The question isn't whether Daft Punk will or won't exist. It's whether people will pay for authorized copies of Daft Punk, or unlawfully download unauthorized copies.
You keep using this term "commodity" as if it meant "any market where offerings have a low cost". But that's neither a good description of the music market nor a valid characterization of commodities markets, which include pork bellies which are used to make bacon like you might find in a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich as well as gold, silver, and crude oil, which aren't cheap.
A commodity market is one in which good are standardized to the point where one provider's offering is as good as any other's, and so the only determinant of price is cost; commodities markets often feature low prices as a result of competition. But Daft Punk isn't competing with Blaft Smunk and Zaft Tunk for who can offer the cheapest dance album. Music consumers demand Daft Punk and will not accept substitutes.
You comments pretend that what's happening is that music consumers are driving prices down by avoiding artists who don't pay for licensing on consumer-friendly terms. But of course that's not what's happening. Instead, consumers acquire content that isn't licensed at or near "free" by unlawful mechanisms ranging from ad-supported P2P networks to Google's ad-supported Youtube site. P2P networks and Youtube don't reliably remit any payments to artists, and their significant impact on pricing is a market inefficiency; they're free-riders.
What makes music appear to be a commodity market is the coercive impact of technology coupled with the market power of a cartel of specific buyers which makes it untenable for almost any artist to sell music directly to consumers. Music is made cheap by piracy, and cheaper still by the fact that a monopsony effectively controls authorized sales.
I might feel like these were pedantic points, except that you're the one who keeps invoking economics in defense of the status quo, as if there were real economic principles supporting it.
Yes it is the question whether or not they exist. People will buy something else. It's not like people walked around saying. "I wish there was a band like Daft Punk."
People like music naturally and depending on what time in history you lived in will like different types of music, but music is the fundamental product that people are buying.
They would buy more or less whatever was available to them, cause that is how music works. Repetition and the more you hear a song the more you will end up liking it.
You can choose to play a game of semantics and not accept the term commodity but the reality is that 50 years ago people paid for music because there was real cost involved, just like they today still pay for a concert. Today to be in a position to have a band the price has come down many many times. That's the primary commodity part.
There is no "hard labour" involved for most of the music you hear today.
They understand that they should pay for it and there is a classic supply/demand principle in play.
With digital distribution and copying there isn't the same supply/demand principles in play. The artist don't pay for the medium that holds their music, they barely pay for the recording anymore, the consumers do themselves.
This is the difference in value. I like the music of bands and I am ready to support them, but I liked a lot of bands a lot before the internet and I didn't buy a fraction of what they were selling.
This has all changed and it is at no cost to music in genreal only to the individual musician. But I would much rather live in a world where record labels weren't the gatekeepers anymore.
Both the musicians and their audience is much better off.
This seems to be an argument that the price of music has fallen because we no longer have to pay for little plastic disks. Nobody was paying for the plastic disks or the clunky reels of magnetic tape.
I'm having a hard time understanding how musicians could be better off in 2013 now that a manipulated robotic market has driven the price for recorded music down to $0. As hard as it may be to stomach, the facts seem to indicate that they were better off in the era of A&R reps and cigar-chomping label execs. The things people claim make musicians money in 2013 were also revenue sources, also in the mix, in 1981 (another idiosyncratic tech belief is that the Internet taught musicians how to make t-shirts --- which also get pirated!). Most live musicians make fuck plus all on touring.
What might be the case is that 2013 is a better time to be a hobbyist musician; you might get some national exposure. But since the entire market for recorded music is collapsing, along with many (most?) classic artist follow-on jobs like recording engineering, session musicianship, scouting, and promotion, it seems like 2013 is a distinctly worse time for professional musicians.
(I'm not a musician but come from a family of musicians; my brother is a professional musician, for instance).
ps: I'm not voting your comments down, and voted the parent up; I couldn't disagree with you more strongly but appreciate your civility, which is unfortunately atypical of music licensing discussions on HN.
I wouldn't expect you to vote me down just because we were in disagreement. I know you well enough for that :)
But back to the discussion.
All people start as hobbyists when it comes to playing music. It's something you do, not because you have to, not because it helps others, but because it's fun. It's for most a performing art.
More people can start as hobbyists today than ever before and more people do. More people are also today able to put out records for almost no money.
50 years ago it was both much more expensive and the only distribution you had was the one that the lables owned.
Today everyone can put out a song and everyone an access it. A professionally sounding song has also been driven down to almost nothing.
You need a string quartet? No problem, here is a sound. Need a xylofone? No problem, here is a sound.
Spotifys data show that people are listening to much more off-chart music, because they suddenly have access to it. Bands that was never heard of before or wouldn't have had a chance now has an audience. They wont make Elvis kind of money, but they can at least make a little.
This is the reason why music is a commodity. Not the individual artist but the process of making music and reselling the same performance.
The individual artist can still sell their concerts and do so in fact at many times higher prices than they used to, and people are buying it.
Most musician always made fuck all on touring. Let alone on their records.
I made fuck all when I was a struggling musician myself. Very few people have ever made money on music besides the record labels.
Music isn't an industry it's performing arts and that you can always make money on.
The record industry has nothing to do with music besides it selling it. If anything is a myth, that is the myth.
You keep using this term "commodity" as if it meant "any market where offerings have a low cost". But that's neither a good description of the music market nor a valid characterization of commodities markets, which include pork bellies which are used to make bacon like you might find in a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich as well as gold, silver, and crude oil, which aren't cheap.
A commodity market is one in which good are standardized to the point where one provider's offering is as good as any other's, and so the only determinant of price is cost; commodities markets often feature low prices as a result of competition. But Daft Punk isn't competing with Blaft Smunk and Zaft Tunk for who can offer the cheapest dance album. Music consumers demand Daft Punk and will not accept substitutes.
You comments pretend that what's happening is that music consumers are driving prices down by avoiding artists who don't pay for licensing on consumer-friendly terms. But of course that's not what's happening. Instead, consumers acquire content that isn't licensed at or near "free" by unlawful mechanisms ranging from ad-supported P2P networks to Google's ad-supported Youtube site. P2P networks and Youtube don't reliably remit any payments to artists, and their significant impact on pricing is a market inefficiency; they're free-riders.
What makes music appear to be a commodity market is the coercive impact of technology coupled with the market power of a cartel of specific buyers which makes it untenable for almost any artist to sell music directly to consumers. Music is made cheap by piracy, and cheaper still by the fact that a monopsony effectively controls authorized sales.
I might feel like these were pedantic points, except that you're the one who keeps invoking economics in defense of the status quo, as if there were real economic principles supporting it.