Slashdot Asks: Is the Internet Killing Old and New Art Forms or Helping Them Grow? (nytimes.com)

The thing about the internet is that as it gained traction and started to become part of our lives, it caused a lot of pain -- bloodbath, many say -- to several major industries. The music industry was nearly decimated, for instance, and pennies on the dollar doesn't begin to describe what has happened to the newspapers. But things are starting to change, many observers note. As Netflix CEO Reed Hastings noted at the New Yorker Tech Festival last year, the internet is increasingly changing the way people consume content and that has forced the industries to innovate and find new ways to cater to their audiences. But some of these industries are still struggling to figure out new models for their survival. Farhad Manjoo, a technology columnist at The New York Times, argues that for people of the future, our time may be remembered as a period not of death, but of rejuvenation and rebirth. He writes: Part of the story is in the art itself. In just about every cultural medium, whether movies or music or books or the visual arts, digital technology is letting in new voices, creating new formats for exploration, and allowing fans and other creators to participate in a glorious remixing of the work. [...] In the last few years, and with greater intensity in the last 12 months, people started paying for online content. They are doing so at an accelerating pace, and on a dependable, recurring schedule, often through subscriptions. And they're paying for everything. [...] It's difficult to overstate how big a deal this is. More than 20 years after it first caught mainstream attention and began to destroy everything about how we finance culture, the digital economy is finally beginning to coalesce around a sustainable way of supporting content. If subscriptions keep taking off, it won't just mean that some of your favorite creators will survive the internet. It could also make for a profound shift in the way we find and support new cultural talent. It could lead to a wider variety of artists and art, and forge closer connections between the people who make art and those who enjoy it.

Comments

the internet invented the meme

[Anonymous Coward]

we used to call them image macros but whatevs
this is a new artform created by internet
also emoji is fasting growing language on the planet
ask a linguist
eventually its back to heiroglyphics

Re:the internet invented the meme

[TWX]

I bet he would disagree with you, if Kilroy was here.

Re:the internet invented the meme

[wardrich86]

I remember the times when we had multiple different types of memes, and image macros were but just one type. Ah, those were the days.

Re:the internet invented the meme

[phantomfive]

Fortunately, since Frodo Lives, he can explain about the three hares.

Re:the internet invented the meme

[Humbubba]

Richard Dawkins coined the word 'meme' in his 1976 book "The Selfish Gene", well before ARPANET took up TCP/IP back in 1983. So, no, the internet did not invent the meme - unless Dawkins is even more awesome than I thought.

Re:the internet invented the meme

[Hognoxious]

Worst Haiku ever
By two too many lines
Plus season missing

Capitalism is killing everyone and everything

[For a Free Internet]

Only in a communist society will everyone be able to realize their full individual potential.

The workers must rule!

Re:Capitalism is killing everyone and everything

[Anonymous Coward]

The nice thing about communism is that, as it doesn't promote innovation, there wouldn't be robots to take over people's jobs. More work = happier workers!

Re:Capitalism is killing everyone and everything

[TWX]

Only in a post-scarcity society will everyone realize their full potential. Unfortunately access to resources begets a desire for even more resources, so it is basically impossible to have a post-scarcity society because there are those who will not be satisfied with what they have no matter how much they have, or what they desire is a reflection of what their peers have and want to have more than they do.

That was one of the few significant flaws that came out in Roddenberry-controlled Star Trek, it's not really possible to meet the needs, wants, and desires of everyone because some people cannot be satisfied at any cost.

Re:Capitalism is killing everyone and everything

[Dunbal]

because some people cannot be satisfied at any cost.

So you do what they do in the Star Trek universe. You pile them all into a space ship and shoot them off into space.

Re:Capitalism is killing everyone and everything

[Anonymous Coward]

Robots aren't the problem. The problem is the 0.1% who own all the robots expecting the working class who no longer even have jobs to pay all the taxes to support the infrastructure that makes their warehouses, transportation and security possible. Not to mention who is going to buy the crap the robots make when nobody has a job. Everyone working will soon be a thing of the past, society isn't ready to accept that yet and the results are going to be disastrous.

Re:Capitalism is killing everyone and everything

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is too many people without any marketable skills. Figure out how to solve that.

Re:Capitalism is killing everyone and everything

[Opportunist]

This is exactly the problem we're in today: We lack money on the demand side and have an overwhelming surplus of money on the supply side.

There is a lot of money begging to be invested. The interest rates alone are a dead giveaway. We're a hair from "you have to pay us to take your money and park it", i.e. negative interest. Actually, at the refinance side, we have arrived there already. People who have capital are almost willing to back ANYTHING that could look like it might at some point in the future actually mature. That's also the reason why the real estate market is still in a huge bubble. And the next big problem is that any actual recovery of the economy would make that bubble pop instantly, because as soon as there is actually an economy to invest in, real estate prices will plummet again.

It pains me to say it, but we somehow need to get money into the hands of the idiots. Idiots buy bling. And that's exactly what we need now. We need people too stupid to fix their own shit so they have to hire people, from mechanics to bricklayers to carpenters and so on, to do shit for them. We don't need more production, we need consumption. Yes, consumption. We need more idiots stuffing their face with greasy hamburgers and dying an early death. We need people wasting their life at the mall. Our economy depends on people having disposable income.

We need people who have spending money. The more people, the better. Because if it's only a few, they will not spend it all. And we need to spend it all. We have a ton of money on the supply side wanting to be invested, but no businesses to invest in because there is nobody to buy whatever those businesses would sell. We need people who can buy.

We need way, way more money on the demand side.

Re:Capitalism is killing everyone and everything

[Anonymous Coward]

3D printing is killing sculpting. When's the last time you saw an article about sculpting? When's the last time you saw one about 3D printing? That's because we've STOPPED SCULPTING! And as we know, the advance of sculpting coincided with the advance of civilization. And so will its decline. We can already see it. 3D printing is at the root of the end of society.

Sincerely,

Mark Miwords.

