Brands Plus Music

The Death of Pop Music?

2011-02-26T15:43:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted here in a long time, but an article I read in Digital Music News about a panel at Digital Music Forum East seemed to beg for a response. Apparently an NPD analyst was complaining - I wasn't there, so this could be out of context - that the record labels had done all kinds of things to lure customers back to paying for music, all to no avail.

It got me thinking about my lifelong love affair with pop music, and how, when I stopped working for record labels several years ago, I would explain to friends, "I didn't leave the music business, the music business left me."

More to the point, it may be time to accept the fact that the pop music era - defined as the commercialization of short form songwriting, a historic aberration that lasted for the better part of the 20th century - is in decline. I say 'aberration' because music had for centuries been funded by wealthy patrons before the more recent practice of selling directly to consumers.

The pop music era started with ragtime and the player piano roll, evolved with composers like Gilbert & Sullivan and George Gershwin, and flourished with the advent of broadcast radio which popularized recording artists during WWII. Pop music reached its creative zenith in the 60s through 80s (a completely subjective analysis, I'll grant you), and hit its commercial peak in 2000 when the inflated returns from CDs masked the creative stagnation underneath. (Again, 'stagnation' may be too strong a term, but I think digital recording tools removed all barriers to entry, effectively diluting the market with mediocre artistry; a separate post, I suppose). Napster's disintermediation and Apple's unbundling of the album hastened the collapse of concentrated/controlled music distribution - the engine of economic rents for decades.

Fast forward 10 years and we have an explosion of personal entertainment substitutes: videogames, social media, mobile, tablets. Not only have the devices taken center stage, but the content pumped through them has evolved. The zeitgeist has moved on. Have you seen the latest ads for Chevy's Cruze? They're personalizing the automobile not with a killer sound system, but with functionality that allows you to get your Facebook updates read to you while you drive.

The revolution will definitely be monetized.

Need more evidence? A Wilkofksy Gruen Associates study showed that between 2000 and 2005, leisure hours spent consuming music dropped a precipitous 37%, while videogame and internet consumption increased 30% and 20%, respectively. The study did not take into account multi-tasking - arguably the prime mode of consumption these days - but what can you say of an art form that is best enjoyed "in the background" while engaging in more compelling activities like posting status updates or slaying digital dragons?

It's not that there isn't plenty of great music being made. It just isn't as central to the culture as it was in 1969. Each artistic movement, be it Gothic cathedrals or American Primitives, has an arc of popularity that eventually diminishes.

Blaming the consumer is not the answer. That's like getting angry that municipalities stopped commissioning public statues. Or lamenting that folks stopped buying Scott Joplin piano rolls. It's time to iterate. Innovate. Will.i.am, who knows a thing or two about reinvention, talks about digital entrepreneurs being the artists of tomorrow. What he's describing is simply a new form of creativity.

It's not that we should stop making music - I still sit down at the piano and bang out tunes all the time. But if you want to make money doing something you love, it may be time to find a new muse.

Music and the "Gift Economy" 7: Alternative Economies

2010-10-25T08:42:00.000-07:00

Previous posts in this series:
Music and the "Gift Economy" 1: An Introduction
Music and the "Gift Economy" 2: Examples
Music and the "Gift Economy" 3: Commons, Copyright, and Radical Politics
Music and the "Gift Economy" 4: Personal Versus Impersonal Transactions
Music and the "Gift Economy" 5: Supporting Artists
Music and the "Gift Economy" 6: Problems with Free Art

Over the course of this series, I've explored the concept of a gift economy and haven't found any indication that it presents a way to support the arts any differently than we have done for hundreds of years.

However, some people have suggested some new ways of remaking local, national, and international economies which might include, as a side benefit, support of the arts.

Let me outline a few of the proposals, from least radical to most radical:

Art as a Form of Payment
Barter has a long tradition, so I won't detail it here. I'll just point to a couple of examples of programs where artists can give art as payment instead of money.

The [Brooklyn’s Woodhull Medical and Mental Health Center] Artist Access program, which launched in May, allows artists, through performances or interactive programs for patients, to exchange their art for health care credits. "Art for Health Care," New York Foundation for the Arts.

In Mexico, artists can pay their taxes with artwork, which has allowed the Mexican government to amass a collection of over 4000 pieces since the program started in 1957.

Expanded Use of Commons
In part 3 of my series I brought up the idea of commons. Some people feel we could do even more with the concept as a way to promote creativity and community. Sharing and collaboration are variations on this theme.

Some of the research on commons involves shared natural resources and community areas (e.g., pastures, fishing grounds, forests, parks). Here's what people have learned.

Certain attributes of the local community have been shown to positively affect the outcome; (U1) users are dependant on the resource system for a major portion of their livelihood, (U2) users have a common understanding of the resource and of how their actions affect each other and the resource, (U3) users’ relations are built on trust and reciprocity (direct communication), (U4) users have prior organisational experience and local leadership (Ostrom, 2000). Two more attributes are often discussed as well, but the results on their impact are ambiguous. These are group size and the extent of homogeneity in the community (ethnicity, gender and interests), related to the distribution of resources (Baland and Platteau, 1996; Bardhan and Dayton-Johnson, 2002; Ostrom, 2005).

... “Rules are shared understandings among those involved that refer to enforced prescriptions about what actions (or states of the world) are required, prohibited, or permitted”, according to Elinor Ostrom and Victor Ostrom (2004). "Commons protected for or from the people: Analysis of strategies to establish protected areas in the Swedish Mountain Region." Anna Zachrisson.

Some people are extending the commons concept to sharable items (e.g., equipment, cars). Yochai Benkler wrote a paper outlining the types of products which are especially suited for this, such as those that an individual or family may want and can afford to purchase, but they don't need to use all the time. He also writes:

Pooling large numbers of small-scale contributions to achieve effective functionality—where transaction costs would be high and per-contribution payments must be kept low—is likely to be achieved more efficiently through social sharing systems than through market-based systems. It is precisely this form of sharing—on a large scale, among weakly connected participants, in project-specific or even ad hoc contexts—that we are beginning to see more of on the Internet ... "Sharing Nicely: On Shareable Goods and the Emergence of Sharing as a Modality of Economic Production." Yochai Benkler. Yale Law Review. Vol. 114: 273. 2004.

The paper covers far more than I have excerpted. I recommend you read it if you are interested in the topic. His work is also cited here:

In his book, The Wealth of Networks, Professor Yochai Benkler has developed some brilliant theoretical insights into why online commons can be so generative. He has explained, for example, that peer production is best achieved if a particular task is modular (meaning a complex project can be broken into discrete parts), “granular” (meaning it doesn’t take much investment for an individual to participate), and does not cost a lot to integrate the results. "The Commons as a New Sector of Value-Creation." David Bollier. On the Commons. 4/22/08.

Here are more suggestions related to online commons.

For the whole structure to work without large-scale centralized coordination, the creation process has to be modular, with units of different sizes and complexities, each requiring slightly different expertise, all of which can be added together to make a grand whole. "Chapter 8: A Creative Commons." The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind. James Boyle.

In discussing commons, I have gone from commons as a physical location to commons as shared objects to commons as shared projects. Moving along that continuum, here's a list of factors that contribute to successful collaborations:

The following general, practical guidelines for collaboration resurface throughout much of the literature in the field of collaboration study:

Develop trust and mutual respect
Outline clear and attainable short and long-term goals
Define needs/self-interest well
Give reasons behind your thinking
Combine online collaboration with face-to-face meetings to speed up the process
Be concise, patient, and persistent
Get everybody involved in the process
Develop a clear process including self-reflexive loops
Stick to initially made commitments
Take a dose of humility
Develop good listening skills
Pay attention to scale in collaborative groups (production groups: 4-5 participants)
Put a stop to domineering interruptions and put-downs
Communicate frequently, clearly and openly
Acknowledge upcoming problems
Use facilitators for larger groups
Develop a long-term view
Learn when to let go
"The Participatory Challenge," Collectivate.net [from: Krysa, J., ed. (2006) DATA Browser 03. Curating immateriality. The work of the curator in the age of network systems. Autonomedia: New York.] Trebor Scholz 2006

What all this research on commons indicates is that people in a variety of disciplines are looking at alternative forms of property and work. And as ownership and sources of income blur, that filters down to those who make, or attempt to make, their living from the arts and other creative fields. The more that is shared, the less artists have to buy themselves, but also the less they might be able to sell.

Here are some resources:

On the Commons

What’s Mine is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption

Shareable: Is Social Media Catalyzing an Offline Sharing Economy?

Guaranteed Basic Income
A number of people have come to the conclusion that providing everyone a basic amount of money every year to cover necessities is a better system than either providing no help for the poor or coming up with a patchwork of social programs. This money would also serve as a subsidy to allow some people (including artists) to pursue important but low-paying activities.

Among those who support the concept is Peter Barnes. In his book Capitalism 3.0 he covers capitalism's strengths and weaknesses.

When capitalism started, nature was abundant and capital was scarce; it thus made sense to reward capital above all else. Today we’re awash in capital and literally running out of nature. We’re also losing many social arrangements that bind us together as communities and enrich our lives in nonmonetary ways. This doesn’t mean capitalism is doomed or useless, but it does mean we have to modify it. We have to adapt it to the twenty-first century rather than the eighteenth. And that can be done. Capitalism 3.0: Preface

Barnes feels there is historic precedent for providing people with an annual stipend.

[Thomas] Paine therefore proposed a “national fund” that would do two things:

[Pay] to every person, when arrived at the age of twenty-one years, the sum of fifteen pounds sterling, as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property: And also, the sum of ten pounds per annum, during life, to every person now living, of the age of fifty years, and to all others as they shall arrive at that age.

