I can only wonder what copyright law might do to such a model. Would patronage allow one to play the artist's music in a public space without prior permission/consent? Think about all the recent political campaigns that used songs in such a manner. Also, I wonder if the patronage model would make it that much harder for an artist to sustain his/her career.
Crowd Patronage: How A 400 Year Old Model Can Save The Music Industry
11–20 of 63 posts
Re: Crowd Patronage: How A 400 Year Old Model Can Save The Music Industry
#12Hey guys, I wrote this thing, and ready to discuss it here on HN. Come at me with your best shot!
Great job. I am probably biased since this is nearly exactly how I see things going (and want them to go) as well, but your explanation and the historical examples chosen make a great argument. If you are demanding I take a shot then I have a nitpick: First paragraph has the Traditionalists, Incrementalists, Apologists, and Defeatists. What about the school of thought that the widespread ability to freely share music…
hey freshhawk. first of all, I'm totally jealous of your handle. Second, I would say I'm not in any of those camps I define. I'm in the "crowd patronage" camp ;-).
I think music will always have hits and superstars, whether the gatekeeper is radio or internet. What we call "viral" today will be upgraded to how we think of "hit" today.
Overall though, I'm more excited about the "middle class" of musicians the new era of music industry can support. I personally think maintaining a profitable and real relationship with your fans will require a lot less overhead in the future. And, they can go direct to fan, which is beneficial for independent artists, imo.
Re: Crowd Patronage: How A 400 Year Old Model Can Save The Music Industry
#13Hey guys, I wrote this thing, and ready to discuss it here on HN. Come at me with your best shot!
Awesome well thought out article. Agree on many points. Mike Masnick (of www.techdirt.com) has been blogging about very similar models for years now. The fundamental point he gets at is that you want to 'Connect with Fans' more than anything. This is why people like Amanda Palmer, Trent Reznor and the Juggalos (oh my) have been so successful. People connect with their music and their persona. The second part is to gi…
awesome, i've never heard of Mike Masnick (fail!), but he sounds like a smart man ;-). Thanks for the heads up, I'll probably be digging into his stuff pretty soon.
Re: Crowd Patronage: How A 400 Year Old Model Can Save The Music Industry
#14TL;DR The arts used to be (like Mozart's time used to be) supported by wealthy patrons who commissioned works that were subsequently enjoyed by the public. The notion of music as a commodity to be consumed like sugar and paprika is a modern one, and, M Kim argues, a historical quirk whose time has passed. We should thus separate consumption from patronage, with the latter greatly enhanced by crowd-funding technology,…
Wouldn't a tax on paid downloads to fund a dollar matching system just discourage paid downloads even more? I think the entire premise here is that paid downloads of any kind are going to die and the only time you have scarcity and therefore can charge money is before you've created the art.
The concentration of power is a good point, it would be best to have a healthy ecosystem of Kickstarter clones or at least some model that avoids a single "hottest projects" page, those damn things bleed money from everyone else to create blockbusters.
Re: Crowd Patronage: How A 400 Year Old Model Can Save The Music Industry
#15I can only wonder what copyright law might do to such a model. Would patronage allow one to play the artist's music in a public space without prior permission/consent? Think about all the recent political campaigns that used songs in such a manner. Also, I wonder if the patronage model would make it that much harder for an artist to sustain his/her career.
This is just my opinion, but I feel copyright will be less enforceable in the future when it doesn't actually generate revenue. I have to think over time, artists will not want to gate their content, and provide distributors free access to their music to businesses and public spaces in exchange for them, well, playing it and getting exposure. Just like they're doing now with their fans. And all this will be accelerated when people stop buying music altogether. This is sort of a stretch hypothesis, I'm actually not super familiar with how ASCAP and BMI works.
Re: Crowd Patronage: How A 400 Year Old Model Can Save The Music Industry
#16TL;DR The arts used to be (like Mozart's time used to be) supported by wealthy patrons who commissioned works that were subsequently enjoyed by the public. The notion of music as a commodity to be consumed like sugar and paprika is a modern one, and, M Kim argues, a historical quirk whose time has passed. We should thus separate consumption from patronage, with the latter greatly enhanced by crowd-funding technology,…
I personally hate anything that "feels" like charity to the artist, I don't think that's sustainable. Even though I call this theoretical model "crowd patronage", I feel it would only work if the fan "feels" like he's getting more than some altruistic warm feelings of supporting something. They should also feel the real value of relationship access. Just the illusion of having a closer relationship to artist will onl…
I think they try to do this to some extent with "perks." As a crowdfunder and crowdfundraiser, I can see a divide between people who donate bc they want emotional pleasure and people who donate bc they want to receive something. It should be possible to segment patrons to address different donors' desires. Maybe if you're a music patron seeking stuff, you get options to buy particular tickets/seats or are the first to get songs or limited editions or something. If you're seeking status maybe they put your name somewhere on their website or send you a special Facebook logo, etc.
