I love the way C.Y is thinking about patronage in this era of oversupply and declining revenue streams for artists. I think if we can normalise patronage and productise it in a way that makes sense to users we may be able to level the playing field, especially for emerging artists who are justy starting out and don't have the support of a record label.
I recently finished Stephen Witt's book 'How Music Got Free' and one of the parts I found most fascinating was the realisation that economists started having following the rise of music piracy, that in a world of digital abundance (ie. pirating / streaming music) it becomes increasingly harder to make a profit and therefore changes the existing investment/profit relationship. Advances in technology and the emergence of the collaborative economy (read creator economy) bypass the rates of return from an investment point of view. The German Pirate Party thought that this was a positive thing and would lead to greater creativity and innovation, but it would force musicians out of the marketplace and into relationships of patronage.
I think we are starting to see this play out decades later and I'm all for it. I don't see music as a commodity that has an ROI attached. I see it as a collection of cultural artefacts that provide a snapshot of the zeitgeist at any given time in history. It doesn't relaly make sense to me that these artefacts are being evaluated in the same way a startup might be.
I recently finished Stephen Witt's book 'How Music Got Free' and one of the parts I found most fascinating was the realisation that economists started having following the rise of music piracy, that in a world of digital abundance (ie. pirating / streaming music) it becomes increasingly harder to make a profit and therefore changes the existing investment/profit relationship. Advances in technology and the emergence of the collaborative economy (read creator economy) bypass the rates of return from an investment point of view. The German Pirate Party thought that this was a positive thing and would lead to greater creativity and innovation, but it would force musicians out of the marketplace and into relationships of patronage.
I think we are starting to see this play out decades later and I'm all for it. I don't see music as a commodity that has an ROI attached. I see it as a collection of cultural artefacts that provide a snapshot of the zeitgeist at any given time in history. It doesn't relaly make sense to me that these artefacts are being evaluated in the same way a startup might be.