The growing popularity of the “Bowie” bond — a security backed by royalties — may sound strange, but it’s nothing new. In treating songs like annuities, capitalists prove once again that nothing is too sacred, or silly, to be commodified.

The growing popularity of the “Bowie” bond — a security backed by royalties — may sound strange, but it’s nothing new. In treating songs like annuities, capitalists prove once again that nothing is too sacred, or silly, to be commodified.

  • B-TR3E@feddit.orgEnglish
    31·
    19 hours ago

    The music industry is dead. There is no music industry anymore. What once was the recording industry is now just a part of the finance industry. That’s why nothing new has been coming up in the (mainstream) music world and that’s why nothing but crap is on the movies. Why discover or produce anything new and risky when you can make good money selling and buing copyrights and bundling them into “finance product”? Why come up with new “products” for cinema when you have an ongoing and predictable(!) stream of profit from the 957th shitty sequel of a well established franchise?

    • cecilkorik@lemmy.caEnglish
      12·
      14 hours ago

      They won’t stop there. AAA game developers and the awful productivity software giants like Adobe, Oracle and Microsoft themselves have already gotten everybody used to live service, cloud software, and subscription models where they have all the control and you’re just renting. They will destroy indie software and games next too, if we let them, Microsoft’s TPM requirement on Windows 11 is likely just the first step in putting up unbreakable walls around their garden, which they would build even faster if Linux weren’t providing real competition they can’t just buy to suppress.

    • SubArcticTundra@lemmy.mlEnglish
      33·
      15 hours ago

      I think the thing, at least with music, is that creating it nowadays is next to free (you just need a DAW), so it is very possible for the biggest bangers to be created by a hobbyist with some skill and free time. In a way it is better today than it was before because there is nothing financially stopping the biggest natural talents from raising to the top.

      • oeuf@slrpnk.netEnglish
        4·
        10 hours ago

        It’s tragic in a way that as soon as the technology made it possible for anyone to rise up, capitalism stepped in to smack us all back down.

        I might have created the best music in a generation but it will get smothered unless I can find a capitalist to invest in it heavily enough for it to get heard.

      • B-TR3E@feddit.orgEnglish
        1·
        15 hours ago

        I wonder why we’re listening to the same one song (and its’ twenty clones) on the radio over and over again. Day after day, year after year. And don’t even remind me to the christmas loop. That terror will start soon enough again.

          • ragas@lemmy.mlEnglish
            1·
            7 hours ago

            Depends. In my area we have some awesome radio providers, promoting local bands and ventures and unknown music from around the world.

          • B-TR3E@feddit.orgEnglish
            1·
            14 hours ago

            I’ve got plenty of altermatives. I just can’t always avoid exposition to radio emissions. A trip across half of Europe this month with the fucking car “entertainment” system not recognizing any of my thumb drives and USB-SSDs was experience enough to be reminded to all the songs I had hoped to never have to hear again.