> At the same time, a part of me feels art has no place being motivated by money anyway. Perhaps this change will restore the balance. Artists will need to get real jobs again like the rest of us and fund their art as a side project.
As someone who has experienced both the career paths of a full-time musical artist and technical employee in the tech ecosystem, I find this comment saddening, because it revolves around a highly prevalent way of thinking in our society that needs to die.
Why shouldn't artists have their own career? Why wouldn't you consider this a "real job"?
My experience as an individual artist is that it feels very much like being the founder of a company. You’re dealing with technical, administrative, logistical, marketing issues every day, and you’re required to wear many hats until you generate enough revenue to use external actors/hire a few people.
With all due respect: best-case scenario, these lines might be fuelled by a form of untold jealousy; at worst, they reveal how deeply pessimistic and capitalist our worldview has become. Because such situations have long been observable in modern society, we listeners confuse this longitudinal data with empirical truth, when in reality it’s very much preserved by corporate interests and power dynamics within the music industry.
Artists have long been the last agent of the music business to be paid, and usually get the smallest slice of the cake. This is mostly preserved by a handful of actors who benefit most from this situation. Enter:
1. Labels (including, but not limited to, majors) exploiting the complexity of music rights (master, publishing royalties, ancillary rights, etc.) and imposing harsh contractual conditions on artists.
2. Digital streaming platforms (DSPs) built on vastly unprofitable, VC-money-ridden business models and making up for it by squeezing every possible bit of revenue they can.
The ever-persistent myth of the romantic, tortured artist who needs to live on skid row and experience dire living conditions to create the purest piece of art, devoid of any mercantilism is another problematic piece of the puzzle.
Empirically, extreme precariousness throughout the art world leads to mental health issues I’ve experienced first-hand and observed with many colleagues. When you don’t have the physical or mental resources to produce art, because you’re living from hand to mouth and focused on making a buck on the side, it directly and negatively impacts your practice. A steady, albeit small, income goes a long way.
But because gig-economy mechanisms and atomization of the artistic practice vastly profit the aforementioned actors (you could also throw in social networks, with their black-box, engagement-driven algorithmic updates), it stays the same.
Bottom line, it doesn’t have to be this way. That the ad-tech bubble is about to burst, or that some startup relied way too much on free VC money to prolong its ill-thought-out business model should not have such a drastic impact on the vast majority of artists. And more importantly, citizens like you and I should have no part in perpetuating these toxic mentalities.
Van Gogh was commercially unsuccessful during his lifetime and suffered from severe depression when he cut his left ear off; and here we are arguing this social model is the right one.
My 2 cents.