The article keeps reiterating the viewpoint that not selling art devalues it. That’s not necessarily wrong, but it’s such a corporate take on the situation, and completely misses the actual issue people had with this. Corporations should not be using their ability to control our personal devices. It’s a violation of trust, and that’s what people were reacting to.
And further, I think it also completely ignores what is truly devaluing art: allowing executives huge cuts of the profit. They don’t do sufficient work to justify the amount they take from the industry, but if they let bands have the money, they’d lose the control that lets them keep it.
U2 also devalued their art by deciding to make what was undoubtedly their worst album up to that point. I’m a U2 fan and I was annoyed by the album being in my library.
Yeah, I would agree the loss of agency was also a meaningful impact. That’s also pretty visible in Apple’s products today—I only ever use the Music app on my iPhone for music I own and synchronize, but it will still give me occasional popups about signing up for the Music subscription.
The article keeps reiterating the viewpoint that not selling art devalues it. That’s not necessarily wrong, but it’s such a corporate take on the situation, and completely misses the actual issue people had with this. Corporations should not be using their ability to control our personal devices. It’s a violation of trust, and that’s what people were reacting to.
And further, I think it also completely ignores what is truly devaluing art: allowing executives huge cuts of the profit. They don’t do sufficient work to justify the amount they take from the industry, but if they let bands have the money, they’d lose the control that lets them keep it.
U2 also devalued their art by deciding to make what was undoubtedly their worst album up to that point. I’m a U2 fan and I was annoyed by the album being in my library.
Yeah, I would agree the loss of agency was also a meaningful impact. That’s also pretty visible in Apple’s products today—I only ever use the Music app on my iPhone for music I own and synchronize, but it will still give me occasional popups about signing up for the Music subscription.