FBXL Social

We were talking about music sucking yesterday and this is relevant.

nitter.poast.org/revenant_MMXX/status/1788248024679919906#m

@sickburnbro It reminds me of when the government sued to stop the merger of these two huge publishing companies and in discovery they revealed that almost none of the new books they sell even come close to earning back the advance they pay the author and the only thing keeping the lights on are reprints of public domain and 30+ year old stuff.

@sickburnbro Some of that is only incidentally related to the drop in quality. The complaints about having to be a massive act to break even go back as far as I can remember as even giant acts like U2 or the Rolling Stones would have to go on tour if they wanted to actually make money. The albums and radio play were basically ads for the live act.

@EvilSandmich for them yes, but not the record label.

@sickburnbro The digital chokepoints for content are so tight now that if they're unable to exploit that for profit then that's on them.

Something I realized listening to music with my son is that high fidelity music has existed for about 80 years, so any new musician needs to compete with the greatest music produced by all of human civilization in 80 years.

What's easier at that point, especially given the fact they're going to keep getting a revenue drip from a lot of artists who have been dead longer than any of us have been alive? Finding the next Jimi Hendrix, or finding some dumb ho to mumble about her "wet ass pussy"?
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I recall it was some absurd number, like half of books struggled to get more than 12 sales. I got more than 12 sales, and I'm just some shitposter on the Internet!

@sj_zero @sickburnbro Yeah, it's not even hit-based economics like movies and video games it's them barely staying in business by printing the King James Bible and Huckleberry Finn over and over. 😂

On a lark I checked out who published the Mark Twain anthology I've got on my desk right now, and honestly I don't even recognise the parent company.

(I guess though the service they're providing isn't the book or even the printing, it's putting it together in a suitably pretentious package - and that isn't a criticism, that's the reason I bought it)

@caekislove @sj_zero what's interesting to note here is that they are also feeling the raw end of "content mindset" ... and I think what happens when there is too much content is things become bewildering and people just stick to what they know.