An additional view to “Copyright or the Right-to-eat”
I was just commenting on Vince’s last article Copyright or the Right-to-Eat and realized that my comment was getting so long that I should better write an article on the subject. This actually funny because I was about to write a piece on exactly the same subject, and for most of it with the same opinion, because I attended on Friday a conference called “New Media Artists and The Law” organized by California Lawyers for the Arts and I wanted to share the thoughts of this conference on this blog. It gathered Emily A. Berger, Intellectual Property Fellow with Electronic Frontier Foundation, Mike Linksvayer, Vice President of Creative Commons, and Joel Slayton, Director of the CADRE Laboratory for New Media, and exploring the ways copyright laws are implicated in new media art and the challenges artists face in this evolving area of the law.
In direct connection with Vince’s article, Mike Linksvayer, VP of Creative Commons defended the idea that there are plenty of ways to make a living while giving one’s art for free. But I had the same issue as Vince’s about the status of the artist in our society: what does this reveal if people are not willing to pay for art anymore? I personally believe that the Internet and the culture of gratuity and open access is an opportunity for unknown artists because giving their art away for free allows them to get some market traction and then, be able to sell some “derivatives” of their art, and make money that they wouldn’t have made without this strategy. So for this specific kind of people, I would say that it shouldn’t be an ethical problem to make money on things that are not the product of their art itself, because the product of their art itself wouldn’t have generated any money otherwise. But of course there is the other portion, which can have an opportunity of making money from its art directly, but which will start feeling a certain pressure to give this art for free. I was kind of shocked during this conference to hear artists in the audience speaking about offering their art on the Internet as a fatality, a trend they were obliged to follow, as if the “Myspace success story” was the only hope left. But as Emily A. Berger mentioned during the conference, referring to Chris Anderson’s article “Free”, you will always have free to compete with you: so either you try to make it better than what is offered for free, or you try to tackle the niche of people having more money than time (the iTunes niche, which, with the right pricing, is actually not a niche anymore), or you make it free and find ways to make money otherwise. An excellent article from Kevin Kelly called “1000 True Fans” argues that an artist only needs 1000 True Fans to make a decent living, since a True Fan, that you can “recruit” via the free offering, will after that be ready to pay for anything related to you. And he also mentions that the Internet allows you to reach this number more easily than traditional channels and therefore find a middle way between the long tail and the superstar.
But while all this talk is perfectly understandable in the case of the music industry which is a market based on volume, it is a totally different story when it comes to visual arts. Which is why I have trouble understanding a copyright law which seems to tackle all the artists as if they were a unified world facing the same challenges. And this is also why I welcome initiatives like Creative Commons which allows people to give away some of their rights when they feel that the copyright law doesn’t answer their needs and that these new licenses can benefit them, as long as (and this is a major risk) it doesn’t put any pressure on other people in the industry to do the same. But how do you adapt these notions of derivatives in the case of visual arts? It is way harder for a painter to get True Fans, and even if he manages to get some, I am not convinced at all that a person falling in love with the image of a painting will be ready to buy a T-shirt with this same image: it is just not the same feeling. The visual art market has somewhat been already confronted to the same kind of problem outside the Internet, like how to monetize a happening or short-lived works of art. When Christo decided to wrap the Reichstag in Berlin and the Pont Neuf bridge in Paris, he had to find ways of monetizing a work of art that was offered for free to the inhabitants of these cities, and therefore he sold some pictures of the different stages of the experiment. But, to go back to Vince’s point, this is Christo, and a lot of people are interested in those pictures, whereas an unknown visual artist doesn’t have the traction.
Actually, the major paradox is that only artists who would manage to sell their art directly are able to sell derivatives in a significant amount, whereas the starving artists who would be ready to give their art for free and make a living by selling derivatives don’t have the market traction to generate enough interest around their derivatives, especially in visual arts. And after all, even if Emily A. Gerber said “get your art out there by any means, get market traction and after that you’ll see”, a thousand fans is a pretty large number don’t you think?
