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You can't afford to be an artist and/or author, let alone be respected

cdahmedeh.net

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Re: You can't afford to be an artist and/or author, let alone be respected

#61

Post by mikkergp »

Mathnerd314 wrote: post #12

There 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…

One thing that interests me about Dall-E and other art-making, is, I wonder if it will eventually lead to individuals making their own high-quality animated feature films and "triple-a" games. Will these tools get to the point that an individual can make a unique triple-a game in their bedroom?

Re: You can't afford to be an artist and/or author, let alone be respected

#62

Post by syndacks »

Hi Ahmed, I want to read your piece, but your opening sentence needs some work:

>Us denizens of the Internet have become familiar with concepts that were foreign more than a decade ago, one of the most that causes the most influence is going viral.

This is largely unintelligible and, as a writer, I think something you should consider making more concrete. Otherwise, you run the risk of leaving your readership confused and, ultimately, not reading your work.

Re: You can't afford to be an artist and/or author, let alone be respected

#63

Post by a4isms »

egypturnash wrote: post #3
anigbrowl wrote: post #2

Underrated piece. In many creative or specialized subfields, some of the best work is being done for peanuts or being given away. Prices are generally thought of as ruled by supply. demand, and product quality, but inferring the latter from the first two really only works in terms of commodities that are relatively fungible. Preferential attachment is a large and underappreciated (by most) factor. You could do experi…

This strategy kinda selects for "great at SEO and promotion", not "great at art".

Of course it does. There are some very skilled musicians who are extremely popular, and also thousands of entirely interchangeable boy-bands and girl-bands and what not that have hits as long as a large PR machine is there to market them, and as long as they focus on milking their celebrity.

Making money in music isn't that much different from making money in tech. This very day there is/was a post on the front page about Adam Neuman(sp?) getting bankrolled yet again. Why? Because he is described as the world's greatest pitch man.

Likewise, crypto. Who's making money? The smartest programmers? or the people who know how to promote their projects?

Re: You can't afford to be an artist and/or author, let alone be respected

#64

Post by dinosaurdynasty »

pizzathyme wrote: post #19
kradeelav wrote: post #13

This 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…

I used to work in the games industry, which was me trying to feed my family and pursue an art passion at the same time. It wasn’t great at either: pay is low and the art you get to make not so fulfilling. I switched a few years ago to splitting these apart: I (1) got a non art tech job that I love (which is key) and that pays great, and (2) I started doing pure artistic games on the side as a hobby, no need for money…

> Why does it need to pay the bills?

Because life is so expensive for so many that every effort has to have money in mind or they starve. Especially if you are chronically ill (or simply have less-than-average energy levels), meaningful stuff outside work just will not happen.

Re: You can't afford to be an artist and/or author, let alone be respected

#65

Post by kcindric »

joe_hills wrote: post #54

I hope anyone who wants to pursue the arts doesn’t let pessimists like this discourage them from expressing themselves in the ways they love best. I can say from experience that becoming a self-employed artist is possible, but not easy or quick. My path was to find a full-time job that used different parts of my brain from my art. I used my limited free time to brainstorm, create, and publish whatever I could make ti…

Would love to see your art! Care to share it?

Re: You can't afford to be an artist and/or author, let alone be respected

#66

Post by mikkergp »

nine_k wrote: post #46
klipt wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rich patrons mostly.

Also, the church(es) which employed many of them. On top of that, music was not a commodity back then. Live performances literally made a living for many of them as these performances were the only source of music. (And a church needs this music for every mass, for instance.) Now music is abundant, recordings are cheap / free, and the best performance is easily available in a recorded form. Live performances are stil…

Dall-E for music will be interesting, but I think it's different. In a sense I think we're already there. Not in the sense that AI makes music but that music is so abundant, and there already aren't a ton of jobs in music writing. It's not a trade in the same way that like graphic design is. I mean, maybe Hans Zimmer loses his job but socially it doesn't seem like that big of an impact. Musicians don't tend to make money from streaming, and if you like going to shows to see performances, you're probably not going to watch a server rack on stage (Maybe, who knows what the future will bring!).

Re: You can't afford to be an artist and/or author, let alone be respected

#67

Post by runevault »

buscoquadnary wrote: post #42
runevault wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like the patron system of old ended up turning into the modern professional sports system instead of supporting the arts. Which sort of shows the shift in priorities at least the rich have had in more recent years.

Eh I don't know, I think to an extent Patreon which is explicitly this model has helped allow anyone to patronize artists they support.

The patron system of old was rich people/nobility, not large swaths of people. Patreon is named AFTER the idea, but isn't quite the same thing.

Re: You can't afford to be an artist and/or author, let alone be respected

#68

Post by bulatb »

a4isms wrote: post #48
bulatb wrote: post #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.

I don't think that's how I use the word "quality." Yes, it is not synonymous with popularity. But no, I don't think there's something wrong with the world that people prefer a certain thing that is "lower" quality. Is champagne higher-quality than coca-cola? Of course it is, but no serious person argues that the world ought to prefer champagne to coke. Quality is a combination of a bundle of--cough--qualities, not al…

> Is champagne higher-quality than coca-cola? Of course it is

Hm. I don't think I'd use the normal definition that way. I see it, but I wouldn't compare them.

But maybe that's why I'm suggesting this weird definition. The thing that people point to with the word, even in your example, is a bundle of traits that either stops existing or becomes irrelevant when you remove the speaker's preference. I don't think there's anything in "quality" except that normative aspect, because we can articulate the other stuff by just describing the champagne.

Re: You can't afford to be an artist and/or author, let alone be respected

#69

Post by falcolas »

phoe-krk wrote: post #10
falcolas wrote: post #4

I 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…

> The inherent value of art is zero. So is the inherent value of gold, sans its use in electronics and dentistry.

That "sans" is doing a lot of work, especially with regards to electronics. Gold's traits - high conductivity, low reactivity - provide a lot of inherent value because we build electronics in a highly reactive atmosphere.

Re: You can't afford to be an artist and/or author, let alone be respected

#70

Post by squeaky-clean »

ohiovr wrote: post #21

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.

Bach had a salary while he was the Cantor at Thomasschule, but most of his income came from funerals and weddings.

https://bachnetwork.org/ub12/ub12-heber.pdf

There were a lot of great composers in that period, but that's over 200 years and there were probably many more who are forgotten or were never even given the opportunity. And today there are probably more songs released on Spotify daily than were written in all of the 1700s.

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