The profit angle is wrong.
While creators would no doubt love a steady income, at every point in history the greatest art was produced when a few geniuses sacrificed their lives for it.
Art as a day job not only produces mediocrity, it does so at a scale that drowns out true genius.
Sucks for the creators, but throwing money at self proclaimed "creators" just gets you a giant pile of shit.
It may not be fair, but true creators will press on in any environment, it's who they are.
Cutting the money just trims the wannabes.
I think the author fundamentally misunderstands the ecosystem, one of their suggestions:
> venture based funding for artists in the same way we fund startups.
This already exists in the form of record deals or contracts paying artists such as sculptors or painters for their next N pieces. It's worth noting that, in music at least, every year more artists are succeeding without this kind of investment and the percentage of music backed by a label is dropping[0].
The extreme supply of artists vs. demand will always mean most artists cannot be invested in, I'm not sure the OP has actually made the case that the problem their discussing exists.
I'm underwhelmed by the NFT crowd. They're frantically trying to create artificial scarcity so they can Make Money Fast. There are now NFT pet rocks, called Ether Rocks. Prices are now up to US$1M. Somehow I suspect wash sales to pump up the price. The end of this fad may be in sight.
I kind of liked the Filecoin/Arweave distributed storage idea. Except that nobody seems to actually use it for storage much.
What an odd time to worry about creative work drying up. Artists and 'creators' are becoming absurdly wealthy nowadays with every imaginable way to monetize content. YT pays ~$5/1k views, twitch, NFTs, substack, insta, affliations, etc. The barriers to being a creator now are so low that anyone can do it as a hobby, which is fantastic. The author is pining for the very systems that already exist.
You're wildin my dude. Every thing you listed exists to leech value from creatives by selling an extremely peaky reward distribution as linear. But especially NFTs holy heck, that's entirely a vehicle for money laundring and speculation, the artists are just around to give the illusion of legitimacy.
So are art shops selling paints and brushes in the business of leeching value from artists as well by your estimation? It's easy to look at how wealthy some of these platforms have become and get greedy, but at the same time they've provided artists/creators with historic opportunities.
Agree. Some of these YouTube creators are making absolute FU money. They don't talk about it because if they disclosed how much they made , they would not seem so relatable to their audience. Also, product placement, affiliate offers...tons of ways to make money.
The barrier to being a creator on youtube getting paid is much higher than it was in 2015. The minimums insure most will never make it as google takes 100% of those ads.
Instagram is falling out now. The market is drying up. People want real experiences.
I think your comment is even more odd (and detached, really) since it’s coming from the assumption that the current system is fair and not curated or incentivised by biased algorithms.
What exactly is the 'current system' though? I referenced a few systems/technologies, which are only a fraction of what is available. My assumption isn't that there is a single system being supervised by a biased algorithm, which is incorrect. Regardless of the fairness of any of these options, though, they provide the monetary incentives necessary to support creators. I imagine the dynamics of any individual business relationships could swing either way, such is life.
"Supporting artists by enabling and funding their transition to tokenized creativity."
is this more NFT bullshit, why yes it is
If you are full of FAANG/crypto/etc money and wanna support an artist, hi, I draw shit and put it online for free without any "tokenizing" bullshit, and I have a Patreon, and will also gladly accept large donations via my Paypal account.
hell, if you wanna play VC, you can pay for me to rent some space in my city's gallery row for a couple months, print out some of my stuff, and I'll give you a healthy cut of what I manage to sell.
We dont need to "invest" in creators. Investors want ROI. We need better ways to pay creators directly or via advertising that mostly (or completely) goes to the creators.
Imagine we tokenized all digital music so that now people can directly buy an NFT from an artist instead of paying for Spotify or a record label.
Now there are 100 billion NFTs representing every song ever made. Who is going to promote your album in a world where every artist has their own brand? Do the artists want to take on the role of marketing as well in a super crowded market?
Who is going to build integration into a cloud service so you can play the song on any device or through Siri/Alexa? Or a recommendation engine? Or just basic software to create and share playlists? Apple Music or Spotify do more to increase the total amount of music people listen to than any artist. Of course they will take their cut.