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Wow, Fidji, this is exactly what I missed on Tech IT Easy: some back-and-forth banter about interesting subjects! And your article is much better than mine!
I’m a little sceptical of both the concept of a “true fan” and the number “1000.” Fans and artists have a dynamic relationship, and I’m hesitant to stereotype a fan as anything, as that would, I think, lead to some kind of complacency on the artist’s side (”Hey, I got 1000 TRUE fans, now I don’t have to do anything.”). I think that artists should focus on providing value and, hopefully, the fans will come.
On a related note, I had an interesting discussion with my sister yesterday, who studies ‘cultural policy’, and suggested the French* book, Le livre du courtisan , to me. From my understanding, it was written in the 16th century, and is about the qualities that court-artists (i.e. top-artists at that time) possessed. One is humility. (*: my sister’s French is much better than mine, I’ll wait for the translation)
Anyway, I agree that a t-shirt is perhaps not the best piece of merchandising, but I do think that with store-fronts like eBay and some others, it is possible to form relationships with a great number of clients, and hopefully develop digital versions of a product, that can enjoy a certain economy of scale.
But what I am, like you, sceptical of, is giving away products for free, simply because a certain subset of artists, those with existing “market traction,” are doing so with some success. I believe in building competitive advantage, which, to me, means building products and business models that are difficult to replicate. For, if we all did the same thing, how would we be special?
“what does this reveal if people are not willing to pay for art anymore?”
I don’t think anyone is claiming that people are not willing to pay for art anymore. In some cases, many people are unwilling to pay for *digital copies* of art.
But even this is not universally true. See the recent Nine Inch Nails release, which grossed $1.6m in a week although it was available for free (and legally). Or digital fine artists who manage to sell installations at high prices that are little more than a digital copy, consumer electronics … and authenticity.
Kelly’s “True Fans” and “Better Than Free” are actually all about how people are willing to pay for art … just not cheap digital copies.
Mike
p.s. I really enjoyed the panel and all of the passionate interest from everyone there.
I must be getting lucky these days: every time I write about a conference I attended, one of the guests ends up participating to the discussion. It’s an honor to have you on this blog Mike, and thanks for your insights during this great conference.
I totally understand your point, which is why I mentionned that all the arts can’t be put into the same basket: the digital version of a song is the exact product of a musician (even if some people will argue that the real manifestation of a musician’s art is a concert), whereas the digital version of a painting is not. So that’s a completely different story from an art to another, probably depending on how close the direct product of the art is from its digital version.
@Vincent: I understand your scepticism with the 1000 True Fans concept, and it is of course a simplification of the relationship between a fan and an artist, but what is interesting here is that it shows that if an artist really needs to eat, then *only* a thousand fans can allow him to make a living with his art. We can of course discuss, as I did in the article, if this number is easy to reach and what *true* really means, but the concept is interesting.
I think the issue here is also that the economics for digital products are different from physical products, at least as far as reproduction and distribution is concerned (I imagine production and marketing is still substantial). It is much cheaper to produce a 1000 versions of a jpeg then of a poster; customers know this and understandably value it lower also.
The question is whether artists should not try to add more value, beyond the digital realm perhaps. Whether it is sending a physical version, creating some kind of premium versions, etc.… Just like media-producers are struggling with traditional lock-in models no longer working, and being forced to think outside the box, so should perhaps artists.
The problem I see with my logic is still the Vincent van Gogh’s out there—talented, entirely focussed on their art, and useless at marketing, etc.… the way art should probably be. Or, to put it in business-terms, it is simply a matter of a lack of resources. Whether it’s a lack of traction, like Fidji writes, translating to insufficient revenue to fund growth-strategies, or it’s a lack of skills/human resources.
But if there’s one thing that artists probably don’t lack it’s creativity, and that’s why art will probably prevail.
