# Friendly reminder - Racing to the bottom with your rates means nobody wins.



## MauroPantin (Apr 8, 2020)

I just got off the phone with a Europe-based potential client that needed an entire symphony engraved. He is not a musician, the work is someone else's and he wanted to engrave the manuscript as a gesture. It was a substantial amount of work, so a lot of handholding and explaining took place over the last few days.

Today he brought up concerns about how he considered my rate to be very expensive (which really isn't, I do research on this regularly and I know I'm right in the middle of the market price). I explained the importance of getting it done correctly, the music preparation impact on live performance, the advantages of my low overhead operation and was even prepared to negotiate the rate a bit seeing as this was to be some sort of gift for someone and not the usual "OMG THIS NEEDS TO BE ON THE STANDS A WEEK FROM NOW!!!" situation.

He then countered by casually mentioning he was getting competitive bids for as low as $2 per page for engraving and preparing a fully-fledged, performance-ready orchestral score, plus part extraction, project files AND for just another $90 a mockup of the entire thing, no matter how long it ends up being. The total running time is still TBD, mind you. 

As you can imagine, the conversation was over as soon as I mentioned the standard rates for mockups.

Now... I have no idea if these ridiculous bids were real or not, but it sounded like they were. *If you are doing this, please stop. If you are starting out and need the gig, please value your work and do some research on the market rates.* Maybe even do some research on business costs, those rates probably won't even cover the software or the hardware required to perform the work, let alone any profit. *Nobody wins by doing that.*


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## msorrels (Apr 8, 2020)

Price Fixing


Price fixing is an agreement (written, verbal, or inferred from conduct) among competitors to raise, lower, maintain, or stabilize prices or price levels.




www.ftc.gov


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## gst98 (Apr 8, 2020)

msorrels said:


> Price Fixing
> 
> 
> Price fixing is an agreement (written, verbal, or inferred from conduct) among competitors to raise, lower, maintain, or stabilize prices or price levels.
> ...



This is not price fixing.


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## MauroPantin (Apr 8, 2020)

msorrels said:


> Price Fixing
> 
> 
> Price fixing is an agreement (written, verbal, or inferred from conduct) among competitors to raise, lower, maintain, or stabilize prices or price levels.
> ...



LOL! Yeah, you hit the nail in the head, you know. This is a call for price-fixing, that's exactly what I'm saying. We musicians have to get that yacht money.

Arise, music engravers: First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin!


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## nolotrippen (Apr 8, 2020)

"competitive bids" does not mean bids from competent professionals. Trying to educate potential clients is a never-ending (and often fruitless) endeavor.


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## Technostica (Apr 8, 2020)

MauroPantin said:


> I just got off the phone with a Europe-based potential client.


Sometimes they never were potential clients.
It's why I stopped using Gumtree as I'd put an ad up at a price that was well below a good eBay price and people would almost always offer me around 60% of the asking price.
Those sort of prices are for stolen goods I imagine or for the desperate.
Either way I'm not interested.


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## pmcrockett (Apr 8, 2020)

I once had a back-and-forth with another composer who had some piano pieces he wanted recorded. I looked them over, gave him a figure that accounted for the performance, sourcing the venue and piano, and recording and editing the sessions, and he had the audacity to tell me that I'd never find work with those prices and claim that students in Indiana University's music program would have been happy to do it all for him for fifty dollars total.

Because apparently students who perform and record people's stuff _as part of their coursework_ are a reasonable metric to judge professional rates by.

I didn't take the gig, obviously.


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## Symfoniq (Apr 8, 2020)

It must not be a very good symphony if it's only worth $2 per page.


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## rgames (Apr 8, 2020)

The great thing about a free market is that you have every right to *not* take any gig that doesn't meet your requirements, whatever those may be.

If somebody can figure out how to do your job for less money then that's a good thing. Society benefits from such pressures because resources are freed up and are available for use on other things that society values more. Societies make that judgment call through free market economies by voting with their dollars. There's a couple hundred years of history that clearly shows that such an approach is the best way to serve society (a.k.a. those involved in the economy) from the standpoint of overall standard of living.

For example: 30 years ago something like a current-gen smartphone would have cost a few million dollars. Well, Apple and Samsung and others put pressure on the market to drive those costs down so that just about everyone can afford a smartphone now. Apple and Samsung both had a supply chain that was facing the same dilemma you're describing: those who could compete stayed in. Those who could not exited that market and did something else.

Driving prices down is what free markets do. And everyone is better off because that's the best way for a society to express its judgment on what is and is not valuable. If you're in a true free market then you'll get paid consistent with the value that society places on your product. That's why we have guidelines and laws such as the price fixing link given above.

The usual gripe with situations such as described above is that "My product is much higher quality" and therefore worthy of more money. Well, you have every right to charge whatever you want. And society has every right to *not* pay it.

Right now I'm sipping iced tea from a cheap glass. Are there higher quality glasses out there? Probably. But I don't care. This one is good enough for me and I'm not willing to pay more for someone else's judgment on what is an acceptable level of quality for a drinking glass. Thank goodness we have a free market that drives those prices down so that I'm able to spend my money on things I actually care about.

rgames


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## asherpope (Apr 8, 2020)

rgames said:


> The great thing about a free market is that you have every right to *not* take any gig that doesn't meet your requirements, whatever those may be.
> 
> If somebody can figure out how to do your job for less money then that's a good thing. Society benefits from such pressures because resources are freed up and are available for use on other things that society values more. Societies make that judgment call through free market economies by voting with their dollars. There's a couple hundred years of history that clearly shows that such an approach is the best way to serve society (a.k.a. those involved in the economy) from the standpoint of overall standard of living.
> 
> ...


Yeah, but you're a composer for hire like most of us here, yes? Will you be welcoming AI composition making you obsolete? Actually you might, as I remember you being anti performance royalties a while ago...for some baffling reason


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## rgames (Apr 8, 2020)

asherpope said:


> Yeah, but you're a composer for hire like most of us here, yes? Will you be welcoming AI composition making you obsolete? Actually you might, as I remember you being anti performance royalties a while ago...for some baffling reason


Whether I like AI-based composition or not is beside the point - society gets to judge for its collective self. I've never heard any AI-based composition that I like but I'm just one person among several billion who get to express their opinions as well. I shouldn't have any more influence than anyone else in that regard (assuming you believe that all people have equal right to influence their lives).

And composing is less than 10% of my income, so that does influence how I think. Fair point.

OT: If you look through what I've said in the past you'll see that I'm not anti-performance royalties - I simply think there are better ways to get paid. Royalties are one way to get paid, sure. But the'yre not the *only* way.

rgames


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## dpasdernick (Apr 8, 2020)

I charge $250,000.00 per note. Don't blame me.


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## asherpope (Apr 8, 2020)

dpasdernick said:


> I charge $250,000.00 per note. Don't blame me.


Well I'm gonna charge $249,999.99 in that case


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## dpasdernick (Apr 8, 2020)

rgames said:


> Whether I like AI-based composition or not is beside the point - society gets to judge for its collective self. I've never heard any AI-based composition that I like but I'm just one person among several billion who get to express their opinions as well. I shouldn't have any more influence than anyone else in that regard (assuming you believe that all people have equal right to influence their lives).
> 
> And composing is less than 10% of my income, so that does influence how I think. Fair point.
> 
> ...



Rgames,

You are spot on. Years ago I remortgaged my house and bought a Silicon Graphics workstation to do 3D animation. I was flipping logos for 1-3 grand which was massive money for me. A guy at a post house asked how much I charged and then flipped out that my prices were so low compared to his. The reality was i could do it for less. Nowadays you can't get 100 bucks to do that type of animation. The market is
saturated, equipment is super cheap and there's a billion kids pouring out of art centers with these skills and passions. Just like the music industry.

I took some flak here a while ago for calling this a "race to the bottom" but I see as nothing but.

Great thoughts my friend. Enjoy your tea!


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## scoringdreams (Apr 8, 2020)

I hope that the effort composers put in doesn't get de-valued to the point of having to compete against 'discount stores'. Times are tough now, and demand would shift accordingly. However, the best way forward perhaps, is to offer variations on our original services; i.e. instalments if possible, or modular offerings that can be added on at a later date / 'unlock' options, or even just focusing on ideas and concepts now (stage 1 payments), and then having production at later dates (stage 2/3).

Everyone, hang on till the storm calms! - the OP has a good title, racing to the bottom would not be winning; but more of a fast-track lost.


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## MauroPantin (Apr 8, 2020)

rgames said:


> The great thing about a free market is that you have every right to *not* take any gig that doesn't meet your requirements, whatever those may be.
> 
> If somebody can figure out how to do your job for less money then that's a good thing. Society benefits from such pressures because resources are freed up and are available for use on other things that society values more. Societies make that judgment call through free market economies by voting with their dollars. There's a couple hundred years of history that clearly shows that such an approach is the best way to serve society (a.k.a. those involved in the economy) from the standpoint of overall standard of living.
> 
> ...



I understand your point. And look, I have been engraving music for several years now, I have the touchscreen and the entire Tim Davies altar. I am fast, and sorry to sound petulant, but I am very good at what I do. Productive, and constantly looking to gain any possible edge in that regard. Hence why I do market research every few months to stay on top of things, and why those rates are so shocking to me. 

Still, as good as one can be, there are a few unavoidable facts. The samples to produce mockups still cost money, the software for engraving music costs money and needs to be kept up to date, and the hardware required for running all that stuff is also high-end. The time it takes to engrave music can also be translated to a baseline below which it just does not make any sense to do the work because of the cost of just existing as a human being, even with low overhead, lean business operation, and modest living. If you do the math you are going to come up with a number that is going to fall within a reasonable distance of the center of a Gaussian distribution.

The $2 a page rate falls outside that distribution, by A LOT. That offer is below that of the leftmost values I've ever seen, but not by a bit, not by a standard 30% margin most people profit, and not by a margin any of the variables I mentioned could reasonably affect. Even taking the most budget-conscious approach, it is about an order of magnitude below. Which makes me wonder if the bid was even real in the first place. And if it was, I wonder if the person who offered that has just pirated a few sample libraries and notation programs to be able to offer such a ridiculous bid. Or if it is a student who just doesn't know any better.

In any case, market research done in this regard is clear. If you offer a rate so low, you are a) bidding below the cost of doing business and b) leaving money on the table. So, in that case, you can take my initial post as advice for people in the industry working on engravings not to lowball themselves when bidding for work. 

Philosophically speaking, you are correct: competition improves us all in the long run. But as far as the reality of existing today goes, charging low rates way below the cost of doing business is akin to those guys that get tired trying to climb at the top of Everest and sit down to "rest a bit". They collapse and die because there is not enough oxygen and the body is spending more than what it gets. The relief never comes, you are literally starving your body of oxygen and dying of hypoxia. 

If you charge rates that are no longer just competitive, but rather extreme, you are starving your business of oxygen. And sure, again, philosophically speaking the dead are a red herring warning others attempting the summit not to rest, and someone eventually gets to the top walking over everybody else's dead bodies and humanity as a whole gets a win, yay. But the experience the corpses had is that they fucking died, which sounds unpleasant, 0/10 would not recommend.


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## rgames (Apr 8, 2020)

MauroPantin said:


> If you offer a rate so low, you are a) bidding below the cost of doing business and b) leaving money on the table.


You forgot option C) you weren't as clever as the guy who figured out a way to do it for less 

The argument you're making is exactly the same as the argument made in the space launch business for decades. Boeing, Northrop, etc. owned that market and they said the same thing "It costs what it costs and we know what those costs are. We can't be profitable and do it for less."

And then along came Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and they said "Nah. I can do it for less and still make money."

And they're succeeding.

And because they're succeeding in driving costs down (despite protestations from Boeing and Northrop) they'll provide products and services that were previously unavailable to most of society. That's a good thing.

rgames


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## Rob (Apr 8, 2020)

I believe the difference in quality of your work compared to the guy who asks 2$ a page would in the long run have its effect. Can't believe that for such compensation they are offering a professionally done job... It could be that the client didn't have the money to pay you and made up the bidding thing to have an excuse for disappearing...


