I like music and art and want to see more people doing it, and it sucks it's gotten less remunerative. But it does grind my gears to see people insist that society *owes* them a living for making their particular brand of art and music. Do we owe this to everyone no matter how good their art is? - ThreadSky

stephenjudkins.bsky.social • 77 days ago

I like music and art and want to see more people doing it, and it sucks it's gotten less remunerative. But it does grind my gears to see people insist that society *owes* them a living for making their particular brand of art and music. Do we owe this to everyone no matter how good their art is?

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jeremymathews.bsky.social•77 days ago

The issue is not that everyone who makes art should make money off it. That has never been the case, and I certainly don’t create my own music for that. The issue is the devaluing of art into “content,” and training customers to pay for subscription services instead of music/movies/etc.

stephenjudkins.bsky.social•77 days ago

My pro-artist position: society owes everyone the chance to make some material tradeoffs, and be able to live comfortably in a culturally vibrant city on a non-exploitative part-time service industry gig, and have plenty of time to pursue their art and music interests

danlehner.bsky.social•77 days ago

pound for pound you probably do have more *time* to do weird shit with the spread, even in the recent curtailing, of remote work; places to do it is definitely an issue with high CoL, though

stephenjudkins.bsky.social•77 days ago

I think high urban housing costs have really wrecked the material conditions of artists. I am very sympathetic to that. I'm also pessimistic that we can ever get back to the era of really deeply affordable low-tier housing, that was a post-white flight artifact that will never come back

mazepolypore.bsky.social•77 days ago

Doesn’t this just speed up the cycle of ‘New York/LA for a few years to find an agent and build a portfolio, then do an Android Jones and build a studio in a converted mill out in a Marfa or Beacon or Ojai or Pioneer Valley’? Never easier to connect with a distributed audience

stephenjudkins.bsky.social•77 days ago

Renting a room in a run-down but fun shared house in an inner east Portland neighborhood for $200 a month was conducive to lot of cool cultural stuff but that's gone forever now, even if we can do a whole lot to address our general housing crisis

stephenjudkins.bsky.social•77 days ago

It also bugs me that some of the people who benefited from these conditions and are nostalgic for them were part of a wave that, even with these "cheap" rents, displaced working-class families at the time! Five hipsters willing to crowd together were happy to outbid the Black single mom

danlehner.bsky.social•77 days ago

Right like, what bothers me about someone like Jeremiah Moss is that *I* obviously thrive better in that world than our contemporary one but who else would?

danlehner.bsky.social•77 days ago

I said elsewhere that you’re probably not going to recreate the 90’s LES, but that you can get a little closer than we are

vitling.bsky.social•76 days ago

Thinking along those lines it's easy to end up with an argument for UBI and/or a reduced working week. If we want to avoid the issue of having to decide which artists are "good enough" to have a career, or forcing artists to make "product", then we inevitably must treat it as a hobby like any other.

vitling.bsky.social•76 days ago

A valued hobby that is worth fostering and supporting by society, but a hobby nonetheless. Much like a sport or a craft or a community activity. Many creative hobbies have been reframed lately as side gigs, which are subject to business pressures to "succeed", and I think that's part of the problem.

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