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0 sats \ 7 replies \ @itsrealfake 5 Dec \ on: Music Has No Economic Value; Convince Me Otherwise (TDE, Joakim Book) BooksAndArticles
bullshit. i'm a dj. i pay for it, to the tune of $1.95/song
great tracks, in hi-resolution audio formats, that fit the style/energy that i'm looking for are very scarce
hm... not sure the music would be the thing that's scarce. The tech and the discovery process (at least in a landscape of close-to-infinite informational overload) would be valuable, but not the music itself...?
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you could grow/prepare your own food, but you eat at a restaurant because it's convenient. same argument.
the labor is scarce.
i pay for music because i need the musicians and producers (and discovery platforms, yes) to keep doing their part so i can do mine.
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not same.
this part of the article:
As a matter of economic fact, no, they’re not. Since the retirement of the labor theory of value, labor doesn’t have economic value simply because it was expensed. Economic transactions and the property rights we use to guide them are intrinsically related to scarcity. We don’t price or transact oxygen, words, or the recipe for your grandmother’s meat stew — not because they don’t have value (they’re immensely valuable!), but because they don’t have scarcity or rivalrousness. One person’s use of them doesn’t prevent another person from using them.
The restaurant and its production line has scarcity; when I'm occupying a table, another person can't -- the food in my mouth cannot simultaneously be consumed by someone else.
Music (in the digital world) is different: much more like recipes and oxygen than steak and restaurant tables
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it's hard to compose my thoughts without interjecting some snarky music attitude, so i'm just gonna lean in and get this dig in at the top, in the friendliest possible way:
if you don't think music has value, i pity what i imagine to be an much lower quality experience of life, and i'm grateful that i don't share that opinion
now i've said the thing, and tried to be a little bit funny, while also engaging with (and acknowledging) the emotional nature of the position i've taken in this philosophical discussion, which may not have a right answer.
i think it would be helpful to define "music" for the sake of the discussion. in the meantime, here's this...
via investopedia
maybe you would say something like "music isn't commensurable, only CDs and records are, and therefore the song doesn't have a price".
music creation is a service.
music performance is a service.
music amplification (loudness, fidelity, etc..) are services.
each of those have benefits to individual market participants. it's not so different from V4V.
i'm willing to pay a limited price for recordings of specific songs, not recordings of just any song. this indicates that it's not the recording that's special... it's the song. that price is the economic value of the song.
digitizing something doesn't suddenly remove it's value.. it merely makes it digital & readily duplicable. multiple copies of a file are not the same as the contents & structure & meaning of the file (see also: the timechain)
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This is a very cogent economic argument. Subjective valuation of goods and services. Well done!!
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awe, thanks
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You’re welcome!
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