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Comment by burkaman | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone have historical sources that can back this up? Right now it reads like an extremely strained attempt to find the most cynical possible perspective without any evidence.

The idea here seems to be that until churches and bars started hiring musicians in order to attract clientele, nobody had ever tried to make money from music. And since then, no significant portion of the music industry has ever been about a pure exchange of money for music, it's always been driven by ulterior motives.

Is there any reason to believe any of this? What about the history of classical music concerts? Operas? Broadway? Buskers? Mariachi bands? I'm sure I'm missing many non-western examples.

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“Court” music is about being a display of power that doesn’t threaten your neighbor into thinking they need to start building an army. That’s why the music itself epitomizes precision and control. Classic soft power.

It’s conspicuous consumption. You keep musicians on staff to demonstrate that you are so rich and powerful that you can afford to blow it on something so frivolous that it doesn’t even feed anybody, it doesn’t stick around, and you’re either there to hear it or you’re not. See Haydn for the very best example of this model.

Sheet music then becomes the “advertising” so that people can be aware that it’s happening.

However, I think sheet music eventually became (and later, records/CDs) mostly a pure exchange of money for music.

I guess what I’m trying to say is something in between: the exchange itself can be pure on both sides (creation/consumption), but music is “of” society/culture and almost always serves many other purposes in the power structure of societies.

In its very purest form, buskers have almost always been very poor.

I agree with your characterization of court music, but again I don't understand why it should represent the entire history of the music business. At the same time that European royals were commissioning symphonies as a status symbol, musicians were holding independent concerts where people paid money to hear some music and then went home.

I don't think it's really relevant that many musicians are poor. Most writers in history have been poor, but the history of the book business is still mostly about people paying money to read a book.

And I agree with what you’re saying, too. I don’t think it’s relevant to music that many musicians are poor, but I think it’s relevant to what I thought was being discussed. I thought we were talking about the music / money relationship, and the degree to which “ulterior motives” play onto the music/money transaction.

A music history textbook I read identified movable type for printing music as the start of the "music business" on any scale.

Sheet music was a sizable industry before the phonograph.

Troubadors (buskers) existed before the advent of paid church musicians, as far as I can tell.

Interestingly, at least for classical music nowadays in my limited experience, the most reliable way to get a regular gig for most ordinary musicians (who aren't going to be opera stars or something) is to work for a church still. But perhaps my instrument choices (voice and organ) have skewed this disproportionately.

I think you're right. I know a lot of classical musicians, and except at the superstar level, a pretty good generalization is that they have multiple income streams, including performing and teaching. A church gig can nicely compliment those other things. This includes music director positions. Some but not all require a level of commitment to the religion.

High quality source? No. But if you're looking at famous European musicians before the 1800s, almost all of them were employees by sort of church or powerful aristocrat.

Of course not. Music was business every single period musicians were free and not serfs or slaves or something like that.

Music is fun, people like fun. That being said, there were almost always churches of some sort who would tend to play music too.

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