I am occasionally reminded of the home-taping version of this when I pull out an LP from the mid-80s and a card drops out with a short missive about how home taping is taking money away from the artist.
I did have a fairly substantial collection of cassettes made from friends' LPs, I'm pretty certain that those recordings pushed me to further investigate the artists in question, resulting in more purchases.
i've pirated it for you. convinced me to subscribe finally so guessing you win! we'll see if google gets free users to it (as they can't see any comment)
I'm finding it difficult to mentally untangle all the different prices at play here... the fact I flunked out of economics class probably doesn't help.
But, I'd argue that just because the marginal cost of producing and distributing a "copy" of a digital album is essentially zero doesn't mean it intrinsically has no value. There are still production costs for the master recording, plus the labor of the songwriters and musicians of course. For physical items, the price of the item has always been higher than the overhead of production, distribution, retail, etc - whatever that remainder is applies just as well to digital. No one is paying for a slab of vinyl in a cardboard sleeve on its own merits as an object.
The secondary market for physical items is a whole other aspect, which doesn't exist for digital (although I guess NFTs are some attempt to change that)... but that's also not really connected to the value of the music, so I'm not sure how to factor that in.
I am occasionally reminded of the home-taping version of this when I pull out an LP from the mid-80s and a card drops out with a short missive about how home taping is taking money away from the artist.
I did have a fairly substantial collection of cassettes made from friends' LPs, I'm pretty certain that those recordings pushed me to further investigate the artists in question, resulting in more purchases.
i've pirated it for you. convinced me to subscribe finally so guessing you win! we'll see if google gets free users to it (as they can't see any comment)
https://content.noloveforned.com/post/666747919285829632/an-economic-argument-for-piracy-by-damon-krukowski
I'm finding it difficult to mentally untangle all the different prices at play here... the fact I flunked out of economics class probably doesn't help.
But, I'd argue that just because the marginal cost of producing and distributing a "copy" of a digital album is essentially zero doesn't mean it intrinsically has no value. There are still production costs for the master recording, plus the labor of the songwriters and musicians of course. For physical items, the price of the item has always been higher than the overhead of production, distribution, retail, etc - whatever that remainder is applies just as well to digital. No one is paying for a slab of vinyl in a cardboard sleeve on its own merits as an object.
The secondary market for physical items is a whole other aspect, which doesn't exist for digital (although I guess NFTs are some attempt to change that)... but that's also not really connected to the value of the music, so I'm not sure how to factor that in.
Really enjoying/appreciating everyone’s comments, thank you!