Re: Capitalism is killing everyone and everything

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet some opportunist are going to make a killing soon xD

Re:Capitalism is killing everyone and everything

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never seen an article about sculpting. And I've been around much longer than 3D printing.

Re:Capitalism is killing everyone and everything

[Immerman]

Let me start by saying that until someone develops a robust, corruption-resistant form of democracy, that I will never, ever support anything claiming to be Communism.

That said, when has communism ever been tried on a large scale? We've seen lots and lots of fascism (same people controlling government and production) that calls itself Communism, just as we see lots of it calling itself Capitalism all over the world today. In fact it can even be argued that without a strong counter-force in place, preventing economic influence on government, Capitalism will naturally result in fascism. So long as money talks, those with money will control government, and unfettered Capitalism by it's design inevitably concentrates wealth into the hands of the few. Economies of scale allow for no other outcome.

Communism though, explicitly requires that the means of production be controlled by the workers. That makes it inherently an antithesis to fascism. That it has always failed at scale is not a testament to it's inherent flaws, but to the fact that we do not yet have the necessary precursor social technologies necessary to give it a chance to make it work - such as a method for robust, corruption-resistant democracy so that the people can actually control the government that controls the means of production.

Or perhaps it's simply that nobody has ever seriously attempted to implement communism at all, preferring instead to use it's egalitarian ideal to cloak the fact that they're seizing wealth and power only for themselves. After all there are many ways communism could be implemented without requiring central government control of production, and yet somehow the only methods that have ever been "attempted" are those centrally-controlled approaches that concentrate enormous economic power into the hands of a small cadre of insiders.

Re:Capitalism is killing everyone and everything

[Anonymous Coward]

because some people cannot be satisfied at any cost.

So you do what they do in the Star Trek universe. You pile them all into a space ship and shoot them off into space.

Pretty much.
TOS in particular makes a lot more sense if you assume that Starfleet is trying to get rid of the crew of the Enterprise (and her sister ships) because having people like that (driven men and women of action) back home is mussing up their communist utopia, so the put them ina starship and ship them off to meet the salt monster or Apollo and hope nature will take it's course.

Re:Capitalism is killing everyone and everything

[outlander]

Marketable skills are a good thing, certainly, but the argument you're making fails to account for the increasing capabilities of automation.
The ability to automate a job derives from the degree to which it is possible to map out job tasks in a clear pattern.....
In a Slashdot-friendly area, consider devops - it used to take a lot more *nix engineers to manage large installations than it does now. A few devops engineers now can manage tens or hundreds of thousands of servers using mcollective, puppet, chef, ansible, salt, et cetera. So that reduces demand for traditional SA except in corner-cases where a particular configuration needs to be debugged at a level deeper than the DevOps staff can do. Those are marketable skills which are being undermined by automation.....and they are not low-skill jobs.

We know that low-skill jobs are going to be automated - truck driving, package handling, much fast-food restaurant work, assembly work, et cetera. This is going to accelerate the reduction in demand for the average low-skill worker well beyond the labor-arbitrage-based outsourcing that they've suffered to date. The jobs will not be going elsewhere; they'll just go away. This is the logical end result of business - they want their labor expenses to be zero, or as close to zero as possible (hence the continued presence of slavery throughout the world, including the US), and if there's a way to replace a labor expense with a capital expense - a robot or automation system - business will automatically do that. Why? Because they're incentivized to - capital assets do cost money, but they depreciate and provide tax advantages and generally don't involve litigation, unless the business runs into a dispute with a vendor, which is way less risky than any labor-related litigation.

The net end goal is the reduction of jobs to as few as possible to enable the maximization of profit for business entities. This will tend to concentrate the wealth among the owners and the relatively few workers whose jobs can not be automated, which will be a fairly small subset of the population. The rest will be left to fend for themselves in an economic system where a lack of long-term employment is equivalent to extreme privation, loss of material goods, housing, access to capital, access to health care, et cetera.

There's already a lot of evidence to show what happens when the jobs go - look at the formerly industrial northeast and midwest, where plant closings have plunged communities into abject poverty overnight, killing property values, driving up foreclosures, despair, and poor behavioral choices - not least of which is blaming undocumented immigrants rather than the executives who made the decision to engage in labor arbitrage.

TL;DR: If your job can be automated, no amount of marketable skills will remain marketable. And that includes you, most SAs, unless you're lucky enough to get a senior devops position. So maybe we should consider a strong social safety net to deal with the inevitable fallout from automation rather than suffering through the chaos that it will cause....

Re:Capitalism is killing everyone and everything

[tomhath]

It pains me to say it, but we somehow need to get money into the hands of the idiots.

That is exactly the point of low interest rates - to make money cheaper so people spend more of it to buy real estate, cars, clothes, whatever.

And don't forget that Obama spent most of his administration injecting about a trillion dollars per year into the economy through printing money - sorry - quantitative easing.

Re:Capitalism is killing everyone and everything

[JesseMcDonald]

After all there are many ways communism could be implemented without requiring central government control of production, and yet somehow the only methods that have ever been "attempted" are those centrally-controlled approaches that concentrate enormous economic power into the hands of a small cadre of insiders.

Other approaches have been tried, such as communes. The problem with communism is that it simply doesn't scale. Sure, it can work well enough in small, close-knit groups where members' goals are more-or-less aligned, but the larger the group the more disagreement there inevitably is over how the shared resources should be used. Beyond a certain size governing by consensus becomes impractical and you can either take the command-economy route, with increasingly concentrated decision-making authority, or divide the resources up among the members of the group and transition to a market economy.

Re:Capitalism is killing everyone and everything

[Anonymous Coward]

You have no idea what you are talking about. I could argue on a point-by-point basis, but what's even the point when you lack a fundamental understanding? I will say, please post less and lurk more on this subject.

Re:Capitalism is killing everyone and everything

[jeff4747]

there are those who will not be satisfied with what they have no matter how much they have, or what they desire is a reflection of what their peers have and want to have more than they do.