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## TGV (Apr 8, 2020)

rgames said:


> ... they'll provide products and services that were previously unavailable to most of society. That's a good thing.


Certainly in the context of space exploitation, that's a doubtful statement.


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## MauroPantin (Apr 8, 2020)

rgames said:


> You forgot option C) you weren't as clever as the guy who figured out a way to do it for less
> 
> The argument you're making is exactly the same as the argument made in the space launch business for decades. Boeing, Northrop, etc. owned that market and they said the same thing "It costs what it costs and we know what those costs are. We can't be profitable and do it for less."



Dude, please... This is not rocket science. It's hilarious that it is exactly what you are comparing it to. Engraving music is not as complex as colonizing the universe. There are no variables to "disrupt" the process silicon-valley-style. It is a very straight forward task.

Somebody sends you a blurry scan of a handwritten score and you get it in. As far as notation goes and the way to input that notation there is only small incremental progress like with Dorico, which is already as good as it gets, or StaffPad, which is okay-ish. 

And even if somebody came up with a brilliant solution to input, transcribe, or scan shitty manuscripts into perfect performance-ready notation, that person would be selling that solution rather than taking up 2 bucks/page jobs, and he or she would be making a killing putting JoAnn Kane out of business.

Not everything out there is ripe for a breakthrough. Umbrellas are the shittiest everyday object there is and yet no design changes in I don't even know how long. I imagine this outlook makes sense of the world for you but as far as engraving goes I regret to inform you that you don't know what you are talking about.



Rob said:


> I believe the difference in quality of your work compared to the guy who asks 2$ a page would in the long run have its effect. Can't believe that for such compensation they are offering a professionally done job... It could be that the client didn't have the money to pay you and made up the bidding thing to have an excuse for disappearing...



Well, I'm not sure, really. If he was lying he was very convincing. I agree that it will be probably a rushed job. Even working with templates, macros, touchosc, notation express, speedy entry, etc. it would probably end in the red. If the bid exists, whoever offered it is probably desperate.


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## rgames (Apr 9, 2020)

MauroPantin said:


> If the bid exists, whoever offered it is probably desperate.


Or clever 

Remember that running a business doesn't mean making money on everything you do (i.e. not every activity is a profit/loss center). So maybe the guy doing it for $2/page offered related services where he makes more money. Or maybe it's part of a plan to build a client base. Remember - most businesses lose money for a long time before becoming profitable. And lots of businesses run elements at a loss becuase it makes other elements more profitable.

Steve Jobs always said Apple didn't make any money on music sales. But they sure did make money on gadget sales...! The music, though operating at a loss or tiny profit, provided a service that drove profitability elsewhere. (Which begs the question - why didn't Apple share those massive revenues with the musicians who were so key to generating them? Separate discussion....)

rgames


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## d.healey (Apr 9, 2020)

Is it possible that the $2 a page guy is in a country where $2 is worth a lot more? I've asked for quotes for various bits of creative work over the years and had guys in India get back to me with what I think are incredibly low prices.

One of them was some graphic design work. The usual price from a European or US designer would have been about £400, I got a quote from India for £60. I took the Indian offer and it turned out really well.

The cost doesn't always determine the output. I've paid both above and below average rates for various projects and had both good and bad outcomes regardless of the cost.

Don't assume that everyone pays for the software they use either


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## Michael Antrum (Apr 9, 2020)

A lot of intellectual work is being out-sourced to countries with lower labour/living costs. Particularly in areas where location isn't that important - such as programming, web design, call centres etc. It's going to kill us in the West if we keep doing that. Most of our manufacturing has already been exported already - if we lose the tech industries too...... well, lets not go there. (Hasn't the programming for Sibelius been exported ? )

I work in a specialist niche market for my living - there are very few people who can do what I do, its a bit off the beaten path, , and blush, I am absolutely terrific at what I do. However, I cannot change much over what some of the unskilled chancers do, because it is difficult to show the quality difference before an order is placed. This is because the 'product' is something they can't see/touch until after I've been given the work.

I do pick up a lot of work, however, after someone else has ballsed it up. I value myself and my time, and if someone doesn't want to pay it - then that's fine, I'll work for someone who does. And it is surprising how often I get them back the next time they need my services. I am fortunate, however, that there are significant barriers to entry in what I do.

The problem in this industry is there are so many people wanting to get into it. In some ways it reminds me of the early days of the VFX industry, with young capable people being (and I won't apologise for using this word) exploited. Ridiculous working hours that were not remunerated properly, horrendous deadlines and ever changing end results required - with most of the money ending up elsewhere. 

I do hope it's not students trying to gain some experience - because I'd hope they were bright enough to realise that in a couple of years time it might be them being undercut - but it wouldn't surprise me at all if it were.

Honestly, just move on to the next job, but if you find that there aren't enough jobs paying you what you are worth, or even worse, what you need to keep the lights on - well, there's only one answer to that.....


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## thesteelydane (Apr 9, 2020)

rgames said:


> Which begs the question - why didn't Apple share those massive revenues with the musicians who were so key to generating them? Separate discussion....


Because capitalism/free markets and greed are two sides of the same coin.


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## patrick76 (Apr 9, 2020)

When western societies who have fought and long struggled for basic human rights, fair pay, labor's right to organize, health care, child labor laws, right to safe work conditions, etc. allow corporations to outsource massive amounts of work to societies that do not have these same protections and rights for workers, they are destroying what is good about western society. 

If sweat shops are not legal here, they sure as hell shouldn't be allowed to outsource to a country where they basically are. If they want to hire a composer from a country that does not have the same worker's rights, living conditions, etc, then they should have to provide the same safe conditions they would have to provide to someone from a western society. They want slave labor, but they can't get it here so they found a way to get around it. It's mostly out of our direct view so no one cares and we get the free market speech which doesn't address these issues of course.


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## Michael Antrum (Apr 9, 2020)

You know all those CEO's who pay themselves telephone numbers for mediocre performance ?

Well they had this great trick. They sacked all their staff and closed their factories, moved production abroad where the environmental regs weren't so stringent, labour was cheap and there were few workers rights. They cut their costs to make extra money which they personally benefitted from in stock options and bonuses. So they basically sold their workforce down the river for personal gain.

These people were richly rewarded, not having the foresight to realise that if all the other big companies did the same, then they were effectively putting their own customer base out of work and trashing demand for their own products. Of course the housing bubble hid this for a while, but it all comes out in the wash eventually.

What's weird is that the only politician I've ever heard bring this up is one that most people regard as beyond the pale. But on this one thing, I think he's right.


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## MauroPantin (Apr 9, 2020)

rgames said:


> Or clever
> 
> Remember that running a business doesn't mean making money on everything you do (i.e. not every activity is a profit/loss center). So maybe the guy doing it for $2/page offered related services where he makes more money. Or maybe it's part of a plan to build a client base. Remember - most businesses lose money for a long time before becoming profitable. And lots of businesses run elements at a loss becuase it makes other elements more profitable.



Those are possibilities. I am guessing that in order to offer a mockup for that price irrespective of the length it was probably going to get done with note performer. That would probably be a profit no matter what, it's basically exporting from Sibelius. Still, as great as it is I don't think it would pass muster against a mockup any artist worth his salt. As a playback solution for notation software note performer is amazing but as a mockup tool, it is simply not there.

The idea of creating a client base is nice as well, but this works only when you have a product for sale and not a service. When you are selling a service and you tell your customers you are worth a low rate, they will get anchored on that price point and getting them to accept a rate hike on the next project is quite difficult if not impossible. Word of mouth is also tricky because a referral will feel cheated if you charge him at a different rate as his acquaintance. This is explored by Dan Ariely in his book, "Predictably Irrational" and it is something that I find is verifiable in the real world.



d.healey said:


> Is it possible that the $2 a page guy is in a country where $2 is worth a lot more? I've asked for quotes for various bits of creative work over the years and had guys in India get back to me with what I think are incredibly low prices.
> 
> Don't assume that everyone pays for the software they use either



This is possible but I live in a Argentina, a country with a low living cost if measured in US dollars. $2 is not worth a ton almost anywhere in developing countries. We depend on a lot of import goods that are priced in US dollars irrespective of exchange rates and to maintain a good standard of living you still need to make more than that in most places if you want to afford a computer to get the job done, etc.

And that last statement is just as true as it is appalling, man. It's also probably part of the answer to the riddle, the software is my 2nd biggest business expense. 



Michael Antrum said:


> Honestly, just move on to the next job, but if you find that there aren't enough jobs paying you what you are worth, or even worse, what you need to keep the lights on - well, there's only one answer to that.....



Yeah, I am not bitter about it, I was just shell shocked at hearing the client say that. I keep an excel sheet of my market research I do every 4 to 6 months and I have seem some low rates but this one takes the cake.


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## AlexRuger (Apr 10, 2020)

rgames said:


> You forgot option C) you weren't as clever as the guy who figured out a way to do it for less



I like how uber free-market proponents always assume that the person who's doing it for less is somehow "better." They're smarter, more clever, more efficient, etc. They seem to conveniently forget that life isn't so simple as "just try harder."

In my experience, the person undercutting someone else usually does so because they can, i.e. they're already wealthy and can afford to. For instance, the amount of trust fund babies in the film scoring world is shocking once you see it. 

This discussion is old hat, especially on this site, but it just continuously blows my mind that some people don't see that a totally free market simply results in greater and greater wealth inequality and incentivizes what are otherwise considered to be really shitty traits in all other arenas of life.

Hence the need for a composers' union, etc etc etc, and around and around we go.


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## rgames (Apr 10, 2020)

AlexRuger said:


> In my experience, the person undercutting someone else usually does so because they can, i.e. they're already wealthy and can afford to.


There's a $20 trillion economy in the US that disagrees. And many others all over the world that easily triple that total size.

The percentage of already-wealthy people who really make it big is pretty small. It's been well-documented that wealth doesn't transfer very well in free market socities. One generation - somewhat, but you won't find many grandchildren of billionaires who are also billionaires.

That's why free markets are so great! Everyone has a chance.

rgames


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## Jimmy Hellfire (Apr 10, 2020)

rgames said:


> That's why free markets are so great! Everyone has a chance.


 Not sure if trolling


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## Thundercat (Apr 10, 2020)

AlexRuger said:


> I like how uber free-market proponents always assume that the person who's doing it for less is somehow "better." They're smarter, more clever, more efficient, etc. They seem to conveniently forget that life isn't so simple as "just try harder."
> 
> In my experience, the person undercutting someone else usually does so because they can, i.e. they're already wealthy and can afford to. For instance, the amount of trust fund babies in the film scoring world is shocking once you see it.
> 
> ...


Exactly. Well stated.

Yes, "everyone has a chance" - but not an equal chance. It's no better than the lottery.

Yes, yes, you can get better and work hard and hone your craft, submit to zillions of libraries and make tons of contacts. I believe one can be successful. But it is not a guarantee.

Hence the art world is littered with untold unsung geniuses who die penniless a la Mozart and Beethoven. Leonardo da Vinci wasn't exactly well off I don't think.

Talent and hard work does not necessarily equal success, although it certainly buys you more lottery tickets.

I'm not playing victim - I believe in working hard and not making excuses.

But I also think it's right to recognize a system that has always been and always will be for the rich, by the rich.

There is a reason that 99% in this world are relatively without, compared to the 1%. This is a real thing. And capitalism absolutely favors this kind of system.

I always find it funny when companies become super successful, and as such companies do, begin swallowing up other companies until they are giant behemoths. At some point antitrust laws kick in.

But you have to wonder - if success leads to this kind of behavior, why do we have a model where the most successful companies have to be limited? Because capitalism is a gaping greedy black hole that sucks everyone and everything into it, destroying and corrupting all it touches.

Dramatic? Maybe. But that's what our system promotes. If you're not well off, it's your fault. That's the attitude of the rich, to conveniently help them not to feel guilty about how they can use the system when most can't.

And before you think I'm anti-rich, I'm not. I'm anti-poor, anti-unfair, and anti-rigged.

I support composers unions.

A great alternative style of economy is the Gifting Economy. Read Ubuntu Contributionism by Dr. Michael Tellinger. Great concept, and if we could implement it, would change the world.