A century and a half later, America created a national fund to do part of what Paine recommended—we call it Social Security. We’ve yet to adopt the other part, but its basic principle—that enclosure of a commons requires compensation—is as sound in our time as it was in Paine’s. Capitalism 3.0: Chapter 2

Barnes says that giving everyone a little bit of money will actually make a better economy. As an example, he discusses Monopoly.

... Monopoly has two features currently lacking in American capitalism: all players start with the same amount of capital, and all receive $200 each time they circle the board. Absent these features, the game would lack fairness and excitement, and few would choose to play it.

Imagine, for example, a twenty-player version of Monopoly in which one player starts with half the property. The player with half the property would win almost every time, and other players would fold almost immediately. Yet that, in a nutshell, is U.S. capitalism today: the top 5 percent of the population owns more property than the remaining 95 percent.

Now imagine, if you will, a set of rules for capitalism closer to the actual rules of Monopoly. In this version, every player receives, not an equal amount of start-up capital, but enough to choose among several decent careers. Every player also receives dividends once a year, and simple, affordable health insurance. This version of capitalism produces more happiness for more people than our current version, without ruining the game in any way. Indeed, by reducing lopsided starting conditions and relieving employers of health insurance costs, it makes our economy more competitive and productive. Capitalism 3.0: Chapter 7.

There is even conservative support for a basic guaranteed income:

Support has now come from what might seem a surprising source: the US policy analyst Charles Murray (In Our Hands, American Enterprise Institute). Mr Murray regards himself as a libertarian but of a socially conservative kind. ...

His starting point is that in spite of well over $1,000bn (€810bn) a year spent on welfare services of all kinds, poverty in the US is still rampant. He comes out for an unconditional basic income of $10,000 a year for every American over 21. I was originally attracted to basic income as a way of divorcing capitalism from the puritan ethic and allowing young people or creative artists to opt out from the rat race. Mr Murray on the other hand finds numerous, ingenious arguments whereby an unconditional payment of this kind might help restore the work ethic and traditional values. "Surprising case for basic income." Samuel Brittan. Financial Times 4/21/06.

Michel Bauwens, creator of The Foundation for P2P Alternatives, also supports the concept of a basic guaranteed income.

... clearly we need a more durable macro scale arrangement and, as I said, it is my belief that it will require the introduction of a universal basic income. This is a logical outcome, but it is surely several decades away. "P2P: The very core of the world to come," Open and Shut? 9/7/06.

Collective Ordering
As technology allows more people to connect and work together, this has given hope that at some point they will be able decide in advance what they need and then how to produce or acquire it. That will allow more efficiency than the current market system.

A key insight into the altruistic economic model is that a limit on the number of an individual's direct relationships need not limit the number of their indirect relationships, since computers can efficiently establish and use multi-step relationships such as friends of friends. "Altruistic Economics & The Internet Gift Economy." Robin Upton. Altruists International. 7/7/05.

Environmenalist Dave Pollard explains it this way:

Now, in a process called Peer Production, the local people interested in becoming suppliers, customers or investors of the offering that will fill the unmet need from step 1 above, self-organize and become partners in the enterprise, and co-design the offering to meet their specific needs. This is not rocket science; the reason it isn’t done in traditional economy companies is that it doesn’t scale well up to the multi-national level that traditional enterprises need to grow to to continue to exist.

The partners now decide which of them will work how many hours in the enterprise and what they will be paid (dependent on their time availability, personal income needs, and the needs of the enterprise — but with little differential between highest and lowest hourly rate, and with an appreciation that the enterprise is not for-profit and must manage its costs prudently). "How a Community-Based Co-op Economy Might Work." Dave Pollard. How to Save the World. 7/29/10.

The ideal is that if people have a guaranteed basic income, they won't have to work at jobs they hate and will be free to contribute in ways and to the extent that they wish. According to Bauwens:

In the context of P2P, equipotentiality is the assumption that the individual can self-select his contributions, which are then communally validated. "P2P: A blueprint for the future?" Open and Shut? 9/3/06.

Here are three other advocates of using networks to realign labor.

The essence of the long-term goal is to reduce the workweek to its minimum, so that the work we have to do to survive [pay rent, eat food etc] is no more and no less than what is needed for our survival. The remaining time is then freed up to pursue work that we want to do. It’s a shift from a must-work economy to a want-to-work economy.

Work that people want to do is inherently useful. It’s a gift economy. I want to teach: so I teach, I want to learn: so I go to school, I want to bake cookies, I want to help kangaroos who are being badly affected by our activities, or maybe I want to become a doctor and heal people. As the workweek gradually decreases, our time to do positive contributions increases, and the net-output of the human-system becomes ever more increasingly “positive”.

The beauty of such a system is that if someone is working 2 days a week, say: farming their own vegetables, and then they decide to do nothing for the remainder of their week, this is not only completely acceptable, it is preferred to them making something they didn’t actually want to do. "Gift economy: a viable economy," Sebastian Chedal. 3/12/09.

What about the jobs no one wants to do-like cleaning a public bathroom?
With the mentality encouraged by the gift economy, we would all understand what needs to be done and help where help is needed. Meanwhile, our sense of fairness would help balance the work that needs to be done on a case by case basis. If someone cleaned a public bathroom once a week, then because it is unpleasant work, perhaps they wouldn't be expected to do anything else all day. Or perhaps people would take turns doing easy-to-do yet unpleasant duties like cleaning public bathrooms. There wouldn't be any strict rules about it - people would just be held socially responsible for their role in maintaining a healthy and harmonious society.

What if people don't want to work at all? What if they just want to mooch?
If we lived in a society where people are looked down upon for not contributing their fair share to society, then no one would choose laziness and risk losing the respect and love of their community. And in the case that there are still people who don't contribute, community members could influence each other by refusing service to those who don't seem to be contributing. "Transition to the Gift Economy." Russell Jelter. March 2010

To escape from the fetters of competition, we need to develop an economy that is based on giving rather than trading: a gift economy, in place of this exchange economy. In such a system, each person could do what she wanted to with her life, and offer to others what she felt most qualified to offer, without fear of going hungry. The means to do things would be shared by everyone rather than hoarded up by the greediest individuals, so each person would have all the capabilities of society at her disposal. Those who wanted to paint could paint, those who enjoy building engines and machines could do that, those who love bicycles could make and repair them for others. The so-called “dirty work” would be spread around more fairly, and everyone would benefit from being able to do a variety of things rather ^J than being limited to one trade like a cog in a machine. "What's So Bad About Capitalism?" SF Bay Area Gift Economy - tribe.net, 12/17/05.

Douglas Rushkoff goes a step further and proposes that we take money away from those people/companies that don't do anything and give it to people who do something.

A majority of the money earned under our current currency system is earned by people who don't actually do anything. As such, all this speculation is a drag on the system. Speculators just bet on various companies' ability to pay back what they have borrowed. ...

The way out —— as I see it —— is to begin making our own money again. I'm not talking barter, but local currency. Money is just an agreement. And the more a community trusts one another, the more efficiently the moneys they develop can function. We can create units of currency based on anything; if we don't have grain, we can earn it into existence instead by babysitting, taking care of the elderly, or teaching in a charter school. Every hour worked is an "hour" of currency credited to your account. "Hacking the Economy." Douglas Rushkoff. h magazine. 3/19/09.

But we can take it one step further than creating local currency.

An Economy without Money
The most extreme reinvention of the economy is to eliminate money altogether.

Imagine a future in which millions of families live off the grid, powering their homes and vehicles with dirt-cheap portable fuel cells. As industrial agriculture sputters under the strain of the spiraling costs of water, gasoline and fertilizer, networks of farmers using sophisticated techniques that combine cutting-edge green technologies with ancient Mayan know-how build an alternative food-distribution system. Faced with the burden of financing the decades-long retirement of aging boomers, many of the young embrace a new underground economy, a largely untaxed archipelago of communes, co-ops, and kibbutzim that passively resist the power of the granny state while building their own little utopias. "The Dropout Economy - 10 Ideas for the Next 10 Years." Reihan Salam. Time. 3/11/10.

One reason people think a cashless economy is possible is that abundance will replace scarcity. It's just a matter of making sure it is distributed in an equitable manner.

The future will be shaped by three interlocking trends: imploding capital outlay requirements for production, reduced transaction costs of networked organization, and eroding enforceability of artificial property rights. Taken together, they will render the propertied classes' privileged access to large amounts of land and capital irrelevant, act as a force-multiplier for bootstrapping the alternative economy, drastically lower the revenue streams required both for households to subsist and microenterprises to stay in business, and shift a large portion of consumption needs into the category of Free or virtually Free as embedded rents on artificially property rights are washed out of the price of goods. "The Abolition of Scarcity." Kevin Carson. The Future We Deserve.

A group that is rapidly spreading around the world is The Zeitgeist Movement, based on the ideas of Jacque Fresco.

Simply stated, a resource-based economy utilizes existing resources rather than money, and provides an equitable method of distribution in the most humane and efficient manner for the entire population. It is a system in which all natural, man-made, machine-made, and synthetic resources would be available without the use of money, credits, barter, or any other form of symbolic exchange. ...

Cybernation, or the application of computers and automation to the social system, could be regarded as an emancipation proclamation for humankind if used humanely and intelligently. Its thorough application could eventually enable people to have the highest conceivable standard of living with practically no labor. "Resource-Based Economy." Jacque Fresco. The Venus Project.

Here's more: "What are some of the central characteristics of a 'Resource-Based Economy?'"

So now, we have finally reached a point where a gift economy makes sense. If there is abundance and if people trust that their needs will be met, they may feel free to give away what they want to give away and what they don't need.

