It's a compensation model meant to spread the payment for that one time cost among the many people who benefit from it Allowing unrestricted access creates a free rider problem where those one time costs never get paid and the product never comes into existence
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Space__Horse and
Having been on the other side of the debate, in hindsight it's very tiresome pretending not to know how this works for the one thing you care about even though it's applies in many, many situations It's the whole "Why do my taxes pay for a road I don't drive on" thing
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Space__Horse and
People love to suggest that musicians stop charging money for records and instead make their money from live shows but by this logic they can't charge for live shows either After all, the cost of a show doesn't change based on how many people are physically in the audience
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Space__Horse and
The cost of having the show is already sunk, right, now that they're already performing why shouldn't I be allowed to just sneak in to watch for free, it doesn't take anything from them materially
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Space__Horse and
The big difference here is that musicians benefit directly from the show, whereas record companies (and book publishers) gobble up the vast majority of the profits from a record (or book). Shows are also easy to gatekeep. It's easily possible to prevent people from gatecrashing.
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Replying to @WenSchw @arthur_affect and
It's entirely possible to limit the number of people who go to a show, it's not easy to sneak in. It's not possible to prevent people from downloading a PDF of a book or an MP3 of a record. This is why you change your business model instead of futilely trying to stop this.
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Replying to @WenSchw @arthur_affect and
Book publishers generally charge far less for an e-book than the physical copy, record companies put music for "free" on YouTube and Spotify. They found that video game piracy dropped to very low levels when video games started being sold online for cheaper than physical copies.
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Replying to @WenSchw @arthur_affect and
"Piracy" isn't a theft issue, nor is it a moral issue. It's a market issue where it's very easy to distribute free copies of something that used to cost a lot of money, and those who once controlled the market not being able to keep up with the realities of this new system.
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Replying to @WenSchw @arthur_affect and
You want to prevent people from downloading PDFs of your book or MP3s of your record? Male it easy for them to get, at a cheap price. Set up a merch store and build loyalty with potential fans through online interactions. Post music videos or book reading videos on YouTube.
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All of the things people suggest creators do to monetize their work also constitute labor on top of making the thing in the first place, often significant amounts of labor Turning a song or a book into a video isn't free Designing T-shirts and posters isn't free
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Replying to @arthur_affect @MatthewBorgard and
This is the key reason so many Kickstarters fail, the "Kickstarter death spiral" You try to get people to pledge by pushing bigger and more exciting rewards, but you underestimate the labor and cost of the rewards themselves
1 reply 2 retweets 13 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @MatthewBorgard and
You end up never coming out ahead, your workload grows faster than the money coming in offsets it After all the whole point of Kickstarter backer rewards is you're trying to "trick" them into paying more than the reward actually costs but people are resistant to being tricked
1 reply 2 retweets 12 likes - Show replies
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