Like if artists hate the middlemen so much, there is nothing stopping them from going direct to customers with creative work. Even without NFTs you can throw up 10 MP3s or images on your website and charge a fee to download. Guess what, now you're competing for attention on the internet with everyone else - good luck lol. NFTs don't change any of the fundamental reasons why artists get paid so little. Like in many businesses with lots of competition or too much supply, the power lies with the distributor because the creators are oversupplied.
Creators whining about being poor and how we just aren't working hard enough to support them and patronize them and give them money and "supports the artist by giving them what they need to create their best work." (another quote from OP substack)... boohoo :( You think my boss gives me all the time and support I need to "do my best work" and a gentle pat on the back when I miss a deadline? LOL.
Well you are payed for your work and many of these artist used to be as well not that long ago.
The problem with spotify is that only few people make money on it.
Dont get me wrong i also enjoy just streaming anything i want but situation for musicians got objectively a lot worse.
Spotify taught people not pay for music anymore and youtube is teaching people to not go to concerts anymore.
The super popular make a lot money on streaming so they do it and the rest has to be there to even exist for audiences. Its like if you dont have linkedin page you are probably not a real person and certainly not credible job aplicant.
You end up with a lot fewer professional musicians. Those who used to make normal salary doing some niche music used to be able to manage with concerts and cd sales. Now they are all doing it as hobby and spotify/google is taking this money.
Readit News
"NFTs allow us to give value to the things we own so they aren't just data floating around on servers somewhere"
I'm skeptical:
https://www.fortressofdoors.com/the-degraded-blockchain-prob...
NFTs are effectively provenance and identifying distinctness, if I understand them right (might be a stretch)?
> venture based funding for artists in the same way we fund startups.
This already exists in the form of record deals or contracts paying artists such as sculptors or painters for their next N pieces. It's worth noting that, in music at least, every year more artists are succeeding without this kind of investment and the percentage of music backed by a label is dropping[0].
The extreme supply of artists vs. demand will always mean most artists cannot be invested in, I'm not sure the OP has actually made the case that the problem their discussing exists.
[0] https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/slowly-but-surely-the...
I kind of liked the Filecoin/Arweave distributed storage idea. Except that nobody seems to actually use it for storage much.
This statement agrees with my priors, but can you point me to any evidence, even anecdotal if it's reliable?
Instagram is falling out now. The market is drying up. People want real experiences.
Dead Comment
is this more NFT bullshit, why yes it is
If you are full of FAANG/crypto/etc money and wanna support an artist, hi, I draw shit and put it online for free without any "tokenizing" bullshit, and I have a Patreon, and will also gladly accept large donations via my Paypal account.
my stuff: http://egypt.urnash.com
my patreon: https://www.patreon.com/egypturnash
my paypal: egypt@urnash.com
hell, if you wanna play VC, you can pay for me to rent some space in my city's gallery row for a couple months, print out some of my stuff, and I'll give you a healthy cut of what I manage to sell.
Anything less is exploitation.
Now there are 100 billion NFTs representing every song ever made. Who is going to promote your album in a world where every artist has their own brand? Do the artists want to take on the role of marketing as well in a super crowded market?
Who is going to build integration into a cloud service so you can play the song on any device or through Siri/Alexa? Or a recommendation engine? Or just basic software to create and share playlists? Apple Music or Spotify do more to increase the total amount of music people listen to than any artist. Of course they will take their cut.
Like if artists hate the middlemen so much, there is nothing stopping them from going direct to customers with creative work. Even without NFTs you can throw up 10 MP3s or images on your website and charge a fee to download. Guess what, now you're competing for attention on the internet with everyone else - good luck lol. NFTs don't change any of the fundamental reasons why artists get paid so little. Like in many businesses with lots of competition or too much supply, the power lies with the distributor because the creators are oversupplied.
Creators whining about being poor and how we just aren't working hard enough to support them and patronize them and give them money and "supports the artist by giving them what they need to create their best work." (another quote from OP substack)... boohoo :( You think my boss gives me all the time and support I need to "do my best work" and a gentle pat on the back when I miss a deadline? LOL.
The super popular make a lot money on streaming so they do it and the rest has to be there to even exist for audiences. Its like if you dont have linkedin page you are probably not a real person and certainly not credible job aplicant.
You end up with a lot fewer professional musicians. Those who used to make normal salary doing some niche music used to be able to manage with concerts and cd sales. Now they are all doing it as hobby and spotify/google is taking this money.