In various ways Marcel Mauss, Georges Bataille, and Jean Baudrillard have all argued that societies are grouped around the notion of excess (and acts of generous gift giving) rather than resource scarcity (Coyne 2005: 99-150). "The Participatory Challenge," Collectivate.net [from: Krysa, J., ed. (2006) DATA Browser 03. Curating immateriality. The work of the curator in the age of network systems. Autonomedia: New York.] Trebor Scholz 2006

My personal opinion is that all the discussions about giving away music and then selling scarcities is way too limited. Most of the proposed ways for musicians to make money are based on consumerism. Should we be encouraging them to sell anything? Or should we find ways to help them, and others, survive in a new economic system? As we move more toward user-generated creativity and participatory society (in art, journalism, networking, and so on), finding ways for everyone to live fully and creatively rather than just finding ways for elite artists to sell their works seems to be a good goal.

Here are two extensive gift economy resources:

Regenerosity

Anarchism and Gift Economy

Suzanne Lainson
@slainson on Twitter

UPDATE 11/20/10
A recent article on the subject: "To end poverty, guarantee everyone in Canada $20,000 a year. But are you willing to trust the poor?"

Music and the "Gift Economy" 6: Problems with Free Art

2010-10-11T08:00:00.000-07:00

Previous posts in this series:
Music and the "Gift Economy" 1: An Introduction
Music and the "Gift Economy" 2: Examples
Music and the "Gift Economy" 3: Commons, Copyright, and Radical Politics
Music and the "Gift Economy" 4: Personal Versus Impersonal Transactions
Music and the "Gift Economy" 5: Supporting Artists

Lewis Hyde and others have suggested that art and other forms of creative expression (I'll include music here) should be given away. Justifications include:

1. It's ennobling for giver and receiver.
2. It's impossible to put a true price on creativity.
3. Creativity shouldn't be judged on financial value.
4. More people will be exposed to art if it is free.
5. If it is easily reproducible, why not?
6. The culture should have access to all art.

In my last post, I pointed out that many of the "gift economy" concepts don't address how to create a more equitable society. The system depends on the money makers to support the gift givers in some fashion, so there tends to be a built-in class structure. The rich support the poor.

Whether it's being done in honest ignorance, blind obedience, or cynical exploitation of the market, the result is the same: our ability to envision new solutions to the latest challenges is stunted by a dependence on market-driven and market-compatible answers. ...

Chris Anderson [author of Free] has analyzed where all this is going, and — rather than offering up a vision of a post-scarcity economy — advised companies to simply leverage the abundant to sell whatever they can keep scarce. ...

Higher sales reports and lecture fees serve as positive reinforcement for authors to incorporate the market's bias even more enthusiastically the next time out. Write books that business likes, and you do better business. The cycle is self-perpetuating. But just because it pays the mortgage doesn't make it true. "Economics Is Not Natural Science." Douglas Rushoff. Edge. 8/11/09.

There are people who propose to reduce dependence on market economies, even going so far as to suggest someday we can eliminate monetary transactions altogether. I will get into those ideas in the next post, but for now I want to bring up some of general snags in the free art concept. Consider it food for thought.

If it is free anyway, is it really a gift?
Free culture has gotten a big boost now that we can copy files and distribute them for little or no added expense. But the very fact that they don't cost money to reproduce and pass along may take them out of the gift realm. No sacrifice is involved. Similarly, freely giving away your music/writing/photos/design in order to gain exposure is not gift giving. (We do not, for example, consider broadcast TV a gift, even though viewers don't have to pay for it.)

... gifts are alienable; this means that when you give a gift, you give up ownership of it. Ownership of the gift is transferred to the person to whom you give it. "The Gift of Generalized Exchange." Ira Nayman.*spark-online.com. Version 17.0, February 2001.

A gift costs the giver something real. It might be cash (enough that we feel the pinch) but more likely it involves a sacrifice or a risk or an emotional exposure. A true gift is a heartfelt connection, something that changes both the giver and the recipient....

Free doesn't make something a gift. Free might be a marketing strategy, free might make a generous present, but free doesn't automatically make something a gift. "Gifts, misunderstood." Seth Godin. 6/19/10.

A Christian explanation to differentiate gifts from merely free would be: "Not equal gifts, but equal sacrifice." In other words, you actually have to be giving up something of value -- to you -- for it to be a true gift.

If you give it away, does it have any value?
We have become so conditioned to the idea that money determines how much something (which can be either tangible or intangible) is worth to people that when there isn't a price tag, we are left wondering if it has no value. This experiment, for example, shows that perceptions are affected by price tags.

Twenty people sampled five Cabernet Sauvignons that were distinguished solely by their retail price, with bottles ranging from $5 to $90. ... $90 Cabernet seemed to taste better than the $10 Cabernet, even though they were actually the same wine. How We Decide. Jonah Lehrer. 2009.

Here's another case where people perceive something tastes better when they pay for it than when they get the exact same product for free: "Why Does Bottled Water Taste Better?" ADDED 11/18/10.

Not accepting that money equals quality, some artists have made a statement by not charging for what they create.

The Free Biennial began in late January, 2002, with a call to artists offering a few simple parameters: the work should be nonmonetary, meaning that no money changes hands (no admission is charged, nothing is bought or sold), the work should take place in public space (very widely defined as anyplace a stranger can enter, including the broadcast airwaves, telephone system, and the internet), and it should be perceptible to someone in New York City during the month of April, 2002. Any artwork meeting these criteria could be in the Free Biennial. "Free Words to Free Manifesta: Some Experiments in Art as Gift." Sal Randolph. In Ethics & the Environment, August, 2003.

Another "free art" exhibit:

Known as the Artists for Social Justice, several members recently participated in a one-night performance entitled “Free Free Market” in Chinatown focusing on aesthetic exchange and participation as an alternative to the object-driven art market. ...

“Free Free Market” involved dozens of ASJ member projects that focused on gift economies, the exchange of aesthetic and social experiences, encouraging dialogue, and inhabiting spaces that are nontraditional for art (such as public space, strip malls, and classrooms). "Between Art and Anarchism." Sue Bell Yank. Journal of Aesthetics & Protest. Issue 7.

Yet another "free" art experiment is the Fine Art Adoption Network.

FAAN is an online network, which uses a gift economy to connect artists and potential collectors. All of the artworks on view are available for adoption. This means acquiring an artwork without purchasing it, through an arrangement between the artist and collector. Our goal is to help increase and diversify the population of art owners and to offer artists new means for engaging their audience.

Performance art grew out of a desire to challenge the notion of "art."

From Allan Kaprow's first Happening in 1959 and the Fluxus performances in the 1960s to the body-based works by Carolee Scheemann, Marina Abramovic, Vito Acconci, Chris Burden, or Hermann Nitsch and the non-site performances by Dennis Oppenheim or Richard Long, performance was made plot-less and site-less and distanced from theater. The ephemeral was central to the concerns of these many artists who sought to challenge the assumptions and rules of art-making by second-guessing its materiality and permanence. To be here one second and gone the next, they implied, could make art – and our habits around consuming and appreciating it – free from the market and the museum and, ultimately, into something new. They were clear cases of "you shoulda been there." The Legacy of Performance Art Anthony Huberman. Saatchi.online.

Theoretically performance artists could charge for their shows like musicians do for theirs, but America's most famous performance artist, Marina Abramovic, sees her performance in service of a higher calling:

“The function of the artist in a disturbed society is to give awareness of the universe, to ask the right questions, and to elevate the mind.” ...

Ms Abramovic has never sold her performances. For years she scraped together a living through teaching and commissions. She didn’t acquire gallery representation until 1995, when she was signed to New York’s Sean Kelly Gallery. Nowadays, her income comes mainly from selling photographs, often in editions of seven, made in collaboration with Marco Anelli, a photographer. "Performance art: The artist was here," The Economist, 9/15/10.

Unlike business people who advocate giving away something for free as a way to increase demand for what is scarce, and then to profit from those who have the money to pay for that scarcity, the "free" artists generally are attempting to strip class structures out of art economics. Those with no money are as able to enjoy the art as those who are able to pay. Those who give away their art, but have no means of support for themselves, are essentially martyrs for the cause.

Will people take care of it if they didn't pay for it?
Sal Randolph, in his free art experiments, has uncovered another dynamic with free art.

Giving away something for free makes its value indeterminate — the individual recipient decides its value, rather than the market. ... Is this object precious? How careful should I be with it? The eventual fate of every object without resale value is the trash. The next level up is the thrift store, the junk store, the flea market. And in fact tons of amateur art circulates in those low markets and can be had for prices ranging from $0.50 to $100. I’ve seen free art treated both preciously and casually — framed carefully and preserved, but also thrown in boxes, stacked awkwardly, left in drawers when interest fades. "Beautiful Money (Art as Currency, Art as Experience)." Sal Randolph.

Randolph's observation has relevance to music and other digital art. If you got it for free and it is easily replaceable, does it have any value to you as a possession? Is it now disposable art? Lately there have been discussions of about how copyright is hampering archiving of old books, music, film, and photographs. However, it may turn out that it is the cheap/free items that aren't being saved, rather than the ones deemed valuable from the beginning:

Experimenting at Ebay, I've discovered an interesting law of economics. (Perhaps this is well-known, but I had never heard of it before). The less the intrinsic value of a mass-produced object, the more likely it will become valuable over time as a collectible. (Their lack of intrinsic value means that few people will save these objects, which means that they will become rare. And the fact that they were mass-produced will mean that they are imprinted on the consciousness of many, and thus subject to nostalgia by association, and hence will be in demand.)

As a result, I can get more money selling a fair-condition bottle cap than selling a 100-year-old book that's in fine condition. "The psychology of auctions and collectibles," eBay Guides, 9/10/09.

If it is true that we tend to abandon what we acquire for free or cheaply, and then value it more later on because society didn't bother to preserve any copies, then the destruction of popular culture is necessary to create its future monetary worth.