Mike


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## rgames (Apr 10, 2020)

AlexRuger said:


> a totally free market simply results in greater and greater wealth inequality


Maybe it does, but is wealth equality the desired outcome? The truth is that the most equitable distributions of wealth exist where nobody has anything. They're all broke.

I believe that any time human beings organize themselves into economies and/or governments there will be uneven distribution of wealth. I can't prove that will always be the case but it always has been. In free-market economies, power goes to the businesses. In socialist/communist economies, power goes to the government.

Now, let's take that belief as fact for a moment and think through which scenario is best for poor people.

Let's say you have an economy where the richest people own five houses and 10 cars each and the poorest people live in shacks and own no cars.

Now let's compare that against an economy where the richest people own 50 houses and 100 cars but the poor people also own a house and a car.

Which is the preferred outcome?

The first one is a more even distributoin of wealth but the poor people are better off in the second. The second is what capitalism and free markest seem to do. The former is more like socialism.

The second sure seems like the better option to me! Yes, it has more wealth inequality but everyone is better off. The last couple hundred years of world history show that when economies move to free markets, that's exactly what happens.

rgames


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## AlexRuger (Apr 10, 2020)

rgames said:


> Now, let's take that belief as fact for a moment and think through which scenario is best for poor people.
> 
> Let's say you have an economy where the richest people own five houses and 10 cars each and the poorest people live in shacks and own no cars.
> 
> ...



Sigh. Your heart is in the right place but your conclusions about how to achieve it are unbelievably backwards. You seem incapable of thinking about this stuff holistically or taking into the messy reality than doesn't exist in vacuous hypotheticals.

Yes, free markets are great at producing wealth -- which, at first, results in lifting of quality of life for a majority of people. But unchecked, they very, very clearly result in consolidation of wealth over time. This is inarguable. I am not anti-capitalist, but you have to be ignorant or worst to believe that capitalism left to its own devices is a purely good thing. It, like every other system, has serious drawbacks. 

The actual reality of the situation is that wages have stagnated for damn-near a half century, "trickle down economics" is verifiable bullshit, and to give your example of houses and cars a more realistic slant, we're in a situation where "the richest people own 50 houses and 100 cars but the poor people live in shacks and own no cars." Wealth inequality is worse than ever outside of your circle of privilege, and don't try and tell me it's because any of the last 5 presidents were too left-wing. Democrat or Republican, we've lived a Neoliberal nightmare since Carter.

Richard, I like you, you're a smart guy -- your video on latency is legendary in my view -- but reality doesn't support the conclusions of your libertarian pipe-dream, sorry.


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## NoamL (Apr 10, 2020)

$90 for a mockup of a SYMPHONY?

Well, you get what you pay for...


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## Bear Market (Apr 10, 2020)

rgames said:


> Now let's compare that against an economy where the richest people own 50 houses and 100 cars but the poor people also own a house and a car.
> 
> Which is the preferred outcome?



This is a completely irrelevant analogy since in an untethered free market there is no mechanism that ensures that the poorest people get wealthier as the richest do. The poorest people in your example will always have no house and no car, even if the richest have a thousand. Name the "richest" country by any economic metric and I bet the poorest people in that country have neither house nor car. 

So the relevant question is: how large can the wealth gap between the richest and the poorest be before it destabilizes a community and hampers productivity? Do you think the wealthiest person in, say, Malawi spends the majority of his/her time in Malawi or elsewhere?


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## NoamL (Apr 10, 2020)

Maybe the best move in this situation is instead of being shocked/offended at getting undercut, to "take the client's side" and "protect" them from getting ripped off. "Wow, someone is charging you $2 per page? Have you seen their work output before? Have they sent you samples of scores they've engraved previously? Did you negotiate any right to demand revisions & proofreading or are you just stuck with what they drop in your lap? Did they tell you they could transcribe from pencil MSS not just MIDI entry?" Make it clear that you think THEY are getting ripped off and THEY will end up being unhappy with this person's product.

I mean if they don't care they don't care... but wow, a client being offered $90 for a mockup of 10+ (30+?) minutes of music... that should set off everyone's bullshit alarm. Either your competitor is just exporting an MP3 of Human Playback in Finale->NotePerformer and calling that a "mockup" in which case the client is getting hugely ripped off, or... they don't understand how much work a mockup is and they're going to breach this contract in either time or money.


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## youngpokie (Apr 10, 2020)

AlexRuger said:


> In my experience, the person undercutting someone else usually does so because they can, i.e. they're already wealthy and can afford to.



This must be a joke. 

My partner worked on Fiverr as interior designer and the only way he could get any clients in the beginning was to compete on price, so he could get reviews and establish himself. My nephew has been freelancing in 3D rendering for several years now but had to be supported by his wife until he was able to start earning any income. 

It's amazing to read comments from people who, in the same breath, pontificate about inequality and complain about those who are trying to break in.


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## d.healey (Apr 10, 2020)

youngpokie said:


> This must be a joke.


No joke, people get rich by charging less 

It's the homeopathic approach to wealth.


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## AlexRuger (Apr 10, 2020)

Bear Market said:


> The poorest people in your example will always have no house and no car, even if the richest have a thousand.



Yup. Being poor is expensive and closes a lot of doors to paths for getting out/bettering your quality of life. If you can't even get to the point of being able to afford a car (or if the only car you can afford is shit and thus breaks down a lot), you're stuck with the jobs that public transportation can take you to. But, thanks to lack of investment in our country's infrastructure by small government assholes -- which is disproportionately worse in areas of color (but don't call it racism!) -- you're stuck even more, and thanks to how unreliable it often is, are probably likely to be late to your second or third job enough to the point that you get fired from one of them. Meanwhile, your apartment is getting more expensive by the year but your pay isn't going up, so you have to keep moving farther and farther away from centers of industry. And the cycle continues. And that's just one, single mechanism of dozens or hundreds that keep people down. All results of free markets and unfettered greed.

It's why the "war on drugs" was so ironic -- in a lot of places, selling drugs is the single best chance you have of bettering your quality of life. It's high demand, people come to you so no commute, etc. Had the problems driving people to drugs and making selling them the most logical choice of making a serious dent in their bank accounts been focused on instead, I'm sure the "war" would have been far more successful.


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## AlexRuger (Apr 10, 2020)

youngpokie said:


> My nephew has been freelancing in 3D rendering for several years now but had to be supported by his wife until he was able to start earning any income.



_This_ must be a joke.

Your nephew had the option to take a financial cut in order to compete, which is exactly the kind of position in life I'm saying often isn't available to people and contributes to a race to the bottom. 

Furthermore, wages are _already low enough that he had to do that _due to exactly what we're talking about in this thread. Surely you see the irony here? You're agreeing with me and think that you're arguing.

I've been working as a composer in LA for almost 8 years. Trust me, the trust fund baby issue is the elephant in the room.


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## youngpokie (Apr 10, 2020)

AlexRuger said:


> Your nephew had the option to take a financial cut in order to compete, which is exactly the kind of position in life I'm saying often isn't available to people and contributes to a race to the bottom.
> 
> Furthermore, wages are _already low enough that he had to do that _due to exactly what we're talking about in this thread. Surely you see the irony here? You're agreeing with me and think that you're arguing.



He had the option of working at a factory, like his father. But he wants to earn a living doing what he loves, just like you. 

I don't know how you did it, but for him (and hundreds like him), offering an "introductory price" is a way to break in.


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## JJP (Apr 10, 2020)

MauroPantin said:


> He then countered by casually mentioning he was getting competitive bids for as low as $2 per page for engraving and preparing a fully-fledged, performance-ready orchestral score, plus part extraction, project files AND for just another $90 a mockup of the entire thing, no matter how long it ends up being. The total running time is still TBD, mind you.



One answer I've found useful when hit with a stupidly low competitive bid:

"That's an amazing price. If someone can deliver the same quality of product and service for that price, you should hang up on me and call them now. If they've figured out a way to account for all details and still deliver the quality of product and service you're expecting from us, you need to jump on that right away."

The other way I've found is to ask them why they came to me in the first place. Usually they say they were referred or know my reputation. Then I say that if they believe I have the skills and experience to know what this job costs, why do they think someone else would say it costs so much less? Do they perhaps know something I don't? That usually leads to an interesting discussion and puts the decision back in their hands.


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## Andrew66 (Apr 10, 2020)

rgames said:


> The great thing about a free market is that you have every right to *not* take any gig that doesn't meet your requirements, whatever those may be.
> 
> If somebody can figure out how to do your job for less money then that's a good thing. Society benefits from such pressures because resources are freed up and are available for use on other things that society values more. Societies make that judgment call through free market economies by voting with their dollars. There's a couple hundred years of history that clearly shows that such an approach is the best way to serve society (a.k.a. those involved in the economy) from the standpoint of overall standard of living.
> 
> ...


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## Michael Antrum (Apr 10, 2020)

youngpokie said:


> He had the option of working at a factory, like his father. But he wants to earn a living doing what he loves, just like you.
> 
> I don't know how you did it, but for him (and hundreds like him), offering an "introductory price" is a way to break in.



So what's he going to do when he wants to get married, raise a family, buy a house and a car, put the kids through college ?

Because the next tranche of people offering an 'introductory price' are going to be coming along just right behind him.....


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## Andrew66 (Apr 10, 2020)

AlexRuger said:


> Sigh. Your heart is in the right place but your conclusions about how to achieve it are unbelievably backwards. You seem incapable of thinking about this stuff holistically or taking into the messy reality than doesn't exist in vacuous hypotheticals.
> 
> Yes, free markets are great at producing wealth -- which, at first, results in lifting of quality of life for a majority of people. But unchecked, they very, very clearly result in consolidation of wealth over time. This is inarguable. I am not anti-capitalist, but you have to be ignorant or worst to believe that capitalism left to its own devices is a purely good thing. It, like every other system, has serious drawbacks.
> 
> ...


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## purple (Apr 10, 2020)

rgames said:


> Maybe it does, but is wealth equality the desired outcome? The truth is that the most equitable distributions of wealth exist where nobody has anything. They're all broke.
> 
> I believe that any time human beings organize themselves into economies and/or governments there will be uneven distribution of wealth. I can't prove that will always be the case but it always has been. In free-market economies, power goes to the businesses. In socialist/communist economies, power goes to the government.
> 
> ...


It's not so much about wealth, I couldn't care less about how many zeroes I have in the bank. I care about the fact that in a country with a massive food surplus, there are starving children. Farmers are letting their fields go fallow due to lack of demand while working and even middle-class families have to choose between rent and a full diet. It's just plain silly to me.

Not to mention that this "$20 trillion economy" is build on slavery, genocide, CIA-backed coups, political supression, (I could go on for hours)

But let's not open that can of worms here because this thread is supposed to be about how we should, as professionals, not screw ourselves by undervaluing ourselves. We should stand strong together and not let s****y clients screw us out of a healthy relationship to the industry. Remember that these clients are not the ones with the power here. They don't know how to write music, or mix, or whatever else you do. And finally, clients that choose not to pay well are usually not the ones whose work you want your name on anyways, cause it usually sucks. Any client who cares about their work doesn't want it to sound cheap.


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## Paul Grymaud (Apr 10, 2020)

Sad story


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## rgames (Apr 10, 2020)

AlexRuger said:


> You seem incapable of thinking about this stuff holistically or taking into the messy reality than doesn't exist in vacuous hypotheticals.


A couple hundred years of world history is not a hypothetical.


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## JohnG (Apr 10, 2020)

@JJP has the best script on this thread. Everyone should memorize it -- i've used almost an exact version of that. If you just hang up the phone, you don't get the gig. If you ask, politely, "can he do this, and this and this in a high-quality manner?" you might remind the putative client that maybe he wants someone who actually knows what he's doing. I do find that often people don't really know what we do. Being experienced writing for live brass, live percussion etc. is not something you can learn in five minutes.

And if Client goes with the $2 guy, you can always sign off with, "well, if it doesn't work out I have a lot of experience and I will be glad to hear from you."

Capitalism and Markets?

