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44 sats \ 24 replies \ @denlillaapan OP 5 Dec \ parent \ on: Music Has No Economic Value; Convince Me Otherwise (TDE, Joakim Book) BooksAndArticles
I think I explain that in the article...?
(With Queen Taylor being the monopoly provider of herself; the music, an economically valueless commodity, being a prerequisite for that monopoly scarcity pricing)
So, what you and the author are claiming is that the music is bereft of any marginal value, but musicians make their money selling a unique experience (a live concert) or trademarked goods which have value only because of the band or song trademarked and used on the goods. Would you then not call the music a good of a higher order? Because in order to make the other products, you need the input of the song or band. You could not sell the other goods without the input of the music.
BTW, perhaps Queen Taylor now has earned a reverse Midas touch, everything she touches turns to sh*t.
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what?!
What has she done??
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(S)he really blew it with politics and football. Perhaps, (s)he can at least get a good song out of it! :)
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Oh yes.
My friend says she has a dozen songs about breakups but none about blowjobs. Might be the problem
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Which, the breakups or the blow jobs? :)
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Fine, I'll read the article and then criticize it.
Just know that that is not how the internet works.
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Obvs :))
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Ok, here's my issue. I think you're conflating economic value and market price.
Economic value should be thought of as something like "how much would people be willing to pay for this thing.": In the case of music, and other non-scarce goods, this pretty much equates to consumer surplus.
The argument you're making pretty much equates economic value with producer surplus.
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that seems like definitionally true...? Of course economic value and market price is the same..
but let me think about this.
My intuition is to answer you that at marginal price = 0, any quantity is entirely consumer surplus -- that's why we're willing to donate money in exchange for music (just like zapping for content on Nostr or SN).
Producer surplus is the area above the cost curve but below the marginal market price. Given that artists -- like basketball players -- pay to make their music, their cost curves are always above marginal cost, and so there is no producer surplus.
Also, relevant to the point I'm making is that music is not (since digital files 20+ years ago _has not been) a scarce good. Oxygen, poems, or the letter X are non-scarce, thus can't have any economic value but consumer surplus, I believe
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You may want to see an article relating directly to this subject:
#797031
There are also possible answers to your questions there.
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music is not (since digital files 20+ years ago _has not been) a scarce good.
- recorded music
ftfy
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Since there are so many “pirates” (THEIR name, not mine) out there, digital music is almost free (you still have to invest your time into getting it). This is the problem with copyright in the digital age. Copyright was originally for a different purpose.
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Agreed, and we pay Spotify etc for the tech and the convenience in giving us the songs we want when we want them.
They made a scarce service out of non-scarce foundations. That's their innovation, their value-add
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Any turd can make movies, cellphone cameras are ubiquitous, movies are not scarce, theaters are productizing delivery, that's their magic. movies have no economic value
^^ obviously this is an inaccurate statement. but it's functionally identical to your claim that music has no economic value.
good movies aren't easy to make. same as good songs. they're scarce.
scarce service out of non-scarce foundations.
wrong.
their [Spotify's] value-add
ownership of the song isn't changing. they're streaming you bits... phone's converting that to sounds, yes.
it's a nice noise, that you pay for the comfort of hearing.
you're not paying for songs. you're paying for the service of listening to them (you continue to lean on this argument while you're making the point (which I disagree with) about the value of music).
song ownership is not changing through the transaction with Spotify.
Spotify is the same as paying a theater to watch a movie.
Economic value of the marginal unit is equivalent to market price. Air and gravity have economic value (we would pay for them if we had to), but a zero price.
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no, that's pretty clearly wrong. They don't have economic value, simply because they exist in abundance (any feasible demand summed up across all humans is less than what's plentifully available). Hence no price.
So yea, you're right that I'm equating those things. Should I not?
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Economic value is the value that person places on an economic good based on the benefit that they derive from the good.
I just grabbed this from investopedia, not because it's authoritative of course, but I think it might help orient the discussion.
The way I think about economic value is that it's equivalent to what people would pay for something. What people actually have to pay for things involves a bunch of factors beyond subjective valuations, so it seems less relevant conceptually and further removed from the source of value.
Abundance can only generate consumer surplus if the abundant things are valued.
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uh-hu, what's our disagreement, then?
An abundant good (or free good, like air or gravity or atmosphere or whatever) is entirely consumer surplus. The market price is zero. If there were a recipient on the other side of that I can choose to give some of the consumer surplus value back -- i.e. donating or zapping or giving money to musicians.
But the fact that we would or could pay for something is distinct from its economic value I would say; and it's what turns paying for music into donations rather than consumption of a produced good/service. I give out of my consumer surplus; but you as a producer have no scarcity value such that you could charge a price
You are stating the subjectivist argument here.
I gave him the link to the article I posted about this.
#797031
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