If we judge purely on the quality of the art, why does it matter who created it?
Another variation on how perceptions affect our appreciation of art:

Why is a set of photos worth millions if they were shot by Ansel Adams, and next to nothing if the photographer depressing the plunger was a nobody? After all, the images remain the same. To the extent that art is about appreciating aesthetic objects for their own sake, is it right to put so much stake in the question of who did the drawing or painting or snapping?

The basic market definition of value is perfectly reasonable: A work is worth what someone will give you for it—an amount usually determined by the intersection of desirability, scarcity and the expectation that there will be someone down the line willing to pay even more. But isn't art supposed to have value that transcends the market—something inherent in the object itself?

... what would happen if Vincent van Gogh had died an utter unknown, without any of his paintings ever having been seen or saved. A hundred years later "The Starry Night" turns up at a yard sale, a grimy orphan. Would it be recognized as a masterpiece?

The answer is, regrettably, probably no. "Ansel Adams, Caravaggio and Other Art Authentication Fights: Does a Famous Name Make Anything More Beautiful?" Wall Street Journal, 8/13/10.

An oft-cited story is this one where a talented classical violinist was ignored while playing for tips in the subway.

Three days before he appeared at the Metro station, Bell had filled the house at Boston's stately Symphony Hall, where merely pretty good seats went for $100. Two weeks later, at the Music Center at Strathmore, in North Bethesda, he would play to a standing-room-only audience so respectful of his artistry that they stifled their coughs until the silence between movements. But on that Friday in January, Joshua Bell was just another mendicant, competing for the attention of busy people on their way to work.

... In the three-quarters of an hour that Joshua Bell played, seven people stopped what they were doing to hang around and take in the performance, at least for a minute. Twenty-seven gave money, most of them on the run -- for a total of $32 and change. That leaves the 1,070 people who hurried by, oblivious, many only three feet away, few even turning to look. "Pearls Before Breakfast," The Washington Post, 4/4/07.

What if people don't understand reciprocity?
One of the fundamentals of gift giving is the idea that people will return the favor, if not to you, then to someone else. But sharing or giving gifts is not something left to our innate sensibilities. First, as children we are taught about sharing, and then about giving gifts to friends and family. Then, as we grow older, we learn about tipping protocol. And perhaps when we are even older, we learn about hostess gifts and business gifts.

We live in social groups that have rules about gifts and gift giving. These rules and customs serve to assure that things will come out fairly — that when one gives away something, one will get something in return. While this may sound crass and may not be necessary in an affluent society, it is essential for survival in social groups where resources are scarce. "Gift-giving rules vary with the social subgroup." Vivian Friedman. Raising Children. Vol. 2.

If we hope to support artists involved in a gift economy, we need to establish that either we will give them gifts (and hopefully in some form that covers basic survival needs) or that some institution or patron will.

Gift giving is puzzling from an economic perspective because it is inefficient -- givers spend money on gifts differently from the way receivers would -- and it seems to be necessarily so. "Gifts as Economic Signals and Social Symbols." Colin Camerer. The American Journal of Sociology.Vol. 94, 1988.

In other words, by its very nature, gift giving isn't supposed to replace economic transactions, so for it to do so, we'd need to set up some new societal rules (just as we have to done to make sure tips augment a service person's income).

What if people don't want your gifts?
This probably the biggest problem with gift economies. Even if we want to encourage gift giving, and we will somehow support creative people who give away their art, we will still have to deal with an oversupply of gifts. Right now, for example, we have millions of artists/bands uploading their music. They freely give it away, but most of it will not be downloaded and saved.

... if an artist makes an object and no one wants it, I'm sorry to say, I don't know that you can call it (at that time) a bona fide "gift." Of course, if an artist creates something than none of his/her contemporaries value, that doesn't mean future generations won't. And so, whether an object is a "gift" to humanity or not is place/time-determined and subjective. Such views can and do change over history. "Sorting Through the Muddled Politics of the Gift," Edward_ Winkleman, 2/9/10.

Even the most hardened skeptic of the self-expression free-for-all has to admit that plenty of nonprofessional creators, ignoring the wants and needs of the market, have produced priceless gifts for the rest of us to enjoy. On the other hand, even the most ardent enthusiast of giveaway culture has to admit that a lot of what’s on offer is not only free but worthless.

... a product of the gift sphere may be pure, but even a sharing economy depends on somebody’s wanting what’s being offered — or at least not dismissing it ... "Valuing $0." Rob Walker. New York Times, 5/16/10.

For a good look at the problems in receiving gifts, check out this paper: The Shadow Side of Social Gift-Giving: Miscommunication and Failed Gifts

In my last post in this series, I'll cover some proposed ideas on alternative economies which may allow for more creative expression and the support of artists. Music and the "Gift Economy" 7: Alternative Economies

Suzanne Lainson
@slainson on Twitter

Music and the "Gift Economy" 5: Supporting Artists

2010-09-27T00:10:00.000-07:00

"In a society that mostly talks about money,” says Margaret Atwood, who keeps a half-dozen copies of “The Gift” on hand at all times to distribute to artists she thinks will benefit from it, “Lewis carved out a little island where you can say, ‘Life doesn’t always work that way.’” "What Is Art For? - Lewis Hyde - Profile," New York Times, 11/16/08.

To quote Hyde directly:

... there are categories of human enterprise that are not well organized or supported by market forces. Family life, religious life, public service, pure science, and of course much artistic practice: none of these operates very well when framed simply in terms of exchange value. The second assumption follows: any community that values these things will find non-market ways to organize them. It will develop gift-exchange institutions dedicated to their support. "Reflections of Arts Funding since World War II." The afterword of The Gift, printed in The Kenyon Review, Winter 2008.

Others share this viewpoint. For example, writer/environmentalist Dave Pollard:

Our society puts a value on human activities only when they can be monetized – when a transaction involving an exchange of money occurs. We tend to equate our time with money: If the "market value" of an hour of our time exceeds the cost of hiring someone else to mow our lawn or make a present for a loved one or look after our children or our home, we conclude that it makes sense to buy those services and to work longer hours to pay for them. ...

By contrast, the Gift Economy does not value monetized activity more highly than un-monetized activity. It suggests, on the contrary, that our time is invaluable and that therefore we should "spend" it, as much as possible, doing things we love and things that are our personal responsibility, and only buy goods and services we cannot possibly provide for ourselves. In doing these things ourselves, we learn to do them better, more efficiently, more effectively and more economically, saving the cost of outsourcing them to a third party. "The Virtuous Cycles of the Gift Economy," How to Save the World. 12/6/06.

Sharon Bolton warns that depending too heavily on a market economy mentality will strip us of traditional community values:

The market becomes disembedded, autonomous, self regulating and entirely economic in nature, purpose and outcome. For the moral economists, in modernity the market takes on a life of its own which is represented by the commodification of whole areas of social life. A process that eats into and, in some cases, consumes and overrides the values and norms of the non economic realm. Rather than society being integrated via non economic institutions of family, church and community; the market becomes the integrative mechanism pervading all aspects of the non economic. In other words the process of embeddedness is reversed; with modern society becoming embedded in the market, rather than the pre modern market being embedded in society, and "refashioning its ethos and relations after its own image" (Booth, 1994: 656). The tentacles of the "market society" extend to such an extent that the economic becomes the sole vehicle of analysis and all aspects of social life are objectified, quantified and couched in terms of maximising behaviour and efficiency – the human becomes understood only as homo economicus (Booth, 1994; Polyani, 1977). "The Idea of the Moral Economy."

Perhaps not surprising, many creative people don't want to have to think about using their art to make a living. Unfortunately, after giving us an entire book on gift economies, Hyde doesn't offer any new ideas on how artists can survive financially. He says they can get day jobs, find patrons, or sell their art.

Getting a day job is pretty self-evident and I have covered it in other blog posts.

The second job frees his art from the burden of financial responsibility so that when he is creating the work he may turn from questions of market value and labor in the protected gift-sphere. He earns a wage in the marketplace and gives it to his art.

... The artist who takes a second job becomes, in a sense, his own patron: he decides his work is worthy of support, just as the patron does, but then he himself must go out and raise the cash. "Lewis Hyde on Being an Artist in a Commercially Driven World." Excerpt from The Gift. In Saachi Online, 12/12/06.

Here's just one real world example of this:

Artists pay a significant economic penalty to pursue their practice, and are, through real monetary contributions, replacing potential income-earning employment with what amounts to free labour. In 2007, the average artist worked 26 hours per week on their studio practice, 14.5 hours on art-related employment, and 7.6 hours on non-art-related employment. In addition, they volunteered just over 3 hours a week to art-related activities. Those artists who spent a majority of their employment time in the studio earned significantly less total income, a median of $15,000, versus $28,994 for artists who spent most of their time in art-related employment, and $21,793 for those who spent most of their time in non-art-related employment. "Waging Culture: the socio-economic status of Canadian visual artists," Out There, 4/1/09.

Hyde includes grants as a form of patronage. I'll go step further than Hyde and suggest there is a continuum of financial support that includes patronage at one end and charity at the other, with nonprofit/government funding in the middle. All involve having a person or institution with greater resources giving to a creative person with lesser resources.

(However, some of what passes for patronage doesn't involve the rich supporting the poor. For example, there are middle class "patrons" who commission works of art from affluent artists. In other words, the "patron" may actually have less money than the artist. But I'll treat these as market transactions because in return for financial support, a creation of comparable value is delivered. Similarly, there are financial prizes given out to artists in recognition of work they have done, with no regard to their financial need. I won't include those as examples of grants.)

To put that financial support continuum into perspective, let me start by citing a paper discussing 19th century English writers and their search for funding. (It's a long paper, but worth reading. Since the online copy is broken down into pages, I have included separate links to each page containing each quote.)

