There is a musician in Jonathan Franzen’s novel ‘Freedom’ that describes his job as a chiclet salesman. No matter what goes into the production of a single song, the market value is predetermined at $0.99. A value that seems to exist outside of what we might imagine a market economy to be – prices determined by supply, demand, quality, etc. – and where revenue largely accrues to the owners of marketplaces versus the artists themselves. Of course exploitation of artists is as old as time itself, and seems like old news now, but I can’t help noticing how this hollowing out of the arts is occurring in other media.
Just this week Warner Media announced they would release their entire slate of movies on their HBO Max streaming platform, effectively foregoing the traditional ‘windowing’ where movies are shown exclusively in cinemas for a period of time then move to cable or streaming platforms and DVDs. It seems the general public has applauded the move while artists have been outspoken in opposition. These movies, think what you want of them in terms of quality, represent a form of premium entertainment that consumers have always paid to experience, above and beyond cable and streaming subscriptions. An opportunity for market forces to reward the artist. Now Warner Media is effectively diminishing the value of these movies by treating them like everything else. They say it’s temporary but it will be impossible to change once this becomes normalized. WM will be rewarded by the financial sector because they know as well as anyone that this means growth in streaming subscribers and long-term a significant cut to content production costs. So the winners will be a few at the top and the losers will be the creatives who actually produce content.
This has happened in music and so many other areas of our economy. What is interesting is how most people cheer along. We’ve adopted the language of finance and Silicon Valley as our own – democratization of content, sharing, efficiency, digitization, scalability, productivity. We use those words to justify our desire to be surrounded by entertainment but pay nothing for it. In many ways we actively support the stratification of our society into haves and have nots. We cheer the powerful at the expense of the weak. It’s perverse.
GLAZ 