I mean, I know it's a long convo, but @rgames is right that capitalism has raised hundreds of millions of people out of abject poverty over the last 30 years. The data is there and it's impossible to just dismiss. I can find links if you want but there's plenty out there on The Economist's website.

@AlexRuger I'm sort of curious about the trust fund phenom in Los Angeles, since I've been pecking away here for quite some time and don't know any of those guys. I mean, you could argue that a lot of successful composers have grown up with lessons, instruments, food and so on, so by definition there's a lot of privilege. But are you saying that a meaningful percentage of TV or movie or game gigs ends up in the laps of people who don't know what they are doing but have money?


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## Sears Poncho (Apr 10, 2020)

rgames said:


> And composing is less than 10% of my income, so that does influence how I think. Fair point.


Believe me: after reading this entire thread, this is as clear as can be. You throw out a bunch of BS about the "free market" blah blah, but it's pretty clear that your experience in the music profession is limited at best. I'm not trying to berate you, really. I'm merely saying that talk about the "free market" and some idiot offering 2 bucks a page for a symphony score are not even in the same reality or world. And as far as performance royalties (I believe I remember a post from several years ago?), well, play on a CD that has been used in 40 movies/tv shows and see if your position is still the same.



MauroPantin said:


> he was getting competitive bids for as low as $2 per page for engraving and preparing a fully-fledged, performance-ready orchestral score,



I recently did a project. It was a hand-written score by a fairly well known composer (who died 80 years ago). I had to engrave and reduce the orchestration. I got $3500. It was 98 pages, so slightly more than the $196 this generous soul was offering. And that was dirt cheap compared to the work involved.



rgames said:


> You forgot option C) you weren't as clever as the guy who figured out a way to do it for less


Again: It really seems like you're not in the music biz or connected to it in any way. Because, check this out:

"Hey honey, I just got this gig, and I'm so clever that I'm going to be making complete and total shit pay, far below what pros make".

Does that seem "clever"? It doesn't really exist BTW, but if it did, the last thing in the world it is would be "clever". Personally, I'd call it "mind-boggling stupidity on the grandest scale", but that's just me.


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## AlexRuger (Apr 10, 2020)

JohnG said:


> @AlexRuger I'm sort of curious about the trust fund phenom in Los Angeles, since I've been pecking away here for quite some time and don't know any of those guys. I mean, you could argue that a lot of successful composers have grown up with lessons, instruments, food and so on, so by definition there's a lot of privilege. But are you saying that a meaningful percentage of TV or movie or game gigs ends up in the laps of people who don't know what they are doing but have money?



PM'd you.


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## patrick76 (Apr 10, 2020)

Capitalism is great if it has mechanisms in place to protect worker's rights and human rights. The problem is that often those preaching about capitalism and free markets are frequently engaged in an ongoing assault against anything that would provide any oversight or culpability of their actions. Hence the many atrocities we have seen through the years over and over again because of greed.


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## patrick76 (Apr 10, 2020)

Thundercat said:


> Yes, "everyone has a chance" - but not an equal chance.


Great point


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## JohnG (Apr 10, 2020)

patrick76 said:


> Capitalism is great if it has mechanisms in place to protect worker's rights and human rights. The problem is that often those preaching about capitalism and free markets are frequently engaged in an ongoing assault against anything that would provide any oversight or culpability of their actions. Hence the many atrocities we have seen through the years over and over again because of greed.



fair that we need checks and balances. that's part of why it's nice to have elections -- to throw the bad guys out.

I don't think capitalism is the source of greed; unfortunately, that one goes all the way back. But I still hear you. 

People make themselves miserable wanting the wrong things in life.


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## Thundercat (Apr 10, 2020)

rgames said:


> Now let's compare that against an economy where the richest people own 50 houses and 100 cars but the poor people also own a house and a car.


If only.

The reality is the rich have 50 houses and 100 cars and the poor are homeless or live month to month in horrible shacks rife with crime and bad living conditions.

Most people cannot own a home now with the hyper inflation - certainly not the poor you speak of.

What you are referring to used to be called the "middle class" but that has been shrinking for quite a while. When homes cost over $500,000 and the down payment is what used to BE the house cost cost, something is very wrong.

There are advantages to capitalism, such as the ability when you get rich enough to twist the laws to your advantage, having enough money to bribe others into doing your bidding, buying governments, and let's not forget, influencing elections and even writing the laws that the other schmucks have to live by - laws you conveniently don't have to follow because you write another set for yourself.

It's the "Golden Rule." He who has the gold, makes the rules.

Yes, many advantages. Great system.


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## Iswhatitis (Apr 10, 2020)

MauroPantin said:


> LOL! Yeah, you hit the nail in the head, you know. This is a call for price-fixing, that's exactly what I'm saying. We musicians have to get that yacht money.
> 
> Arise, music engravers: First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin!


Stay firm on your rates. They are either lying to you and have no competitive bids or will force you down to a rate you don't deserve. Stay firm. They will respect you more even though you may or may not get the gig.

Let me also add that the only way to get paid a reasonable rate as a composer is to stay firm. The best offers I ever got only happened when I said no over and over again to lesser offers until they came up over many months to my rate. One gig for example I wanted $50,000 and they initially offered me $15,000, so I said no not interested even though they swore this was the most they could pay me and it was a take it or leave it offer. Two months later they come back and say the same thing but now could offer me $20,000, so I say no not interested again. Around two more months later they called me back again and this time offered $25,000, so I said no not interested. Two more months or so pass and they offer me $30,000, so I again said no not interested. Another couple months pass and they call me once again to now offer me $35,000, so I said no not interested. Finally about 10 months from their first offer they said they would do $50,000. This is a true story.

The lesson I learned was that some producers are lying pieces of junk who try to low ball everyone they can because they are lowlifes with no sense of integrity or character. The best way to get paid the rate you deserve is to say no not interested to anything less. At that time, I was continually stunned everytime they called me with a higher offer as I kept believing them each time they said this was the most they could pay me and it was take it or leave it. The best and only way to leverage your rates is to say no, don’t bargain with yourself. I learned this the hard way so don’t assume I always got my way, I rarely did until I learned to say no to producers offers.

Producers will lose respect for you if you work for nothing or low rates. Stay firm, producers will respect you if you do and want to work with you more, I learned this the hard way over a long time. The higher your rates the more they will want to work with you but that may mean you don’t always get the gig. Paying your dues is bvllshit, there is no end to this mentality and no one will ever respect you. Obviously the bigger the credits you work on the higher your rates can go.


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## WhiteNoiz (Apr 10, 2020)

A "free market" would have let the banks collapse in 2008... 

Just sayin'.


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## LamaRose (Apr 10, 2020)

Free markets? Made me smile. When you're bidding against a guy whose cost of living/overhead is 1/10th of yours... well, good luck with said _free_ - aka _equal_ - market(s).


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## rgames (Apr 10, 2020)

Thundercat said:


> Most people cannot own a home now with the hyper inflation


Yes they can, at least in the US. There are plenty of affordable homes in the Dakotas. And pretty much anywhere in small-town upper mid-west Untied States. And elsewhere in the US - houses in rural Georgia were so cheap that I owned one while still in school.

Regarding free markets - the definition of "free market" is one where people have access to enter and let the market decide if it likes their products. That doesn't mean that the market is unregulated. It still needs to be regulated to ensure that it's as free as possible. A monopoly is not a free market and needs to be prevented.

Likewise, if you generate a ton of revenues while destroying the environment (e.g. downstream on a river), you're limiting other people who would like to compete because they're being hindered by your actions. So you need an EPA to ensure that doesn't happen.

"Free market" is not the same as "no regulation". In general, economies need regulations to ensure that the market is as free as possible. And yes, approaches to free markets are never perfect. But they are the "least bad" approach that humanity has found to date.

Regarding cost of living - yes, there are people who have vastly lower costs of living. They have every right to compete against you, and that's a good thing. If China can make steel for less money than the US, then let them do it. Our steel workers can pick up other skills and the world's steel costs will be lower, freeing capital for other applications. That's why free markets are a good thing - they free up capital for other uses.

A lot of the discussions on this board have a common theme: "I have a right to make a living as a composer and, therefore, the world should adapt so that I can do that." No, you don't have that right. If you're being underbid by someone else and/or can't figure out how to make a living out of it, do something else.

You have the right to try, not the right to succeed. Though far from perfect, the last couple hundred years of human history show that that's the best approach we've come up with so far.

rgames


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## purple (Apr 10, 2020)

rgames said:


> Yes they can, at least in the US. There are plenty of affordable homes in the Dakotas. And pretty much anywhere in small-town upper mid-west Untied States. And elsewhere in the US - houses in rural Georgia were so cheap that I owned one while still in school.



I'm sure there are a lot of job opportunities in the Dakotas that would support a mass exodus of the renting population in major cities.


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## Bear Market (Apr 10, 2020)

rgames said:


> If China can make steel for less money than the US, then let them do it. Our steel workers can pick up other skills and the world's steel costs will be lower, freeing capital for other applications.



Can they though? Or are their government subsidizing them so they can eliminate the US competitors?

What about that EPA that you thought was needed? Did that only apply to products manufactured in the US perhaps?

Your equation is not solvable when you add the globalization factor.


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## thesteelydane (Apr 11, 2020)

rgames said:


> Yes they can, at least in the US. There are plenty of affordable homes in the Dakotas. And pretty much anywhere in small-town upper mid-west Untied States. And elsewhere in the US - houses in rural Georgia were so cheap that I owned one while still in school.
> 
> Regarding free markets - the definition of "free market" is one where people have access to enter and let the market decide if it likes their products. That doesn't mean that the market is unregulated. It still needs to be regulated to ensure that it's as free as possible. A monopoly is not a free market and needs to be prevented.
> 
> ...



Maybe, but isn’t it funny how free markets needs to be bailed out by socialism every 10 years or so?


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## Michael Antrum (Apr 11, 2020)

They are not bailed out by socialism though. They are bailed out by me and you, often by printing money inflating away the value of our savings and pensions that we have worked all out lives for.

One of the reasons for high house prices is that people have realised that having cash savings or a pension is a fools way of providing for the future, and that assets like houses are far more successful for protecting you wealth.

Look at the changes in the value of annuity over the last 20 years.


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## MauroPantin (Apr 11, 2020)

NoamL said:


> I mean if they don't care they don't care... but wow, a client being offered $90 for a mockup of 10+ (30+?) minutes of music... that should set off everyone's bullshit alarm. Either your competitor is just exporting an MP3 of Human Playback in Finale->NotePerformer and calling that a "mockup" in which case the client is getting hugely ripped off, or... they don't understand how much work a mockup is and they're going to breach this contract in either time or money.



The only plausible theory I've been able to come up with is exactly that one, for the mockup part. It is the only thing that makes sense, given that the total running time was not set in stone. I mean, the idea of naming a price with an incomplete brief is insane! Just based on tempos and pages your estimates are quite correct, I was thinking 19-22 minutes of music. Nuts. 

I haven't been able to figure out the elusive magical formula this mysterious genius seems to have come up with to engrave at that rate, though. "A very strict and frugal diet" is my top theory at the moment for that.



Sears Poncho said:


> I recently did a project. It was a hand-written score by a fairly well-known composer (who died 80 years ago). I had to engrave and reduce the orchestration. I got $3500. It was 98 pages, so slightly more than the $196 this generous soul was offering. And that was dirt cheap compared to the work involved.



I love engraving music, getting those dots just right is very satisfying for me. But it is always hard work and these situations are always a low blow. Not here to cry "I'm underappreciated, love me!", but when dealing with stuff like these where the client doesn't care and thinks there's no difference between a data entry job and understanding the needs of musicians and conductors, the orchestration, the aesthetic considerations, printing, etc... It's just frustrating.


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## Krayh (Apr 11, 2020)

The race to the bottom is EVERYWHERE!

Let me give you an example a good friend of mine works for the dutch postal service as a private contractor (parcel delivery), 15 years ago he was making good money. Nowadays he's just barely making minimum wage but without pension plan or other benefits.

Point is over the years other contractors were doing the same service but for lower prices per parcel so he needed to go along otherwise they would not hire him anymore.

