This is a thing that writers aren't supposed to admit. As I wrote on this blog's fourth anniversary, the most laughably false statement about writing ever uttered is Samuel Johnson's notorious "No man but a blockhead ever wrote but for money":

pluralistic.net/2024/02/20/for…

Making art is not an "economically rational" activity. Neither is attempting to persuade other people to your point of view.

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These activities are not merely *intrinsically satisfying*, they are also *necessary*, at least for many of us. The long, stupid fight about copyright that started in the Napster era has rarely acknowledged this, nor has it grappled with the implications of it. On the one hand, you have copyright maximalists who say totally absurd things like, "If you don't pay for art, no one will make art, and art will disappear."

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This is one of those radioactively false statements whose falsity is so glaring that it can be seen from orbit.

But on the other hand, you know who knows this fact *very* well? The corporations that pay creative workers. Movie studios, record labels, publishers, games studios: they all know that they are in possession of a workforce that *has* to make art, and will continue to do so, paycheck or not, until someone pokes their eyes out or breaks their fingers.

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People make art because it *matters* to them, and this trait makes workers terribly exploitable. As Fobazi Ettarh writes in her seminal paper on "vocational awe," workers who care about their jobs are at a huge disadvantage in labor markets. Teachers, librarians, nurses, and yes, *artists*, are all motivated by a sense of mission that often trumps their own self-interest and well-being and their bosses know it:

inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.or…

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One of the most important ideas in David Graeber's magisterial book *Bullshit Jobs* is that the ground state of labor is to do a job that you are proud of and that matters to you, but late-stage capitalist alienation has gotten so grotesque that some people will actually sneer at the idea that, say, teachers should be well compensated: "Why should you get a living wage - isn't the satisfaction of helping children payment enough?"

memex.craphound.com/2018/06/20…

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These are the most salient facts of the copyright fight: creativity is a non-economic activity, and this makes creative workers extremely vulnerable to exploitation. People make art because they *have to*. As Marx was finishing *Kapital*, he was often stuck working from home, having *pawned his trousers* so he could keep writing. The fact that artists don't respond rationally to economic incentives doesn't mean they should starve to death.

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Art - like nursing, teaching and librarianship - is necessary for human thriving.

No, the implication of the economic irrationality of vocational awe is this: *the only tool that can secure economic justice for workers who truly can't help but do their jobs is solidarity.* Creative workers need to be in solidarity with one another, and with our audiences - and, often, with the other workers at the corporations who bring our work to market.

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We are all class allies locked in struggle with the owners of both the entertainment companies and the technology companies that sit between us and our audiences (this is the thesis of Rebecca Giblin's and my 2022 book *Chokepoint Capitalism*):

chokepointcapitalism.com/

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The idea of artistic solidarity is an old and important one. Victor Hugo, creator of the first copyright treaty - the Berne Convention - wrote movingly about how the point of securing rights for creators wasn't to allow their biological children to exploit their work after their death, but rather, to ensure that the *creative* successors of artists could build on their forebears' accomplishments.

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Hugo - like any other artist who has a shred of honesty and has thought about the subject for more than ten seconds - knew that he was part of a creative community and tradition, one composed of readers and writers and critics and publishing workers, and that this was a community and a tradition worth fighting for and protecting.

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One of the most important and memorable interviews Rebecca and I did for our book was with Liz Pelly, one of the sharpest critics of Spotify (our chapter about how Spotify steals from musicians is the only part of the audiobook available on Spotify itself - a "Spotify Exclusive"!):

open.spotify.com/show/7oLW9ANw…

Pelly has just published a major, important new book about Spotify's ripoffs, called *Mood Machine*:

simonandschuster.com/books/Moo…

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A long article in *Harper's* unpacks one of the core mechanics at the heart of Spotify's systematic theft from creative workers: the use of "ghost artists," whose generic music is cheaper than real music, which is why Spotify crams it into their playlists:

harpers.org/archive/2025/01/th…

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The subject of Ghost Artists has long been shrouded in mystery and ardent - but highly selective - denials from Spotify itself. In her article - which features leaked internal chats from Spotify - Pelly gets to the heart of the matter. Ghost artists are musicians who are recruited by shadowy companies that offer flat fees for composing and performing inoffensive muzak that can fade into the background.

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This is wholesaled to Spotify, which crams it into wildly popular playlists of music that people put on while they're doing something else ("Deep Focus," "100% Lounge," "Bossa Nova Dinner," "Cocktail Jazz," "Deep Sleep," "Morning Stretch") and might therefore settle for an inferior product.

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Spotify calls this "Perfect Fit Music" and it's the pink slime of music, an extruded, musiclike content that plugs a music-shaped hole in your life, without performing the communicative and aesthetic job that real music exists for.

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After many dead-end leads with people involved in the musical pink slime industry, Pelly finally locates a musician who's willing to speak anonymously about his work (he asks for anonymity because he relies on the pittances he receives for making pink slime to survive). This jazz musician knows very little about where the music he's commissioned to produce ends up, which is by design.

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The musical pink slime industry, like all sleaze industries, is shrouded in the secrecy sought by bosses who know that they're running a racket they should be ashamed of.

The anonymous musician composes a stack of compositions on his couch, then goes into a studio for a series of one-take recordings. There's usually a rep from the PFC pink slime industry there, and the rep's feedback is always "play simpler."

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