You solve that by getting those individuals the mental health care they need.

Currently, we revere them instead.

Re:Capitalism is killing everyone and everything

[xession]

We need way, way more money on the demand side.

Tell that to the 1% and you'll probably be shot down as a socialist.

One trend that I like that seems to be occurring with stupid people is that while many of them tend to vote against their own best interests (IE Trump and most Republicans in general), fewer are likely to vote in future elections because they tend to be the people too consumed in other stupid shit any more. So there may still be hope for this country.

Re:Capitalism is killing everyone and everything

[Immerman]

>Beyond a certain size governing by consensus becomes impractical
Agreed, and that is why democracy is failing around the world - we haven't yet developed the social technologies necessary to make it practical. ("Democracies" are thriving, but by and large the people they claim to represent have little meaningful voice in them). But by the same token, any advancement for democracy is likely an advancement for communism as well, so the philosophies have a great deal of shared interest at this point in time.

"Pure" communism does indeed seem completely out of reach for now, but various hybrid approaches could be tried. A couple ideas off the cuff -

Compartmentalization could offer a partial solution - for example each factory, farm, etc. could function as a worker-owned commune. Obviously you'd still need some sort of external system to allocate resources between factories, build new ones, etc., but you'd be starting from actual communist values. Even if the communes themselves engaged in inter-commune capitalism or "socialism", you'd have a system in place to largely prevent the heavily imbalanced accumulation of wealth among the populace. And not incidentally, thousands of communes all working out new ways to achieve consensus more efficiently, some of which would scale better than others and see more widespread adoption. Additional tiers of "communes" might also be shown effective - a single factory is small enough that the workers can likely hold representatives to heel reasonably well, and those representatives could then represent their employees at the district level.

Or a completely different approach - leave capitalism in place for resource allocation, but not wealth distribution. E.g. everyone gets an "allowance" that they can spend as they see fit, but excess wealth accumulation is strongly discouraged. Even without allowances, a sufficiently aggressive wealth tax beyond some "acceptable" level of wealth might do the job. (The median perhaps? If you have more wealth than most, society gradually reclaims the excess?) Instead of tackling Capitalism directly, you tackle the problems it creates, (hopefully) reducing it to a convenient tool rather than a governing social principle. With nobody substantially wealthier than anyone else, ownership of all resources will necessarily be distributed relatively evenly amongst the population, achieving one of the major goals of communism without fundamentally altering the day-to-day details of the economy.

Of course such "allowance" based systems may have a freeloader problem, but there are many ways to address that, such as performance-based allowance scaling - everybody gets some minimum baseline, which scales up to the maximum allocation depending on how well your colleagues rate your job performance, and/or how disabled the "labor fitness board" ranks you. Treat education as a job as well, with similarly performance-based compensation, and you encourage everyone capable to acquire the skills they need to work the job they would most like to have. If some necessary jobs see a labor shortage due to undesirability, then there's incentive to alter them to make them more desirable (perhaps sewer maintenance staff only have to work 3/4 time and have jacuzzis in the office?)

As it is though, most of the capitalist world *strongly* favors the wealthy, exacerbating the problems rather than mitigating them. One obvious example: capital gains are almost universally taxed at a much lower rate than salaries: in essence, you pay a much higher tax rate if you work for your income than if you get it by just leveraging accumulated wealth.

Re:Capitalism is killing everyone and everything

[Anonymous Coward]

The exact same argument can be made about capitalism.

Re:Capitalism is killing everyone and everything

[painandgreed]

That was one of the few significant flaws that came out in Roddenberry-controlled Star Trek, it's not really possible to meet the needs, wants, and desires of everyone because some people cannot be satisfied at any cost.

Well, the thing with Star Trek as well as other post scarcity civs like the Culture, is that they say that people get all their needs wants and desires met, they don't mean the ones people decide for themselves, but rather what society determine are reasonable. Furthermore, although there is no money, there is usually a system of getting more than somebody else by doing more than that somebody else. In the Culture stories this was pointed out by many people, but most just didn't care. Star Trek it was baked into the mores of their society that people would contribute to society as a whole. Anybody who wants to be lazy would be looked at as being mentally disturbed or at least abnormal, like somebody today who wanted to be poor and destitute. It wasn't that they were capable of satifying everybody, but rather they could satisfy the needs, wants, and desires of most people. The few that aren't but aren't willing to meet societies standards to get what they want are still seen as deviants, but they are sufficiently few to ignore except by those not-police and judges who are calling themselves security and councilors.

Re:Capitalism is killing everyone and everything

[Opportunist]

That does not solve any problems, though. Buying real estate is not consumption. And try, just TRY, to get a loan for anything that could be considered consumption. You won't get one.

We don't need money in the economy, we need money in the people. The poorer and worse educated, the better. Poor, dumb people spend money on shiny things and crap. That's exactly what our economy needs. People spending money on junk that doesn't survive the night and needs to be replaced the next morning.

I'm not kidding.

Re:Capitalism is killing everyone and everything

[Opportunist]

Well then, supply-side Jesus, enlighten us.

Re:Capitalism is killing everyone and everything

[Opportunist]

Take a look at those "socialist" countries in Europe that do exactly that (i.e. stuffing money into the poor to keep them quiet) and tell me they're worse off than the US.

sooooo

[Osgeld]

newspapers are now art?

Re:sooooo

[bistromath007]

Almost all works of fiction are.

Re:sooooo

[tomhath]

NYT is talking up the idea of subscribing to content, hoping against hope that people will subscribe to what used to be a good newspaper.

Re:sooooo

[Osgeld]

well played

Re:sooooo

[aicrules]

And the reported numbers of digital subscriptions is actually a huge positive for NYT. They may have actually turned the corner on this internet thing.

Define Old?

[wardrich86]

I think it's done a pretty good job of boosting awareness of the most glorious form of art - ANSI (and ASCII). That's pretty old by tech terms.

