Recently someone on an email discussion list I follow pointed out that authors or publishers of copyrighted pieces may be reliant on royalty income for their subsistence. The alternative to proprietary information might be that “only people with income from other sources (such as academic salaries) [would] be able to make their voices heard.”
I can’t speak for anyone else, but every single thing I write is freely available for unlimited reproduction. My book royalties generally average from $100-200 a month, with the occasional outlier of $50 or $300. I earn another $100-150 a month writing for Center for a Stateless Society (on a Creative Commons 3.0 license) depending on how much readers donate that month. I also get an occasional $400 or $500 every few months for writing something for a print periodical. I was surprised to learn from a friend in academia that this actually wasn’t bad compared to what most university faculty earn in royalties — almost nobody in academia, even in the days before easily replicable digital media, made enough from writing alone to live on.
So the dependence of most creators on “income from other sources” is actually part of the way things are right now, under proprietary culture. Almost nobody, right now, in the traditional proprietary information industries, makes much money. Most of the revenue streams flow to gatekeeper corporations. Only a lucky few blockbuster writers/acts can live off their writing, music, etc.
File-sharing may have seriously hurt music company revenues, but it’s mainly the companies themselves — not the artists — who have taken the hit. Disintermediation is bad for middlemen — so what else is new?
What I like about the free culture model is that it makes it possible for little guys like me outside the professional intellectual class to earn a non-negligible income stream from writing without the permission of gatekeeping institutions. I suspect the same is true for local garage bands who can now supplement their income playing in bars by marketing their music directly over the Internet (thanks to desktop editing technology that once would have required a million-dollar studio). I also suspect that people like me and that garage band can much more effectively market our own work virally, within niches we know better than anybody else, than an academic publishing house or record company could.
I find in my case that the natural rents accruing to being first-to-market, name recognition, and the transaction costs of setting up a competing version of my books (which anyone is free to do) are enough to bring me that income. It’s possible to download facsimiles of any of my books from The Pirate Bay, but the hard copy version for sale through Amazon and from my own POD publisher, show up on the first page of Google search results. Try to find my book The Homebrew Industrial Revolution on TPB, and you’re apt to spend a long time weeding out unauthorized versions created from early online rough drafts (without specifying the capture date) or earlier short monographs with the same title, before you find an authentic facsimile of the printed book. Such advantages of authenticity, convenience, name recognition, etc., are something worth making a modest payment for, for all except the most time-rich and money-poor.
If anything, I suspect the free PDF versions online are free advertising for people who would never have bought the book at all without a chance to metaphorically “thumb through” it.
And I haven’t even touched on the whole “Freemium” thing that Chris Anderson and Mike Masnick write about: using free content to promote naturally scarce adjunct services that can be monetized (e.g. Linux distros giving away software free and then selling customization and tech support services).
As my friend Katherine Gallagher (@zhinxy) argues on Twitter, “art, music, and literature existed for many centuries before modern copyright law. If your business model requires artificial scarcity and illogical legal violence to keep the money coming in, it deserves to fail.”
This post dovetails nicely with the one mk recently made titled Personal Content Isn't A Sin. It can be difficult to propagate your own work as an artist on line because the truth is, there aren't a lot of sites that encourage it. I'm a musician and if i want to share my work there are sites that exist but many of them are highly saturated and some, like ReverNation seem to be populated almost entirely by other musicians interested in propagating their work and not discovering someone else's. As ooli mentioned in reference to artists posting their own work, "Self submitting is not only an arbitration between advertiser and creator. It's also a choice between introvert creator and extrovert ones. And for some reason we do not accept easily the second kind." Good luck with your writing, I enjoyed the piece.I also suspect that people like me and that garage band can much more effectively market our own work virally, within niches we know better than anybody else, than an academic publishing house or record company could
-This is assuming that all artists are created equally in regards to their ability to self-promote. Trust me, they aren't and it's a problem because some of the most talented and deserving of attention are the most introverted. This is why the "middle-men" actually have some validity. Some people need a publicist, a manager etc to take care of that which is both foreign to the artist and often terrifying.
Dave Heckman seems to think think labels' (or at least his label's) bigger role now is financing bands: and that's not a role there's a readymade replacement for. Bands that can fund themselves through Kickstarter already have a following.This is assuming that all artists are created equally in regards to their ability to self-promote. Trust me, they aren't and it's a problem because some of the most talented and deserving of attention are the most introverted. This is why the "middle-men" actually have some validity. Some people need a publicist, a manager etc to take care of that which is both foreign to the artist and often terrifying.
