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Comment by ethbr1 | Hacker News Reader

I'd take a step back, and ask what makes art (music, visual, etc) valuable.

To that, I'd respond "scarcity."

It's hard to imagine highly valued art (either culturally or monetarily) without scarcity.

Consequently, I expect the next few decades will see similar progressions to the past, when technology encroached on scarcity (e.g. painting after the photograph, live performance after consumer video/music playback).

Scarcity will reestablish itself in whatever guise remains technically feasible, and again become valued.

In the case of LLMs and diffusion, I expect it will be creating things that are so novel they could not have come from AI.

Hopefully skillful, deep parody and the absurd will reassert themselves, as post-JS-Daily-Show I think that's been missing in culture.

But it sure as shit isn't generic pop music, which will be the first thing to be churned out of humanless hit factories and flood the market.

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>It's hard to imagine highly valued (either culturally or monetarily) art without scarcity.

I disagree entirely. The Mona Lisa's value is greatly expanded by its free availability -- the one-off image on my wall is scarce, but it will never be a cultural icon, that is antithetical to scarcity.

A value of art is reflection (the mental process), but this is magnified enormously if society can reflect on the work, reference it, abstract from it, view it and develop freely from it.

Great pop songs are great because everyone has heard them and we have shared experiences around them. There is no such thing as a scarce pop song.

(This is one of the great crimes that arise from copyright terms being great than a couple of decades, society doesn't get to riff on the important icons of its recent past.)

Is the Mona Lisa print on your wall distinct from the original? I.e. Was her face shape changed in your print to a version you prefer?

Arguments against against scarcity that point to copies of a singular work seem circuitous. There are innumerable copies because the single, canonical version is so valued.

Similarly, great pop songs are valued because everyone knows them, which is why individual song value peaked during the dawn of mass distribution (CD, then early digital) but before the market was flooded with volume.

The scarcity in the pop sense is the limited number of songs that everyone knows. (Largely through sophisticated media campaigns and forced radio/channel placement, but I digress)

If the Mona Lisa didn't exist we'd elevate some other work more. If not Bo'Rap then Stairway to Heaven, etc.

>Arguments against against scarcity that point to copies of a singular work seem circuitous.

It's a good point, but I think it misses something. It is experiences of the effect of an artistic work that matter, not the work per se. Experiences of the work are 10-a-penny -- tens of millions have probably seen one of the 'originals', billions have probably experienced the effect of the artwork (which I will deftly avoid defining ;o)) through photos, copies, videos, imitations, and emulations.

> I'd take a step back, and ask what makes art (music, visual, etc) valuable.

> To that, I'd respond "scarcity."

What is your definition of valuable here?

If you're referring to value to culture/society, I think you're very far off-base. The most culturally valuable artistic works are ubiquitous, the opposite of scarce. Art isn't really able to have any culture influence if it only impacts a small number of people.

If you're referring to monetary value, you're also dead wrong lmao. Look at the top 100 most-paid artists of the last decade, and tell me how hard it is to find and appreciate their entire artistic catalogue for yourself.

The argument that scarcity = artistic value doesn't have any basis in fact, and is the sort of thing that would only be shilled by someone trying to con you into buying an NFT.

> It's hard to imagine highly valued art (either culturally or monetarily) without scarcity.

hahahaha what? Compare the monetary and cultural impact of that one "ultra-scarce" Wu-Tang album (monetary: $2m, cultural: none) to the impact of Taylor Swift's last album, which is available on every streaming service (monetary: $200m+, cultural: very high)

Valuable as in culturally significant and monetarily expensive.

> The most culturally valuable artistic works are ubiquitous, the opposite of scarce.

Not so. Copies of those works are ubiquitous, but there is a singular, definitive work.

Name me a handful of world-famous works for which there are multiple, almost-indistinguishable but distinct copies.

The Mona Lisa has a few original alternates, and yet they pale in value to the famous one. Which itself, ironically, became popular famous mostly through being stolen (scarcity).

> Look at the top 100 most-paid artists of the last decade, and tell me how hard it is to find and appreciate their entire artistic catalogue for yourself.

> [Once Upon a Time in Shaolin] vs [Speak Now (Taylor's Version)]

Total artistic renumeration, especially in the modern period, is dominated by distribution volume.

But if we're talking about single work valuation, the Wu Tang album costs $2M.

Taylor's album costs $15.

That's the premium for scarcity.

> Copies of those works are ubiquitous, but there is a singular, definitive work.

When referring to recorded music, this isn't a distinction that has ever actually mattered in the real world, just a fiction made up to shill NFTs.

Are you going to pretend that anyone actually cares about a "singular, definitive FLAC file" that all of the streaming services' FLAC and MP3 playbacks are based on? This is pure fantasy, the copies are the same thing as the original piece.

The idea that Mona Lisa's (or any other artwork's) cultural influence comes from its scarcity is hilarious. Literally anyone can visit the Louvre and appreciate it for themself. Do you think it would have anywhere near as much influence if it was hidden behind closed doors and only 1 person was able to see it?

> But if we're talking about single work valuation, the Wu Tang album costs $2M. Taylor's album costs $15.