How to get money or resources into the hands of the poor (which can include artists) is at the heart of most economic, religious, political, and societal concepts, so understanding the process is fundamental to understanding how a given community/society conducts itself. In Dickensian England, outright charity was considered demeaning, so paupers sold items that actually had little value. No one needed what they were selling, but these transactions allowed the paupers to save face when accepting money. It was a "sale" rather than a "handout."

It was that same mentality that made giving handouts to writers unpalatable.

Like Mr. Dorrit and the little girls with their bouquets of violets, proponents of nonmarket forms of authorial support strive to dignify the transfers of cash they advocate by characterizing them as offers of tribute rather than alms, or as loans or payments of some sort rather than gifts. "Literary Paupers and Professional Authors: The Guild of Literature and Art." Daniel Hack. Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900. Autumn 1999.

Although gifts and charity were frowned upon, the marketplace wasn't doing a good job of supporting writers either.

The disjunction between intellectual pursuits, on the one hand, and commerce and the provision of daily wants, on the other, explains why men of letters require extramarket support. "Literary Paupers and Professional Authors: The Guild of Literature and Art."

So a debate was going on as to whether government subsidies would be appropriate. The pro-subsidy writers felt the market wouldn't provide enough money, but on the other hand, they didn't want government funding to be seen as any sort of charity, which would demean them and devalue their writing. Therefore they said that the government should pay writers because writers contribute so much to society.

Services done to the State by distinguished efforts in art, literature, and science, are as unequivocal, and at the least as important as services done by professors of arms, law, divinity, and diplomacy. The claims of literature and science are for a due recognition and recompense of such valuable service rendered to the State. ... the state is indebted to these men, and therefore that any payment it makes to them constitutes repayment of that debt. Pensions and the like are not charity, nor even supererogatory tokens of gratitude or esteem ... but simply "due ... recompense." "Literary Paupers and Professional Authors: The Guild of Literature and Art."

Hack points out that justifications for having the government pay writers covered all bases (sometimes in a contradictory fashion):

They deserved it.

They needed the money to subsidize their creativity.

Their craft would suffer or not advance if all they did was to focus on what they could sell rather than taking time to pursue worthy, but not necessarily salable works.

Their writings were a gift to society, so no monetary price could be put on the creations and therefore the government would never be able to pay them enough, but it should give them something anyway.

The problem with giving writers money in recognition of something they had already written was that many of them were too poor to write without upfront funding to cover their living expenses while they wrote. In a nutshell, in Victorian England, like today, people were trying to decide whether or not to use government money to fund writers and if so, if it should come as an advance for future work, or as a reward for already completed work.

Another concept that was being promoted was a writers' guild.

In order to offer such tributes, the Guild proposes establishing an "Institute." This Institute, carefully designed in such a way as to distinguish its support from "the humiliating charity of an Asylum," will have a Warden, Members, and Associates, who are to receive "salaries" of £100 to £200 a year, some with housing on land donated by Bulwer Lytton. Individuals insured through the Guild, along with certain "exceptional cases," will be eligible to offer themselves as candidates for these positions, which are to be filled (again with certain exceptions) through a vote of the Guild's members. Institute Members will be elected for life from "Writers and Artists of established reputation, and generally of mature years (or, if young, in failing health), to whom the income attached to the appointment may be an object of honourable desire"; associates will be chosen either for life or a fixed term from among those who are "less known to the general public" and those "in earlier life, who give promise of future eminence, and to whom a temporary income of £100 a year may be of essential and permanent service". Applications are required for these positions, but there is no means testing; instead, "the application for the office should be held a sufficient presumption that the candidate does not disdain the modest salary attached to it". "Literary Paupers and Professional Authors: The Guild of Literature and Art."

But just as artists today run into problems trying to value what can't always be monetized, so too did this guild run into the same problems.

... to legitimize the Guild's supplementation of the marketplace, literary labor and its products must be shown to have a value the market does not always recognize or reward, but the best way to ensure this supplement's difference from charity is to represent it as a calculated, calibrated payment for goods and services. "Literary Paupers and Professional Authors: The Guild of Literature and Art."

Then there was the problem of how to raise funds for the guild. They didn't want to taint their image by hustling for money. Other options: Stage some plays and sell tickets? Sell annual subscriptions? (Not a whole lot different than ideas being tossed around today, is it?)

The guild organizers contacted a duke to sponsor a play to be attended by Queen Victoria and her court. But then they worried that the Duke might be offended by the play (a satire about a duke). (Sound familiar? Sponsors influencing art.) Luckily the Duke read the play, found it funny, and approved it.

... although the theatrical performances raise over £4000 by 1854, the Guild's Institute is variously derided as a "literary Soup-Kitchen" and "a system of outdoor relief," and the parliamentary bill incorporating the organization forbids it to fill its offices for seven years, after which time its structure proves largely unwieldy. "Literary Paupers and Professional Authors: The Guild of Literature and Art."

Fast forward to today. Not much has changed. People are still looking for funding models for artists, writers, and musicians. And even though there has been talk of gift economies, most of the proposed solutions still involve a world where a market economy is a necessity.

How, if art is essentially a gift, is the artist to survive in a society dominated by the market? Modern artists have resolved this dilemma in several different ways, each of which, it seems to me, has two essential features. First, the artist allows himself to step outside the gift economy that is the primary commerce of his art and make some peace with the market. ...

And then - the necessary second phase - if he is successful in the marketplace, he converts market wealth into gift wealth: he contributes his earnings to the support of his art.

To be more specific, there are three primary ways in which modern artists have resolved the problem of their livelihood: they have taken second jobs, they have found patrons to support them, or they have managed to place the work itself on the market and pay the rent with fees and royalties. The underlying structure that is common to all of these - a double economy and the conversion of market wealth to gift wealth ...

... When an artist takes a second job, a single person moves in both economies, but with patronage there is a division of labor - it is the patron who has entered the market and converted its wealth to gifts.

... Each of the paths I have described is most often a way of getting by, not a way of getting rich. No matter how the artist chooses, or is forced, to resolve the problem of his livelihood, he is likely to be poor. "Lewis Hyde on Being an Artist in a Commercially Driven World," Excerpt from The Gift. In Saachi Online, 12/12/06.

Even though Hyde says in the above piece that "our gifts are not fully ours until they have been given away," a profile of Hyde points out that:

Hyde is not a free-culture purist; he holds copyrights on his books, and those copyrights contribute to his income. "What Is Art For? - Lewis Hyde - Profile," New York Times, 11/16/08.

Artist/writer/curator Jon Ippolito also writes about art not being able to survive in a market economy, but at the same time needing help from it.

For property, intellectual or personal, is the enemy of art.

This essay offers neither a Marxist attack on personal property nor a rosy vision of George Bush writing artists a fat check every year. It is simply an acknowledgment of the fact that a gift culture dies if people stop giving. Making art into property helps plenty of folks--even a few artists. The problem is, it cripples artists more than it helps them, by covertly impeding their power to create, to get paid, even to give. ...

In principle, there is nothing wrong with wanting to make a living as an artist. What's wrong is the perception that our society's art market will ever make that possible for more than a token few.

... The plentiful supply of art in our culture is the product of the unrecompensed labor of countless artists working away in their studios.

... How would they pay the studio rent and DSL bill? The same way their parents' and grandparents' generation did, the same way the overwhelming majority of them do now: a day job. Day jobs suck, but they help reinforce the line between the choices artists make for commercial reasons and the choices they make for their art. ...

Artists aren't the only ones whose illusions would be shattered by taking away the false promise of commercial success through selling art. ... Without the pretense of market compensation, the wealthy and powerful might be under a little more pressure to sponsor free health care, grants, and other mechanisms to sustain this invaluable cultural production. "Why art should be free." Rhizome.org, April 2002.

Here's yet another acknowledgement that in today's world, we don't have a gift economy that exists without a market economy.

The economy of the public domain in fact is a form of gift exchange, involving gifts from the past (our natural and social inheritance), in the present (unpaid and underpaid work), and to the future (including our children as a future workforce). The economy of the real world is in fact a synergy between a market economy and a gift economy. Prosperity arises from the interaction of these two sides of the economy, and not from just the market side or just the gift side. In the market economy we work for a private wage or for profit. In the gift economy, we work on a voluntary basis for the benefit of family, community or society, in the general expectation that others make the same sorts of unpaid contributions. Socially responsible businesses (and their employees) pay income taxes for their use of the outputs of the gift economy, while themselves contributing "external" benefits to the gift economy. "Revisiting the UBI." Keith Rankin. New Zealand Political Review, July 1998.

Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig, who has written extensively on copyright and founded Creative Commons, says something similar.

One of the most important conclusions that can be drawn from the work of Benkler, von Hippel, Weber ... and many others is that the Internet has reminded us that we live not just in one economy, but at least two. One economy is the traditional "commercial economy," an economy regulated by the quid pro quo: I'll do this (work, write, sing, etc.) in exchange for money. Another economy is (the names are many) the (a) amateur economy, (b) sharing economy, (c) social production economy, (d) noncommercial economy, or (e) p2p economy. This second economy (however you name it, I'm just going to call it the "second economy") is the economy of Wikipedia, most FLOSS development, the work of amateur astronomers, etc. It has a different, more complicated logic too it than the commercial economy. If you tried to translate all interactions in this second economy into the frame of the commercial economy, you'd kill it. "on the economies of culture," Lessig, 9/28/06.

And here is this from Michel Bauwens, the creator of the Foundation for P2P Alternatives, which advocates the peer-to-peer concept in as many aspects of life and economics as possible.