Re:Define Old?

[TWX]

Ah, I still remember my ANSI animation signature from my BBSer days. Looked great at 9600 baud but those on 2400 baud complained about it.

Re:Define Old?

[Dunbal]

I use 300 baud you insensitive clod and your screen full of crappy graphics takes me 5 mins to download!

Re:Define Old?

[TWX]

*grin*

A friend of mine figured out how to sign-up for Renegade boards by manually typing the ANSI escape sequences for color, so his username itself on the boards was in color. He couldn't receive mail because no one could manage to type his actual username, but he was able to be really fancy in teleconference.

Re:Define Old?

[Dunbal]

Ahh yes, ANSI, VT52 and VT100 escape codes. The memories... sometimes I just play around with telnet for fun.

The landscape has always been in-shift

[TWX]

If the Internet is forcing a change it's only because it's one of the more recent agents of change in a long line of changes. Music at one point was by-ear and with live performance. Then it was by notation in the form of sheet music requiring someone to actually play it themselves to enjoy it. Then it was fragile media, then radio, then more durable media, then copyable media, and finally electronic media. Funny thing is, it's still by-ear, in-notation, on the radio, on durable media, on copyable media, in addition to being electronic, and each variation has had its problems with theft (originally stealing ideas, then copying sheet music without paying, etc) so while changing it's not like the old forms are discarded.

The Internet allows for a global audience, but it does not necessarily mean that the global audience will appear, nor does it mean that everyone will value the work the same.

Re:The landscape has always been in-shift

[Anonymous Coward]

If anything music has a wider audience with the "Internet." The music mafia has been in decline but the artists are thriving and previous generations of music are easily accessible and discovered by new audiences now. For all of the mainstream music groups promoted via traditional means, there are thousands of lesser known musicians, singers, songwriters, and performers gaining exposure on a global scale. Better to buy direct from the artist than pay a middle man who skims the majority for themselves.

Re:The landscape has always been in-shift

[TWX]

That's been one of my chief complaints about the modern recording labels, they basically keep almost everything and even tend to seek compensation from artists they sign if the sales do not make-up for the initial money they paid the artist to make the album in the first place.

I understand how making a modern album can be expensive, given the amount of post-production that seems to be required, but given that the label is choosy about whom they sign in the first place it seems rather unfair that they are in a position to penalize those acts they sign if the returns that the label expects aren't realized.

The article suggests "and", not "or".

[Frobnicator]

Yes, some of them are hurt, many will be reduced, a few will be eliminated. But at the same time, it enables many more new markets, it creates new avenues for culture to grow, it opens options that have never existed.

The article talks about death of newspapers (probably because they are the New York Times) and it is obvious the selling of printed paper articles has plummeted, yet more people than ever before are reading news stories. The article talks of the fall of independent bookstores, yet there are new bastions online that help people discover, trade, and publish their writings. The article talks about music, and how the music industry has been fighting change with all they've got, yet new genres continue to appear and new talent has been popping up everywhere for years.

Any gardener can tell you: a good pruning stimulates rapid growth. It is certainly painful for those who were pruned, those whose business models need to be modified or have become completely invalidated, but the end result of the change is generally something better than before. Collectively as humanity we can create quite a lot.

Re:The article suggests "and", not "or".

[Anonymous Coward]

The biggest danger, I think, is that people can't accurately assess the quality of what they are getting when everyone can get in on the game. If you have enough friends, you can play the social media algorithms and become popular; then the old logic of what is popular must be good, so it takes off.

For things like music and art, it just means the trash becomes the most popular; that's been true for a while in many senses, and that's not terrible since society doesn't need good movies to survive and function.

Where it matters a lot is the news. We see all this "fake news" that gets spread around. The people writing this? Low talent people who may or may not even have a journalism degree. But even if they do, their goal is to be popular and generate clicks and ad revenue. The people publishing the content have no incentive to verify whether it's true or well-written because if it's not, they just take it down and say "Sorry, yo." And the writer...he doesn't have to worry about a reputation either because his entire worth is based on traffic, not journalistic integrity. Someone else will pick him up. He's not limited to a handful of newspapers that control the market; publish false things in your stuff in the NY Times and the LA Times will find out who you are and not hire you. But now, you can get tossed out of some reputable website and some start-up will take you simply because they want and need traffic at any cost.

This is dangerous because normal people jump to conclusions, write things that are based on speculation, etc. That's how fake news spreads. People aren't sitting in the back room deliberately making up crap. They get a hint or two and embellish the details a bit. Someone else gets a hold of it and adds more to it and...well, we've all played the classroom game "Telephone" before. Before you know it, we have a story that is more fabrication than fact and it's traceable and attributable to absolutely no one. Quite literally, no one is lying or making stuff up--it's a collective act of negligence.

You Can't Kill Culture

[bistromath007]

The music industry is defunct. Music flourishes. Newspapers are irrelevant, but awareness and engagement with current events is so high it's probably deeply unhealthy.

Media as a business is effectively on hiatus while society sorts out how to monetize things and what problems those monetization schemes cause. Media itself is in a golden age.

Re:You Can't Kill Culture

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh my god, new music is so dead. It's really sad to see what's happened. People have always complained, but it feels like the last big trend was reggaeton. Increasingly, it's just old stuff, often literally the same music. And interest in public events/life has certainly shifted towards a more tabloid format, with people more interested in news that is attention grabbing and held to little standards of truth - much less than a NY Times article, which may not have been perfect but was certainly not 60% fake.

Re:You Can't Kill Culture

[Anonymous Coward]

No, _commercial_ music is dead. It was 95% crap before Napster, and now it is 100% crap.
There is lots and lots and LOTS of great, high-quality music out there, but you absolutely will not find it on any commercial radio or streaming service because good music is the direct enemy of these services which cater to mediocrity and the boring masses.

Re:You Can't Kill Culture

[KozmoStevnNaut]

New music is dead?

