Who paid for the great works of music in the period between 1700 and 1918? From such musicians as Liszt, Beethoven, Mozart, Bartok, Handel, Debussy, Bach etc... there were a heck of a lot of great composers in that period. I was analyzing Bach the other day. His Brandenburg Concerto #2 has tens of thousands of notes. That is a heck of a lot of work.
You can't afford to be an artist and/or author, let alone be respected
21–30 of 273 posts
Re: You can't afford to be an artist and/or author, let alone be respected
#22There have been a few Spotify-clone studies that showed 70-80% of musical success was attributable to "quality" but the ranking of the top 10-20% was essentially random ("luck" to use the author's word). Now consider Dall-E and other art-making tools. If it becomes easier to make quality art, then the luck factor gets much more important, because the baseline quality is higher. So one can ask whether e.g. the Mona Li…
In fact, the Mona Lisa didn't become an iconic painting to the general public for a very long time.
But, in general, while there's a lot of variation in musical styles/art styles/etc. that a given person likes, I find that there's fairly broad agreement that an expert list of, say, the 50 top classic rock songs are pretty good--among people who like classic rock even if they might disagree on the order.
Re: You can't afford to be an artist and/or author, let alone be respected
#23I saw a great commentary from an art gallery owner on Tiktok about the "inherent value" of art. The inherent value of art is zero. That is, the art itself has no inherent value. The actual value of a piece of art is whatever you can convince someone to pay for it. One thing that can help is having receipts of what you've sold an artists work for in the past, since you can use that to inflate that amount a current pie…
I agree but that's basically the case for literally everything: the value of everything is determined by how much someone else will pay for it. Art isn't notable for conforming to that universal law of capital valuation. Nothing, not even the most technically nutritious food or the hardest of metals, has a value beyond the demands of others.
It does become a bit circular. Just saying "the value of art is what other people judge it to be" just begs the question "how do those other people judge it?" ad infinitum. When I hear "inherent value", I usually think of a non-monetary value, a value that exists outside a system of multi-party transactions, some utility that is possible even if no one ends up using it.
For art, I believe the inherent value is what it makes you feel. If a piece of art doesn't make you feel anything, it's pointless and useless as art.
Re: You can't afford to be an artist and/or author, let alone be respected
#24Who paid for the great works of music in the period between 1700 and 1918? From such musicians as Liszt, Beethoven, Mozart, Bartok, Handel, Debussy, Bach etc... there were a heck of a lot of great composers in that period. I was analyzing Bach the other day. His Brandenburg Concerto #2 has tens of thousands of notes. That is a heck of a lot of work.
Rich patrons mostly.
Re: You can't afford to be an artist and/or author, let alone be respected
#25This piece touches on the inherent tension between originality and selling out (or selling to the masses) that I've definitely seen in comic circles. So many aspiring indie artists/comic creators who think Patreon is their easy ticket to a passive and liveable income when the stark reality is much different. It's why my first piece of advice to any creative is to have a dayjob that maximizes their free time to create…
Patreon isn't an easy ticket, but it does seem like it's opened up some interesting opportunities. I listen to a few podcasts where the hosts have been able to quit their full time jobs and live on Patreon income. Being funded by Patreon as opposed to ads means you don't necessarily need to maintain a huge audience to live, just a dedicated one. So you're more free to explore less popular topics that you know the audience will like.
Most podcasts being created now will probably still fail, but it feels like a nice step away from the current ad-induced hellscape.
Re: You can't afford to be an artist and/or author, let alone be respected
#26~ A take ~
"Quality" is what we say when what succeeds is not what we think should succeed.
There's an actual objective function that defines success: that's fitness. Quality is what we call the difference between that one and the one we'd like. Expecting everything to rearrange itself to use our function is a high-"quality", low-fitness strategy.
Re: You can't afford to be an artist and/or author, let alone be respected
#27There have been a few Spotify-clone studies that showed 70-80% of musical success was attributable to "quality" but the ranking of the top 10-20% was essentially random ("luck" to use the author's word). Now consider Dall-E and other art-making tools. If it becomes easier to make quality art, then the luck factor gets much more important, because the baseline quality is higher. So one can ask whether e.g. the Mona Li…
In fact, the Mona Lisa didn't become an iconic painting to the general public for a very long time. But, in general, while there's a lot of variation in musical styles/art styles/etc. that a given person likes, I find that there's fairly broad agreement that an expert list of, say, the 50 top classic rock songs are pretty good--among people who like classic rock even if they might disagree on the order.
It got famous after it was stolen and “returned.” I know a few art nerds who are convinced the one we know is a fake and the original is lost/destroyed.
Re: You can't afford to be an artist and/or author, let alone be respected
#28Who paid for the great works of music in the period between 1700 and 1918? From such musicians as Liszt, Beethoven, Mozart, Bartok, Handel, Debussy, Bach etc... there were a heck of a lot of great composers in that period. I was analyzing Bach the other day. His Brandenburg Concerto #2 has tens of thousands of notes. That is a heck of a lot of work.
Rich patrons mostly.
I think a lot of them were royalty. But they competed with other royalty. See I have the best music!
Re: You can't afford to be an artist and/or author, let alone be respected
#29then be a starving artist.
Re: You can't afford to be an artist and/or author, let alone be respected
#30Freedom to be an artist is exactly the same as freedom to be a parasitic slob.
Say we do UBI program.
What's the minimum percentage of artists/opensource-coders/gardeners to make it worthwhile?
1 out of 1000?
What if we suddenly had 1000 new Edisons and Picassos running around? Would that be cool?