• 4 Posts
  • 40 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 17th, 2023

help-circle







  • then they should create their own competing distribution. They aren’t actually making any ambient soundscapes. not even white noise, let alone rain, wind, birds, crickets, etc. And what about all those copies of “which side are you one boy” and it’s many covers. you could make the same argument for any traditional music, but you’re not. You only care about “white noise” because you consider it to be low effort. Low effort is not no effort, and the people that put in the effort to create those files should be paid.


  • so, you don’t believe that people should profit from the redistribution of public domain works? I think the entire publishing industry would have something to say about that. Considering the amount of non-copyrightable/public domain material that is bought and sold commercially every day. That’s a pretty funky belief you’ve got there.

    You’re right, spotify could release a competing distro, yet they aren’t.



  • No one should care about a spotify exec. This includes their parents and wife. Everyone who creates audio projects for spotify should be paid. This includes musicians and creators of ambient noise tracks. People like those tracks, they are popular, they should be paid. It’s not a difficult concept. Make a product. Distribute the product. Get paid for the product. You perception of the products relative value compared to other disimilar products in the same file format, is about the least relevant thing in the world. Even if you don’t think the product represents enough “effort” to be considered equal.

    All of this is crazy.



  • That is not the scenario I described, but it is imaginative. I’ll give you that. Here, let an old chinese guy explain it to you…

    “If your enemy is secure at all points, be prepared for him. If he is in superior strength, evade him. If your opponent is temperamental, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant. If he is taking his ease, give him no rest. If his forces are united, separate them. If sovereign and subject are in accord, put division between them. Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected .” ― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

    Or as I like to paraphrase it “Don’t give anyone the fight they came looking for. Give them a different fight”.

    Now go be dumb somewhere else.







  • A little over a decade ago I worked for a company that designed and fabricated stonework for buildings. Not just anyone can clad their house in marble, so I wound up interacting with some very wealthy people. I can’t say who, because they’re still just as wealthy and powerful and I’m about to shit all over them. I came away from the experience with much less respect for them afterwards. They essentially have no interaction with ordinary people at all. They don’t do anything for themselves, and they don’t engage with the real world. It’s no wonder they lack empathy and only act in their own self-interest. The real world is an abstract concept to them, I doubt they think about any of us as being real people.

    I was raised dirt poor, like food insecure and periodically unhoused poor. The guy I interacted with was literally a billionaire and had always been a billionaire. His staff treats him like a noble lord, and they buffer him from nearly any circumstance that would lead to him experiencing reality. One perk of being a white guy with good diction and vocabulary is that you can hide your low-class upbringing. Put me in some decent clothes and they’ll assume I’m from a similar background and speak more openly. The conversations were disturbing. The things they said about poor people, my people, were horrible. They think about us like animals if they think about us at all. I had to sit there and smile the whole time.

    Even before he became a political figure, he could have had the entire LAPD at his house within moments of the first sign of trouble. It’s not like the french revolution. They have a modern army that is well trained to deal with large groups. They’ve had lots of practice. We can’t just roll up on him with a guillotine in the back of our truck and expect to actually prevail.

    My experience at that job radicalized me somewhat and drove from me any lingering desire I might once have had to obtain wealth. I do not want to live in that world. I want to unmake that world.