I'm sorry, I can't hear you for the hordes of awesome metal releases I get introduced to, every single month.

Betteridge

[Anonymous Coward]

... probably not.

you pay for TV until you discover Kodi

[Anonymous Coward]

and then you hit yourself over the head and wonder why you paid for crap all this time. And then lawyers get involved, and start sending threatening letters? Didn't that happen a decade ago?

But then again I come from a time when you could log in on an FTP server anonymously using your email address and download as much as desire!

I think the bigger question is, if you have access for FREE to EVERYTHING (movies, music, books, etc), what do you watch/listen/read? Is there anything that really stands out, or is it all just noise?

A Lottery

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that some people pay for online content but in general, people are very selective on what they decide to pay for. That doesn't mean they steal/pirate everything; they just choose not to bother. The consequence is that while some IP keeps high value--people are paying to watch Star Wars in droves, for instance--the average piece is worth absolutely nothing.

This means that if you're a new musician, a new artist, a new photographer....you're very unlikely to hit it big enough to support yourself. The days of being able to make enough to earn a living for the typical artist is gone. Why? Because the logic of "Oh, I can get it online later and prefer digital delivery anyway" is in most people's minds. Example: a local musician sells her CDs at her concert. In the past, that was the best place to buy her music because it was likely the only way to get it; sure, you could scour local record stores and drive all over town, but that's too much effort. The concert goer would think "I like her music and if I don't get it NOW, I won't be able to get it." The concert goer now thinks "I like her music but I can just get it on iTunes tomorrow." At that moment, they do intend to execute that promise but then forget or get busy and never end up making the purchase.

Furthermore, so many artists give away their work for nothing in the hopes that it will bring internet fame and internet fame will bring prosperity. Truth is that most of the customers won't pay for anything because there's someone just down the street who's giving away a product of similar (or perceived to be similar) quality for nothing. Fame is worth really really little. It means you need to be REALLY REALLY good to have a chance to make it, whereas in the past you could simply be very good. Sure, you can get a few patrons and make a little bit of cash but it will pretty much only be at hobby level for all but the luckiest, who happen to get noticed by the right people.

The answer is ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes

Not remembered well.

[sims 2]

For many years archive.org has operated in the background to save pages for the future but now many sites are choosing to opt out.

Bottom half flooded with choice

[Tablizer]

The change in art & music is not just about unauthorized file copying, but also about more choice. Content from amateurs and tinkerers is much easier to access than before, giving people cheaper and free choices.

I myself have put my own amateur music online for people to (hopefully) enjoy without charge. And cat videos etc. compete with professionally produced content. (I don't make cat vids.) This cats into, I mean cuts into revenue options for those struggling to make a living on art, entertainment, and music. If so many entertain for free, why pay?

The most popular acts are still doing well, in part because the fad mechanism makes those "in-style" a scarce resource. Yet another reason the rich get richer while the rest stagnate.

Also, "physical" artists are still doing fairly well, but the Internet also makes it easier to find and get physical art from all over the world, creating a problem similar to business labor outsourcing in higher-wage countries.

If you want to make a living in music, become a bar band. So far they haven't been able to mass outsource those. However, there's a lot of ageism in that biz, especially for females. You don't see many 50 year olds playing in bar bands, with the possible exception of very rural country bars.

Re:Bottom half flooded with choice

[greythax]

What's old is new again. The most exciting "innovation" the internet has brought to music, for me, has been the resurgence of patronage. Have an old band that you loved which faded into obscurity 20 years ago, who you wish would put out JUST ONE MORE ALBUM? With the advent of patreon and kickstarter, you can help them put out a new album just by donating. Hey, it was good enough for Mozart!

Art? No. Industries? Definitely.

[Opportunist]

Last time I checked the RIAA isn't art. Neither is a newspaper.

They may transport art, and they are replaced by a new medium that does it better.

I fail to see the story here.

Re:Art? No. Industries? Definitely.

[UnknownSoldier]

Concur 100%!

The OP is confusing the middleman with the content creators -- I guess they _completely_ missed the memo in back 2000 when Courtney Love called the RIAA is nothing more then a bunch of thieves

Today I want to talk about piracy and music. What is piracy? Piracy is the act of stealing an artist's work without any intention of paying for it.

I'm not talking about Napster-type software.

I'm talking about major label recording contracts.

She also made a letter to Recording Artists

Dear Fellow Recording Artists,

I'm writing to ask you to join the chorus of recording artists who want us all to get a fair deal from the record companies. R.E.M., the Dixie Chicks, U2, Alanis Morrissette, Bush, Prince and Q-Tip have called me with their support and we need your participation as well.

There are 3 basic facts to all recording artists should know:

1. No one has ever represented the rights and interests of recording artists AS A GROUP in negotiations with record companies.

2. Recording artists don't have access to quality health care and pension plans like the ones made available to actors and athletes through their unions.

3. Recording artists are paid royalties that represent a tiny fraction of the money their work earns.

Apparently, the OP also missed the memo in 2001 when Courtney Love, Don Henly, LeAnn Rimes Testified on Artist's Rights

The RIAA is so out-of-touch with artists that they didn't realize Trent Reznor intentionally 'leaked' his Year Zero album in 2007.

The old medium is dying because the new medium has driven the cost of content creation down to almost zero. And zero fucks were given.

The consumer's "problem" is that they are drowning in mediocrity -- a first world problem -- along with MORE choices. /sarcasm Such a "problem."

The only ones complaining are those still trying to figure out how to monetize it because the internet is cutting out the price-gouging of the middleman.

--
Greed destroys every "industry."

Hope they voted

[Anonymous Coward]

45 will do more art killing than the Internet these next few years.

Re:Hope they voted

[Anonymous Coward]

45 will do more art killing than the Internet these next few years.

#45, took me a minute but I got it, nice +1

Re:Hope they voted

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, he actually was originally interested in producing broadway shows and did in fact produce one, which was a flop. Maybe if it had gone well, we wouldn't be here.

