When I am trying to speak with people about how the trade based world inevitably turns any initially good idea to utter shit and nonsense, I usually use the music streaming services as an example.
Being a big fan of different kind of music and having it as a huge part in my life I remember how I always tried to find a better way to collect my favorite music together. It was a different challenge each time. I had all kinds of music players throughout the years. When I had a cassete player, I recorded my favorite tracks from different cassetes to make personal mixes and to have them in the order as I want them to be, took me hours. Then I have got my first MP3 player, it was on 128mb of memory and it allowed only 15-20 tracks to be uploaded (with better quality of course, with more compression it might be even more tracks), but it was such a blast. No more rewinding back and forth, tracks switching is instant, you can shuffle them, it was amazing. Obviously I had a bunch of folders with different track to reupload each time when needed.
After even more time when the Internet was developed enough in my country, the music streaming started to emerge. Just think about it: you have an access to millions of tracks, you can listen to them almost instanly, you can try some of them and add into favorites if you want, you can listen all sorts of recommendations to discover new music you may like, mix your own radio stations or playlists and share it with your friends. Just awesome. On the other side of things: the musicians themselves have a convinient platform to release their songs quickly and having a huge audience to be probably interested in listening to. This is what is the Internet for, this is the way it should be..
And then there is always the trade base world to interfere. Your carefully crafted music collection is actually not your own. Do you want to open your music player one day and realize that some of your songs are miraculously disappear because of the licensing problems? You got it! Do you want your player to remove all your downloaded music because you have not payed the subscription in time? You have it! Do you want your player not to be able to switch tracks, listen to some ads in between songs or other amazing "freemium" features? Be my guest. And of course there are the musicians which can be underpayed easily, because nobody has any idea how the musician can calculate his/her wage in this total mess of the license owning companies which are selling each other rights on the music and do not give a shit about any of it, except making more profit. At the end we have the annoyed music lovers who does not own any real access to the music they love and the utterly confused musicians who do not control their music anymore. What a waste!
Just listen to Benn who is an experienced musician and who, I think, provided a pretty damn good analysis of Spotify and similar services from the both sides of things: ytb.trom.tf/watch?v=gDfNRWsMRs…
We need more trade-free goods and services, including the music share services. People who like making music should be connected with those who like listen to it, that is it, it is that simple. Just imagine if the musicians would not need to trade their asses to simply survive, but to easily share it with all others in the world with no cost, finding more people who can relate to their thoughts and feelings, instead of relying only on those who can afford to buy it. To make even more really honest art without being pushed to produce more and more to sell..
Why Spotify Will Ultimately Fail
An investor's guide to breaking the thing you're trying to sell. Replying to your comments here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9qUfJme4eU 💗 Support this channel and join an amazing community: http://www.patreon.Benn Jordan | Invidious
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Tio
in reply to Roma • •Bravo. Great post! 100% agree. And to make matters worse we talk about digital stuff. Small in size. We can replicate and host these so fast and everywhere. It is a messed up society, because of trade. Nonsense, useless. We should do better than this.
#TradeRuinsEverything
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Roma
in reply to Tio • •like this
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Rokosun
in reply to Roma • •@Roma @Tio
The thing I hate most about our trade based society is how it gives zero fuck about people and their well being. An artist should be able to survive and live a good life, not because their art sells good, but because they're a human being like you and me. Our trade based society forces us to sell stuff in order to survive, if your art doesn't sell or if you don't want to sell it, then your needs are ignored. We're in 2023 and people are still left alone to fend for themselves, when are we gonna grow up and act like an intelligent species? to help our fellow brothers and sisters so that they can live a happy healthy life in this planet, instead of forcing them to sell more shit.
#TradeRuinsEverything
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Lorraine Lee
in reply to Roma • • •Roma likes this.
Tio
in reply to Lorraine Lee • •Lorraine Lee likes this.
