which phenomenally popular american entertainment institution would you most like to see come to a sudden end by 2023

i feel like capitalism still existed and was bad before streaming and social media tho

think the point was it's the reason why those things are bad, not the other way around

so capitalism makes streaming music bad, in a way that it didn’t make physical media music bad?

the ways in which streaming is worse than physical media (worse business model is the big one) is due to the effects of capitalism & not inherent to the technology

I thought Whiney's point that it was inherent in the technology was good

sorry for flattening things out with “capitalism,” but obv it affects all things not equally but individually

and obv there’s a level on which “streaming music” is unenvisionable without capitalism so

world sucks and is a trap

xps ufo - is there something intrinsic to the technology that made the business model bad? maybe capitalism just got worse, and the business model would have devolved to a similar point under physical media. it seems like the period pre-streaming but post-peak of physical media, when file-sharing trashed revenues, was also a bad business model. idk, i just don’t see how having to manufacture a bunch of jewel cases improves the business model from an artists’ pov

now that we’ve invented the technology of streaming music, i don’t think we’re going to like, forget how to do it. if the world transitioned to communism, streaming music would probably remain. it would be funny if the new communist leaders were like “ok folks, we’re going back to turntables and cassingles ONLY” tho

yes that’s exactly what i imagine would happen in this thought experiment no one was participating in

I feel like streaming music would have a place in our Communist future. It's a great cultural resource and archive for the masses.

I'm thinking more in a high culture context-- I feel like the early Soviets would have killed to have multiple versions of every Beethoven symphony at one's fingertips for little or no cost to the recipient. I was just watching last night Soviet-made 1970s short films of Pushkin's poetry no available on YouTube for the enlighteenment of new generations of the Masses.

a lot of classical music on streaming was transferred at a pitifully low quality bc…… well i don’t wanna say it

there is a lot of amazing experimental music that is not on streaming

there is a lot of amazing experimental music that is not on streaming

shifts in technology provided an opportunity for the business model to get worse, certainly, but the current worse business model of streaming is surely not the only one possible for it, just one encouraged by capitalism etc.

i don't really agree with whiney's other points about why streaming is bad though, "pays people dogshit" is the only real complaint i have about it.

a lot of classical music on streaming was transferred at a pitifully low quality bc…… well i don’t wanna say it

Good riddance to the monoculture.

xp re: Whiney's post, I thought the other points he had were most important

Also: There's also the infamous "digital watermark" Universal Classics (DG and Decca) put on their digital releases until a few years ago.
― Typo? Negative! (Boring, Maryland), Saturday, October 16, 2021 5:14 PM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

that’s what i was referring to! did they correct this across the board

i don't really agree with whiney's other points about why streaming is bad though, "pays people dogshit" is the only real complaint i have about it.

― ufo, Saturday, October 16, 2021

really?

"made songs and albums ephemeral and made narratives disappear and ruined physical media and made everything an exhausting game of 24-hour lifespans and made sound quality shitty, and destroyed the monoculture"

i don’t really think it made narratives disappear

Also: There's also the infamous "digital watermark" Universal Classics (DG and Decca) put on their digital releases until a few years ago.
― Typo? Negative! (Boring, Maryland), Saturday, October 16, 2021 5:14 PM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

that’s what i was referring to! did they correct this across the board

“made sound quality shitty” reminds me of ppl complaining about radio

yes that’s exactly what i imagine would happen in this thought experiment no one was participating in

― STOCK FIST-PUMPER BRAD (BradNelson), Saturday, October 16, 2021 8:06 PM (thirteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i was just replying to you saying an end to capitalism is unenvisionable without an end to music streaming. personally, i can envision one without the other. they don’t seem that related

i didn’t say such a thing!