Participants cannot live from peer production, though they derive meaning and value from it, and though it may out-compete, in efficiency and productivity terms, the market-based for-profit alternatives. Thus peer production covers only a section of production, while the market provides for nearly all sections; peer producers are dependent on the income provided by the market. So far, peer production has been created through the interstices of the market. "The Political Economy of Peer Production," CTheory.net, 12/1/05.

Those who acknowledge that artists can't survive without either participating in or getting help from the market economy are at least being honest. In contrast, when it is suggested that artists, writers, and musicians should give away their works, but no provision has been made for them to receive life-sustaining gifts in return, this is inherently unfair.

We need to question naive campaigns that merely promote "free culture" without questioning the underlying parasitic economy and the "deprofessionalization" of cultural work. "The Digital Given–10 Web 2.0 Theses by Ippolita, Geert Lovink & Ned Rossiter," Network Cultures, 6/15/09.

Without an exchange of roughly equal value occurring, a marketplace becomes a cruel power game in which one party gets what he wants while offering nothing of equal value in return. Social damage is the inevitable long-term result. That freeloaders are generally unaware of this damage does not mean it is not real, that it is not in fact piling up even as we speak.

I find it interesting that those who take digital music for free that is not being offered for free are not generally attempting to make a grander statement about capitalist society. Few if any seem to be trying to undo marketplace protocol in general, although that would, at least, make some philosophical sense. No, it’s just the digital music they want for free (and okay, maybe movies too, as bandwidth increases). "Free is Not the End (a Fingertips Commentary)," Fingertips Music, 9/13/10.

...The Story of Stuff, seems to be a success. This is work that wants to be given away, distributed freely. We have the technology, a large and growing audience has access to it, but how can we arrive at schemes to fund the creation of this work? We need improved models of state support, new collective and entrepreneurial models and appropriate forms of sponsorship. "The value of didactic art and the gift economy—from object ownership to object affiliation." Adelheid Mers. Art21 Blog, 7/6/09.

So here we are. We still haven't found a way to support most writers, artists, and musicians other than the usual ways -- day jobs, grants/patrons, or selling the works -- all of which still depend on market economies to provide the money to buy the basic necessities of life. And it gets even more complicated when "free" changes people's perception of art and its value:
Music and the "Gift Economy" 6: Problems with Free Art

Suzanne Lainson
@slainson on Twitter

UPDATE 10/12/10
Erik Sherman writes about people who give their work away for free while companies profit from it:

I call it the New Feudalism. There is a dependent relationship uncomfortably reminiscent of the common political and social structures from just before the turn of the first century up until the dawn of the Renaissance. In theory, there was a hierarchy from royalty down to serfs, and people swapped military service to their immediate superiors for the use of land and their ability to make an agricultural living.

In the New Feudalism, workers are technically free, in that they aren’t property. If they receive money, it is a token amount. Instead of land, they receive “exposure” when their material is published. "Huffington Post Makes a Profit? All Hail the New Feudalism!" BNET 10/11/10.

Music and the "Gift Economy" 4: Personal Versus Impersonal Transactions

2010-09-14T09:43:00.000-07:00

Previous posts in this series:
Music and the "Gift Economy" 1: An Introduction
Music and the "Gift Economy" 2: Examples
Music and the "Gift Economy" 3: Commons, Copyright, and Radical Politics

The relationship aspect of gift economies is, depending on whose viewpoint, either its strength or its weakness. Gift economies are either good because they encourage (or force) people into social relationships, or they are bad (or at least limiting) because they get bogged down by these relationships.

Before I explore the practicality of gift economies and the arts, let me highlight some of the discussions about market economies versus gift economies. There are trade-offs with each. Even if we use a hybrid system, which many people suggest is the only option, it still helps us to understand the strengths and limitations of each to know how to best utilize each.

... gift economies are fundamentally relational. A large part of the purpose of the gift is to establish and further relations between persons and groups. Part of what makes this possible, as Marcel Mauss points out in his wonderful Essai sur le Don (in English, The Gift), is that gifts demand reciprocation. ...

The relational nature of the gift economy is both its strength and its constraint. It both establishes relationship and requires relationship. On the other hand, the market economy works on the principle of even exchange. Every transaction is complete in itself, balanced, leaving the participants free of each other.

The gift economy is free in terms of money, of course, but constrained by the qualities and requirements of human social relationships. The market economy requires a constant flow of goods or money from the individual, a flow which may be difficult or impossible to produce, but it leaves the individual free to engage or not to engage. In this way, the two systems offer contrasting models of “free” and freedom. "Some Experiments in Art as Gift." Sal Randolph. March, 2003.

Gifts can establish a relationship that then switches to a market economy.

Mauss was interested in how we make society where it didn’t exist before. Hence we offer gifts on first dates or on diplomatic missions to foreign powers. How do we push the limits of society outwards? For him money and markets were intrinsic to this process. Hence giving personalized valuables could be considered to be an exchange of money objects if we operate with a broader definition than one based on impersonal currencies and focus rather on the function of their transfer, the extension of society beyond the local level. This helps to explain his claim that “the great economic revolutions are monetary in nature” (Fournier 2006: 212), meaning that they push us into unknown reaches of society and require new money forms and practices to bridge the gap. The combination of neoliberal globalization and the digital revolution has led to a rapid expansion of money, markets and telecommunications, all reinforcing each other in a process that has extended society beyond its national form, making it much more unequal and unstable in the process. "On commoditization: exchange in the human economy." Keith Hart. The Memory Bank. 8/10/08.

Freedom is often cited as a justification for market economies:

Classical liberals promoted markets as a means towards greater individual freedom as a corrective to the arbitrary social inequality of the Old Regime....

According to writers as varied as John Locke and Karl Marx, ours is an age of money, a transitional phase in the history of humanity. Seen in this light, capitalism’s historical mission is to bring cheap commodities to the masses and break down the insularity of traditional communities before being replaced by a more just society. "On commoditization: exchange in the human economy." Keith Hart. The Memory Bank. 8/10/08.

... I like many aspects of capitalism; I like the freedom, the dynamism, the creativity it unleashes. I would never, ever, want to do away with the market as the primary engine of productivity. "Capitalism, the Commons, and Divine Right." Peter Barnes speaking to the E. F. Schumacher Society, October 2003.

The values which shape exchanges in a commodity culture have to do with personal expression, freedom, social mobility, the escape from constraints and limitations, the enabling of new "possibilities". We sometimes refer to such fantasies as escapism or social experimentation; they are closely associated with the patterns of "transformation" and "plentitude" which Grant McCracken has documented. The fantasies which animate the exchange of gifts are often nostalgic, having to do with the reassertion of traditional values, the strengthening of social ties, the acceptance of mutual obligations, and the comfort of operating within familiar social patterns. "If It Doesn't Spread, It's Dead (Part Four): Thinking Through the Gift Economy." Henry Jenkins. Confessions of an Aca/Fan, 2/18/09.

According to the study's author, Jean-Sébastien Marcoux (HEC Montréal), many researchers romanticize gift-giving. "They praise it for humanizing market relationships, for making the market meaningful, and for providing an escape from the commodifying logic of capitalist exchanges," Marcoux writes. ...

"People use the market to free themselves from the straitjacket of social expectations—from the sense of indebtedness and emotional oppression—which constrains them in their reciprocity relations inside the gift economy," Marcoux concludes. "The Dark Side Of Gifts: Feeling Indebted May Drive People To The Marketplace," ScienceDaily, 6/17/09.

Gifts often come with a real or at least perceived sense of obligation and the need to reciprocate.

Thus in the tribal economy, when a clan or tribe (or the members of such) gives away its surplus, the recipient group or individual is forced to eventually give back, say the next year, at least as much, or they will loose relative prestige. What such a gift economy does however is create a community of obligations and reciprocity, unlike the market-based mechanisms, where ‘equal is traded with equal’, and every transaction stands alone. "The intersubjectivity of P2P: the The Gift Economy vs. Communal Shareholding," P2P Foundation, 7/28/10.

[According to Mauss] societies based on the exchange of the gift impose three positive obligations on members:

1. The obligation to give (you can’t not give)

2. The obligation to receive (you cannot refuse to receive)

3. The obligation to return (you must return that which is given)
"The Gift – Mauss, Bataille, Hyde, and Derrida." Erik W. Davis. Freeebay, 6/18/10.

... there is a tendency to romanticize the idea of the gift. It’s easy to imagine that a world based on an exchange of gifts would be better, more humanistic, more intimate, even more beautiful. This notion is not entirely false, but it leaves out the problematics of the gift. Think of receiving a gift that you don’t want. Or the sense of obligation that an excessive gift can engender. Think of wanting or needing something but having to wait to find out if or when it might be given to you. There’s a dependency, and a loss of control inherent in the gift situation. If your relationship with those around you is going well, you may receive everything you need, materially and emotionally—but what if it doesn’t go well? What about the coercion inherent in the need to please others to receive what you need for your survival? "Some Experiments in Art as Gift." Sal Randolph, March 2003.

I don’t mean to demonize "gift economies" by inverting their moral valuation, but I do want to emphasize that people who grew up in gift economies don’t mind getting out of them all that much. It can actually be tremendously rewarding to buy a honkin’ big piece of meat from someone who you will never meet again, take it back to your hotel room, and eat the entire thing by yourself, completely alone. "Gift economies suck (except ours)," Savage Minds, 8/10/10.

Because the exchange of goods within a gift economy brings with it social expectations, not all gifts can be accepted. In that sense, there are goods and services which literally can not be given away, because even in the absence of an explicit value proposition, consumers are wary of hidden obligations, unstated motives, or hidden interests which come smuggled inside the gift, much like the classic myth of the Trojan Horse. "If It Doesn't Spread, It's Dead (Part Four): Thinking Through the Gift Economy." Henry Jenkins. Confessions of an Aca/Fan, 2/18/09.