Lorraine Lee
in reply to Tio • • •I made a subreddit: reddit.com/r/anagorism/
And a blog: astoundingteam.com/wordpress/
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Dima
in reply to Roma • •Roma, i might add a bit from me as a professional musician - i hate spotify. And i don't use it.
As a band if you want your music to be published on spotify and similar platforms you need an agency who will deliver your music to them. You need to pay for it. As a musician you need to create music, record music and then pay to some agencies to publish it on streaming platforms. Price might be different , depending on the agency and if it's one single, several, or album, but more or less 15-20$ per song. Some agencies ask for yearly subscriptions. In return as a music band we've got profit from streaming. The numbers are follow, for around 3-7 streams the band got 0.01$ . Then from this 0.01$ agency will take a fee and the rest have to be divided between band members in our case 4 people. And also after that you will pay taxes.
Only top 1% of musicians can make some money there. The ones who got millions streams.
Again as a musician i am for free music for all everywhere digitally. Would be great to have similar to spotify platform but trade-free. The problem that not ma
... Show more...Roma, i might add a bit from me as a professional musician - i hate spotify. And i don't use it.
As a band if you want your music to be published on spotify and similar platforms you need an agency who will deliver your music to them. You need to pay for it. As a musician you need to create music, record music and then pay to some agencies to publish it on streaming platforms. Price might be different , depending on the agency and if it's one single, several, or album, but more or less 15-20$ per song. Some agencies ask for yearly subscriptions. In return as a music band we've got profit from streaming. The numbers are follow, for around 3-7 streams the band got 0.01$ . Then from this 0.01$ agency will take a fee and the rest have to be divided between band members in our case 4 people. And also after that you will pay taxes.
Only top 1% of musicians can make some money there. The ones who got millions streams.
Again as a musician i am for free music for all everywhere digitally. Would be great to have similar to spotify platform but trade-free. The problem that not many musicians share my views. As they really want to sell their music to make a living, bcs one of the challenging moments of being musician is to earn enough money so that you don't need to go and work somewhere else. Musicians just want to make music, play music, for that you need to earn money.
But spotify is a fuckery, i can't understand why people use it. It full of ads, they restrict you in a free version like crazy. You can't choose song or play them in order. it's crazy why people still using it.
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Lorraine Lee
in reply to Dima • • •Roma likes this.
Roma
in reply to Lorraine Lee • •Thanks for your opinion Lorraine! It is actually another big topic to tackle - the social services.. Yeah, it is rather a cover up than a real deed in the society like we have. We can be taught that it is all matters and actually makes a difference, moving our world to a better place, but all I can see is that we keep participating in this circle of trades to survive. Like in this movie Matrix - once you see how the world looks like for real, what are the building blocks of the system, you see these "falling green symbols" everywhere..
There are people who no doubts would spend all their energy to help others (I believe people in general gravitate toward being good rather than bad, though some of them have no other choice to behave like jerks because the survival needs make them), but in reality it is only possible to stay "out of trades" as much as possible, otherwise your help becomes just another good to trade or you would only help others to build a successful business. There are great world organisations like Doctors without borders and all sorts of non-commercial proje
... Show more...Thanks for your opinion Lorraine! It is actually another big topic to tackle - the social services.. Yeah, it is rather a cover up than a real deed in the society like we have. We can be taught that it is all matters and actually makes a difference, moving our world to a better place, but all I can see is that we keep participating in this circle of trades to survive. Like in this movie Matrix - once you see how the world looks like for real, what are the building blocks of the system, you see these "falling green symbols" everywhere..
There are people who no doubts would spend all their energy to help others (I believe people in general gravitate toward being good rather than bad, though some of them have no other choice to behave like jerks because the survival needs make them), but in reality it is only possible to stay "out of trades" as much as possible, otherwise your help becomes just another good to trade or you would only help others to build a successful business. There are great world organisations like Doctors without borders and all sorts of non-commercial projects, which actually care about people, but even those may suffer a lot to keep going since every participator should still be able to fullfil at least basic needs for itself. So yeah, this is a real hostage situation here - either play our Monopoly game and don't ask any questions or simply starve or at least live on minimal. We can continue to name our businesses as "with people in mind", "with nature in mind", "with all good causes" and pretend that it is genuine, but to be honest with ourselves and others, to actually make the people around happier is the hell of a challenge in the world like that and not everyone is ready for this leap of faith, again, not to be judgemental here.