streaming does seem to make all songs and albums ephemeral

NFL: definitely; brain damage for the participants (and the fans, ha ha), plus it's owned/run by psychotic bigots, plus there's the whole economy of stadiums
Marvel Cinematic Universe: definitely; has poisoned the brains of an entire generation (though this goes hand in hand with social media, TBF)
Broadway Musical Theater: definitely; since I live in the NY media market I see a seemingly endless amount of media coverage of this shit, including local news stories, it's a nightmare
True Crime Podcasts: have never listened, never will, so...don't care
Streaming Music: I don't use it that much, but I do use it for research (Spotify, occasionally YouTube), and it helps me to share music with people who might buy it - as far as "destroyed the monoculture," good fucking riddance
Streaming Video: I don't expect to ever go to a movie theater again, so if I want to see a movie it's gonna be on Amazon Prime or Hulu or HBO Max

maybe i misunderstood

obv there’s a level on which “streaming music” is unenvisionable without capitalism so’

isn’t there a stanislaw lem short story where he invents music streaming?

i'm young enough that i was only ever buying cds in my teens and i don't miss physical media at all. most of the other complaints (e.g. death of the monoculture) seem more attributable to the internet than streaming directly & often somewhat predate streaming's prominence? would also completely disagree with 'making narratives disappear', don't really understand the sound quality complaint either, both spotify & apple music are high enough bitrate to be basically indistinguishable from cd quality and even spotify's free tier is surprisingly difficult to notice issues with. it's obviously good to have flacs available but they're not at all necessary for most purposes.

my actual pick is social media bc the mild fondness i have for twitter is drastically outweighed by the incredible harm fb does

lol could be

i wasn’t making a bigger point other than “the technologies that we know of prob wouldn’t exist without capitalism so me blaming capitalism for an issue with a technology is sort of a catch-22” etc.

did i malaprop catch-22 there, i haven’t read the book

xp

monoculture didn’t even die, look at the fucking articles

it's diminished though so i can at least understand what people mean when they complain about 'death of the monoculture'

also wouldn’t monoculture dying be

a good thing

or at least not an unequivocally bad thing

yet literally everywhere you go, ppl are talking about the same shit everywhere

The monoculture is dead, you have the option of being a MCU fan or a Synderverse fan.

adele album’s gonna save the monoculture

i'm far too young to be able to know exactly how things were pre-internet but yeah it doesn't exactly seem like the diminishing of the monoculture was close to a bad thing

The non-royalty streaming music complaints come down to the misery of choice - not having the curated new release rack of a good record shop (or even MP3 blog) and being able to afford one album a week to keep you from being overwhelmed.

Streaming video (and the blockbuster reign over theaters) has a similar problem. The 'golden age of TV' could be the golden age because there was one great show for everyone to watch and talk about every week and now it's a hassle trying to keep up with individual series and what service they're on.

i think whiney’s point was that it makes it harder to be a music critic when there are no narratives and no monoculture. streaming “hollowed out the middle class” of music critics

man the thing that depressed me most about getting hired as a music critic was being required to write about the big names all the time, fuck that

I read that as hollowed out the middle class of musicians.

burden of choice is a myth imo. having choices is nice

The two ideas aren't mutually exclusive.

narratives… still exist, idk, though i think as a failed critic who doesn’t want to write about most narratives i feel like i’m the wrong person to take this temperature

streaming “hollowed out the middle class” of music critics

― flopson, Saturday, October 16, 2021 5:51 PM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

also, i gotta say, something has been happening at the publications themselves that caused this at least as much as if not more than streaming music

Having access to (almost) all of history's music is great but it does devalue the finds and make the average listener work less hard at appreciating an album when they have nothing invested in it/it's easier to move on.

Being, generationally, on the cusp between "you get to listen to what the one good record store in town stocks and maybe two hours a week of decent college radio" and shifting into that universal access was great, being on either side of that divide permanently would have been much worse.

not having the curated new release rack of a good record shop (or even MP3 blog) and being able to afford one album a week to keep you from being overwhelmed.

