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I find myself regularly revisiting this Cory Doctorow piece; Neither the devil you know nor the devil you don't. In it, Doctorow discusses how streaming service providers (Spotify, Apple, etc) are designed to be anti-artist because they are in bed with the copyright holders of a good majority of the music. It's not net new information but it is put forth in such a way that it's worth reading and re-reading. This really summarizes it well for me:
When you understand the business mechanics of Spotify, all the contradictions resolve themselves. It is simultaneously true that Spotify pays a very low per-stream rate, that it pays the Big Three labels gigantic sums every month, and that artists are grotesquely underpaid by this system.The piece is not entirely focused on streaming media; that's just the jumping off point. He goes on to discuss AI training, copyrights and how creative workers should be banding together to prevent exploitation. I'd file this one under essential reading.
There are many lessons to take from this little scam, but for me, the top takeaway here is that artists are the class enemies of both Big Tech and Big Content. The Napster Wars demanded that artists ally themselves with either the tech sector or the entertainment center, nominating one or the other to be their champion.
But for a creative worker, it doesn't matter who makes a meal out of you, tech or content – all that matters is that you're being devoured.
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