Lewis Hyde, known for his book The Gift, written in 1983, now acknowledges some shortcomings with the concept.

There is a hidden problem in the gift book: much gift exchange takes place is communities with a strong sense of in-group and out-group. Gift giving may be a wonderful thing, but what if you happen to be in the out-group? What if all the scientists are men and they don’t share their data with the women? "Lewis Hyde, author of Common as Air: Revolution, Art, and Ownership," Creative Commons, 8/27/10.

Andrew Swenson, Director of Marketing at Concordia University, offers this solution to the primary problem of the gift economy:

I’m suggesting that in order to have a true “give-win” situation that demands no reciprocation, we must remove all economic considerations from collaboration.

This would mean that after a gift has occurred in a collaborative partnership, both parties must forget the transaction occurred entirely. It must be as if the donee has inherited something: the donor has died and the beneficiaries are free to act as they wish with their new resources.

This is the only way that a gift can escape the moral confines of the gift economy. "The Economy of Collaboration 3.0," wordpost.org, 1/14/10.

Even as they facilitate quicker transactions, market economies are not totally without a human component.

The moral economy describes the set of social norms and mutual understandings which make it possible for two parties to do business with each other. In some cases, the moral economy holds in check the aggressive pursuit of short term self interest in favor of decisions which preserve long term social relations between participants. In a small scale economy, for example, a local dealer is unlikely to "cheat" a customer because they need to count on continued trade with this person over an extended period of time and thus need to build up their reputation within this community.

The measure of a moral economy is the degree to which participants trust each other to hold up their end of these implicit agreements. When there is a sudden and dramatic shift in the economic or technological infrastructure, as has occured with the introduction of digital media, it can create a crisis in the "moral economy," diminishing the level of trust within participating parties, and perhaps even wearing away the mechanisms which insure the legitimacy of economic exchanges. At such times, we can see all involved making bids for legitimation, that is proposing new models or frameworks through which parties may reach a understanding of what should provide the basis for fair and meaningful interactions. "If It Doesn't Spread, It's Dead (Part Three): The Gift Economy and Commodity Culture." Henry Jenkins. Confessions of an Aca/Fan,2/16/09.

In these times of change, we may be looking for alternative economies, but we understand the concept of the market economy and have reasons to continue using it.

It’s hard not to be a consumer. It’s what we are most of the time. There’s work, where we earn the money, and there’s non-work, where we spend the money. Most of our time is spent either servicing others as consumers or being serviced as consumers. In its vectoralist form, commodity culture has evolved a sophisticated way of treating us as its consumers. It’s all about crafting an image and a brand for a commodity that makes it appear as something more than a mere thing. The thing—be it a T-shirt or a carton of orange juice—is the support for an experience, mediated by a brand and an image that makes us feel special, that makes us feel unique. "Copyright, Copyleft, Copygift." McKenzie Wark in Meanland, 7/28/10. First published in Meanjin Vol 69:1 2010.

Market economies also work well when there are distances or complex exchanges to deal with. Money, credit cards, and the like allow you to negotiate with strangers and to individualize your purchases, thus giving you unlimited flexibility. (Some people feel the Internet has erased distance and complexity barriers by setting up networks and commons among people who have never met and live thousands of miles from each other. Therefore, they foresee a time when gift economies can function globally. I will address this in another blog post in this series.) The big problem (which leads to my next blog post) is that the market economy doesn't know what to do with activities that aren't monetizable.

Money is the blood of our economic system; it shouldn’t be the soul. Humans have needs and desires that can’t be met by exchanging dollars. These needs include connection to family and community, closeness to nature, and meaning in life. A twenty-first-century economic system must address these needs, too. Capitalism 3.0 Peter Barnes. 2006.

This brings me to the next blog post, the heart of this series: Music and the "Gift Economy" 5: Supporting Artists.

Suzanne Lainson
@slainson on Twitter

Music and the "Gift Economy" 3: Commons, Copyright, and Radical Politics

2010-09-07T09:30:00.000-07:00

Previous posts in this series:
Music and the "Gift Economy" 1: An Introduction
Music and the "Gift Economy" 2: Examples

The concept of a gift economy brings up issues concerning property, wealth distribution, and the value of labor. Some theorists have suggested that partial or full implementation of a gift economy may eliminate some of the perceived problems with capitalism and with market economies.

A gift economy does not necessarily eliminate private property ownership; however, advocating that people give away what they own undermines the desirability of ownership. An alternative to private ownership is public ownership. This can come in the form of state or government ownership, but it can also come in the form of commons. Elinor Ostrom won a Nobel Prize in economics for her exploration of commons.

Commons is a general term that refers to a resource shared by a group of people. In a commons, the resource can be small and serve a tiny group (the family refrigerator), it can be community-level (sidewalks, playgrounds, libraries, and so on), or it can extend to international and global levels (deep seas, the atmosphere, the Internet, and scientific knowledge). The commons can be well bounded (a community park or library); transboundary (the Danube River, migrating wildlife, the Internet); or without clear boundaries (knowledge, the ozone layer).

Commons analysts have often found it necessary to differentiate between a commons as a resource or resource system and a commons as a property-rights regime. Shared resource systems — called common-pool resources — are types of economic goods, independent of particular property rights. Common property on the other hand is a legal regime — a jointly owned legal set of rights (Bromley 1986; Ciriacy-Wantrup and Bishop 1975). ...

The analysis of any type of commons must involve the rules, decisions, and behaviors people make in groups in relation to their shared resource. Economist Mancur Olson’s influential The Logic of Collective Action (1965) is still being read by students today as a basic introduction to the challenges of human organization. Collective action, voluntary groups working to achieve a shared goal, is a key ingredient in understanding commons. Olson laid the groundwork for the study of incentives for people to contribute to a joint endeavor and outlined the basic problem of free riding, where one reaps benefits from the commons without contributing to its maintenance. "Introduction: An Overview of the Knowledge Commons," by Charlotte Hess and Elinor Ostrom in Understanding Knowledge as a Commons. 2006.

Here's more on the concept of commons from Yochai Benkler:

The salient characteristic of commons, as opposed to property, is that no single person has exclusive control over the use and disposition of any particular resource in the commons. Instead, resources governed by commons may be used or disposed of by anyone among some (more or less well-defined) number of persons, under rules that may range from “anything goes” to quite crisply articulated formal rules that are effectively enforced.

Commons can be divided into four types based on two parameters. The first parameter is whether they are open to anyone or only to a defined group. ... The second parameter is whether a commons system is regulated or unregulated. Practically all well -studied, limited common property regimes are regulated by more or less elaborate rules — some formal, some social-conventional — governing the use of the resources. Open commons, on the other hand, vary widely. Some commons, called open access, are governed by no rule. Anyone can use resources within these types of commons at will and without payment. ... The most successful and obvious regulated commons [include] sidewalks, streets, roads, and highways ... In all these cases, however, the characteristic of commons is that the constraints, if any, are symmetric among all users, and cannot be unilaterally controlled by any single individual. Wealth of Networks. 2006.

If you would like to know more about commons, here's a resource.

In recent decades the concept of commons has been extended into cyberspace.

In this sense the definition of Free Culture gathers all those subcultures that shaped a quasi-political agenda around the free reproduction of digital file. The kick-off was the slogan “Information wants to be free” launched by Stewart Brand at the first Hackers’ Conference in 1984. Later the hacker underground boosted the Free Software movement and then a chain of new keywords was generated: Open Source, Open Content, Gift Economy, Digital Commons, Free Cooperation, Knowledge Sharing and other do-it-yourself variants like Open Source Architecture, Open Source Art and so on. “Free Culture” is also the title of the book of Lawrence Lessing, founder of Creative Commons. "The Ideology of Free Culture and the Grammar of Sabotage," by Matteo Pasquinelli in Studies in Network Cultures. 2008.

The move toward information commons has led a number of people to ask for revisions in copyright laws or to eliminate them altogether. One variation is copyleft.

Copyleft says that anyone who redistributes the software, with or without changes, must pass along the freedom to further copy and change it. Copyleft guarantees that every user has freedom. ...

To copyleft a program, we first state that it is copyrighted; then we add distribution terms, which are a legal instrument that gives everyone the rights to use, modify, and redistribute the program's code, or any program derived from it, but only if the distribution terms are unchanged. "What is Copyleft?," GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF).

The copyright debate has been particularly relevant within music, art, and publishing discussions. We've built up a system of paying people based on copyright, so if we eliminate it, we need to develop or embrace alternative economic systems to provide for artists, musicians, and writers. That's where theis entire series is headed: Are there alternatives and will they work?

In the information age, we are seeing money concentrated in ever fewer hands, overburdening a financially rich minority with decision-making, while the views of the majority are largely ignored. Massive grassroots opposition exists worldwide to the "privatisation of the commons" – the rapacious systematic exploitation of our shared natural, social & cultural heritage. Nevertheless, the current financial system encourages such selfish and shortsighted plunder by rewarding its perpetrators. Many feel powerless in the face of the scale, anonymity and sheer iniquity of modern economic practice. As the unfairness of "free-market capitalism" becomes increasingly palpable, demand for constructive alternatives is on the rise. "Altruistic Economics & The Internet Gift Economy," by Robin Upton, altruists.org/ 7/7/05.

... the majority of workers faces a declassing (déclassement) of life conditions despite skills getting richer and richer in knowledge. It is not a mystery that the New Economy has generated more McJobs. This model can be easily applied to the internet economy and its workforce, where users are in charge of content production and web management but do not share any profit. "The Ideology of Free Culture and the Grammar of Sabotage," by Matteo Pasquinelli in Studies in Network Cultures. 2008.

