- Napster – file sharing descimated record sales, leading to the closure of Tower Records
- But record deals were never good- see Steve Albini’s essay from 1994 “The Problem with Music” – https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-problem-with-music
- Before that – National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) gutted – no more grants to visual artists
- Spotify – just when things couldn’t get worse, Spotify started offering Neil Young $5 for 10 million plays of his music every month (fact check- not quite true, but Spotify royalties are $0.0033–$0.0054 per stream)
- Before that – the synthesizer – no more making a living playing the violin
- Music writing software – composers offered $100 to write a score for a musical.
6b. Fiverr and gig sites turned digital work into a ghetto – logo design for $10. - AI – well, that’s the end of that. Mood board jobs? Gone. Book illustration. Nope. Logo generation has gone from a way to earn hundreds of dollars, to $5, to no money at all.
- Canva for AI – so much for being a graphic designer, or voice over artist, newsletter writer, or blogger.