I do think record labels, depending on how this transition turns out, might disappear entirely, 5 or 10 years down the road. We still have exposure, distribution, we provide a level of professionalism. Unfortunately I feel more like a banker than a record label at this point. For example, I’m talking to Skinny Puppy right now, that shouldn’t be a surprise. These bands need the 10 or 15 thousand up front, for production, or the Birthday Massacre might need it to live while they record their new album. Unfortunately on the level I’m at, and moreso for majors it’s being a banker. An artist can’t go to a bank. I have a record label, a back catalogue and a certain amount of cash flow. Now a lot of that goes to pay royalties and mechanicals [mechanical reproduction rights - ed.}, but I can pay advances for bands. Part of what a record label has become is a bank.
and that's not a role there's a readymade replacement for. Bands that can fund themselves through Kickstarter already have a following.
You think that Dave Heckman is financing bands that don't have a following?
Metro has definitely released bands that didn't have much of a following at the time in the past. VNV Nation came out of nowhere. They don't seem to do it much anymore, but then there are fewer new bands who want to be associated with Industrial now.
Back when our band was playing regularly, we didn't have a huge following however, the people that did follow us were very supportive. Combine that with friends, family, coworkers etc. and you've got hundreds of people that you can tap on the shoulder for a kick starter campaign. If you are smart about it and don't ask too often, or too much of people then you can have a very successful kick starter campaign without being a very popular group. The problem is some people are fantastic artist but they are very bad marketers. These are the people that still need representation in this modern climate.
I've donated to a lot of failed Kickstarter album campaigns, and to some successful ones. The successful ones were always bands that, while not hugely popular, had fans who really wanted another album. I don't doubt you, but from what I've seen, Kickstarter has only worked for the latter.
I think kickstarter campaigns fail when they are improperly marketed. So many people think that if you create one, people will just naturally flock to it. These same people think that if you have a show, put up a few fliers, that people will come. You have to really challenge people these days if you want a piece of their wallet or a chunk of their time. It's HARD WORK and the artists that treat it as such win.
Source? Seems like a bold claim to make without backup.File-sharing may have seriously hurt music company revenues, but it’s mainly the companies themselves — not the artists — who have taken the hit. Disintermediation is bad for middlemen — so what else is new?
I think we are at a very unique point in culture. We used to pay the gatekeeper (huge publishing houses and studios) who were controlling the market. The internet made the rebellion against these gatekeepers easy with torrenting, instant downloads, "free" everything. Now we are swinging back and seeing that rebellion slowly subside as more and more creatives are marketing and selling their own media. The creators have more control and the consumers are open to paying for the amazing things people create. However, our spoiled little asses still want that media to be as quickly and easily consumable as possible. I am more likely to buy and ebook than buy a real book. I haven't purchases a DVD or even Redbox DVD in years. I want to download my music and have it on all my personal devices whenever I want. What the large movie studios are failing to recognize is that if you want people to buy it, it has to be on the consumers terms. We want it now and we want it without the bullshit - the DRM, the bloated media player, etc. The money is no longer the thing holding consumers back, it is the ease and accessibility. If it is easier for me to type "tpb movie" and fuck around on Hubski for an hour as it downloads then that is what I am going to do. Netflix has done an astounding job at accomplishing this. Their player on the computer is in your browser using the simplest add-on tech possible. You can get it on your phone, tablet, ps3, wii, xbox, smarttv and any semi-recent DVD player. It is easier to open Netflix than to download a movie and that is the reason for it's success. Books are the next arena that we will see the shift. Amazon is a great marketplace and their one click buy is easy. iBooks (never used it) probably does the same. But there needs to be something more like Netflix or Spotify or Pandora for books. When that happens, then that arena will be more set and we will see an increase is consumption and discovery of new media. That will trickle down from the big publishing houses to the little guys and the long tail, just like we have seen in the music environment. Amazon/Apple iBooks/etc are still viewed differently because (1) they are seen as a more traditional media source and (2) you still have to make the decision to pay for each and every thing you want to buy. There is no serendipity or freedom like the Netflix model. And it isn't new. People love new. Netflix was new. It was fresh. It was reinventing the realm of watching movies. We need that for books.