Ask HN: How to design a better internet for artists?

(another artist who's been posting art online for the last 15 years)

deviantart is/has been dying but for ~20 years was the best place that I can think of that actually served all of the points you listed in a realistic manner. artstation was sort-of built to be a successor in some ways but caters almost exclusively to AAA video game artists and has a vibe I dislike.

my current working method is a personal site with RSS-enabled logs + a few invite-only discord servers with friends to hear feedback and share work in progress pictures. It works for me but I'm a very introverted soul and also deliberately run away from the commercialization of art.

personally I think it all went to hell when people started latching onto the idea of "content creator" as a cash-flow identity. your mileage may vary though.

interestingly ...I built a DA mini-clone (as a multi-wordpress install) about 15y ago for a teenager art group at a local library

Sadly, it only lasted about 2y before being abandoned

oh that sounds interesting! :o honestly, the same idea might have traction now since I know so many artists who are desperate to get away from social media and make their own site, but would like "some" kind of discoverability.

this was hosted under the auspices of the library's website - but I bet now'd be a great time to revisit this idea ... and, as much as HN tends to hate them, it could be interesting to *offer* artists chances to sell their work digitally, via NFT, or as prints

hmmm... I may need to go build this thing now :)

> Blogs and my personal sites have always been good, but discoverability isn’t there.

I'm working on something trying to solve the discoverability problem:

" Hello Internet! I made something, check it out! hello? Anyone?"

But there is a strong argument for it:

"You got no response cuz you suck, what you made suck, it's not internet's problem, it's your own problem."

I can't argue back so I accepted it, then I realize something:

It wasn't that no one see it or no one likes it holding me back, it was the humiliation that haunts me the moment I post it.

>None of these outlets feels like a good “home” to me

You should never feel humiliated at home, which is one and only reason why I don't live with my parents :--(

I feel completely blocked as well being a music producer. Music was my way of living for almost 10 years, but now it just gets worse for introverts like me. For every instagram post I do, I waste at least 1 hour thinking if I should post it. And when I post, I dwell for hours If I should delete it lol. I'm just tired of all of it and can't play this game anymore. Nobody cares. If you're not a clown following all the social media agenda, you already lost.

My 16-year-old daughter is an artist and she's trying to put together a site that would let artists post their work and collaborate:

https://getcollabing.com

My email is in my profile if you want to talk more.

I don't think there is a "solution" You want people to see your work and pay for it, art is not much different from anything else transactional.

Have you tried thinking about it like a marketing / sales funnel? Who are your customers, where do they discover and purchase...? You have to be there and stand out in a crowded field. You have to have many channels, it's just the nature of the beast.

In the end, only a small percentage of artists (producers of X) will be able to make a living from their work.

I don't even want them to pay for it, necessarily. I personally don't want to make a living from it (I have a day job), but respect others who do. I do both commercial and non-commercial things, and I wish there were platforms that supported both types of work as first-class citizens.

I'd guess (limited experience) that local outlets (offline - e.g. trade shows - & online e.g. Craigslist ... ideas there too) might be better bets. When my SO made some knitted seasonal doorknob covers (crafts but still) and took them to a trade show, a lot of orders resulted. From there, word-of-mouth might help.

Coinbase NFTs? While it may seem ludicrous, I have heard the global avg sale price is $2k per nft. That could equate to 10h of work for environment or 3d artist.

Of course, net artists have been engaged in the online sale discourse since the dial-up modem era and advent of bbs tech. What's the digital equivalent of "gallery representation":

https://www.nettime.org/archives.php