You're right, this only exist within what the last 3 years, it just suddenly sprang up and it's piracy all over again! It's not like there's been radio for...oh wait, FM radio has been around how long? And AM even longer than that?!? What is this madness? How have the music labels not gone out of business 20 times over? It's not like they weren't complaining about piracy for decades either.
And Taylor Swift complained that streaming gave the impression that her music isn't worth anything. Um, but putting it on radio or Youtube doesn't? I don't pay anything (or at least very negligible) for it either way. Oh she's an outlier alright, but only in that because she's one of the few artists that still makes money from doing things the old label way of doing things. That's kinda the whole point. The market completely changed and yet they're just back to fighting it and blaming it for all of their ills, when there's a multitude of factors, many of which are self-inflicted, that are responsible.
But ok back to your argument. The internet. The dreaded merciless serial killer of media industries! Oh no, whatever will they do? Maybe adapt? I'm tired of these multi-billion dollar industries wallowing in their plight while they resorted to (and still do actually) ridiculous tactics to try and control and manipulate the market. Consumers are clearly speaking to them but they just refuse to fucking listen.
The biggest reason their argument is bullshit is because there's nothing at all stopping the labels from doing their own streaming services and charging what they think is fair.
What you fail to realize is music was less "made for someone" before. Now they try to hypertarget demographics and it's failing because it comes off as phony shit made to target markets and not as honest music.
Yeah, man rap is doing well because no one pirates it? Are you fucking kidding me? Rap took off because it hit the key demographic of what 13-30 year old white people. Definitely though those people never pirate anything. Weird that that's also one of the key country demographics and gave rise to Taylor Swift (and Justin Bieber, and most of the "successful" artists of recent years). Seriously, wow, your "they didn't have smartphones or computers and couldn't pirate" is one of, if not the most nonsense argument I've ever seen in any of the threads on here.
You think that's funny when that's exactly the point that's being made about why the labels aren't making money like they used to? Come on, you can't be this obtuse can you? So, a market complains that it's shrinking and people voice that they're not giving that market money because they don't like what they sell as much, so the market reacts by going even further in the direction of what people voiced they didn't like? Seriously, that's basic fucking economics, and it's exactly why people like you and the music industry fail spectacularly at understanding why the music industry isn't making 90s price fixing money any more.
Consumers: "I don't give them money any more because I don't like what they're selling"
The music industry: "damn kids with their ipods and apps, ruining everything, why can't we make as much money, I know let's keep making music worse and worse!"
"You haha, look at the idiot consumers complaining!"
Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb-dumb. Seriously fucking stupid on a level that I'd laugh if I didn't know that you seriously are too stupid to even realize just how stupid that argument is.
That has nothing to do with it. What's the point of having million dollar recording studios if they're going to ruin the music? Hey guys, check out this microphone, it's so awesome at recording, now let's smear the shit out of anything it records! It's easier than ever, in all of human history, to make a good recording. That's part of the problem. It's easier, and cheaper than ever to both record and provide these recordings to consumers, yet the quality of the recordings has actually gotten worse and the companies want to charge the same (or even more) money for them? Again, what the fuck kind of logic are you using?