The reason why the postal service lowered the prices is because of the explosion of webshops that needed to send the packages and the explosion of delivering services so the competition was huge. 15 years ago I was paying a lot of money for shipping rates when I ordered something online, when I send something back when i did not like it, I had to pay it again.

Nowadays its FREE! Why? Because some webshops starting to offer that service due to competition, so logically I went to those shops to order not to the ones that charged shipping fees, after a while all shops had to adhere to these services otherwise people would not buy from these shops.

So in essence we the customers were all in "fault" for driving the prices down for the contracters.

Let my give you another example. Nowadays we have Netflix Disney amazon that deliver top notch tv shows and movies at an unlimited supply for less that 10 euros a month! Because we all dont want to pay more for those kind of services any more, where do you guess the companies are cutting costs??? 

Sounds Familiar doesnt it???

So in the end there is no one to blame but ourselves...


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## Sears Poncho (Apr 11, 2020)

MauroPantin said:


> the client doesn't care and thinks there's no difference between a data entry job and understanding the needs of musicians and conductors, the orchestration, the aesthetic considerations, printing, etc... It's just frustrating.


Agreed, it is frustrating and may cause problems for them down the road if they hire inexperienced people for an important job.

Being a string player, I sometimes play weddings in the summer. I am rarely the contractor, not my thing. When I do contract I go for a good fee and if I don't get it, I just wish them good luck and move on. I had a bride to be call a few years ago, she scoffed at my price and went with someone else, I wished her the best.

A year later I met the bride (friend of a friend). She started crying and sobbing. Her mom did too. The quartet she hired "ruined the wedding". I could have told her that of course, and I didn't feel any schadenfreude, I felt bad for them. But.. the brides have 2K dresses, a cake can be 1K, there's a limo, hotels, I have seen 50K worth of flowers at big ticket weddings..... but the musicians? And this bride unfortunately learned the hard way. The "free market" wasn't on her side.


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## ism (Apr 11, 2020)

youngpokie said:


> My partner worked on Fiverr as interior designer and the only way he could get any clients in the beginning was to compete on price, so he could get reviews and establish himself. My nephew has been freelancing in 3D rendering for several years now but had to be supported by his wife until he was able to start earning any income.





First, creative industries have always been "winner takes most" models. For every every billionaire artist a you have a couple of million starting artists.

The problem is that even the popular billionaire artist in a very real senses stands on the shoulders of all the starving artists that have created the larger artistic discourse.

Emblematically, I've heard it said that the first Velvet Underground record sold 300 copies (at first). But all of those 300 people went out and started a band. Or think of all the non-billionaire artists that influence Beatle records, and that the Beatles couldn't possible exist without. (Or just how much Oasis should be paying royalties to the Beatles.)

In our extreme capitalist model, the only value that is even recognizable is the exchange value of record sales. The model simply doesn't have a way to even conceptualize, much less account for the value of the circulating social and artistic energies that are fundamentally necessary for a breakthrough artists to distill all of these insights into something that is then capable of making a billion dollars. (Although arts grants, publicly funded music programmes and things like this, when justified as supporting music as an industry, do tacitly acknowledge this).

But here we also the myth of the autonomous individual. That our genius is solely out own. Early version of auteur theory also enact this narcissism. When Newton invented gravity he famously said "If I have seen carter, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of Giants" (meaning Galileo, Kepler et al). But in fact, anything any of us ever accomplices, regardless of our own brilliance, is only ever possible by the huge networks of social structures and discourses and influences. (Harold Bloom talks about the "anxiety of influence", using a Freudian Oedipal analogy for how artists feel the need to disavow the fact that they have had influence other than their own autonomous genius).

A more commercial version of this is the capitalist who resents paying taxes because he doesn't use social services, and "It's my money". But this ignores the fact that his supposedly "self-made" business depends very, very heavily on thinks like police and any number of other, apparently invisible, social structure that allow for even the most self-made businesses to develop and operate in the first place. In this sense someone with a large business consumes a lot more public services in various forms that any of the rest of us.


So when you take this ideology of the autonomous self-made individual, and mix it with the current business models of the internet and the gig economy (designed by and for a handful of silicon valley billionaires), what you get - and fiverr is a great example - very often amounts to an only slightly more subtle version of a ponzi scheme. 

Academia is like this also, incidentally. The only way to get ahead is to kill yourself to produce work that your supervisor gets his/her name on. But what new grad students don't realize is that the only way for their supervisors to get tenure is on the backs of as many cheap grad students as possible. When I was at Stanford, there was a story (which I think was true) of an annual memorial service for a professor killed by a grad student. The grad student's PdD was taking so long that eventually he confronted the professor and said - am I still here because I haven't earned my degree or because you enjoy taking credit for my work. Discovering it was the latter, the story goes, the grad student killed the professor with a hammer. Some of this could be apocryphal, but it was said that that the annual memorial service, the profs sat on one side of the chapel, and the grad student on the other, and the tensions was palpate.

This doesn't mean I think that mediocre artists should have a right to make as much money as a bona fide genius. But I do think that we should acknowledge that the current economic system is designed to recognize only the most crudely commodifyable notion of value. And there's no reason we need to accept this a a fundamental truth of how the world should be run.


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## youngpokie (Apr 11, 2020)

Michael Antrum said:


> Because the next tranche of people offering an 'introductory price' are going to be coming along just right behind him.....



He figured out a way to specialize in more complex projects, so he has less of them now but charges high rates (he's in video 3D). His wife still makes more than him, but he's happy. My partner on the other hand couldn't make it on Fiverr and went to work for a furniture company. 

As for "introductory price"... 

- People on this forum: "Never pay full amount for a sample library. Wait until the developer cuts prices". 
- Also people on this forum: "Cutting _my_ prices is unacceptable"

Even if most of these aren't the same people (though many are), there's a disconnect in how we perceive our own work versus the work of others, and how we assign value - in any field.


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## Michael Antrum (Apr 11, 2020)

youngpokie said:


> He figured out a way to specialize in more complex projects, so he has less of them now but charges high rates (he's in video 3D). His wife still makes more than him, but he's happy. My partner on the other hand couldn't make it on Fiverr and went to work for a furniture company.
> 
> As for "introductory price"...
> 
> ...



You are making my point for me. The vast majority developers in this industry have 'trained' their customers to expect large discounts but offering them all the time - just look at the deals thread - sales in this sector are a marketing tool, leveraging the FOMO.

No one goes into DFS and buys a sofa that not in THE sale, just as no-one buys Hollywood Orchestra at list either.

But do they sell at pricing that means they cannot make a sensible level of profit ? You bet your ass they don't. 

There really is no shortage of busy fools - I should know, long ago I was one too, but I've learnt and I did it the hard way. If you want to be successful in life, you have to learn how to say No.


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## youngpokie (Apr 11, 2020)

Michael Antrum said:


> The vast majority developers in this industry have 'trained' their customers to expect large discounts but offering them all the time



And why did they do that? Are they stupid?


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## Michael Antrum (Apr 11, 2020)

No, it's a marketing technique, and well understood and overused one.

Or do you actually believe that the sofa in DFS that is 499 really was 1299 ?


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## Resoded (Apr 11, 2020)

I really have to commend Richard (Rgames) for staying polite, true and to the point despite a few sour comments in this thread. Very mature.

For what it's worth, I think no matter what field of work you're in, accepting reality and adapting to changes is important.


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## youngpokie (Apr 11, 2020)

Michael Antrum said:


> No, it's a marketing technique, and well understood and overused one.



Yes, exactly. But none of these techniques would be used if it wasn't human nature to look for value for money, however we define it individually. That's why they work. It goes back to the point of how we perceive the value of our own work vs how others perceive it. And how we perceive the value of someone else's work vs our own.

I think the insight here is to figure out how clients define value for this types of projects and build from there. Or, to simply say no.


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## Michael Antrum (Apr 11, 2020)

youngpokie said:


> Yes, exactly. But none of these techniques would be used if it wasn't human nature to look for value for money, however we define it individually. That's why they work. It goes back to the point of how we perceive the value of our own work vs how others perceive it. And how we perceive the value of someone else's work vs our own.
> 
> I think the insight here is to figure out how clients define value for this types of projects and build from there. Or, to simply say no.



Couldn't agree with you more. Particularly when you use the word value. There is a big difference between price and value, and therein lies the disconnect.


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## youngpokie (Apr 11, 2020)

Michael Antrum said:


> There is a big difference between price and value, and therein lies the disconnect.



The disconnect happens when seller's asking price doesn't match the value as perceived by the buyer. 

So, what the potential buyers consider to be valuable needs to be understood/worked on to justify the asking price, or the price needs to be reduced to match the perceived value. Otherwise, there's no sale.


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## thesteelydane (Apr 11, 2020)

Sears Poncho said:


> Agreed, it is frustrating and may cause problems for them down the road if they hire inexperienced people for an important job.
> 
> Being a string player, I sometimes play weddings in the summer. I am rarely the contractor, not my thing. When I do contract I go for a good fee and if I don't get it, I just wish them good luck and move on. I had a bride to be call a few years ago, she scoffed at my price and went with someone else, I wished her the best.
> 
> A year later I met the bride (friend of a friend). She started crying and sobbing. Her mom did too. The quartet she hired "ruined the wedding". I could have told her that of course, and I didn't feel any schadenfreude, I felt bad for them. But.. the brides have 2K dresses, a cake can be 1K, there's a limo, hotels, I have seen 50K worth of flowers at big ticket weddings..... but the musicians? And this bride unfortunately learned the hard way. The "free market" wasn't on her side.


A friend of mine, very good Sax player who now tours with Steve Gadd, was busking on the street many years ago while still studying in conservatory, when I a guy (who turned out to be in construction) approached and asked if played at parties. Sure, he said, but when he mentioned his very reasonable price the guy freaked out and said something to the effect of “when I build a house it stands for 100 years. What you do just disappears into thin air - why should I pay for that?”
That’s what we’re up against...


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## Sears Poncho (Apr 11, 2020)

Resoded said:


> I really have to commend Richard (Rgames) for staying polite, true and to the point despite a few sour comments in this thread. Very mature.


Fair enough, and I'll agree. I'll try to lighten my comments in this thread. But... Point of order: If there is a thread made up of pro composers, suggesting that undercutting them is "clever" might have a naturally sour response. 



youngpokie said:


> As for "introductory price"...
> 
> - People on this forum: "Never pay full amount for a sample library. Wait until the developer cuts prices".
> - Also people on this forum: "Cutting _my_ prices is unacceptable"


Well, for a good many of us it's already built in. I know very few musicians who make what they "should" make. Itzhak, Yo Yo and John Williams do, as for the rest of us.... I sometimes score a "great" writing gig and make less per actual hour of work than a person working at Target. Pre-cooties Target.


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## thesteelydane (Apr 11, 2020)

Michael Antrum said:


> The vast majority developers in this industry have 'trained' their customers to expect large discounts but offering them all the time - just look at the deals thread - sales in this sector are a marketing tool, leveraging the FOMO.


I can tell you from personal experience that it’s not a marketing tool, but a matter of survival. And how did we get there? Another race to the bottom, and possibly market saturation.


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## Uiroo (Apr 11, 2020)

I see it this way:

In the long run, you need to charge a decent amount of money that lets you live comfortably while not working so much that you burn out. 
That amount should be justifiable with expertise, experience and a good track record. 

For getting into the business, lower prices are an option, but they're not sustainable.
If you're not lowering your price, there's no good reason for someone to try you out when they're connected with other experienced professionals. 
If they know someone experienced they could choose, there's gotta be something in it for them to try you.
"Ah shit no budget this time, ok, I'll give this rookie a chance" seems an ok szenario in my opinion.

But it is rediculous if someone compares the cost of a well experienced professional to the cost of an inexperienced rookie who tries to get into the business and will up his cost as soon as he's got a foot in the door. Because he has to. 

UNLESS he is superman and is much quicker than the rest of the world at this particular job, but even then he'll STILL up his cost as soon as he can.


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## ghostnote (Apr 11, 2020)

Stay strong, that's all I have to say. The more people stand their ground, the faster they will accept the rates and stop playing games.