Vince, you know that I have interviewed several artists for my thesis, and I can guarantee that a lot of them (and sure, it is also a matter of demographics) fall into the Van Gogh category: they just don’t like marketing their art, and a lot of them are still living in the idea that art should speak for itself. Which is why auto-promotion and the disappearance of galleries in clearly a myth, at least on the short and medium term.
[...] bed now, but just for info I posted an article about the New Media Arts conference on Tech IT Easy here, and an article about a great conference I attended today by Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, about [...]
Hi Fidji, Vincent!
top subject, I don’t know where to leave my comment because it’s transversal trough your articles.
I am so glad you arrived at the basic idea that an artist is someone who lives things differently, thus s/he cannot conform with business rules.
But you also present artists competing over art-consumers revenues, which is bad news. Good news is that business people may start closing deals that are just beautiful and exalting for their soul. Cool, I’ll stick around to see it!!!
Vincent I agree that artists feel ackward with (hate) business. That’s why they hire agents to do the nasty job. Or they get married, like Rembrandt, putting love in the middle so that greed stays masked.
To monetize, you can count only on agent-driven art. Art that is artist-driven is highly impredictable and has some very unstable dynamics.
Quality is definitely easier to monetize and license than the representations that have no inbuilt pricing criteria. I don’t know how much I would like to pay for a 5minute song with a piano, a bass, a flute, no idea how much a tree or Dori sitting in the middle of an exhibition costs.
If I had money, I would buy a strong marketing, probably a dead artist (whose marketing is passed on to pros) or an agent-driven one.
If I had time I would buy something I like, and If I were also mature enough (as an audience) I would have had the opportunity to support a seed.
So education, Vincent, is effectively a good solution for the sustainability (trendy word, haha) of art.
Fidji, coming from a country where orthodox priests are public servants, I am very positive of the idea of replacing some of them with artists (who will address the spiritualism of people who don’t express themselves through religion). This would democratize the luxury of art, improve social welfare, and help stressed artists concentrate in their art rather than in business.
I couldn’t agree more Georgia, nothing to add to that; as I said previously, during my interviews with artists I had the occasion of verifying what we are saying here, that they believe that art must speak for itself and that business spoil the artistic inspiration, but hey, somebodu has to eat eventually… And I love your last idea, you are actually describing my dream world!
A very good analysis, Georgia, that’s why I’m happy to have you on our team!
As far as your last paragraph goes, I disagree with you somewhat. Definitely, education is the answer for many artists, as it’s a way to go commercial without “selling your soul.” And I like the idea of artists as priests, also (though religion also has a business-model, 1000s of years old).
But, in practice, I think, organising comes with many trade-offs, often at the cost of the very essence of art, which is originality and breaking the rules.
For instance, politics and bureaucracy become needed disciplines (or necessary evils) in such a setting, creating an unwelcome overhead to many, and letting those that are better at politics, but not necessarily better at art, rise higher in the organisation.
Since these organisations also typically lack working business models, there’s is a lack of resources, meaning that those at the top will try to centralise power (reserve the best deals for them), and defeat the idea of defending the individual artist.
Yes, this is hypothetical, but I can actually name at least one practical example.
However I try and twist it, I don’t think there is space for a super-artist in today’s society. Rather it’s a matter of entrepreneur-artists, who both create art and make deals, or the super-organisation, composed of many artists, but with all the necessary trade-offs to make such an organisation function.
Haha!!!a good analysis that doesn’t pass the message…
Vincent I was actually referring to education of the audience, who will learn to seek for new talent and support it and this way support the decentralization. Since you named it politics in art, education is about us learning how to find new candidates and preserve our healthy vision on things.
Cannot hide that education on the respect of copyrights (the idea you passed on the 1st article) is not my thing, not because I don’t want my budget going to art but because it is difficult to have these kind of goods very strictly ruled (what no tapes copied? Air in bottles?). It spoils the party for everyone.
I prefer having things driven by the artists protecting themselves against pressure to vulgarize their value, as u said it Fidji.