81–90 of 273 posts
And for god's sakes, the last thing you want to do is go into debt while paying for an art degree at a liberal arts college that has no vested interest in whether you can get a job that can support you afterwards.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Patronage. Honestly music was profitable for a very brief period of time between around 1940s-1990's. Every other time in history it's required someone rich to like you enough to pay you to do it, or be a traveling minstrel who lived on the edge of society. Like even Wagner who is arguably one of the most influential and popular composers of all time spent most of his life destitute and only was stable when the Kaise…
Neither Mozart nor Bach were poor. Quite a lot of these were basically middle class - respectable good paid job, but you are not Elon Muck rich. And some of them earned less then they could due to own habit of alienate people (Beethoven).
Not to leave it at criticism, while highly specialized, the excellent lectures of Professor Christopher Page of Gresham College linked on the bottom of https://www.gresham.ac.uk/speakers/professor-christopher-pag... include a lot of details that tell us a lot about more ordinary musicians and (here: guitar) teachers, even if it's mostly about one instrument and a few limited locations and periods of time. A very interesting anecdote in any case, especially given the quality of the presentation(s). It is not explicitly or even mostly about the economic situation, but enough can be deduced from the context.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They were also something that most modern artists and writers are not: good.
I am quite sure there were a lot of bad contemporaries, but they never ended up in the history books. One of the new genres that really impresses me, is 3D art. The art form is getting quite mature, and often requires as much work as any Dutch Master oil painting. One of my favorite 3D renderings, is Worth Enough , by radoxist[0]. Nowadays, I'm sure that there are works that beat it, but it was quite amazing, when he…
Ppl also dont see art where it is in its pure form -Engineering.
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?
With every new platform or tech revolution (like streaming) we hear that now it is the little guys turn. But the opposite happens, the big ones take an even larger share.
Maybe I misunderstood the article, it was hard to read for my mediocre mind.
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.
Patronage. Honestly music was profitable for a very brief period of time between around 1940s-1990's. Every other time in history it's required someone rich to like you enough to pay you to do it, or be a traveling minstrel who lived on the edge of society. Like even Wagner who is arguably one of the most influential and popular composers of all time spent most of his life destitute and only was stable when the Kaise…
"For $20, I can sell you this audio file that makes you yearn for the deep friendships you created that summer a few years ago. Side effects may include vivid visual memories and internal hallucinations of what could have been, sudden mood swings including finding them on Facebook to see what they are up to, and in some cases: crying".
A lot of my talented peers are so much better then me in all of the music and performing stuff, but can't find enough time for it between regular boring work. Woody Allen said that 80% of success is just showing up, and it seems true. But now I see how a lot of talented people simply can't afford to show up. They are missing open mics and performing opportunities because they can't skip another shift as a barista, they can't find time for rehearsal because of soul killing the low paying bank job. I keep thinking about all the beautiful songs that are left to be unwritten.
I guess the life of artists was always like that - either you are struggling, or you have a source of passive income that carries you through the development years. And I do think that this moment in history is as full of opportunity as it ever was. Still, it was a surprising discovery for me. I really thought that at least at the starting level it would be mostly about who plays their chords better, and it surprisingly isn't.
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…
I think some of the best advice you can give folks who are looking to pursue arts as a full time career is 'don't do it'. It's incredibly difficult, and not at all like arts as a hobby. I think it is terrible advice blindly telling folks to pursue arts because it makes it seem reasonably achievable, and sets people up to waste far too much of their time becoming miserable with real consequences for themselves and tho…
I know a person who makes upper 5 figures at her day job and makes about that much writing zombie romance novels (as in, the main character falls in love with a zombie) for online publication. Clearly, it's her niche, but it's also a hobby that she's been able to buy a house with.
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.
Patronage. Honestly music was profitable for a very brief period of time between around 1940s-1990's. Every other time in history it's required someone rich to like you enough to pay you to do it, or be a traveling minstrel who lived on the edge of society. Like even Wagner who is arguably one of the most influential and popular composers of all time spent most of his life destitute and only was stable when the Kaise…
And having a market like this for a while bought us an incredible bounty of all kinds of music, some incredibly sophisticated, some with subtle & important things to say, some with all the art of a schoolyard taunt, some finding both wide and deep appeal.
If the conditions were unusual, so was the harvest -- bountiful enough that hopefully people will give a second thought about dismissing such conditions simply because they're potentially ephemeral (especially given that so are we).
As for commodification: it's different from monetization. It's distinguished by fungibility; muzak for grocery stores, elevators, hotel lobbies, customer service calls, etc being the greatest example, but of course some pop music is disposable too. And yet people don't always know the difference in advance (art is tricky in that way). In any case, monetization which rewards successful indelible efforts provides a powerful reinforcement for creators who have a knack for things people value or even find transcendent.
> You can buy anything in this world for money
In the story where I heard this, that's something the devil says, and while the devil isn't above telling you the truth, he's much more likely to say whatever he needs to (true or false) in order to get you focused on a model/direction that serves malevolent purposes, like the Cthaeh.