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## Varishnipu (Apr 11, 2020)

Leave sales to salespeople. You are musicians, so do the music. You are not salesperson, so don’t do that. Learn your role and do your role.


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## rgames (Apr 11, 2020)

Uiroo said:


> For getting into the business, lower prices are an option, but they're not sustainable.


That's correct - Amazon lost a bunch of money on a lot of bets up front. But they're paying off in the long run. There are hundreds of such examples in the business world, most of which end in failure. Most businesses fail. But not all.



thesteelydane said:


> and possibly market saturation


That's certainly a significant part of it. The music market is saying (and, I think, has always said) "We have enough composers." And thank goodness for that because if society didn't have a way to enforce its preferences then we'd be spending resources funding unemployed composers instead of curing cancer.

That's one of the elements of economics that people often overlook: there's not an infinite supply of resources. Spend on problem A and there are fewer resources available for problem B. So how do we make an assessment on where to spend resources? That's where economic theory comes in. Socialism says we should let a single, central authority decide. Capitalism says let the people decide by voting with their dollars.

Having said all of that, again with the caveat that my experience is mostly as a performing musician and much less as a composer, I see a market for composers that is actually better than it was 50 years ago. There's vastly more opportunity now. There's the same number (or perhaps slightly more) top-end composing gigs for major productions. I'd say those composers make vastly more money now than their predecessors. So that subset of the market is clearly much better off.

What has changed is the explosion of new media consumption outlets that opened up a huge new market for composers and music producers. That's where the price battles lie. Other than the occasional library placement in a film, most of my composing income comes from outlets that didn't exist 50 years ago. Likewise with countless other musicians.

So the current generation of composers are much better off than their predecessors. There's vastly more opportunity out there. And, therefore, vastly more competition. The music business is, well..., a business!

rgames


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## MauroPantin (Apr 11, 2020)

Varishnipu said:


> Leave sales to salespeople. You are musicians, so do the music. You are not salesperson, so don’t do that. Learn your role and do your role.



With respect, in my opinion, this is terrible advice. The most successful amongst us are not only great artists but they are also very business savvy people.

There's this idea that selling means convincing the other person to just fork over the money as if we were car salesmen when, in reality, it means knowing how to reassure the client that you: a) hold his best interest at heart, b) know what he needs and c) know how to deliver it.


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## scoringdreams (Apr 11, 2020)

Some really thought-provoking pointers mentioned:

- The race to the bottom happens everywhere, yes, especially during a recession (like now).

- And till the time comes when the aftereffects have calmed, we should be wrecking our brains for a way to work out new business models that maintains the same value proposition for clients while allowing us to sustainably survive off art; or even better, profit more than before.


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## Thundercat (Apr 11, 2020)

Michael Antrum said:


> So what's he going to do when he wants to get married, raise a family, buy a house and a car, put the kids through college ?
> 
> Because the next tranche of people offering an 'introductory price' are going to be coming along just right behind him.....


That's why this thread is called the Race to the Bottom! The Amazing Race! And we all lose this race!


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## Thundercat (Apr 11, 2020)

rgames said:


> Yes they can, at least in the US. There are plenty of affordable homes in the Dakotas. And pretty much anywhere in small-town upper mid-west Untied States. And elsewhere in the US - houses in rural Georgia were so cheap that I owned one while still in school.
> 
> Regarding free markets - the definition of "free market" is one where people have access to enter and let the market decide if it likes their products. That doesn't mean that the market is unregulated. It still needs to be regulated to ensure that it's as free as possible. A monopoly is not a free market and needs to be prevented.
> 
> ...


Hey, I find you very intelligent and your thoughts well organized. I completely disagree with you however. Sure, I am free to go buy a house in South Dakota, but I could also go buy a house or make a hovel in Africa. So my choice is to give up my homeland. Another state 2,000 miles away might as well be Mars. Different culture, different people, different opportunities.

The problem with statements like these is they have at heart the idea that capitalism is the best thing ever. But it isn't.

Baby companies grow to be large companies that swallow other companies and then do whatever they want. There are no checks and balances other than if someone gets caught openly committing a crime. The real crimes happen in the board rooms where corporations are under no obligation to act for the common good, but only to make a profit.

It is this that is at the heart of the problem. The system is a game of numbers. It is not about making a better world or livliehood for everyone - it is an isolationist fantasy that whatever you do that earns you a buck is OK. And this is exactly how capitalism has played out low these thousands of years. It promotes the very worst behaviors and rewards them.

Another argument is that capitalism incentives people to work. That capitalism is responsible for the great buildings and human progress has only occurred on the back of capitalism.

BS.

At the heart of this argument is the idea that we are only motivated to take action if it will make us money. I take many, many actions that take tremendous amounts of time that will never make me money. Money is not required to motivate a person, or a society for that matter.

Again at the heart of capitalism is the lie that "anyone can succeed."

Again, BS.

Some people are great artists. They will NEVER understand money and finance in a way that would make them wealthy. So why should our society's rules promote only people who think a certain way.

The lie at the heart of capitalism very much reminds me of the movie "The Island." The people are told there is a beautiful island awaiting them, that their time will come. Be patient. But it turned out the island was a complete lie. As is the lie that riches are equally available to anyone. They aren't. But that's again by design. It's a way to keep the proletariat quiet. "Just keep your head down and keep working. You can do well if you just shut up and produce."

Right. No.

And finally, capitalism is a MADE UP SYSTEM. Out of whole cloth. We don't have to trade dollars for goods or services. Trading dollars for goods or services sets up an artificial barrier to action. You can't have that unless you have a golden ticket.

Do you realize the great Depression would have stopped overnight if everyone stopped demand money in exchange for goods and services? If everyone simply said, "screw money. I'm giving my gifts because I want to."

The world would change overnight.

This is something called Ubuntu Contributionism. Or the "Gift Economy."

We have tried capitalism now for centuries. It makes wealthy people wealthier, and despite the fact that some people's lives have improved, there has been a huge net transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. And it happens every down cycle like clockwork. Boom/Bust cycles are made up. They fuel the transfer of wealth to the rich. There's a reason the 1% own the world. It's by design.

And another casualty of capitalism is the destruction of our planet. Brazil is burning rainforests at unprecedented rates so they can use the land for commercial purposes.

Capitalism is a completely self-centered greedy system that keeps people looking out of their own little bubble at the world. It is not holistic systems thinking. It is "every man for himself" thinking. And that's literally destroying our planet, and our lives.

It's a brutal thing to tell someone, "well, now that we have this new technology, we don't need you at our factory to work anymore. Sorry you've been here 30 years and have a family and a life. You have to move to South Dakota where you can stand in a soup line for bread.

WONDERFUL system.

I respect you and your ideas. But I won't drink the cool aid. It's a terrible system. Maybe "less terrible" than other systems tried, but that doesn't mean we do nothing. Terrible is terrible.

Mike


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## Thundercat (Apr 11, 2020)

For an incredible and eye-opening look at what capitalism and we are doing to our world, I highly encourage everyone to watch some of these free videos at StoryOfStuff.org.

Story Of Stuff Videos

They are all amazing. In particular The Story of Solutions, and the Story of Stuff, are essential viewing.


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## Thundercat (Apr 11, 2020)

Krayh said:


> The race to the bottom is EVERYWHERE!
> 
> Let me give you an example a good friend of mine works for the dutch postal service as a private contractor (parcel delivery), 15 years ago he was making good money. Nowadays he's just barely making minimum wage but without pension plan or other benefits.
> 
> ...


Well said. But it is the system at the heart of this that is the problem. You are describing human behavior. We need a system of trade or economics that allows for the human mental/emotional conditions and doesn't implode over it.


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## Thundercat (Apr 11, 2020)

ism said:


> First, creative industries have always been "winner takes most" models. For every every billionaire artist a you have a couple of million starting artists.
> 
> The problem is that even the popular billionaire artist in a very real senses stands on the shoulders of all the starving artists that have created the larger artistic discourse.
> 
> ...


I wish I was as articulate as you are. Incredibly well said. The idea of getting wealthy in isolation entirely on one's own is completely apocryphal, yet as you so rightly stated, there are hidden dependencies that every wealthy person avails themselves of. In the StoryOfStuff.org videos, they talk about this.

A "cheap $4.00 radio" costs much more than $4.00 to produce. The cost comes in the form of all of the people up the supply chain who paid with terrible jobs. And the damage to the planet because the company that made the radios pours toxic waste into the rivers. And the hidden human costs behind it all are staggering.

And then we go and throw away that radio after it breaks a month later. Start the cycle over again.

Clever humans, clever system.

Not!


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## stigc56 (Apr 12, 2020)

rgames said:


> Maybe it does, but is wealth equality the desired outcome? The truth is that the most equitable distributions of wealth exist where nobody has anything. They're all broke.
> 
> I believe that any time human beings organize themselves into economies and/or governments there will be uneven distribution of wealth. I can't prove that will always be the case but it always has been. In free-market economies, power goes to the businesses. In socialist/communist economies, power goes to the government.
> 
> ...


You forget the Scandinavian countries. Here we have a mixed economy, where the state is responsible for health and education among others. There are still big differences in wealth, but nowhere near the American level. And you are simply wrong about a lot of your conclusions regarding the distribution of wealth under capitalism, maybe update your knowledge reading Piketty.


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## lux (Apr 12, 2020)

MauroPantin said:


> I just got off the phone with a Europe-based potential client that needed an entire symphony engraved. He is not a musician, the work is someone else's and he wanted to engrave the manuscript as a gesture.



the profile says probably more than everything else. I may be wrong, but that's a typical non-client or "someone-who-have-no-idea" profile, which may be added with "I-do-negotations-all-day-this-is-no-different-lemme-shoot-a-ridicolous-rate" attitude as well. Maybe he just had half an idea, which is classic. 

Again, I may be wrong but honestly, at a first glance, this can't be even considered a lost gig. Looks more like a never existing gig.


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## GNP (Apr 12, 2020)

MauroPantin said:


> I just got off the phone with a Europe-based potential client that needed an entire symphony engraved. He is not a musician, the work is someone else's and he wanted to engrave the manuscript as a gesture. It was a substantial amount of work, so a lot of handholding and explaining took place over the last few days.
> 
> Today he brought up concerns about how he considered my rate to be very expensive (which really isn't, I do research on this regularly and I know I'm right in the middle of the market price). I explained the importance of getting it done correctly, the music preparation impact on live performance, the advantages of my low overhead operation and was even prepared to negotiate the rate a bit seeing as this was to be some sort of gift for someone and not the usual "OMG THIS NEEDS TO BE ON THE STANDS A WEEK FROM NOW!!!" situation.
> 
> ...



Agreed. Many folks do not understand what it takes to achieve several processes in filmscoring; they only compare competitive bids without knowing what they're getting themselves into. I'm currently working with really great folks, but they're not very experienced in knowing how much it costs just to hire a quartet, let alone a bigger ensemble. They also don't know that it's best to stick with mockups while having to conform to every updated cut of the picture. Once you record live musicians, that's it. Reconforming tempo to updated picture requires recording them again. The main problem with this movie I'm currently working on, is that it is quite CGI-dependent. The problem is, they scheduled submission for the CGI artists wayyy past the date for audio and music post! Which means, the audio people are still conforming to tiny shifts in visual timing because the CGI is still not done yet. Big fuck up!
If they want to hire LIVE musicians in future projects, they will need to schedule FINAL FINAL FINAL CGI way BEFORE we hit audio post and live music recording. Thank god this time round, we're only using mockups, because the budget just isn't big enough to hire live musicians.

There are many producers like them who do not know so many things that involve the costs. All they know is to compare bids between composers. So composers who ruin the market by doing stuff for the ultimate cheap also need to be aware of the market.


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## GNP (Apr 12, 2020)

rgames said:


> You forgot option C) you weren't as clever as the guy who figured out a way to do it for less
> 
> The argument you're making is exactly the same as the argument made in the space launch business for decades. Boeing, Northrop, etc. owned that market and they said the same thing "It costs what it costs and we know what those costs are. We can't be profitable and do it for less."
> 
> ...



