The creative apocalypse that didn't happen
August 20, 2015 7:23 AM   Subscribe

Steven Johnson looks into concerns that the internet would destroy creators. He finds that while some bad things happened, "economic trends suggest that the benefits are outweighing the costs."
posted by doctornemo (28 comments total) 12 users marked this as a favorite
 
What really caught my eye in that piece was the quote from Lars Ulrich regarding how much is involved in producing a record: "All the jobs I just talked about will be lost, and the diverse voices of the artists will disappear.’" And it turned out that the former can happen without causing the latter.
posted by smackfu at 7:37 AM on August 20, 2015


My criterion is how many days I can go reading my favorite artsy blogs without being hit up for money for an artist in a medical financial bind.

It's become a lot less frequent since Obamacare passed, but it's still happening.
posted by ocschwar at 7:39 AM on August 20, 2015 [6 favorites]


" In 2012, musical groups and artists reported only 25 percent more in revenue than they did in 2002, which is basically treading water when you factor in inflation."

It sure took a lot of words to bury that.
posted by mobunited at 7:44 AM on August 20, 2015 [13 favorites]


I think what I like best about the piece is how uncontroversial it feels. Change has happened, arguably apocalyptic, and yet once the data's all been crunched, the worst read of it seems to be ...

musical groups and artists reported only 25 percent more in revenue than they did in 2002, which is basically treading water when you factor in inflation."

I will now go spend a mostly guilt-free hour or two at youtube-mp3.org
posted by philip-random at 7:50 AM on August 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


When I was a shrimpy and precocious child, I wanted to be a painter/illustrator/visual artist. My mother took me to an art supply store when I wanted to buy some brushes. She took me to a discount section labeled "starving artists" and gave me a pep talk that basically consisted of saying, "This is the reality for most artists. A tiny few get rich and famous; some can eke out a living; most have to choose between buying brushes and having enough food to eat."

" In 2012, musical groups and artists reported only 25 percent more in revenue than they did in 2002, which is basically treading water when you factor in inflation."

So better than the average worker then?

Adjusted for inflation, if you impute an hourly wage from a salary, my wage has been going down over this time period. I made more money in 2004 as a ranch hand than I do now as a business analyst.
posted by [expletive deleted] at 7:51 AM on August 20, 2015 [7 favorites]


"I made more money in 2004 as a ranch hand than I do now as a business analyst."

You didn't have to buy the cows, did you? Ain't the same.
posted by mobunited at 7:57 AM on August 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


I will now go spend a mostly guilt-free hour or two at youtube-mp3.org

Maybe instead go to Bandcamp, where you can listen for free and, if you like the music, pay the artists directly?
posted by grumpybear69 at 8:04 AM on August 20, 2015 [3 favorites]


I mean I get it. Everybody downloads so anything that provides moral comfort is welcome. But this article is so profoundly at odds with the experiences of people within creative industries, and so sly about concealing things like the fact that making money at a job where you have to pay for everything and making money at a job where you don't are *different* that, well, I don't fuckin' buy it.

I write--have done so over much of the period covered by this article. Things like this chart from Canadian union Unifor (funny how no labour sources are quoted, eh?) jibe with what I've witnessed better than anything in the article.
posted by mobunited at 8:06 AM on August 20, 2015 [7 favorites]


...and, if you like the music, pay the artists directly?

Pay? But, there's nothing disruptive about that.
posted by Thorzdad at 8:07 AM on August 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


Slightly tangential, I think it's very positive that creators have more avenues and opportunities to connect with audiences; what I find a bit less positive is the tribalism that's popped up relating to the mechanics of that connection. It's always been there in music as far back as I can remember ("indie" vs. "major label" artists), but it's also happening in other creative fields now, including publishing, where I live and work. I find it less than positive because I think that sort of identity feels like intentionally winnowing the options you allow yourself to reach audiences (or make money).
posted by jscalzi at 8:07 AM on August 20, 2015 [2 favorites]


if you like the music, pay the artists directly?

... or save that money for stuff I can't easily access for free, like paintings, sculptures, live performances. Or put it into kickstarters. Or ...
posted by philip-random at 8:09 AM on August 20, 2015


I think it's very positive that creators have more avenues and opportunities to connect with audiences
jscalzi

But are these new avenues and opportunities translating into more (or even the same) money as before? It's great to be able to connect with audiences like never before, less great if all that connecting doesn't pay the rent.
posted by Sangermaine at 8:13 AM on August 20, 2015


Just the other day I was wondering what Steven Johnson (FEED, Plastic.com, Emergence) has been up to lately.

"He won the Newhouse School fourth annual Mirror Awards for his TIME magazine cover article titled "How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live." Steven has also written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Nation, and many other periodicals. He has appeared on many high-profile television programs, including The Charlie Rose Show, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer."

