's true that people aren't paying YOU for your work. People are paying someone else for your work. Companies are paying to advertise on sites that do nothing but give away your work.

http://thetrichordist.wordpress.com/2012…

@7: No, I'm not intentionally being dense. Believe it or not, I'm trying to see where he's coming from because it doesn't make much sense to me & I've never studied IP or economics. I hope being the guy who posts snarky, patronizing comments in an online forum is going swimmingly for you.