> struggling to come up with ways to cover actual production costs, which haven't really changed much
The cost of buying food hasn't changed much, but the actual costs of doing the recording/release/distribution have decreased a lot, which lowers barriers to entry and increases supply.
To produce a recording whose production values are seen by the average casual music fan as "good enough", and then sell an mp3, requires much less capital investment than putting out a decent-sounding record in 1975 would have, or even a decent-sounding CD in 1990.
Sure, home recording on a Macbook isn't going to get you the quality a professional studio would get you, but the quality gap is much less than it used to be, especially for someone who spent some time reading (free) documentation on the subject. Rather than home recording producing unreleasable cassette demos, they're now often good enough to upload to YouTube or sell directly to fans. As a result, the people who've paid for professional studio time now have to compete directly with all those home recordings, whereas previously they could more or less ignore them. That drives down prices.
Related, many artists actually put a negative value on their time: there are quite a few people who love what they do so much that they're actually willing to subsidize their own art-production by working other jobs (e.g. waiting tables).
Each type of 'information good' is a bit different:
Musicians can at least do concerts, which are excludable and rivalrous, and so make for a pretty good 'traditional' product that they'll get paid for.
Writing a book is likely a bit faster than 50 years ago due to computers, but not that much, as most of it's in your head. Isn't it Neal Stephenson who says he writes everything freehand?
One possibility some self-publishing writers are using is to also sell traditional products of some sort, e.g. limited-edition letterpress or handmade editions of their books.
It does lead to different economics, since it rewards a writer by how many ardent fans they have (preferably well-off ardent fans who're collector types), rather than total readership.
Not sure how many total writers it'll be able to support; I suppose we'll see. But then, I'm not sure how many total writers traditional publishing would be able to support either, even absent piracy; the industry seems to be converging on a model that picks and heavily advertises relatively few large blockbusters per year, which only serves to support a fairly small number of writers, though it admittedly supports each of the lucky few quite handsomely.
>there are quite a few people who love what they do so much that they're actually willing to subsidize their own art-production by working other jobs (e.g. waiting tables).
Do you really see this as a good thing? When the only way to make money is to do something that can't be given away and anything digital must be given away?
I don't think it has to do with digital or non-digital. It has to do with the fact that people like forming bands, making music, writing poetry, etc. They like it so much that many of them---even people who are good at it---would be willing to do it even if they didn't make any money at it. Hence, it's hard to charge a high price for labor that people are willingly oversupplying.
Contrast with waiting tables, where people do not enjoy doing it enough to do it for free. If there were a lot of people who loved it so much that they were willing to wait tables for free in their spare time, wages would probably go down there too...
I think your 'oversupply' might be in the number of people willing to do X (acting in films, music, writing...), which doesn't necessarily correspond to the set of people who are actually good at X. The ideal solution would let people who are good at X do more of it, as this benefits both them and everyone else. In other words, we're "better off" with Humphrey Bogart acting full time, and J Random Dude moving on from waiting tables and dreaming about movies to something he's actually better at (making sets or something).
Were films something people could freely and legally copy, we might see a shift to handycam amateur efforts funded by table waiting, and fewer things like Avatar, which would require approximately 281328282 man-years of table waiting to produce. I think that we would lose something in that transition (although other things would be gained).
>Hence, it's hard to charge a high price for labor that people are willingly oversupplying.
Not strictly true. Thanks to digital camera availability there are a near infinite amount of people willing to do your family portrait but I suspect you'll have no issue with paying to have it done.
>Contrast with waiting tables, where people do not enjoy doing it enough to do it for free. If there were a lot of people who loved it so much that they were willing to wait tables for free in their spare time, wages would probably go down there too...
That sounds like an incredibly awful world to live in where people can only get paid for things that no one likes doing and everything fun has to be given away. I mean, I don't mind doing what I love to do for free so long as I don't have to pay for food, rent, etc.
What are you talking about? I'm not saying to keep jobs around that make no sense to be done (e.g. having a guy stand at each of a construction site holding a sign to direct traffic). I'm saying that things that still have to be done shouldn't all become free if they are tasks that people like to do.
Don't people always say to find something you love to do and then find a way to get paid to do it? I don't want a world where there is no way to get paid to do it unless nothing costs anything.
The cost of buying food hasn't changed much, but the actual costs of doing the recording/release/distribution have decreased a lot, which lowers barriers to entry and increases supply.
To produce a recording whose production values are seen by the average casual music fan as "good enough", and then sell an mp3, requires much less capital investment than putting out a decent-sounding record in 1975 would have, or even a decent-sounding CD in 1990.
Sure, home recording on a Macbook isn't going to get you the quality a professional studio would get you, but the quality gap is much less than it used to be, especially for someone who spent some time reading (free) documentation on the subject. Rather than home recording producing unreleasable cassette demos, they're now often good enough to upload to YouTube or sell directly to fans. As a result, the people who've paid for professional studio time now have to compete directly with all those home recordings, whereas previously they could more or less ignore them. That drives down prices.
Related, many artists actually put a negative value on their time: there are quite a few people who love what they do so much that they're actually willing to subsidize their own art-production by working other jobs (e.g. waiting tables).