How much is music worth?

Why is it that visual art goes for hundreds of millions of dollars at auction, and music sells for...well, nothing sometimes? Is music really worth that much less than art? Or is there something else at play that speaks to the fickle economics of art?

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[AdamNeely]

You might note that I didn't mention Patreon in this video, or other crowdfunding options for artists. I went back and forth on this idea in the script a couple times and ultimately left it out. I wanted to mainly focus on the monetary worth of music itself, and not the relationship musicians have with their fans. It does seem strange that I left out Patreon when I owe basically my entire career to Patreon, but I left it out for that reason.

[theimacman]

When you buy a song, you buy a copy of it, not the song itself. So, it can't be compared to art, which literally has only one original piece. If someone charged 1.29 for a picture of a piece of art, that would be more comparable. It's also why music piracy is an interesting topic, since pirating a song does not actually take that song away from the creator, and you can't even claim loss of revenue, because you can't prove that the pirate would've paid for the song otherwise.

[kaitok]

"There is now effectively a 1:1 between musical experience and availability."
*Records the take*

[LorenzoPrice]

Wow, I'm actually really fascinated by this concept of single take recordings. There is something really beautiful about it.

[ibji]

If someone buys a famous painting for 50 million dollars, they and they alone own it and can get the experience of viewing it in person. You can then turn around and charge others to view it, providing you don't mind people coming to your home at all hours on a regular basis. But if I pay one dollar to 'own' a song, I don't own the rights to the song, and I can't charge people for listening to it. All I am buying is the experience in the same way I bought a ticket to enter a museum. I'm sure if Taylor Swift wanted to sell the rights to her hits, where the buyer would be the sole beneficiary of all future purchases of copies of her songs, those rights would also sell for millions.

[hugoleonardoamaral]

I love How you always 'spoil' your own videos in the thumbnails.

[TotalJustinGaming]

To experience the van gohg painting you did not pay 100 mil. Did you?

[ilovemonkays]

>Music that is devastatingly beautiful and life changing for one person will sound like complete noise to another


Ahh, the eternal struggle for metalheads is real

[sebastianzaczek]

Still love those anti-clickbaity thumbnails 😃

[glue]

Not everyone who went to see Van Gogh's self-portrait paid 100 mil. The 1.29 per song or 12$ for an album better corresponds to the 25$ entrance fee to the MET, and the 100 mil for the painting might better correspond to the masters of the songs.

[DrDeusExMachina]

If Taylor Swift dropped an exclusive song tomorrow and allowed one person to leave with it and all the rights contained to it therein. The value would shoot into the stratosphere.

[gdeuhhp]

If anyone could put me in touch with Taylor Swift, I'd like to purchase and own one of her songs for $1.29. I'm happy to workout a fair royalty for anyone who wants to purchase the right to play it after that.

[polygondwanaland]

Art sold for millions of dollars is the performance itself. Music on iTunes is equivalent to a print, and nobody's paying millions of dollars for a print of the Mona Lisa. How much does a Mona Lisa wallpaper cost?

[Hulavuta]

Another example you could compare is literature, which you kinda alluded to but didn't go into depth about. I feel like literature is almost the intersection here. Books themselves are pretty cheap to print and you can get the most celebrated works of Shakespeare, Dante, etc. for the same price as any other book. At the same time, something like the original manuscripts would probably be worth millions. Even though it's the same art and same experience. Guess that's an another example of how the history of an item can contribute to its value.

[Memento_Mori_Music]

- Going to a concert could be viewed as analogous to going to a museum.
- Buying a copy (e.g., mp3) of an original master of a famous song could be viewed as analogous to buying a copy (e.g., poster) of a famous painting.
- Just like an original famous painting might be worth millions of dollars, so might an original manuscript of a famous composition; and perhaps for music that isn't in the public domain, owning the rights to a song could be viewed as the equivalent?

[ChristianIce]

I guess the $43 billion don't include live music.
Concerts are the way a band makes most of the money, exactly like it used to happen before the vinyl/tape/cd/mp3 era.
Things are not gettin' worse, they are going back to normal.

[knighth]

Van Gogh painted one self portrait. He did not mass produce many self portraits. This is the difference. If Taylor Swift wants the same value, she will have to make a single recording made then wait over 100 years after her death to see those prices. Even Van Gogh couldn't give away his paintings when he was alive.

[NN-slwi]

You seem to be more unbiased towards pop music than a few years ago. Don’t get me wrong, I find it bland, but it takes some skill to be able to write a song that millions of people can connect with. I’m glad to see you use examples from more genres than just jazz and classical. Keep up the good content

[DBruce]

In terms of your last point, I definitely think the fact you don't buy a physical item these days has affected the way people appreciate music. People don't seem to 'worship' their favourite artist the way they did when, say a new Led Zeppelin album was released and they had a physical artefact to pore over. I suppose that's not directly related to its price but it does show that the same music has a different impact on us depending on how its distributed. I would like to think that to the owners of those single copy discs they sound absolutely AMAZING!

[miradrgn]

it's almost as though capitalism is a fundamentally senseless system, where the concept of "value" is simultaneously divorced from the intrinsic utility or worth of a thing and also considered a fundamental property of all things in existence, from products to human time and experience, and that artists are hugely harmed by this because their ability to continue living (and making art) is contingent on their ability to sell their work under this system where the "value" of something as abstract and subjective as art is fundamentally kind of undefinable, but has to compete against cheap mass-produced goods that set consumers' expectations of "what things should cost" 🤔