Agree as well, although I'm definitely one of those who can make money while doing it for less, I would still champion for abit more budget to really hit things out of the park. Couldn't hurt.


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## AlexRuger (Apr 12, 2020)

GNP said:


> Once you record live musicians, that's it. Reconforming tempo to updated picture requires recording them again. The main problem with this movie I'm currently working on, is that it is quite CGI-dependent. The problem is, they scheduled submission for the CGI artists wayyy past the date for audio and music post! Which means, the audio people are still conforming to tiny shifts in visual timing because the CGI is still not done yet. Big fuck up!
> If they want to hire LIVE musicians in future projects, they will need to schedule FINAL FINAL FINAL CGI way BEFORE we hit audio post and live music recording. Thank god this time round, we're only using mockups, because the budget just isn't big enough to hire live musicians.



Even on the biggest movies I've been a part of, this is unfortunately par for the course, and precisely why music editors exist. Final picture or CGI before recording is a pipe dream.

Also, you can totally reconform the tempo of live material. Definitely not my first choice for a finished product but it's certainly possible.


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## AlexRuger (Apr 12, 2020)

stigc56 said:


> You forget the Scandinavian countries.



Seems that libertarians always forget the Scandinavian countries  It's funny, progressives in the US on the whole go out of our way to say that the kind of "socialism" we're advocating for more closely resembles the Scandinavian model than anything else, and yet those on the right always bring up Venezuela or whatever instead. Weird.


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## GNP (Apr 12, 2020)

AlexRuger said:


> Even on the biggest movies I've been a part of, this is unfortunately par for the course, and precisely why music editors exist. Final picture or CGI before recording is a pipe dream.
> 
> Also, you can totally reconform the tempo of live material. Definitely not my first choice for a finished product but it's certainly possible.



That's encouraging, lol. Definitely the *timing* of the cuts and CGI should be final, even if the looks of them are not. 

Yep you're right, reconforming live material is possible, but definitely not my first choice either.


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## Beluga (Apr 12, 2020)

I have been undercut many times. I guess I just like to get well paid. Lately one of my clients reduced the amount of the total music playtime by using cheapo royalty free music so I doubled my rate to make up for it. Was accepted without discussion and I blew the quality of the custom music out of the park. Spent double time on it and they loved it. I hate to be on a budget and feel like I should go faster quicker and cheaper. It’s just not for me. Some clients will always look for cheaper options and brag about how cheap the music is. People trying to be the cheapest should try to get well paid. It’s really nice.


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## AlexRuger (Apr 12, 2020)

GNP said:


> That's encouraging, lol. Definitely the *timing* of the cuts and CGI should be final, even if the looks of them are not.



By definition that isn't going to happen. The "looks" is "what is happening" which, of course, occurs over time. You'd think that whether a CG shot is finished or not (i.e. you're working to wireframes that aren't filled in/colored/etc) wouldn't matter, but often times as it's finished, timing is changed -- for example, they might find that a character movement looked okay as a wireframe but needs to be sped up to look more natural once textures/colors/backgrounds/etc are fleshed out. 

The cut can and will change until the very end. I've had entire subplots added or taken away after the music was recorded. Doesn't matter. It's just the nature of the industry now.


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## GNP (Apr 12, 2020)

AlexRuger said:


> By definition that isn't going to happen. The "looks" is "what is happening" which, of course, occurs over time. You'd think that whether a CG shot is finished or not (i.e. you're working to wireframes that aren't filled in/colored/etc) wouldn't matter, but often times as it's finished, timing is changed -- for example, they might find that a character movement looked okay as a wireframe but needs to be sped up to look more natural once textures/colors/backgrounds/etc are fleshed out.
> 
> The cut can and will change until the very end. I've had entire subplots added or taken away after the music was recorded. Doesn't matter. It's just the nature of the industry now.



That's really too bad. But that means it's up to the producers to pay for music editors, and not for the composer to do all of that reconforming, unless if they pay the composer to do that as well!


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## Varishnipu (Apr 13, 2020)

MauroPantin said:


> With respect, in my opinion, this is terrible advice. The most successful amongst us are not only great artists but they are also very business savvy people.
> 
> There's this idea that selling means convincing the other person to just fork over the money as if we were car salesmen when, in reality, it means knowing how to reassure the client that you: a) hold his best interest at heart, b) know what he needs and c) know how to deliver it.



if you know how to sell, you should always make money.


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## MauroPantin (Apr 13, 2020)

Varishnipu said:


> if you know how to sell, you should always make money.



Absolutely, but there's much more to it than that. The goal is not to make the sale or just make money. The goal is to have a career. Or at least that was mine when I started. 

There are all kinds of sleazy tactics people use to get a sale. That only means you can convince people to part with their money, not that they will come back to you next time they need something. That can only happen if you deliver the goods and take care of the client. 

Also, which one is it? Should you know how to sell? Or you should leave that to the salespeople as per your previous post?


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## rgames (Apr 13, 2020)

AlexRuger said:


> Seems that libertarians always forget the Scandinavian countries


The Scandinavian countries are a great example of successful free market economies. As Denmark's Prime Minister said after Bernie Sanders referred to them as a socialist country: "Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy"

Denmark, in particular, is even more free market than the US. There's basically no labor protection like government support for unions or a minimum wage. They let the markets work all that out.

So how do they provide so much in terms of health care and education? Easy - the middle class pays really high tax rates, much higher than in the US. And that's fine - government can provide services and people can choose to pay for them. That's what the middle class there is doing. Government is another player in a free market - if people find value in government-provided services then they absolutely should be able to access them. But they have to *pay* for them - that's the part that gets ignored in the US. That "middle class pays a lot of taxes" thing doesn't get a lot of air time here in the US. Have you ever heard of anyone running on the "Increase taxes for middle-class Americans" platform? Nope. If you really want to be like the Scandinavian countries, that's what you have to do.

Norway is another good example - also very much free market. They use that market to make money of that giant pool of oil off their coast, which is owned/managed by the government. Revenues from that oil pay for all sorts of services. We could do exactly the same in the US - we have huge oil reserves. But "Drill Baby Drill" wasn't too popular here. And that's fine - the US people spoke and the system worked like intended.

So if the Scandinavian countries are even more free market than the US, why is there lower wage disparity? The answer lies in what the society values. Free markets are a means for societies to express their values through voting with their dollars. Free markets don't have anything to say what those underlying values are. And US values are different than Scandinavian values.

The fact that those values are reflected in their respective free market economies is yet another testament to how well free markets work.

rgames


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## rgames (Apr 13, 2020)

Thundercat said:


> Baby companies grow to be large companies that swallow other companies and then do whatever they want.


That's not a free market.


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## Thundercat (Apr 13, 2020)

rgames said:


> That's not a free market.


Really? That’s the very definition of it.


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## AlexRuger (Apr 13, 2020)

Richard, you seem to be defining "free market" as "a well-regulated market," which is by definition not free. You might get your point across better if you just stop using that term, which is at the very least colloquially understood as "without regulation" and is what everyone is talking about here. The end result of a free market is unquestionably consolidation of wealth, including monopolies.


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## SamC (Apr 13, 2020)

Beluga said:


> I have been undercut many times. I guess I just like to get well paid. Lately one of my clients reduced the amount of the total music playtime by using cheapo royalty free music so I doubled my rate to make up for it. Was accepted without discussion and I blew the quality of the custom music out of the park. Spent double time on it and they loved it. I hate to be on a budget and feel like I should go faster quicker and cheaper. It’s just not for me. Some clients will always look for cheaper options and brag about how cheap the music is. People trying to be the cheapest should try to get well paid. It’s really nice.




That’s great Beluga. Integrity and hard work is a very important thing to have, especially in the state of the business today. Simply being great at what you do is all we have left.

Ive been at this full time for a while and to be honest, I’m not concerned about people undercutting me. I’m concerned about shrinking budgets, royalties drying up due to streaming, nepotism, the lack of a union, the general undervaluing of the composer year by year.

Sometimes on these threads I feel like we composers are all in a car heading into a brick wall and we’re arguing which seat to take.


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## rgames (Apr 13, 2020)

AlexRuger said:


> Richard, you seem to be defining "free market" as "a well-regulated market,"


Yes, it gets confused sometimes. That point was discussed a few pages back, I think.

"Free market" means everyone is free to offer products and services to those who might buy them. If a company (or government, as in the case with Chinese steel in the US) uses its power to deny anyone that opportunity, that market is not free. We need at least some regulations to ensure that doesn't happen. But it is also true that regulation sometimes prevents people from offering goods and services (again, the Chinese steel example: trade wars).

But your point is correct - "free market" does not mean "unregulated." There's a balance. There can be too little regulation and there can be too much.

Apropros of the origin of this thread - price fixing is not allowed in a free market! And there are regulations to prevent it.

rgames


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## AlexRuger (Apr 13, 2020)

rgames said:


> But your point is correct - "free market" does not mean "unregulated." There's a balance. There can be too little regulation and there can be too much.



The vast majority of people -- myself included -- hear "free" and associate that to mean "unregulated" (what else would it be free "from"?) A cursory Google search turns up Investopedia stating "In a truly free market, buyers and sellers conduct their business *without any government regulation.*"


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## rgames (Apr 13, 2020)

AlexRuger said:


> The vast majority of people -- myself included -- hear "free" and associate that to mean "unregulated" (what else would it be free "from"?) A cursory Google search turns up Investopedia stating "In a truly free market, buyers and sellers conduct their business *without any government regulation.*"


From Wikipedia:

"For classical economists such as Adam Smith, the term free market does not necessarily refer to a market free from government interference, but rather free from all forms of economic privilege, monopolies and artificial scarcities. "

As I said, the definitions vary. But I'd give more weight to Adam Smith, widely recognized as the father of economics, than Investopedia 

rgames


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## Thundercat (Apr 13, 2020)

I hear the ivory tower ideas and maybe in a perfect world the "free market" system you speak of can work.

But the system is run by thugs. There's no other word for it. Corruption is rife throughout the system, and any regulation is merely a roadblock to those wishing to do what they want. They can and do get around any laws or regulations you can name.

Take the Fed. I dare you to read "The Creature from Jekyll Island" and not come away changed forever in your opinion.

The system itself is terrible. It's blasphemy to say that to a citizen of a Western country, who have been told since birth that "capitalism is the greatest system ever."

But it's not.

We can continue to try to frost a turd, and tease out subtleties regarding said shitty system, or we can recognize that it simply doesn't work for the majority of people. Not well anyway. And a system of economics should allow the majority to prosper; not the initiated few who know how to bend the rules to their advantage.

And as for price fixing not being part of your free market - please. It's a guarantee. What is OPEC? What is any consortium of businesses that offer a product or service, but gatekeepers to prices being a certain amount? What is the point of this thread? Let's all be in collusion to make sure we get ours. And I'm not against that in this case since it favors me - but it is a collusion nonetheless, and it is a natural outgrowth of the core of capitalism - "get as much as you can while you can get away with it."

To have a banking system that is allowed to lend out 10x more money than it has - and also charge interest on the total amount - this is another example of "free market" thuggery that gets written into law.

Doesn't matter if it's illegal even (which it's not in this case); it gets done because capitalism promotes greed and encourages the worst of human behavior. 

I have an idea. Let's play a game. Is it possible to create a system where the rich are not systematically favored and bailed out, while the poor pay with their lives?

We are too smart as a species to answer the question "no." But also do we have the round ones to attempt it?


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## BlackDorito (Apr 13, 2020)

Fascinating thread and alarming. Haven't read it all, but it reminds me of a similar situation in non-commercial location recording. By non-commercial I mean regional theater, school/university/church productions, and the like. The technology in recent years is such that any kid can hang up a stereo mic and record into a laptop, so many music directors are just getting so-and-so's nephew to come in and record. But they don't know what sort of mics to use, where to place them, how many tracks to record, how to do mix and master, etc. The nephew is not a recording engineer, but they can get an acceptable sound in some cases. The nephew does not have a mic library, fancy preamps, lots of cabling experience, etc. but if you give the not-picky music director/conductor (which is a lot of them) a price, they say "Yikes, my nephew will do it for free."