Last time I checked, the sum of revenue from their discography is how artists and labels get paid, not based on the maximum amount that 1 person is willing to pay.

Speak Now is a single work, and it generated like 100x as much monetary value as Shaolin (with like 10,000x as much cultural impact). And those estimates are extremely conservative, when you consider that you can tour and sell merch off an album that people can actually listen to lol.

>> Name me a handful of world-famous works for which there are multiple, almost-indistinguishable but distinct copies.

Literally every world-famous work has replicas and recreations, what's your point? Those copies are also part of the work's cultural influence, and in many cases (if the replicas are sold by the original artist) part of the monetary value as well.

This doesn't provide any more credence to the falsity that art's scarcity is the source of its value (when overwhelming evidence proves that the exact opposite is true)

That's not what I'm asking.

Those replicas and recreations are recreations of a... single, scarce work.

That's famous precisely because there is one original.

But if that's not true, it should be possible to point to, say, a series of similar paintings or musical compositions that are all famous.

Generally, that's not the case though.

Because people want one thing.

The one Mona Lisa. The one officially-blessed Taylor Swift album. The one version of Beethoven's Fifth.

Complexity and variety confuses simple people and the market.

> Because people want one thing.

> The one officially-blessed Taylor Swift album. The one version of Beethoven's Fifth.

Millions of people have bought vinyls/CDs/MP3 replicas of these albums. These are not scarce works. The demand is not for the scarce original (who even knows what that means when it comes to music), it's for a faithful recreation of the artist's work and creative output.

On top of that, nobody who listens to these albums really just wants one album... they want to listen to music that moves them. Taylor Swift fans will listen to other albums that she puts out, and music from other artists that they enjoy. When Beethoven released his 6th symphony, it didn't make his 5th any less valuable to those who enjoyed it.

Because for most people, the value of art comes from its intrinsic beauty, not its "scarcity". Unless if you're someone whose only attachment to art is as a vehicle for financial speculation, which is sad but unfortunately common in NFT circles, etc.

> But if that's not true, it should be possible to point to, say, a series of similar paintings or musical compositions that are all famous.

Have you heard the term genre before? It's literally a word for a group of similar musical compositions. Most genres contain plenty of similar compositions that are all famous.

If people enjoy a work of art, there is almost always other popular art made that's similar to it. Turns out, you get bored if you just listen to one album over and over again.

When it comes to art, most people enjoy variety, it doesn't "confuse them" lol. This is clearly reflected in the market, as there are hundreds of unique genres of music, each with thousands of unique artists.

I think something can be valuable and abundant, what you really mean is what makes the value capturable. If truly good songs were cheap to create then people making good songs won't be able to charge as much as they do, but consumers will arguable experience more value through an abundance of good songs.

>consumers will arguable experience more value through an abundance of good songs.//

It is people's shared experiences of a song that makes a song most valuable (it's not the only value, of course). Having more songs means less shared experiences, more is less.

Imagine going to a club where the DJ can play any of a million songs but only one person knows that song; compared to them playing a setlist of floor-filling bangers ...

The herd vs merit distinction is interesting, and I think they both have value. Maybe differently to different people, but non-zero.

Imagine a handful of objectively "good" songs.

Play them for a crowd where nobody knows them.

Or, in a more humorous example, imagine the Beatles played tracks only from their second album, while touring for their first album. Would audiences be disappointed?

I struggle to imagine an overly negative reaction. People love hearing songs they love, but they also fell in love with those songs for a reason. Well executed music is well-executed music.

Yes, agreed, music has a particular value to a person (I was going too say 'intrinsic' but it is personal) as well.

But shared love of music, or shared experiences of music transcends this value IMO; and is largely orthogonal.

"That song we danced to", "what we sang at the campfire", crab dance for LTT watchers, 'easy for ENZ' for CSGO players, a national anthem to a nationalist, ... the music matters a little but it's only really a rallying point for shared experiences.

"It is people's shared experiences of a song that makes a song most valuable"

You are definitely right that abundance leads to a decline in shared experiences. I’m the only person I know who listens to the music that I do, but of course I treasure that music. But beyond my anecdotal experience, from sites like Last.fm it appears that listeners really began to fragment by the 2010s; with so much on offer now, people don’t necessarily listen to the same music as even their closest peers.

DJs, too, have spoken about the decline of the well-known banger when they are being flooded with hundreds of new tracks every week. Moreover, computer mixing today means those tracks might get so cut up by DJs (e.g. taking a bass line from one track and a synth line from another) that they become well-nigh unrecognizable to even the savviest trainspotters.

You can buy a copy of Vincent van Goghs Starry Starry Night for a few dollars, totally legally. There is no scarcity here.

The only meaningful difference between it and the one in the Museum of Modern art is that it was painted by the Van Gogh directly. And sure it has a hefty price tag attached, but everybody who buys a copy buys it because they like it.

Growing up music was rare, but with access to Spotify I can listen to so much more music. That has not meant I appreciate music less. Sabatons "Primo Victoria" is still going to pump me every time I hear it and Bethovens ninth is as uplifting as it ever was, no matter how many times I listen to it.

How much money have you spent on NFTs?

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