Re: Crowd Patronage: How A 400 Year Old Model Can Save The Music Industry
#17TL;DR The arts used to be (like Mozart's time used to be) supported by wealthy patrons who commissioned works that were subsequently enjoyed by the public. The notion of music as a commodity to be consumed like sugar and paprika is a modern one, and, M Kim argues, a historical quirk whose time has passed. We should thus separate consumption from patronage, with the latter greatly enhanced by crowd-funding technology,…
I personally hate anything that "feels" like charity to the artist, I don't think that's sustainable. Even though I call this theoretical model "crowd patronage", I feel it would only work if the fan "feels" like he's getting more than some altruistic warm feelings of supporting something. They should also feel the real value of relationship access. Just the illusion of having a closer relationship to artist will onl…
Without subsidy crowd patronage will tend towards normal patronage as it exists in the classical arts (we still have patrons commissioning paintings and sculptures, for example). Pure patronage ignores consumer demand for music. Leaving money on the table deprives the artistic community potential income, which limits its size, as well as creates an opening for a competing, consumer-centric model to re-appear. I'm trying to find a way to merge those two sources of revenues (consumer demand and patronage).
Moving towards music distributors being required, as part of the licence, to divert a portion of revenues to matching patronage to artists would be an alternative. That way, person A, who would have supported one project for $100 000 can now support two, with $50 000 each of matching funds (assuming 1:1 matching) making up the other half. The distributors could also dis-intermediate the patrons, the difference between this model and the labels being that the artist would have the freedom to distribute their music for free as well.
Note that an un-intended consequence of this would be music losing mass appeal and catering to the tastes of the patron minority. Given the state of popular music I'm not sure if this would be a terrible loss :P.
Re: Crowd Patronage: How A 400 Year Old Model Can Save The Music Industry
#18TL;DR The arts used to be (like Mozart's time used to be) supported by wealthy patrons who commissioned works that were subsequently enjoyed by the public. The notion of music as a commodity to be consumed like sugar and paprika is a modern one, and, M Kim argues, a historical quirk whose time has passed. We should thus separate consumption from patronage, with the latter greatly enhanced by crowd-funding technology,…
Wouldn't a tax on paid downloads to fund a dollar matching system just discourage paid downloads even more? I think the entire premise here is that paid downloads of any kind are going to die and the only time you have scarcity and therefore can charge money is before you've created the art. The concentration of power is a good point, it would be best to have a healthy ecosystem of Kickstarter clones or at least some…
My point is that there will probably be services beyond simply giving me music that I and people with similarly inelastic demands will be willing to pay for. Whether that manifests as a Spotify-like subscription or iTunes-esque pay-per-download has yet to be seen.
Re: Crowd Patronage: How A 400 Year Old Model Can Save The Music Industry
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Great job. I am probably biased since this is nearly exactly how I see things going (and want them to go) as well, but your explanation and the historical examples chosen make a great argument. If you are demanding I take a shot then I have a nitpick: First paragraph has the Traditionalists, Incrementalists, Apologists, and Defeatists. What about the school of thought that the widespread ability to freely share music…
hey freshhawk. first of all, I'm totally jealous of your handle. Second, I would say I'm not in any of those camps I define. I'm in the "crowd patronage" camp ;-). I think music will always have hits and superstars, whether the gatekeeper is radio or internet. What we call "viral" today will be upgraded to how we think of "hit" today. Overall though, I'm more excited about the "middle class" of musicians the new era…
Yeah, I don't think we'll ever get away from hits and superstars, that's just how humans behave.
I am excited about the possibility of a potentially larger middle class of musicians as well but I can also see pressure from the need for virality that works against a healthy middle class.
"You need to make the kickstarter music top ten page or else you make nothing!" is something I can see happening. At the same time, it's unlikely to be worse than the selling CD's model for those people so maybe that's just complaining about it only being "better" instead of "perfect", which is silly.
Re: Crowd Patronage: How A 400 Year Old Model Can Save The Music Industry
#20Hey guys, I wrote this thing, and ready to discuss it here on HN. Come at me with your best shot!
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