But back to music engraving. If the OP had the opportunity (however unlikely) to see the results of a $2-per-page process, he might be able to point out to the next potential client how his work is substantially better than a $2 hack job. Now let's say there are an increasing number of $2-per-page jobs in the future. That becomes a market segment that the OP does not operate in, and sadly the overall pie for quality professional jobs is now smaller. I venture to say that location recording, though a very skilled activity, is quite equipment-dependent, and thus it is disrupted a bit by waves of new technology, enabling a kid with a laptop and a mid-range stereo mic to record a non-commercial event. The market shrinks because there is now a segment for the not-so-discerning directors who can use their nephew. 

But since I count myself as an experienced notation software user, I'm trying to imagine what sort of disruption would enable formatting page after page of symphonic music at $2-per-page _as a job_. Maybe as a learning activity .. maybe to put it on a resume or get a reference. But working at Taco Bell seems more realistic to put food on the table. $2-per-page doesn't seem like a sustainable market segment. Forgive me for only having read Page 1 and Page 6 of this thread - maybe this has all been hashed out - but I sincerely hope the OP discovers that this is not as big a threat as this one client seems to be indicating.


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## rgames (Apr 13, 2020)

Thundercat said:


> The system itself is terrible.


Yes it is. And all the others are even worse!

If you switch your focus from "good" to "least bad" you might feel differently about free markets.


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## Thundercat (Apr 13, 2020)

rgames said:


> Yes it is. And all the others are even worse!


So, what, we just live with it? That's just sad...


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## rgames (Apr 13, 2020)

Thundercat said:


> we just live with it?


Yep. At least until somebody comes up with another system that is demonstrably better.

But, again, better in the sense of "less bad" not "good." I think "good" is too far a stretch.

rgames


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## Sears Poncho (Apr 13, 2020)

BlackDorito said:


> But back to music engraving. If the OP had the opportunity (however unlikely) to see the results of a $2-per-page process, he might be able to point out to the next potential client how his work is substantially better than a $2 hack job.


Here's the thing: the original client already knows/knew this. After all, the OP did get the call. And that's the alarming part. The client could have/should have called Mr. El Cheapo first if he thought the work would be of similar quality. They didn't. They knew. They called the good guy and said "There's a crappy guy that works for 2 bucks a page, therefore...." They wanted the good guy at bad guy pricing.


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## AlexRuger (Apr 13, 2020)

rgames said:


> From Wikipedia:
> 
> "For classical economists such as Adam Smith, the term free market does not necessarily refer to a market free from government interference, but rather free from all forms of economic privilege, monopolies and artificial scarcities. "
> 
> ...



To be clear, the point I'm trying to make isn't what the real definition is, but the (arguably more important) colloquial definition, as demonstrated by the fact that literally everyone in this thread thought that you were talking about unregulated markets until you had to explain more thoroughly.

My reason for bringing up Investopedia isn't that it's the pantheon of economic information, but rather that it's one of the top results when you Google "free market definition," which is far more likely than people looking up Adam Smith.


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## Varishnipu (Apr 13, 2020)

MauroPantin said:


> Also, which one is it? Should you know how to sell? Or you should leave that to the salespeople as per your previous post?



Let the salesman sale and the musician make music, no need to confuse the problem.


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## rgames (Apr 13, 2020)

AlexRuger said:


> the (arguably more important) colloquial definition


I disagree! I don't know anybody who thinks "free market" means "unregulated". And I spend a lot of time talking about economics and have worked government policy for the US Government.

Perhaps you don't actually know EVERYONE in the world? 

EDIT: In fact, the world's largest proponent of the term "Free Market", The Economist magazine, would never say that "free market" means "unregulated". Absolutely the opposite. There may be some people confused in this thread but I dare say they are not a good representation of the rest of the world.

rgames


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## José Herring (Apr 13, 2020)

rgames said:


> The great thing about a free market is that you have every right to *not* take any gig that doesn't meet your requirements, whatever those may be.
> 
> If somebody can figure out how to do your job for less money then that's a good thing. Society benefits from such pressures because resources are freed up and are available for use on other things that society values more. Societies make that judgment call through free market economies by voting with their dollars. There's a couple hundred years of history that clearly shows that such an approach is the best way to serve society (a.k.a. those involved in the economy) from the standpoint of overall standard of living.
> 
> ...


 I think I threw up a little bit. Only a capitalist would compare the music to smart phones and ice tea. That IS what's wrong with the music "business". 

It starts with us. We have to think we're worth something. That music is worth something. Because if we don't we reduce it to stamping out a product for as little as possible to be given out by bit torrent. The "free market" argument only works if people are honest. People aren't honest. People steal. People steal music in this free market. So then people think that an engraver spending weeks preparing a score then mocking it up is only worth a couple of hundred bucks. Yet that same cheap bastard goes to his union job and demands fair wages, pension, health insurance for sitting on his ass 9-5.

It wasn't always like this. It is now. The "free" market IS the sole cause of the decline of making a viable living in the arts. Not because of any tenants proposed by a free market system but because the market isn't free at all, it is controlled by crooks.


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## rgames (Apr 13, 2020)

josejherring said:


> The "free market" argument only works if people are honest.


Actually free markets are much better at weeding out corruption than other types of economies. That's a pretty well-established fact. Go look at any measure you like for corruption. Now compare that against any measure you like to establish how close that economy is to a free market. There's an extremely strong correlation: free markets are much less corrupt, and not just by a little bit.

Does that mean they're corruption-free? Of course not. But they're not nearly as bad as other types of economies.

But don't take my word for it - go gather the data and look for yourself.

And again, don't think "good". Think "least bad".

rgames


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## Thundercat (Apr 13, 2020)

rgames said:


> Actually free markets are much better at weeding out corruption than other types of economies. That's a pretty well-established fact. Go look at any measure you like for corruption. Now compare that against any measure you like to establish how close that economy is to a free market. There's an extremely strong correlation: free markets are much less corrupt, and not just by a little bit.
> 
> Does that mean they're corruption-free? Of course not. But they're not nearly as bad as other types of economies.
> 
> ...


We are the species that invented gothic cathedrals. The pyramids. Chocolate. And the slinky. We sent people to the moon.

the best we can hope for is least worst?


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## José Herring (Apr 13, 2020)

rgames said:


> Actually free markets are much better at weeding out corruption than other types of economies. That's a pretty well-established fact. Go look at any measure you like for corruption. Now compare that against any measure you like to establish how close that economy is to a free market. There's an extremely strong correlation: free markets are much less corrupt, and not just by a little bit.
> 
> Does that mean they're corruption-free? Of course not. But they're not nearly as bad as other types of economies.
> 
> ...


Nobody is advocating a closed economy just the limited idea that you have that you can compare a composer's output who has spent years honing is craft to cheap wine drinking from a plastic glass. There's my opposition because you sell yourself short. The crooks that control this joint absolutely want you to think that your music isn't worth a penny. It makes it cheaper for them to use your music to sell their Wheaties. 

It's that black and white Ayn Rand type thinking of absolutes that absolutely disgust me. It's so limited and so short sighted and has proved so unworkable everytime that somebody tries to espouse it that I still can't believe that people buy into that. It completely rules out any kind of judgement and thought and reduces everything down to a 2+2=4 mentality. Which type of mentality has no providence in the arts which relies on a higher level aesthetic judgement.

So fine, if you want to compare your music to a can of coke, but just realize that that can of coke wouldn't sell at all if it wasn't for the millions spent on making the product more aethetically appealing through millions spent on advertising. So you can consider your music worth a can of coke or you can consider your music worth a $25,000 commission to score their next ad campaign. As an artist you can't compare the ability to sway the minds of the masses to a consumable product.


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## rgames (Apr 13, 2020)

Not sure where you're going @josejherring. I don't think anyone is advocating selling yourself short.

If you want to be an artist with a "highly developed aesthetic", then be an artist.

But if you want to be in the music *business* then put the *business* first and the music second, or at least address them with equal emphasis. That requires consideration of how markets work and how your products/services fit within those markets.

rgames


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## Thundercat (Apr 13, 2020)

rgames said:


> Not sure where you're going @josejherring. I don't think anyone is advocating selling yourself short.
> 
> If you want to be an artist with a "highly developed aesthetic", then be an artist.
> 
> ...


You are incredibly well spoken and even handed. I don't get where you're coming from exactly, but some of what you say rings true, and some of it feels like reducing art to a can of coke like Jose said.

I especially agree with your last comment here, however, Art is great for art's sake, but business is business. That's something I need to keep in mind.

Thanks

Mike


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## AlexRuger (Apr 14, 2020)

rgames said:


> I disagree! I don't know anybody who thinks "free market" means "unregulated". And I spend a lot of time talking about economics and have worked government policy for the US Government.
> 
> Perhaps you don't actually know EVERYONE in the world?
> 
> ...



...hence the term "colloquial." 

_Adjective. Used in ordinary or familiar conversation; not formal or literary._

One would assume that the circles you run in -- people who work in economic policy or otherwise talk economics a lot -- won't be using colloquialisms with regards to basic economic concepts. But I'd be willing to go out on a limb and say that an entire generation or two behind you associates "free market" with "unregulated," simply because that is how it's used by the loudest right-wing voices in the US.

And, again, I present as evidence #1 -- *gestures broadly at most of this thread's response to your defense of a so-called "free market" and the ideals and imagery that obviously conjures up.*

I don't really care to beat this point into the ground in the name of pedantry anymore, so take my point or leave it I guess.


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## AlexRuger (Apr 14, 2020)

rgames said:


> Not sure where you're going @josejherring.



If I may, I imagine most peoples' issue with your position can be summed up by this sentence:



rgames said:


> The great thing about a free market is that you have every right to *not* take any gig that doesn't meet your requirements, whatever those may be.



The amount of privilege wrapped up in that statement is honestly mind-blowing.


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## Uiroo (Apr 14, 2020)

Thundercat said:


> We are the species that invented gothic cathedrals. The pyramids. Chocolate. And the slinky. We sent people to the moon.
> 
> the best we can hope for is least worst?


When I hear cathedrals I think of religion and all the horrors linked to it.
Pyramids remind me of generations of slaves that died for it.
Chocolate is the reason one distant relative of mine can't walk anymore because she's addicted to it. 
Slinky reminds me of tons of plastic polluting the oceans. 


The least worst is really what we're aiming for here, that's important to understand.


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## Krayh (Apr 14, 2020)

ghostnote said:


> Stay strong, that's all I have to say. The more people stand their ground, the faster they will accept the rates and stop playing games.



Dont count on it, the race downwards is everywhere unfortunately...


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## Thundercat (Apr 14, 2020)

Uiroo said:


> When I hear cathedrals I think of religion and all the horrors linked to it.
> Pyramids remind me of generations of slaves that died for it.
> Chocolate is the reason one distant relative of mine can't walk anymore because she's addicted to it.
> Slinky reminds me of tons of plastic polluting the oceans.
> ...


funny how we have different associations.

when I think of cathedrals, I think of towering, soaring structures that create shock and awe when one enters them. The quality of the silence is overwhelming, inviting introspection and worship.

when I think of pyramids, I think if structures that can be seen from space that defy all logic and understanding as to how they were actually built. We really don’t know.

when I think of chocolate I think if happiness and moments of joy.

and finally, I hate plastic slinkies. The best ones are metal.


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## rgames (Apr 15, 2020)

AlexRuger said:


> ...hence the term "colloquial."
> 
> _Adjective. Used in ordinary or familiar conversation; not formal or literary._
> 
> ...


What you're saying is also true about "freedom" in general.

I've not met anyone who says the word "freedom" implies "no laws."

But hey - define it however you like! It's just not consistent with my experience. And mine is not consistent with yours. C'est la vie!

EDIT: "It's a free country" is a colloquialism, isn't it? Do you think the people who say that mean to say that there are no laws? 

rgames


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## rgames (Apr 15, 2020)

AlexRuger said:


> The amount of privilege wrapped up in that statement is honestly mind-blowing.


The privilege of being in a free market? Not a privilege but an actual right here in the US!

But seriously - I don't follow what you're getting at.


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