Musicians are suffering

"Musicians are suffering under this new economic model", a quote from this article on music ownership by Ted Gioia that sparked some thoughts.  This bear is old enough to remember the era that Gioia describes when big records with big graphics were collected as cult objects.

Had this once upon a time, but that pictured is not mine.

Like boiled frogs, we have gradually become accustomed to the present environment of convenient digital supremacy, but the facts Gioia cites are still shocking:  "Last year, more songs were streamed on any single day than were downloaded during the entire year."

And as that shift has occurred, all revenues now go to the platform (looking at you, YouTube) instead of the artist - not that the artist had a great share before.

Gioia is making a plea for the return of some kind of tangible cultural artifact that will accrue value and endure, and while that is a very sympathetic point of view, I cannot believe it can become true.

Perhaps out of nostalgia, Gioia omits much of the downside of the physical. People bought a lot of albums because they had to, if they wanted to choose their music at all.  People bought albums because they had to do that in order to find out what the other 9 songs a band was playing in addition to their hit single.  Often these albums were BAD, and the purchase was a cause for regret.  Yes, the arduous and costly exploration in search of good music generated a strong bond with the favorites that one discovered, but the process was onerous.

The limited supply of physical artifacts meant that people were locked into a limited set of choices from the big record companies, for the most part, except for those who took extreme measures to chase down their dreams.

And, let's not forget that records were HEAVY.  Anyone who ever had to change apartments a couple of times began to regret having a big collection and to pare it down.  

The big curated collection of 8,000 rarities was the provenance of those who had the money, time, and stability to build such a hoard. Now anyone can access almost any music of their exact taste without extreme measures.  Yes, that is no longer a special form of achievement. But perhaps we should not be striving for great achievements of consumption, but rather listen to the music for its own sake and develop our spirit (and spirit animals) accordingly.

In retreat from Facebook

NJKpopper is an old and grizzled bear, and so he remembers the ancient times before Facebook ever existed.  Those days were full of things that are rare now, like privacy...

NJKpopper also lived through the first algal bloom of FB, where suddenly all of one's high school, college, grad school and work acquaintances were dumped into the same fishbowl.  Of course, in such an environment, all you can do is smile idiotically and say "Hi!".  I even remember, although most of the world seems to have forgotten or erased this, that for a brief time, FB had a thumbs down option to dislike something, until it was removed after a couple of months.  FB was much simpler then, however.  Just a kind of electronic directory and picture-sharing service.
I first bailed on FB in 2012, when they forced users to accept the "Timeline" display of all activity on the site.  And for years I never missed out.
Then, I was lured back in. I still don't think that was a mistake.  There were some benefits to being able to tap into the massive communication platform that FB has become.
But, I still dislike the fishbowl aspect of FB. I still believe in the early vision of the open Internet, where everything is accessible and discoverable, but atomized and not closely tracked.  If I post something here on my blog, only the NSA, FSB and a couple of close friends will read it. But if I post to FB, I know that it will not only be visible to all of my connections, but that it will be recommended to others and recorded in my profile for anyone who might browse my identity in the future.
And, frankly, the quality of interaction that FB encourages is just awful compared to what occurs in genuine human conversation, or solitary, long-form writing, or even solipsistic medium-form writing like blogs.  So that is a big minus.  And our time on this earth is limited.
What I discovered during my brief return to FB was a bit disturbing, however.
I do not like the detailed tracking that occurs via FB/Messenger, where everyone can see exactly how long it has been since you were last active, and not only whether, but when, you have viewed a message from someone else.  This level of atomistic micromanagement is destructive of healthy, trusting, nurturing human relationships.
Although they are proposed as solutions to the privacy problem, the FB privacy controls are utterly nonsensical and untrustworthy.  From the start, I have always assumed that anything I write on FB is basically equivalent to what I write on the public web, since even if privacy controls operate now, in the future they will either be breached by a hacker, or by FB itself.
But it is worse than that. Although many people block their Friends list from public view, if you "friend" someone, it turns out that you can actually view their entire Friend list while you are waiting for their response.  So the Friends list is never actually private.
Secondly, the sheer amount of material that FB preserves is astounding.  If you start to actually search, beyond what FB serves up to you, for information on any person, you will see that FB keeps everything.  And given that most people accept the defaults of letting anything be visible by "Friends of Friends", all of that is essentially visible to the world.
It was actually such an incident that drove me off of FB the first time, when a long ago photograph was unexpectedly surfaced to FB.  It was my prom photo, with my prom date, post-intoxication.  I might post it here, and at least it will not be publically tagged for all to see via facial recognition.  While professionals in the NSA and FSB have always had access to this information, only FB makes this kind of detrimental information available to amateurs and idiots of all stripes, which is why it is so awful.
This article on Capgras syndrome is really quite good on how our primate social brains begin to interact in odd ways with electronic simulacra.  Worthy of more reflection.