Hacker News Reader

Comment by spacecadet | Hacker News Reader

Castles made of sand.

Yes, let this be a warning to trap metal artists everywhere: the quarter million dollar record deals are a smokescreen. Solar panel sales are where the real action is.

That's the headline number record labels and A&R men use to dupe young musicians with no familiarity with corporate America.

That cool quarter million is an advance, and will end up being used to offset the logistical and marketing costs of recording an album and going on tour, which are both organized by the label. So really, the artist is just temporarily holding on to money that will be paid back to the label.

Do you know this for a fact or are you interpolating based on legacy music media tactics?

I know that nobody gets $250k upfront for 3 seconds of music on TikTok on the off chance that it could lead to millions more in streaming royalties later. I note the writer didn't bother to quiz the A&R guy on the structure of said quarter-mill offer.

The top record labels haven't changed places since the bad old days. You know why Spotify's never made a profit in 15 years? It's because all their revenue goes to pay licensing fees to the big 5. Spotify can't make its own music a la Netflix, which is why they're desperate to build podcast revenue.

> Spotify can't make its own music a la Netflix

Why not? Why not be their own label?

a) Sure, but that's the game the music industry has been running ever since they concocted this scam. It has nothing to do with how an artist got on their radar in the first place

b) Still sounds better than selling solar panels, to me at least

How to hustle hard in return for little money and no career path.

The moment you realise the career ladder is a hamster wheel.

There’s massive survivorship bias going on in this space right now. Social media is basically a survivorship bias machine, after all. You never see the many thousands who try this and completely flop.

That's every market with an inelastic supply of labour. P Diddy could reboot Yo! MTV Raps with a million-dollar cash prize, but that's not going to uncover another Biggie.

I'm used to elasticity in terms of something like oil where people will pay for it, whatever the cost. I guess creative endeavors are the same, just on the other side. There will always be another artist willing to work for nothing in hopes of getting discovered.

The economic model for that is a winner-takes-all market, which media is a textbook case of. Social media, on the other hand, is a little heavier tailed, but still nothing like engineering.

Snobbery is so unbecoming.

This is just another way of saying everyone who doesn't like your "content" is a "hater".

Except I'm not promoting any content. GP is implicitly boasting about making more money than people in the article, while suggesting that being an entertainer isn't a valid career choice.

I personally don't enjoy Tiktok, but I don't see the need to sneer at people who are making a living out of it.

It's hardly snobbery to say that a particular hustle is not a great investment of one's time and resources.

Why isn't it? The article quotes people making $70k/month out of it which seems like a rewarding occupation to me. Will they go on to have long running careers? Depends on how good they are at navigating the entertainment industry, which is quite large. No argument was offered to flesh out the original dismissive comment, and I responded in kind.

Fall in the sea

Reply on news.ycombinator.com