Re:Hope they voted

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm, a self-absorbed sociopath who wanted to be an artist but ended up being leader of a country instead... where have I heard that before?

Re:Hope they voted

[rogoshen1]

and that's why art schools do not turn anyone away.

the new age

[puddingebola]

"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." It is Shiva, both creator and destroyer. Indie music is getting flattened, and the mass consumption of streaming insures only the most banal music makes money. But the internet creates new possibilities for artists also. Some artists have adapted better than others, and new communities of musicians have been created.

Re:the new age

[Anonymous Coward]

I currently hand make electric guitars. I would not have been able to figure out many of the details without Youtube. In addition buying special tools for it and materials is actually possible with the internet now.

I think there are many out there that can make types of art that they just couldn't figure out how to before. The number of word working video instructions online is great, and I'm sure a lot of people learn a lot watching them.

So I think ability to create art has INCREASED greatly from the internet.

Re:the new age

[avandesande]

The converse to that is that since the barrier to entry is so low now in most things is that you will get little or nothing trying to sell your craft unless you are very good, lucky or both.

Re:the new age

[moeinvt]

What gives you the idea than indie music is getting "flattened" by the Internet? That seems counter-intuitive. Don't streaming and downloading help to level the playing field because production and distribution costs are so much lower? Wasn't it the old model of distribution via physical media that severely disadvantaged indie music and assured us an ongoing supply of popular garbage?

A few searches on Indie music market share seem to indicate that it's thriving under the streaming model. e.g.

http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot...

"as popularity of streaming services continues to increase, major labels have increasingly less access to defining and funneling music discovery. The tipping of the scales has resulted in more exposure for indie artists."

Re:the new age

[Anonymous Coward]

...or, of course, have a good marketing department.

Re:the new age

[enjar]

Indie shows I've attended sell out fast nowadays. If I don't get tickets quick they are often gone in hours. These aren't for "big" acts, either -- we are talking club shows or small theaters/arenas holding up to say 1000 people tops. Not stadium or arena shows by any means, you can see the musicians sweat from the bad seats and see facial expressions and the whites of their eyes with modestly better seats / showing up a little early.

In contrast to today, I spent my formative years in the middle of the US with my only access to entertainment being

1) television with rabbit ears, then basic cable. MTV was a Big Thing.
2) whatever was on the radio. We didn't live anywhere with a cool college radio station, either. So top 40 drek. It was equally drek back then.
3) local record stores. Most were chains, one was independent. The independent was a 30 minute drive each way.

On visits to my grandmother's house it was in range of a cool college station where they played what nowadays might be called "Classic Alternative" or "Fisrt Wave" -- Violent Femmes, Depeche Mode, New Order, The Cure, Echo and the Bunnymen, Midnight Oil, etc. I'd stay up really late listening to whatever they played because it was so different and so much better than the regular stuff. Some of those bands, of course, broke into Top 40 eventually, one way or another. I was also a metal and punk fan, but good luck hearing Metallica, Megadeth, Iron Maiden, Dead Kennedys or the Ramones on the radio in those days. Tipper Gore was doing her best to keep them away.

That left schlepping to the indie record store where they carried batter music than Target did. This involved begging and pleading with the parents to take me since it was well beyond walking distance and public transit wasn't really an option. Once I got my license it was better. But still I had to come up with twenty bucks to get something, and often it sucked. Twenty bucks wasn't exactly easy to come by.

Nowadays we have a Spotify Family account. For fifteen bucks I can dive deep on whatever the hell I want. I can spend the evening nerding out on seventies punk. I can listen to modern indie acts. My kids listen to anything and everything. My wife has her thing. Or I can find stuff on youtube, soundcloud, band camp or streaming radio.

I've been to more indie act shows lately than I ever had formerly -- the internet lets me track the acts, sends me a notifier when they are coming to my city, and I can then make arrangements to see the shows I want to see. No way in hell anything like that existed pre-Internet, especially for kids growing up in the center of the US where the Bible thumpers would make modest pledges to to censor TV and radio, ban questionable books, and contribute to many other Godly services. Acts that got big enough (e.g. Metallica) could come to a decent sized venue because they had enough draw, although people were happy to show up to remind me my soul was at risk from the devil music. Nowadays a up and coming band can get 10-100K Twitter followers and let everyone of them know when they have tour dates. There's nowhere near the hubub about trying to censor albums anymore, either -- not like when the PMRC was a thing.

Re:the new age

[Anonymous Coward]

You can also Google "Are the Jews responsible for 9/11"? and find out that yes, indeed, it is true. If you're familiar with the scene, there is much less indie music being made, and the new styles/genres/sub-genres come out much slower than before.

Re:the new age

[puddingebola]

The criticism has been made that the major beneficiaries from this new method of music consumption are the major record labels, not the artists. Indie artists with a limited number of recordings may indeed benefit from exposure through new streaming services, but the amount of money they stand to make is much less. David Byrne made an interesting point in a Rolling Stone article: "Perhaps we might stop for a moment and consider the effect these services and this technology will have, before 'selling off' all our cultural assets the way the big record companies did," he writes. "Musicians might, for now, challenge the major labels and get a fairer deal than 15 percent of a pittance, but it seems to me that the whole model is unsustainable as a means of supporting creative work of any kind. Not just music." He finishes with a bleak warning. "What's at stake is not so much the survival of artists like me, but that of emerging artists and those who have only a few records under their belts," Byrne writes. "Without new artists coming up, our future as a musical culture looks grim."

Re:the new age

[KozmoStevnNaut]

The task of marketing is more on the musicians now. You have to get out there, play small venues, interact with blogs and your fans on social media.

I know a small local death metal band, though one of my friends. They started in late 2015, and have played at least 30 concerts in 2016, in Denmark alone. No big tours, just whichever venues they could get in touch with. They're out there, working their asses off, interacting with people, getting their name out there.