Oh.

Anyway, Johnson concludes:
The new environment may well select for artists who are particularly adept at inventing new career paths rather than single-­mindedly focusing on their craft. There are certainly pockets of the creative world, like those critically acclaimed books dropping off the mainstream best-­seller lists, where the story is discouraging. And even the positive trends shouldn’t be interpreted as a mindless defense of the status quo. Most full-time artists barely make enough money to pay the bills, and so if we have levers to pull that will send more income their way — whether these take the form of government grants, Kickstarter campaigns or higher fees for the music we stream — by all means we should pull those levers.
Mostly this article is a look at how the most pessimistic predictions made 15 years ago have failed to come true, but geesh, it's hard to be optimistic if more government grants, bigger kickstarter campaigns, and higher subscription fees for Spotify are the hope for the future.
posted by notyou at 8:22 AM on August 20, 2015 [6 favorites]


To be a creator on the internet for most of us is to surf the tiny waves on the long tail.
posted by Annika Cicada at 8:25 AM on August 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


(and to stay off the internet as much as possible and hustle IRL instead)
posted by Annika Cicada at 8:27 AM on August 20, 2015


I made more money in 2004 as a ranch hand than I do now as a business analyst.

I know what ranch hands earn around here, and it isn't much. (And like a lot of ag work is increasingly being done by immigrants)
posted by Dip Flash at 8:28 AM on August 20, 2015


I was surprised and disappointed by his analysis. He's a brilliant thinker and writer, but this seemed a mishmash of information and the use of average income rather than median income for musicians was a huge red flag.
posted by twsf at 8:42 AM on August 20, 2015 [2 favorites]


One this that's happened with the indie trend is that a lot of money that isn't being made is money that the artists never saw anyway, because the system was so rigged against them. The fact that ProTools has replaced the heart of the studio and the Internet has replaced the duplicating plant has again, taken a lot of money that was spent that never went to the artists away -- but again, the artists never saw that either.

The biggest thing that's keeping many artists alive is connecting with their fanbases. You can joke about the kickstarter driven tour/recording, but in many ways, this is almost an ideal setup. You're basically saying "Hey, if enough of you drop X, we will do Y. If not, the kickstarter won't fund and well, we won't and that'll be sad but nobody gets hurt." This beats the hell out of driving 250 miles and playing to three people at $5 a pop, which means, well, you've already lost in gas money. Plus, when you can get the Social Media/Kickstarter/Web/Whatever conversation going, your fans get invested in you, and they come out. They spend money.

I picked "Whatever" for a reason. Ask jscalzi. He writes 'Whatever' for a lot of reasons, one of which I'm sure is that he's got the Writing Itch and if it doesn't scratch it he'd be typing "All work and no play make Sheena a punk rocker" over and over and getting sued by The Ramones and nobody wants that. Another is announcing new books, and book tour dates, and such like that, and getting the news out is always a good thing.

But a big part is just staying in touch with the people who read his books. Novelists take time to write novels. He's basically dropping a bit of jscalzi-goodness for everyone, well, almost every day. This keeps his fans happy, so when he shows up nearby, they come to his book tours, and when he does get the new book out, they buy it and ask Wil Wheaton to sign it, and almost everybody is happy expect that gamer gate guy, but fuck him.

He's just a mercenary bastard who wants your money, see! Creators like him have found that the Internet allows you to stay in contact with a fanbase that's scattered like never before. You can have 100,000 fans, and distance, really, isn't that much of a factor for most things (live performances? Not so much -- but videos of them? Not a problem!) And you stay in touch, and you keep in touch, and when you come out with your next gem of a power ballad rendered on the sousaphone, your fans buy it from you. You get to be creative all the time, your fans get a little bit of your creativity everyday, so when the actual big-hunk-that-you-charge for comes out, they actually buy it.

And, hey -- you find that you can afford the important things in life. Like Coke Zero food.

I think one of the first to really grasp this model may have been They Might Be Giants with the original Dial A Song service, where they'd drop a song every day onto (at first) a simple answering machine, and you'd call a number, and hey, a brand new TMBG song! Every day! As technology changed, they changed how they did it, but still, if you needed a little bit of John & John in your life, there it was for you.

So -- there is something here. And jscalzi is not the perfect example (sorry, dude,) since he very much works in the traditional publishing model and makes ALL THE CLAMS* doing so. But look at groups like The Doubleclicks or Pomplamoose, or _____________.** They're making a living, in some cases, a good one, doing this.

And in the old model, they wouldn't have gotten anyway with the music industry at all.

So. It's still changing, of course. Who knows what silly social media network or new file format or streaming service or bad regulation will come out next? But somehow, the artists do seem to be finding a way to make money, and with ACA, they're even able to get health insurance in the US now, which is a seriously good thing.

