Comment by damienmeur | Hacker News Reader

Comment by damienmeur | Hacker News Reader

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I think what the article is missing is that main issue with streaming platform (for music and videos) is that it reshapes completely the business models of the music/movie industry. A CD or DVD was maybe a bad product, but it allows not "TOP" artists/production to still get ROI without needing to be viewed/watched by audience of billions.

The music/movie industry is now way less diverse, because smaller actors cannot live out of it, so only the big players remain and produce stuff that only a very large audience would like but not love (you cannot please everyone whenyou have a 1B audience). Smaller categories in movies and music will just disappear: look at the 2000`s movies like the Ninth gate or some cool thriller, these could not make enough money just with the theater tickets but they could exist thanks to the DVD money. Now with streaming there is not enough revenue to capitalize on second tier movies (not block busters) that would be really loved by a smaller audience.

We have a less fragmented culture so by definition it just slowly looses its richness.

What you are getting at is that discovery platforms do not give attention for free anymore and you are expected to pay for it. In the radio era this was called payola, it was illegal, and people did it anyway because radio was the gatekeeper to financial success in the medium. Payola isn't even restricted to streaming services anymore. For example, Amazon expects you to buy advertising on their own platform if you publish a Kindle book.

The fact that home video would provide a second boost of cash for a production was important, and I do mourn the slow death of physical media. But it is not directly connected to the discoverability problem we have. Even when people were buying CDs and DVDs, you still had to contend with a distribution system that largely had already decided what you could and could not buy. Midlisters still made shit money, because publishers do not actually care about their midlist and they don't want to sell you originality. They want to sell you IP they already own.

it’s only less diverse at the top.

go down a couple of layers and various genres of music are experiencing renaissance’s like you would not believe.

pop music has always (mostly) sucked

[EDIT] Bring on the downvotes. You never bothered to explore. If you take what’s given to you by those who are selling, you’re in the seller’s market. Your downvotes are pride to me.

311 may have said it best ~33 years ago:

    I tell you what's wrong to me
    The industry's ability to manufacture stars
    They churn them out like Iwo Jima makes cars
    But the blame lies not with those suits for trying
    It's the sheep that keep on buying that soulless crap
    Whatever they put in front of ya
    The hysteria of America

IMO it's just very scattered across very huge players / very small players that dont really live out of their artist work (it s just like a "hobby").

If you look at this year rock werchter festival in Belgium, it's ofcourse very good artists: Gorillaz, The XX, Franz Ferdinand,...

But almost only groups from the 90`s / 2000`s that could make their name when the industry was more tolerant with non-pop / blockbuster music.

I m over caricaturing ofcourse, but probably that if Gorillaz was created in 2026, Damon Albarn would post his work on a forgotten soundcloud, do some bartmitzvah during the weekend to roundup the end of the months while working as a ubereats delivery driver.

I dunno.. even here in new zealand, very much not a musical hub, i still know plenty of jazz musicians who make a living off of music, and there is generally at least 1 jazz gig every week.

I also think the industry is pretty tolerant of more experimental/non-pop music, just that this isn't really true for the rock scene amymore. Hardcore punk, hardstyle, dubstep, hyperpop, shoegaze are all huge genres now, large enough to live off of and perform at festivals as big as coachella.

You may be right about Damon Albarn but that would just be a result of which genres have listeners who are willing to listen to smaller, non-mainstream artists. I think the biggest example of this is that mainstream rock music a la guns and roses has pretty much completely died out, while genres with smaller, more dedicated fanbases like post-rock and noise rock are still going strong as ever. I'm sure if you check your local shows (and you live in a place with reasonably large population) you will be able to find plenty of bands who completely live off their music.

how many live local shows have you been to in the last month?

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