No idea what we do about it, but clearly something does have to be done.
Spotify is villainous, but legal, and we lap it up while bemoaning its awful business model.
Live Nation and TicketMaster are, quite simply, thieves. Legal thievery, but thievery, nonetheless. Yet we buy our tickets from them.
No idea how we change this colossal monopolisation of the music business by just a couple of dozen people and their technological enslavement of millions of us…none at all.
Thoughtful and sensible ideas Dave, I like the (French? paris/Berlin?) model of direct UBI to creatives but in this current politicisation of everything it is a mountain to climb. The Arts Council funding grass roots better is slowly happening I feel. I chair a youth music charity called AudioActive in Brighton/Worthing/Crawley etc. We work with a lot of young potential artists and I know that we help provide a positive option for many who might otherwise fall into patterns of violence, drugs or mental health issues - saving local services huge amounts of money in the longer term. So investment into music has so many benefits for communities in addition to filling small venues.
Finally, art is protest. With the attack on creative freedom moving from multi-national (Spotify, Live Nation) to political every moment spent defending creativity helps support our diverse and wonderful nation…
Several of my French friends have built careers thanks to their artist funding system but I agree a form of UBI to artists would be a mountain to climb right now. Hats off to the project you work with.
One of the issues with earning money in the creative industries has more to do with those of us who tend to find it hard to get onto the rung of the ladder and are always told that we have to work for free, even though our creative material gets used. In my mind if your creative work is good enough to used or published then you are good enough to get paid for what you do. The fact is a lot of the discourse in this country tends to settle on specific industries, and people who have in the popular mind made it, there’s always lot of talk about smashing the glass ceiling, and the gender of company directors – but nobody ever want to talk about the non-payment of creatives for carrying out work. Because if you become a refusenik and begin asking for payment you’ll never able even to attempt to build a sustainable creative practice, due to the fact that there are other people who are more than wiling to fill the hole you just vacated. It just seems that the whole system is just stacked – don’t ask me for the class analysis on this – against people who have no contacts and not what the establishment would regard as the appropriate education (an education which comes with the right contacts.) All some of us want to do is make a living and live. It’s not about climbing the heights of the industry – but trying at least be able to afford our next hot meal.
Yeah, as always well-written and nuanced. Just to add some thoughts from the Dutch perspective.
So, we had a well subsidized network of small venues and actually a band could make a decent tour in the Netherlands and get paid. We're talking end of eighties and nineties, a time where Troy from Sinead O'Connor was a top 10 hit (the conservativekatholic broadcasting actually promoted the song as the song of the week).
Fast forward to now and I sense a widely spreaded hang to nostalgia. On basically every radio national station the dominant music that is being broadcasted is full of nostalgic taste. This is actually not just demographics, the group of older people in our society is a overwhelming majority, and they preserve what they like. It's a fact that older people are less open to new, more experimental forms.
This also has an effect on the program that is being put forward by the pop venues: more coverbands, tributes and what have you not. Opportunities for niche, experimental bands have decreased greatly, even if the number of concerts that actually are organised probably haven'. It's more commercial, more sales driven.
This nostalgia driven taste is except by demographics also being driven by the increasing trade in publishing rights. Think Neil Young, think Pink Floyd, who sell their catalogue to profit driven companies. They push the old in favor of the new.
Enshittificaton.
This is the modern world, Dave.
No idea what we do about it, but clearly something does have to be done.
Spotify is villainous, but legal, and we lap it up while bemoaning its awful business model.
Live Nation and TicketMaster are, quite simply, thieves. Legal thievery, but thievery, nonetheless. Yet we buy our tickets from them.
No idea how we change this colossal monopolisation of the music business by just a couple of dozen people and their technological enslavement of millions of us…none at all.
I suspect it is a little too late. Sadly.
Thoughtful and sensible ideas Dave, I like the (French? paris/Berlin?) model of direct UBI to creatives but in this current politicisation of everything it is a mountain to climb. The Arts Council funding grass roots better is slowly happening I feel. I chair a youth music charity called AudioActive in Brighton/Worthing/Crawley etc. We work with a lot of young potential artists and I know that we help provide a positive option for many who might otherwise fall into patterns of violence, drugs or mental health issues - saving local services huge amounts of money in the longer term. So investment into music has so many benefits for communities in addition to filling small venues.
Finally, art is protest. With the attack on creative freedom moving from multi-national (Spotify, Live Nation) to political every moment spent defending creativity helps support our diverse and wonderful nation…
Several of my French friends have built careers thanks to their artist funding system but I agree a form of UBI to artists would be a mountain to climb right now. Hats off to the project you work with.
One of the issues with earning money in the creative industries has more to do with those of us who tend to find it hard to get onto the rung of the ladder and are always told that we have to work for free, even though our creative material gets used. In my mind if your creative work is good enough to used or published then you are good enough to get paid for what you do. The fact is a lot of the discourse in this country tends to settle on specific industries, and people who have in the popular mind made it, there’s always lot of talk about smashing the glass ceiling, and the gender of company directors – but nobody ever want to talk about the non-payment of creatives for carrying out work. Because if you become a refusenik and begin asking for payment you’ll never able even to attempt to build a sustainable creative practice, due to the fact that there are other people who are more than wiling to fill the hole you just vacated. It just seems that the whole system is just stacked – don’t ask me for the class analysis on this – against people who have no contacts and not what the establishment would regard as the appropriate education (an education which comes with the right contacts.) All some of us want to do is make a living and live. It’s not about climbing the heights of the industry – but trying at least be able to afford our next hot meal.
Yeah, as always well-written and nuanced. Just to add some thoughts from the Dutch perspective.
So, we had a well subsidized network of small venues and actually a band could make a decent tour in the Netherlands and get paid. We're talking end of eighties and nineties, a time where Troy from Sinead O'Connor was a top 10 hit (the conservativekatholic broadcasting actually promoted the song as the song of the week).
Fast forward to now and I sense a widely spreaded hang to nostalgia. On basically every radio national station the dominant music that is being broadcasted is full of nostalgic taste. This is actually not just demographics, the group of older people in our society is a overwhelming majority, and they preserve what they like. It's a fact that older people are less open to new, more experimental forms.
This also has an effect on the program that is being put forward by the pop venues: more coverbands, tributes and what have you not. Opportunities for niche, experimental bands have decreased greatly, even if the number of concerts that actually are organised probably haven'. It's more commercial, more sales driven.
This nostalgia driven taste is except by demographics also being driven by the increasing trade in publishing rights. Think Neil Young, think Pink Floyd, who sell their catalogue to profit driven companies. They push the old in favor of the new.
Hope you are well, Dave. From Heerlen