Man, I should get a Patreon for these comments.



* No clams were hurt in the writing of this comment.

** I left the blank so you could fill it in with your favorite act and go "Oh yeah! I LOVE those guys" and hopefully that will make your day better, because everyone probably needs your day to be better. And no, jscalzi, putting "Metallica" in that blank wasn't funny. Okay, it was a little funny.
posted by eriko at 8:46 AM on August 20, 2015 [8 favorites]


Artists weren't getting paid before. Now we have a completely new technological and conceptual frame in which to not get paid. "My future's so bright I can't even see it!"
posted by Sing Or Swim at 8:49 AM on August 20, 2015 [2 favorites]


METAFILTER: almost everybody is happy expect that gamer gate guy, but fuck him.
posted by philip-random at 8:53 AM on August 20, 2015 [8 favorites]


Artists weren't getting paid before. Now we have a completely new technological and conceptual frame in which to not get paid. "

this is when I wish I'd read more Marx or whoever. Because I'm sure they'd have something well-grounded to say about this assumption that all endeavors must somehow accommodate themselves to the market and its rules, or else be doomed.

I mean, what if the real point of genuine art (whatever it may be) is that it doesn't care about the market, it can't care about the market, because as soon as it does, it's not doing what it should be doing which is something to do with communicating some pure and essential truth about something or other, and the market can only get in the way of this (eventually, if not immediately).

You can joke about the kickstarter driven tour/recording, but

I don't joke about it. I sometimes feel it's the only way forward. Artist somehow gets noticed, gets a base of appreciators *. Artist then works with this base to get works to completion which, because they've already been paid for, are free to be distributed, shared, whatever.

It seems so easy. But it isn't, because ...

* this is the really hard part.
posted by philip-random at 9:05 AM on August 20, 2015


The biggest thing that's keeping many artists alive is connecting with their fanbases.

A couple more Patreon examples: Jeph Jaques of Questionable Content recently broke $10,000 a month in his Patreon. And Scott Bradlee of Postmodern Jukebox gets $3300 for each music video he posts, and that's before any youtube ad revenue.

Connecting fans with artists is a good thing.
posted by fings at 9:07 AM on August 20, 2015


Sangermaine:

"But are these new avenues and opportunities translating into more (or even the same) money as before?"

Anecdotally, a lot of the musicians that I know in "nerd rock" (Paul & Storm, The Doubleclicks, Marian Call, etc) seem to be accessing money via Kickstarter/Patreon/etc that would have been difficult for them to get to in another era. And of course there are a number of self-pubbing writers, particularly in niches, who are doing better than they might have if they had to wait for a publisher to decide to take a risk on their particular niche. I fully admit that I tend to see the "successes" more than the failures, but the point is that these new avenues all for successes in a manner that probably didn't exist before. So yes, I suspect more money is now available.

Eriko:

"But look at groups like The Doubleclicks"

Who, as it happens, opened for me in Portland at my tour event just the other night!
posted by jscalzi at 9:12 AM on August 20, 2015 [3 favorites]


Ok, I shouldn't have used myself as a personal example, so I looked for the best data I could find:

From the article's numbers and FRED data, 2002-2012:

Real Income from Musical Groups and Artists: -2.1%
Real Median Personal Income: -4.4%
Real Median Household Income: -5.7%

From BLS:

Area: National
Period: May 2014
Occupation (SOC code) Hourly median wage
All Occupations(000000)
17.09
Musicians and Singers(272042)
24.16

So by any objective measure I can find, it seems musicians have been doing better than average. This is my point, and it seems to support the author's thesis.
posted by [expletive deleted] at 9:14 AM on August 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


I mean I get it. Everybody downloads so anything that provides moral comfort is welcome. But this article is so profoundly at odds with the experiences of people within creative industries, and so sly about concealing things like the fact that making money at a job where you have to pay for everything and making money at a job where you don't are *different* that, well, I don't fuckin' buy it.

I write--have done so over much of the period covered by this article. Things like this chart from Canadian union Unifor (funny how no labour sources are quoted, eh?) jibe with what I've witnessed better than anything in the article.

mobunited
Is it reasonable to combine your experiences in freelance writing with those of the music industry? The internet has indisputably profoundly changed the way people read, interact and pay for written journalism, but to me that seems to be quite separate to how the music industry has changed.

Maybe the most telling statistic of the article is this one:
American households in 2013 spent 4.9 percent of their income on entertainment, the exact same percentage they spent in 2000.
The internet has brought a new system for musicians. Ultimately there will always be winners and losers in the new system, but that seems to be the cost of progress. On the whole, as the article says, it's not clear that the new system is any worse than the old one.
posted by leo_r at 9:54 AM on August 20, 2015


I liked his analysis of mid-budget movies. I wouldn't have guessed they're equivalently profitable now.

