TL;DR The arts used to be (like Mozart's time used to be) supported by wealthy patrons who commissioned works that were subsequently enjoyed by the public. The notion of music as a commodity to be consumed like sugar and paprika is a modern one, and, M Kim argues, a historical quirk whose time has passed. We should thus separate consumption from patronage, with the latter greatly enhanced by crowd-funding technology, e.g. Kickstarter. Artists should raise funds from crowds directly and then release their recorded music for free, with private perks accruing to the patrons.
My comments:
I like the structure, but am concerned about the separation of consumption and patronage. Our society has become far more consumerist since Victorian times and ignoring that cultural shift could be problematic. I propose fortifying crowdfunded patronage with a matching fund that would match crowd patronage dollars.
In college I was cheap and pirated music. Now I care more for convenience than a few dollars and so download my music via iTunes, where cover art, filing, and synchronising is taken care of. I suggest adding an optional (or maybe not) extra $1 (or whatever) to be directed into a matching fund. This fund would then match, at a ratio to be determined after further thought (would probably be a moving scale), crowd patronage dollars to artists. Thus, the consumption and patronage are joined somewhat.
One could still have free music for those who value dollars more than time. The downside is the iTunes of this analogy would be a power centre. That said, it would be naive to assume any such system wouldn't concentrate power. It might be good to have an iTunes figure opposing the Kickstarter one.
I personally hate anything that "feels" like charity to the artist, I don't think that's sustainable. Even though I call this theoretical model "crowd patronage", I feel it would only work if the fan "feels" like he's getting more than some altruistic warm feelings of supporting something. They should also feel the real value of relationship access. Just the illusion of having a closer relationship to artist will only enhance the feeling of supporting the artist. But at a minimum, there must be that value back of some sort of relationship reciprocation. Does that make sense?
Without subsidy crowd patronage will tend towards normal patronage as it exists in the classical arts (we still have patrons commissioning paintings and sculptures, for example). Pure patronage ignores consumer demand for music. Leaving money on the table deprives the artistic community potential income, which limits its size, as well as creates an opening for a competing, consumer-centric model to re-appear. I'm trying to find a way to merge those two sources of revenues (consumer demand and patronage).
Moving towards music distributors being required, as part of the licence, to divert a portion of revenues to matching patronage to artists would be an alternative. That way, person A, who would have supported one project for $100 000 can now support two, with $50 000 each of matching funds (assuming 1:1 matching) making up the other half. The distributors could also dis-intermediate the patrons, the difference between this model and the labels being that the artist would have the freedom to distribute their music for free as well.
Note that an un-intended consequence of this would be music losing mass appeal and catering to the tastes of the patron minority. Given the state of popular music I'm not sure if this would be a terrible loss :P.
I agree with nancyhua. I sort of use "patronage" as short hand, don't let it confuse you. I think to the fan, they must not feel like it's pure patronage... they should get some sort of concrete interaction or recognition back from artist. There should be real value there for fan for this to sustain as a model.
That's not short hand at all - patrons of the arts, going back to antiquity, generally got a private performance of the work they commissioned in addition to the opportunity to fraternise with the artist. They typically also branded themselves onto the work somehow.
My argument is there aren't enough dollars seeking that experience today as there are consumption dollars (which the industry has gotten used to). In the past, monetising that long tail of demand was prohibitive. Today it is not. As a single example, I would never contribute to support a musician yet my lifetime worth to the music industry is at least tens of thousands of dollars (including concert tickets).
There is enough money in that delta to fund the artists, lobby legislators, and enforce the status quo. That's the problem. If you aren't re-routing that demand you're proposing a nice but idealistic hypothetical.
I think they try to do this to some extent with "perks." As a crowdfunder and crowdfundraiser, I can see a divide between people who donate bc they want emotional pleasure and people who donate bc they want to receive something. It should be possible to segment patrons to address different donors' desires. Maybe if you're a music patron seeking stuff, you get options to buy particular tickets/seats or are the first to get songs or limited editions or something. If you're seeking status maybe they put your name somewhere on their website or send you a special Facebook logo, etc.
I thought that the patronage model could partly be a bit like a subscription fan club, with various perks and deals on gigs and limited artifacts and streamed studio access and other stuff like that.
Wouldn't a tax on paid downloads to fund a dollar matching system just discourage paid downloads even more? I think the entire premise here is that paid downloads of any kind are going to die and the only time you have scarcity and therefore can charge money is before you've created the art.
The concentration of power is a good point, it would be best to have a healthy ecosystem of Kickstarter clones or at least some model that avoids a single "hottest projects" page, those damn things bleed money from everyone else to create blockbusters.
My point is that there will probably be services beyond simply giving me music that I and people with similarly inelastic demands will be willing to pay for. Whether that manifests as a Spotify-like subscription or iTunes-esque pay-per-download has yet to be seen.
Ah, gotcha. I see those services dying pretty quickly actually and music just being shared and downloaded from all over and always free.
I guess there will always be a place for pay services dealing with recommendation or cloud storage but I'm assuming that the value of a digital copy of a song, streamed or not, will be zero pretty soon.
One could still have free music for those who value
dollars more than time.
If the music can be copied freely, couldn't the cover art and other metadata also be copied?
There's no reason in principle that an ad-supported iTunes clone couldn't do everything iTunes does - it could be more convenient, in fact, as you wouldn't have to muck around with credit card numbers and passwords. The only reason piracy is inconvenient at the moment is because it's illegal.
The music distribution system today adds value beyond just getting stuff to my computer - it selects artists, curates content, stores it for me virtually, etc. These functions would all probably find a portion of people willing to pay for them.
I am thinking of Pandoras or Shazams, perhaps with features that let me say "someone make a song like this". One could see the emergence, as a counter-movement, of heavily DRM-protected "limited release" albums.
When you make something people value free strange things happen. The most likely is still the use of force to enforce profits, i.e. some form of copyright regime.
My comments:
I like the structure, but am concerned about the separation of consumption and patronage. Our society has become far more consumerist since Victorian times and ignoring that cultural shift could be problematic. I propose fortifying crowdfunded patronage with a matching fund that would match crowd patronage dollars.
In college I was cheap and pirated music. Now I care more for convenience than a few dollars and so download my music via iTunes, where cover art, filing, and synchronising is taken care of. I suggest adding an optional (or maybe not) extra $1 (or whatever) to be directed into a matching fund. This fund would then match, at a ratio to be determined after further thought (would probably be a moving scale), crowd patronage dollars to artists. Thus, the consumption and patronage are joined somewhat.
One could still have free music for those who value dollars more than time. The downside is the iTunes of this analogy would be a power centre. That said, it would be naive to assume any such system wouldn't concentrate power. It might be good to have an iTunes figure opposing the Kickstarter one.