And now they've been booked for Roskilde Festival and Copenhell (biggest metal festival in the country) this summer. All based on one EP and a hardcore touring schedule. If they can keep up the momentum, they're destined for success.

Re:the new age

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Bullshit.

There are tons of indie bands getting exposure, just check Bandcamp.

Re:the new age

[KozmoStevnNaut]

I think the main issue is that people think you can simply put out a popular album, and then sit back and live off the royalties. That only works when the distribution channels are tightly controlled. And it mostly pads the pockets of the big record labels, not the musicians.

Want to get exposure and make money? Get out there and play some damn shows! Interact with your fans, sell merchandise, make connections!

If you want to be a studio-only musician, that's fine. But don't expect to get rich doing it.

We're also seeing a new wave of bands (and other artists) turning to Patreon and similar setups. I know some people simply write it off as pure greed, but if you look at it like a variable-payment fanclub, it makes a lot of sense. And all of the money goes directly to the artists, the way it should be.

You can get a bigger audience but they don't pay

[Anonymous Coward]

nomsg

Killing

[Anonymous Coward]

next question?

Great up till it isn't ......

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the greatest pleasures in spelunking through cultures is the discovery of the new. With the mixing chamber that is the internet, the flashes of new art techniques/movements come and go in the blink of an eye, washed away by the capriciousness of the average net user. Will creators have enough attention to spare time and effort before a movement gains traction?

It could take a while before we get another warhol. Maybe zaha hadid with her organic architecture.

More JUNK flourishing

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, you can get more articles (health and political commentary especially) than before as well as more music, but all I am seeing is a glut of amateur level crap.

Blogs with no actual content except "opinion." Yeah, that's valuable.
Music that is Youtube videos of some highschooler playing a cover song in his bedroom on a guitar or plonking some electronic bloops on his laptop.

The Internet has lowered to the barrier to getting stuff out to an audience, but it hasn't increased the talent level of the producers. Net result: easier to find more JUNK. Enjoy your cat videos.

Re:More JUNK flourishing

[s1d3track3D]

The Internet has lowered to the barrier to getting stuff out to an audience, but it hasn't increased the talent level of the producers. Net result: easier to find more JUNK. Enjoy your cat videos.

If your looking for junk you will find it. I come across so much genuine and unknown talent online that I really scratch my head when I hear the radio and what is being fed to consumers. I've finally realized that success is majority marketing/publicity with a dash of talent, not the other way around.

Re: More JUNK flourishing

[bistromath007]

Yeah, if you haven't found any good musicians on YouTube, you aren't trying. I don't try and I still find some good stuff. The assertion regarding the quality of "reporting" is certainly fair, but the niche of people who sincerely want relevant facts more than bias confirmation is small enough to be economically insignificant.

Re:More JUNK flourishing

[Anonymous Coward]

I've finally realized that success is majority marketing/publicity with a dash of talent, not the other way around.

When I was playing in local bands, I had a buddy who used to like to say that your chances of mainstream success were inversely proportional to your talent level.

That was 30 years ago. The more things change...

Re: More JUNK flourishing

[Anonymous Coward]

You guys are missing my point: for every real talent you find randomly on the internet, you have to wade past 100 producers of JUNK.

It's not easy to find the good stuff given the low signal-to-noise ratio, hence my statement that the internet has made it easier to find a ton of crap. Sure, it is *possible* to find something of quality if you put the effort into it, but it is not the main outcome. I do not see a "renaissance" here, just a handful of pearls in a landfill.

Re: More JUNK flourishing

[bistromath007]

I can't remember the last time I received a music recommendation that wasn't any good at all. Have you considered that maybe you just don't like music very much? Or maybe you need some new genres?

YouTube is full to the brim with great metal and chiptunes. Not only can I find lots of good new stuff, I have the entire history of classics to directly compare it to. Shitty music can't survive in this environment.

Re:More JUNK flourishing

[greythax]

I haven't noticed the ratio of junk to awesome being any worse than what I hear on the radio. If you haven't found good indie music on youtube, you haven't looked very hard. Since I am an old fart, and miss the 80s, I have been ecstatic to see the synthwave subculture finding an audience, and inspiring new bands, Some of which are really good . This is something that would have never happened under the old distribution system.

I, for one, welcome the chances of sub cultures to flourish with massive connectivity, even if it did give us Bronies.

Re:More JUNK flourishing

[thegarbz]

People don't line up hitting refresh constantly for marketted junk. I may not like a lot of modern music, you may not either, but to call it junk that is surviving only through marketing is doing it a disservice. Just because it's by formula doesn't mean that a crapload of consumers don't actually like it. Heck that's why the formula exists in the first place.

What it is, is mediated. Success in the industry depends on impressing the mediator. The mediator can then get it out to the consumers or can let it die.

Re: More JUNK flourishing

[Flozzin]

Have you considered that maybe you like everything that has a melody to it and have no real idea what good or bad music is? Not defending anon's post. But if you are going to go that route in this debate...

Re:More JUNK flourishing

[Flozzin]

If you haven't found good indie music on youtube, you haven't looked very hard.

Isn't that his point though? That you have to look? He complains about a poor signal/noise ratio and you tell him to spend more time looking. Personally what has worked for me is setting up pandora with a few bands/songs I like and let it play.

Re: More JUNK flourishing

[bistromath007]

I can tell you exactly what bad music is: basically anything produced from 1995 to 2005. Especially "metal" that got mainstream airtime.

Re: More JUNK flourishing

[KozmoStevnNaut]

If he likes it, it's good. Doesn't have to be anymore complicated than that.

Optimism gave you Chernobyl and

[AutodidactLabrat]

TMI and Titanic and Fukushima-dai-ichi.
Optimists...these "new voices" won't get paid.
They will go out of business as well.
Result?
The 0.01% already own 80% of the eyes in "news", which is why you fell for the WMD lie
What other catastrophes await those who prefer subsidized "news" like Faux and Newsmucks and Sludge?

Sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

The "new" culture demands low attention span from the so-called artists, no attention span from their audience. The "creators" better be loud and dress in some provocative (not necessarily sexual) way, in order to be noticed.

Internet is good

[Confused]

In summary, the internet is good for most art forms and reinvigorating it.

Sure, the big companies making their profit from having a choke-hold on the distribution of art are suffering, but they had it coming. They were complacent and exploiting customers and artists alike.

Also with the internet a floodgate has been opened and works of all quality - mostly total junk - has inundated the world. Curating the work isn't yet where it needs to be to filter out all the crap, but there are definitively improvements made in that area.

Hand in hand with the previous points it becomes for artists more difficult to earn a living with traditional methods and they need to find alternatives. But it always was hard for artists to make a living, so that's just the next iteration of an very old story.

From what I see, traditional art has seen a resurgence because of the internet, but making ends meet as an artist is still tough.

Art is everywhere.

[Anonymous Coward]

Always has been.

Only thing that's changed is any mediocre work can be thrown in front of the masses. No longer is the sentinel of marketing the sole proprietor of at.

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[account_deleted]

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Piracy

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet, so many trolls on here will fight for the death for the right to pirate content.

Art changed....

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. Art ideas propagate quite fast now.
I am a face and body painter, and the fads for these are really fast. And face painting follows Disney and marvel ( kids face paintngs ) in a big way.
Body painting not so much, but the trend is there. ( 3D, graffiti style, cosplay, SI swimsuit edition ).
I do agree about sculpting and 3D printing ( CNC should be in this also, but is a bit slow in getting started ).
Tech is also affecting watercolors, oils, and acrylic painting... and the airbrush - wow!
Digital art is now a field in its own right...

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[account_deleted]

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

No. But it destroys old cultural hegemonies.

[Qbertino]

What the internet and the modern world definitely do is level the playing field. Big time. Basically everybody can have professional tools at their hand. For free.
You can grap a guitar and spend the next three years flat, 8 hours a day, surfing youtube and learning how to play it and become an expert without ever setting foot into a classic music school.

Same goes for digital fine art. There is an abundance of digital painters out there that are at the level of the grand masters of old and perhaps even beyond. Because they have an abundance of paint and canvas. And many of them are still students and do art in their spare time.

You can go online and find videos of dancers no one has ever heard of and yet they belong to the best in the world because they've spend the last 4 years practicing in their parents garage in their spare time.

You find films that would've cashed an arthouse award on the spot 30 years ago but today barely get a few thousand views - because equipment is basically free and the entire world is making films.

What the internet does is take away the cultural hegemony of the academic field. It's not that the academic field is yelled at it's more like it's simply ignored and completely steamrolled without academic smart-alecs ever knowing what hit them. A university professor of music that merely focuses on classic and maybe two pieces of John Cage today would either have to admit that he doesn't really know that much about the world of music world today or risk being called out as being silly, stupid and ignorant. Old-school media critics know zilch about videogames and are so disconnected from what's actually happening they couldn't even form a useful opinion - allthough they sometimes do try.

An academic definition of science-fiction literarture I found in a school book two years ago is so stupid, you wouldn't even believe it.

Another very good example of this is the demo scene. They've been doing the worlds best multimedia artpieces for decades but are basically completely ignored by the academic world. Yet no one in their right mind would say that what the demoscene does does not constitute fine art in its highest form.

Bottom line:
Art is doing great. Better than ever. The concept of what constitutes 'real' art and who gets to decide about it gets shattered to bits and pieces every day though. And that is a good thing.

so...

[camazotz]

Missing from this thread are actual artists and their experiences. I know many artists, including family, who equate the bottom dropping out of their market for physical art media with the arrival of the internet. Some have managed to transition online to continue to make some sort of money, but all of the artists I know agree that the internet killed the art economy in a special way....the work, no mater how much time, effort, skill and craftsmanship was needed, became badly devalued non coincidentally with the rise of the internet. I don't know if this is an accurate assessment (one could pin it on economic issues and a lack of cash to spend on nonessential art pieces....or a decline in housing ownership, meaning a decline in the number of potential art buyers who actually have space to represent their desired pieces) but the art industry is definitely in a death spiral and most artists are now people who do art when they aren't trying to juggle a day job.

shows you how bad it is

[Anonymous Coward]

when you can download almost anything, you realize how bad most "art" products are - music, fiction, etc

The New York Times is an undead zombie

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't listen to the New York Times for analysis of the future. They are already dead many times over as a newspaper and have no understanding of markets, yet Carlos Slim still finds NYT useful for pushing foreign anti-U.S. propaganda. The Left hijacked electronic broadcast tech very early on and used it to try to trick the world into globalism over the course of the 20th century, but that period is over and the jig is up. It's all blogs and local music shows now.

Look on the bright side

[Anonymous Coward]

Look on the bright side: at least reggaeton finally died.

OOMP! Chah doom pah OOMP!
Repeat x1,000

Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

That was a very interesting way to word the question.

In short, it's not the "Internet" that is the problem, it's the CENSORSHIP on the internet that is the problem.

The internet...

[Anonymous Coward]

...has changed media corporations from exploitative to hyperexploitative businesses. Apart from that and not having to go to an actual shop to buy copies of artists' work so they have to employ more than a handful of people, I can't see any real difference.

Paperbacks

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine kids hearing the Beatles Paperback Writer and asking what a "paperback" is.

Is the Internet Killing Old and New Art Forms...

[Trogre]

No, but copyright law is.

Ask Wix.com. They bought DeviantArt

[Anonymous Coward]

Wix.com is a web hosting company that bought DdviantArt. Supposedly, they're allowing Wix customers use DA graphics for site building.

As for the recent...

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of modern "art" did not need any help committing suicide.

See also: The Skills of Xanadu by Sturgeon (1956)

[Paul Fernhout]

It's a story about a world where people use technology to freely share skills -- including, when needed, the skill of achieving freedom.

Print: https://archive.org/details/Ga...
Audio performance: https://archive.org/details/pr...