how music got free and how housing got expensive

‘the secret of life is honesty and fair dealing (if you can fake that you’ve got it made)’
- old record industry saw.

horsemouth is up. outside it is a grey morning (boo) but that is ok because horsemouth is slightly torched from yesterday. yesterday he had a mission to run (it got him out of the house and away down the road at a fair old trot). otherwise he went off in search of cheap coffee at the supermarket in the fields (failure - there is obviously a ritual that needs to be done to ensure success in the coffee hunt and horsemouth is not doing it.)

nonetheless the overground into town and some brisk walking at either end and on either journey. this is good preparation for when he is back at work (whenever this will be).

horsemouth is reading how music got free (stephen witt) - the record industry mogul, the german inventors of mp3 (an interesting section of psychoacoustics - the sound we actually perceive), the dudes from shelby north carolina sneaking pre-release CDs out of the pressing plants and uploading them to the internet (to no great economic benefit).

the book is from 2015 and is a much better account of where the push towards the dematerialisation of music comes from than horsemouth’s account. but is it still true? - have we not in fact reverted to the digital jukebox where you pay for your music as part of a subscriber service - spotify etc. (in fact you pay for it to be ad free).


of course a rival book could be called how housing got expensive.

john mcdonald has proposed a right to buy for tenants of private landlords and there is some social justice to this position, but horsemouth basically views this as a distraction from the real task of getting social housing at social rent built. the small buy-to-let landlords have interestingly received several kickings from the tories already and the market is consolidating into larger companies that can write off the expenses imposed on the sector by government. similarly the housing associations have received several kickings from the government (like the proposal of right to buy for HA tenants) - all these did was convince the HAs that they should get out of providing social housing and get into providing housing for sale.

result? less housing for rent so higher rents all round because the housing that poor people need is simply not getting built.

all over the world in every nook and cranny the money is looking for a return - as long as it continues to be in short supply renting out housing is a one-way bet, and this is true even if the economy tanks or the government taxes it more heavily because people will always need somewhere to live (somewhere near work that is).

and of course buying doesn’t get you out of this - you simply move from renting your home to owing debt on your home - the housing ladder is a debt ladder that you must work to service (this is how the money finds its return).

the mcdonald plan is populist tinkering (it may be that he proposed more social housing at the same time and the press did not report it - it’s just not their interest). anyway this is how the housing got expensive but it is ok because horsemouth can be here telling you about it (until google or facebook or whoever decide to charge for it).