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Comment by striking | Hacker News Reader

Have you considered that most of the money goes to the label rather than to the artist? [1][2]

Unless you're paying them directly, you're still not paying the artist. Streaming and piracy don't even come close to the drain that labels put on income flow to artists. Artists made just about $23.40 for every $1000 their songs sold for in 2010, according to TechDirt [2].

I wish the world were as you described. But it's not. SOPA came close to destroying free speech online instead of guaranteeing artists their fair share.

[1]: http://www.bradsucks.net/archives/2007/05/22/where-your-musi... (an indie/marketplace artist's view)

[2]: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100712/23482610186.shtml (standard industry view)

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Labels put up all the capital (in the Techdirt example, they're getting a return of about 1.5:1 on a hypothetical investment of $4.4 million) but a lot of their bets don't work out, so the acts that do sell well are to some degree subsidizing the ones that don't. This doesn't make as much sense in a world of flatened low-cost distribution channels, but many digiterati have never given much thought to the economics of physical media production. IF you look at the balance sheets of media companies you see their profit margins tend to be in line with other industries - looking at it from the perspective of what actually flows back to shareholders rather than from the perspective of an individual band. After all, if a label puts out an album and it bombs, the loss falls on the label - the artist/band doesn't have any further obligation once the terms of the contract are fulfilled. In this sense, publishers act like VCs for the arts.

Labels put up all the capital

For Taylor Swift, sure. But there is an increasing number of musicians owning their own recording equipment and producing pro-level recordings out of their home (just like starting a software business out of your home is increasingly common).

For these people, they put up the capital. While I won't condone piracy of any copyrighted works at all, it's not reasonable to assume that all musical artists are impacted by copyright infringement in the same way.

Home producers may well be absolutely thrilled to make a few thousand dollars in sales a year, in order to continue funding their own work. Why take that away from them through piracy?

[There's also the argument that small act home producers should be thrilled to get the exposure even if nobody is paying for their recordings. As a home producer myself, I find a small amount of comfort in that, but professional-level recording and music equipment isn't cheap... I'll fund it with other income as needed, but I'd rather have my music outfit be self-sustaining.]

Totally agree. I just wanted to refute the argument that whether artists go unpaid doesn't matter because more of the pain will fall on the labels, which is a popular but fallacious argument.

Techdirt leans pro-piracy, just as torrentfreak does. I'll pay for my content in whichever fashion gets the artist paid the most - makes no difference to me. And I am not just talking about music. TV, Movies, etc. It's content as an entire class. All content companies are getting smashed against the backdrop of piracy.

I'll do whatever I can to support content creators.

> Techdirt leans pro-piracy

Does that make it OK for artists to get 2.34% of what listeners pay for the music they make? Or does it make TechDirt's figures wrong? If so, how?

> Or were you not paying for anything already, and then came across that info which now justified your position?

I am not striking, but I agree with everything s/he wrote. And, as it happens, I do pay for all the music and video and software I acquire. So it is simply not true that holding the opinions s/he expressed is always a rationalization for not liking to pay for things.

(And: do you actually have any evidence that striking pirates things rather than paying for them? Or do you just assume that anyone who takes a position opposing yours must be a pirate?)

Is it legal for artists to sell virtual goods directly to fans, or are those rights locked up in record company contracts? That would allow separation of payment from distribution.

TPP/TTIP/RECP leaks suggest the criminalization of non-commercial copyright infringement, where prosecution will be possible even if the copyright holder does not want to prosecute, e.g. fanzines.

Can we develop a payment mechanism which moves funds from audience to artist for virtual goods, with no exchange of music (which can be obtained on any channel), but which provides a non-forgeable "protection from being prosecuted"? This would return control to the artist.

Unbundle the music license payment from music delivery payment.

If labels were so abusive artists wouldn't use them. It's not like setting up a label is hard.

The reason labels have such high overheads is the same as for movie studios . They subsidise a lot of non-Taylor Swifts music that don't end up being profitable. The costs of the failures end up impacting the profits of the successes. The flip side is - lots of artists get studio time and songwriting time even if they haven't already proven themselves.

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