The intellectual property you mentioned is also a good example of creating the artificial scarcity and the only reason for that is to allow only the "owner" to milk his idea, because it is what Humans do for their entire life on this planet - trying to find their own "holy grail" to trade and if they found it, to clung on it whatever it costs (people in law are happy to help setting this "right" of theirs in stone). No way they may want others to have a piece of this sweety pie, you all should go and find your own "thing" to milk! In this way obviously they call the fact that people would still try to share the idea sowehow or copy it with some very unpleasant name as "piracy" and set a hunt on those, because of course everyone needs to respect the game..
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Roma
in reply to Dima • •Thanks for your reply Dima! It's very valuable to see how things are from perspective of the people who are making music.
Yeah, the musicians are in the dependent situation as any of us, we all have to find a way to sell our shit somehow whatever it is. From selling useless garbage on the streets to the tourists, to selling yachts, cars, penthouses, painting, you name it and searching the most profitable way to do it with all sorts of scam and fraud. Our initial intention of course might be, hey, I can actually sell it and be a good guy, I would never try to fuck with people, but sad truth is that in this society it's actually impossible, you will be caught in the nets of trading and to keep your shit together you will be pushed to grow your profits infinitely. What I've noticed is that almost all "responsible businesses" starting very good, doing a really good product, going famous with it and eventially falling into complete fuckery. And that's because capitalism model is good when things are calm and steady, you're growing, income is growing, everybody's happy. But an ine
... Show more...Thanks for your reply Dima! It's very valuable to see how things are from perspective of the people who are making music.
Yeah, the musicians are in the dependent situation as any of us, we all have to find a way to sell our shit somehow whatever it is. From selling useless garbage on the streets to the tourists, to selling yachts, cars, penthouses, painting, you name it and searching the most profitable way to do it with all sorts of scam and fraud. Our initial intention of course might be, hey, I can actually sell it and be a good guy, I would never try to fuck with people, but sad truth is that in this society it's actually impossible, you will be caught in the nets of trading and to keep your shit together you will be pushed to grow your profits infinitely. What I've noticed is that almost all "responsible businesses" starting very good, doing a really good product, going famous with it and eventially falling into complete fuckery. And that's because capitalism model is good when things are calm and steady, you're growing, income is growing, everybody's happy. But an inevitable truth is that you cannot grow forever, it's just impossible. At certain point crisis is comming and you'll have to start to search for the ways to continue growing. The easiest way is to start to fuck with people who believed in you, using your previous good reputation to cover it, to buy out the competitors and to make them go total shit, to exploit your previously accumulated user base, so you still can use these little wins to showcase that you're still making money to your investors.
I think my point was exactly this. In general, Spotify or Apple Music do not like a bad idea, it might become a some sort of social network for music loving people, who connect and share with each other, find a new technological ways to make the process interesting and enjoyable. But as any other great idea in this world, being based on trading and making money in the foundation, become useless kind of a parody to itself after a while.
And I totally agree we need something like this in the Open Source world. Some federated alternative. The most close thing I know is the Funkwhale, but it's mostly about organisation your media library, but might be developed into something we think about. Unfortunately, it would also require the people of your mentality, liking to share their music free and with nothing to return, but as you mentioned, it's hard to get a decent amount of the musicians on board with that idea, since they have to sell their music, not share it for free. Not to blame anybody, I complety understand their motives. There's not people to be blamed, there's a fucked up cruel trade-base society we live in to incentive people behaving like that..
trom
2020-05-17 19:28:32
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