i don’t relate to this at all. when i bought cds and records, the number of albums I bought were limited by my being poor, and were far below an amount that would have “overwhelmed” me. it was even below the amount that satisfied me. i think that feeling is mostly misplaced nostalgia. now i use streaming for most listening, i still don’t feel overwhelmed. i just listen to the music i feel like at the given moment

but there just doesn't seem to be much passion about anything anymore

xp Right, free streaming is the 'be overwhelmed' part there because you're no longer limited by the supply chain or poverty. This makes cycles shorter (for individuals and culturally, I thinks humans derived a lot of meaning from cycle syncing with others), which arguably makes music cheaper emotionally.

the NFL is indefensible but I still like it, so I can't vote for that

have no clue about True Crime or Broadway

social media is bad in a thousand ways but I admit I find Twitter to be incredibly amusing sometimes, and Facebook is legitimately useful for keeping up with old friends and family members if you are inclined to do so. I use Facebook Messenger a lot though I suppose that could be easily replaced

Streaming...idk why people would want to get rid of that. we're not going back to the era of DVDs and CDs. IMO it was a good thing before Disney and Paramount wanted to make their own exclusive services, which has basically put us back to the era of expensive cable packages.

I voted MCU, no real reason, but I think having a particular genre of very expensive blockbuster movie become this popular is really bad for the industry as a whole. I liken it a bit to Michael Jackson's Thriller, yeah it's a good album (and the MCU movies I've seen are pretty entertaining) but they did so well that it shaped the whole industry in a pretty negative way.

I was happier before social media allowed people to comment on your statuses.

I don't need my non-existent Aunt Ida's comments on why it's problematic that I listen to Bathtub Shitter or a cousin revealing to me that he supports National Burn a Koran day in response to me talking about the show Brooklyn 99

There are a lot of good true crime podcasts and books out there, but the ones that seem to view crime as pure entertainment fodder are not among those.

For example on the bad side of true crime is something like the subreddits that were devoted to the recent murders that took place in Moscow Idaho, and weeks were spent pointing the finger at various people and discussing conspiracy theories and it turned out of course everybody was wrong.

Fuck the NFL:

Pay to play: How 21 NFL stadiums have been financed

and

Taxpayers are paying billions for the renovations and construction of NFL stadiums. Here’s how

In 2022, the Tennessee Titans of the NFL unveiled their plans for a new stadium in the heart of Nashville. The 1.7 million-square-foot stadium can house 60,000 screaming football fans and is estimated to cost $2.1 billion.

The public would fund more than half of the stadium through a one-time contribution from the state of $500 million and $760 million through revenue bonds issued by Nashville’s Metropolitan Sports Authority.

Since 2000, public funds diverted to helping build professional sports stadiums and arenas have cost taxpayers $4.3 billion. While the NFL and team owners contend that building stadiums will provide economic growth for a city, economists and urban planners think otherwise.

The impact of a stadium can be something that leads to really great placemaking, and that is a catalyst for community gathering and other small businesses in a neighborhood. Yet a typical football stadium has a really different design, the impact on the surrounding community is really more just that the stadium is kind of like a big spaceship that is parked there.

The reason cities end up paying for stadiums begins with the issuance of tax-exempt bonds from state and local governments that the federal government has signed off on for decades.

These tax exemptions help lower the burden of high debt through low-interest municipal bonds used by cities and teams to pay for stadiums. Since 1913, municipal bonds have been a popular financing option for airports, roads, hospitals and schools. Private entities could still access these bonds but were subject to a volume cap limiting how many public bonds are issued annually.

As for stadiums, well, they weren’t subject to that cap. The Tax Reform Act of 1986 wanted to end the exemptions for private use, including stadiums. Instead, the bill inadvertently created a loophole allowing stadiums to be backed by tax-free public bonds.

The loophole works by creating an artificial financing structure through tax-exempt municipal bonds. To gain access to those bonds, private companies must fail one of two tests stipulated by the Tax Reform Bill of 1986.

The private use-case test states that a private entity can use no more than 10% of the money from a bond, a test that NFL teams will most certainly pass. Then there’s the private-payment test which states that no more than 10% of the bond’s debt service is backed by the stadium itself.

So if a state or local government is willing to finance at least 90% of the stadium’s cost, it fails the private-payment test — meaning the stadium will get tax-exempt financing through municipal bonds.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.