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Comment by Waterluvian | Hacker News Reader

Has there always been this much debate/discussion any time a new technology disrupts an industry? Or is this a particularly unique case because it touches on what we perceive much more as "creative" works?

When audio recording became a consumer product, was there huge resistance from live performers? I would imagine so, but I just don't know much on the subject.

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I can highly recommend an episode of 99% Invisible [1] about the musician's strike of 1942, which was a fight about royalties from recorded music, but was in large part actually about the the loss of livelihood from music recordings. Very little new music was recorded for over a year, and the president of the musician's union was pushing for record labels to pay into a fund that would benefit unemployed musicians in order to end the strike. I didn't make the connection when I heard this, but yeah, it does feel analogous to what we're facing now.

[1] https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/one-year-the-day-the-...

Actually, it was only instrumental musicians being prohibited to record. So singers weren't affected and that strike hugely contributed music shifting from primarily instrumental (earlier jazz, swing) to vocal-focused (jump blues, rock and roll and so on...)

It's interesting because it's something which is around us every day but most of us don't know about it.:)

> huge resistance

So far I'd consider the resistance from artists against AI "small" to "practically none".

If artists go on street and demain copyright law changes then I'll say it's moderate amount of resistance. Luddites did smash down machines.

> Luddites did smash down machines.

I feel like I barely knew this and now need to go read up on that whole era. Thanks!

None of this is new. Audio recording, sound synthesis, digital mixing and composition either killing the music or not being real music. Cameras, 3D CGI, and Photoshop either killing visual arts or not being real art. And yet here we are, with new musical genres focused on sound rather than rhythm, two electronic revolutions in music, entire new fields of visual arts and entertainment.

This case differs in that it got amplified on Twitter, though.

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