Wasn't too hard for musicians to improve the status quo, given how bad it was for most of them, and the way that technology increased in fundamental ways the hours that the audience has to devote to music.

Journalism is maybe the other extreme: tens of thousands of jobs for reporters and photographers, including high fee freelance work and steady middle-class-salary-and-benefit staff jobs, that simply vanished along with the print circulation and advertising revenue that digital media haven't come close to replacing.
posted by MattD at 10:19 AM on August 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


One of the things that I found really annoying about the article was his assertion that indie bookstores are on the rise.

"This would be even more troubling if independent bookstores — traditional champions of the literary novel and thoughtful nonfiction — were on life support. But contrary to all expectations, these stores have been thriving... indie bookstores have been growing at a steady clip, with their number up 35 percent (from 1,651 in 2009 to 2,227 in 2015)"

What he's doing there is conflating American Bookseller Association membership with indie bookstores. Yes, the number of stores run by American Bookseller Association members has grown by 35%, but that's because the ABA changed their criteria for membership. What started as a professional organization for independent bookstores has morphed into something very, very different. Anyone or thing can now join the American Booksellers Association. Here's the list of acceptable business types from their Join page:

Retail bookstore
Internet bookstore
Book fair
College/university
Mail order/catalog
Institutional/museum
Retail (non-book)
Non-retail operation

Here's the list of store types:

General bookstore
Non-bookstore
Specialty bookstore

I don't blame them. They need to find supporting members somehow, what with the near extinction of their original membership base, and considering their semi-successful advocacy and lobbying for sales tax fairness, I could see why businesses other than bookstores would want to become members, but since technically Amazon.com could now become a member of the American Booksellers Association, I don't think we can point to their membership statistics and declare a resurgance of the independent bookstore. Has anyone noticed a 35% rise in the number of bookstores in their town in the last six years?

Here's another statistic. In 1995, when Amazon shipped its first book, there were two major chains; B&N and Borders, a major discount chain; Crown Books, and over 7,000 independent bookstores that sold new books. Even if all of the ABA's current members were independent bookstores, are we really experiencing a resurgence in bookstores?
posted by Toekneesan at 11:54 AM on August 20, 2015 [3 favorites]


philip-random: I don't joke about it. I sometimes feel it's the only way forward. Artist somehow gets noticed, gets a base of appreciators *. Artist then works with this base to get works to completion which, because they've already been paid for, are free to be distributed, shared, whatever.

It seems so easy. But it isn't, because ...


I can lend a small bit of insight here because this is exactly my situation, and about half of my 2014 income was directly from fans/supporters/patrons, voluntarily, even though the music itself is free. You're right, it's not easy, it took me years to build up what little momentum I have. It isn't easy because it IS so easy conceptually, so in order to stand out for more than 15 minutes of viral fame, you have to either be really damn good, or have a really beneficial quirk. (Mine is the latter, I have a very cute dog)

Patreon and Bandcamp have ensured that I can buy equipment, rent my own studio to work in, and always have an emergency cushion of at least a few months' rent, where I was living check-to-check and improvising with cheap gear just a few years ago. Health insurance too!

A lot of my YouTube / Twitch streaming friends work the same way, just on a much larger scale (while some of them are "partnered" with "networks" which are basically new-wave music labels or TV networks, some remain fully independent.) Last week I went down to the offices (plural, huge building) of a guy who plays video games on YouTube all day. HE HAS A DOZEN PEOPLE ON STAFF. PROFESSIONAL EDITORS. IT'S NUTS!!!

What's more, many of my professional clients nowadays are at least partially crowdfunded. I'd say 50-60% of the games I've worked on in the past year have been launched on Kickstarter, or have Patreon backing. Not just indies! Large studios too! (that's another pretty serious matter we could talk about at some point, by the way..)

It's no longer the case that we must go through the conventional industry and deal with huge disorganized dysfunctional incompetent horrorshow publishers and labels. I'd rather compete for attention online with a million other friendly indie musicians, and risk only achieving modest success and renown, than have to deal with a "mid-level producer" ever again.

Of course, when you forego the corporate backing, you also lose any kind of PR or legal protection, and you have to wing it, work your own way through complicated legal and promotional situations, maybe even do damage control. Some people are going to adapt to that, and some are going to melt down horribly on Twitter. Sometimes you luck out and find a business manager early. Either way, none of these are new challenges, but there are certainly new opportunities and business models.

tl;dr I could decide to release an album TODAY and have usable money in the bank TONIGHT. This is the best time to be an independent entertainer, even with all the dangers of self-employment.
posted by jake at 3:14 PM on August 20, 2015 [2 favorites]


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