[StackRanker3000]

Is this actually happening though? I don’t have actual numbers and would be open to be proven wrong, but my impression is that there are more people making music than ever (barriers to entry have been lowered) and more people making a living off their music and related enterprises such as touring and merch than ever (markets are globalized and contain more people with more disposable income)

I’m not sure why people believe that artists selling copies of their music being a viable source of income in itself is something that’s necessarily critical and/or a moral imperative to preserve. Humans made music for thousands of years before technology made that possible, and after some decades technology has now made that particular business model less lucrative (it’s now very easy and basically free to share essentially unlimited copies of a piece of music, which has tanked the monetary value of such copies)

As long as music is being made, I don’t think it’s a disaster for society that some artists’ preferred way of making money isn’t so viable anymore (if it ever was - what percentage of acts were ever making real bank selling albums?)

[nzeid]

I think my point my have been lost somewhere around how much making music actually costs.

Yes, anyone can _do_ music at little cost at any time. But there is a real cost to make "good music" and it isn't in sheer musicianship or equipment - it's also in time.

I've never done music full time but I've been in several studio and live sessions and I assure you it's exhausting and time consuming.

[StackRanker3000]

And are more or fewer people able to put in that time now than before piracy and streaming became a thing? The answer to that question is not obvious to me, but I lean towards ”more”, or at least ”roughly the same”

Even if the answer is ”fewer”, and we thought that was such a horrible thing that we had to have a massive social movement or introduce strict regulation to move away from streaming, how would you put the genie back in the bottle when piracy is so easy, and people have become used to the technological advancements we’ve made?

[ufocia]

Just because it's exhausting and time consuming doesn't mean that it will be good or popular. Those are subjective measures anyway.