There is concern among some groups that by eliminating copyright but not making other changes in the system there will be further exploitation of creatives and workers. One alternative is copyfarleft, proposed by Dmytri Kleiner, an anarchist hacker and a co-founder of Telekommunisten, a worker-owned technology company.

However, there is a problem, art is not, in most cases, a common input to production as software is. Owners of property will support the creation of copyleft software, for the reasons described, however in most cases, they will not support the creation of copyleft art. Why would they? Like all copyable information, it has no direct exchange value, and unlike software it generally has no use value in production either. It’s use value exists only among the fans of this art, and if owners of property can not charge these fans money for the right to copy, what good it is for them? And if owners of property will not support copyleft art, which is freely distributed, who will? The answer is unclear. In some cases institutions such as private and state cultural funds will, but these can only support a very small number of artists, and only by employing a dubious and ultimately somewhat arbitrary selection criteria in deciding who does, and who does not, receive such funding.

Copyleft, as developed by the free software community, is thus not a viable option for most artists. Even for software developers, the iron law of wages applies, they may be able to earn a living, but nothing more, owners of property will still capture the full value of the product of their labour....

For copyleft to have any revolutionary potential it must be Copyfarleft. It must insist upon workers ownership of the means of production.

In order to do this a license cannot have a single set of terms for all users, but rather must have different rules for different classes. Specifically one set of rules for those who are working within the context of workers ownership and commons based production, and another for those who employ private property and wage labour in production.

A copyfarleft license should make it possible for producers to share freely and to retain the value of their labour product, in otherwords it must be possible for workers to make money by applying their own labour to mutual property, but impossible for owners of private property to make money using wage labour.

Thus under a copyfarleft license a worker-owned printing cooperative could be free to reproduce, distribute, and modify the common stock as they like, but a privately owned publishing company would be prevented from having free access. "Copyfarleft and Copyjustright," Mute magazine, 7/18/07.

For more discussion about copyfarleft and additional citations, go here.

Pasquinelli also covers many of the issues regarding free culture, so I recommend that you read his full paper. Here are two excerpts:

Looking at today's media discourse, [Georges] Bataille is enrolled only to justify a sort of digital potlatch — a furious but sterile reproduction of digital copies.

... [Michel] Serres uses the same parasitic model for intellectual labour and the network itself (as Technology is an extension of the deceptive nature of Logos): “this cybernetics gets more and more complicated, makes a chain, then a network. Yet it is founded on the theft of information, quite a simple thing.” Serres’ opportunistic relation between intellectual and material production may sound traditionalist, but even when Lazzarato and Negri started to write in 1991 about the “hegemony of intellectual labour”, the exploitive dimension of capital over mass intellectuality was clear.

Economically digitalism believes that an almost energy-free digital reproduction of data can emulate the energy-expensive material production. For sure the digital can dematerialise any kind of communication but it can not affect biomass production. Politically digitalism believes in a mutual gift economy. Internet is supposed to be virtually free of any exploitation and tends naturally towards a social equilibrium. Here digitalism works as an disembodied politics with no acknowledgement of the offline labour that is sustaining the online world (a class divide that precedes any digital divide). "The Ideology of Free Culture and the Grammar of Sabotage," by Matteo Pasquinelli in Studies in Network Cultures. 2008.

All of the above establishes that people have been attempting to deal with property, wealth distribution, and the value of labor in the digital age. Other than the copyfarleft idea, I haven't cited any proposed solutions. More on that to come.

Next: Music and the "Gift Economy" 4: Personal Versus Impersonal Transactions

Suzanne Lainson
@slainson on Twitter

Music and the "Gift Economy" 2: Examples

2010-08-30T09:00:00.000-07:00

For the first post in this series, go here: Music and the "Gift Economy" 1: An Introduction

In order to determine whether gift economies have any practical application for artists and musicians, let's look at some gift economies.

The first ones to be described were small indigenous communities where money had never been introduced.

Instead of vying to see who could accumulate the most, the winners were the ones who managed to give the most away. In some notorious cases, such as the Kwakiutl of British Columbia, this could lead to dramatic contests of liberality, where ambitious chiefs would try to outdo one another by distributing thousands of silver bracelets, Hudson Bay blankets or Singer sewing machines, and even by destroying wealth - sinking famous heirlooms in the ocean, or setting huge piles of wealth on fire and daring their rivals to do the same. "Give It Away," by David Graeber. In These Times. August 21, 2000.

However, this author suggests that perhaps there has never been a pure gift economy.

The possibility that some cultures organized their economic life around systems of "gifts made and reciprocated" rather than commodities bought and sold originates in the fieldwork of anthropologists such as Malinowksi in the Trobriand Islands, and colonial observers of the so-called "potlatches" of northwest American Indians, observations which were then synthesized in Marcel Mauss's monumental study The Gift. Yet none of these observers, including Mauss himself, were ever able to decide once and for all whether the practices they observed really constitute a distinctly different economy, a system truly based in generosity and self-sacrifice; instead, they always leave open the possibility that members of archaic cultures simply exchanged gifts in the rational expectation of receiving ever-larger gifts later, making the gift economy merely a kind of rudimentary capitalism under a different form. "Response to Barbara Sebek's 'Good Turns and the Art of Merchandising: Conceptualizing Exchange in Early Modern England'," by Scott Cutler Shershow in Early Modern Culture, 2001.

The best example of a gift economy I can find in today's world (other than some communes and family-style compounds) is Burning Man, the week-long festival held every year in the Nevada desert. Here's what Larry Harvey, founder of Burning Man, has to say about it as a gift economy and the reason for doing so.

We've intentionally designed Black Rock City to foster what we call a gift economy. We allow no vending, no advertising, no buying or selling of anything. We discourage bartering because even bartering is a commodity transaction. Instead, we've originated both an ethos and an economic system that is devoted to the giving of gifts. ...

Let me draw a contrast between the market and a gift economy. I will begin with the marketplace. ... A simple act of purchase allows me to command the resources of the world. ... There has never been a better method for the productive allocation of wealth and the distribution of goods and services. ... The market, mated today in our modern system of mass production and mass distribution, has produced more wealth and distributed it more widely than in all other epochs of human history. This has liberated us from toil, but more importantly, it has freed us to independently pursue uniquely personal visions of happiness. ...

But what this transaction does not necessarily produce is connections between people. It does not produce what Robert Putnam and other writers have described as "social capital." Social capital is a very different concept. Social capital represents the sum of human connection that holds a society together, and it is fostered by networks of personal relationship.

... It is in the nature of our modern system of mass marketing to cater to the desires of the individual. "Viva Las Xmas." A speech at the Cooper Union in New York City. 4/25/02.

Burning Man would not exist, however, without the resources people accumulate during their real world existence outside of the event. They bring in what they personally need and what they want to give away. While services and products are sometimes created at Burning Man, all the raw materials are trucked in from elsewhere.

Q. What should I bring?
A. Thank you for asking the million-dollar question. Burning Man is an exercise in radical self-sufficiency. You have to bring all you need to survive, and then some. Some people bring only the basics; others bring everything including the kitchen sink.
Water, food and shelter are imperative — you will be asked to turn around at the gate if gate personnel believe you cannot meet your basic survival needs. Carefully read the Survival Guide, and prepare accordingly.
After you have taken care of your survival, everything else is up to you.
If you are fond of sleep, earplugs are a participant's best friend.
A bicycle (with a bike light) is vital for enjoying our vast and burgeoning metropolis.
For maximum enjoyment of the event, bring toys or costumes with which you can express your creative spirit.
"What is Burning Man?: FAQ"

So Burning Man shows a true gift economy can exist within a moment of time and location, but it doesn't demonstrate that it can exist without a market economy.

My third example is the Internet, expecially the open source community, the development of Wikipedia, and the use of crowdsourcing. Some people have called these gift economies, but in my mind they are not really. Rather, they are examples of collaboration. While people may be uploading items separately or contributing free labor, the final result is something that benefits them all rather than being the transfer of an item from one owner to another.

The history of the Internet, however, has given rise to some interesting discussions, which will be relevant to my exploration of music and gift economies.

During the Sixties, the New Left created a new form of radical politics: anarcho-communism. Above all, the Situationists and similar groups believed that the tribal gift economy proved that individuals could successfully live together without needing either the state or the market. From May 1968 to the late Nineties, this utopian vision of anarcho-communism has inspired community media and DIY culture activists. Within the universities, the gift economy already was the primary method of socialising labour. From its earliest days, the technical structure and social mores of the Net has ignored intellectual property. Although the system has expanded far beyond the university, the self-interest of Net users perpetuates this hi-tech gift economy. As an everyday activity, users circulate free information as e-mail, on listservs, in newsgroups, within on-line conferences and through Web sites. As shown by the Apache and Linux programs, the hi-tech gift economy is even at the forefront of software development. Contrary to the purist vision of the New Left, anarcho-communism on the Net can only exist in a compromised form. Money-commodity and gift relations are not just in conflict with each other, but also co-exist in symbiosis. The "New Economy" of cyberspace is an advanced form of social democracy. "The Hi-Tech Gift Economy," Imaginary Futures, 4/19/07.

The above paper was written by Richard Barbrook in 1998. In 2005, he was asked how the hi-tech gift economy had evolve since he wrote the paper. You can read his responses here.

Here are quotes from two people who share my opinion that the Internet probably isn't a true gift economy:

Notice that the gifts are exchanged between people who know each other; indeed, the purpose of gift giving is to cement relationships between people. This may have been true of the very early Internet, which was small enough that researchers could know each other and direct their work to specific people. However, it is not sufficient to explain the behaviour of people who, to use one current example, put pages on the World Wide Web, since they may never know (and, therefore, have no relationship with) people who see their work.

Worse, in traditional theory, gifts are alienable; this means that when you give a gift, you give up ownership of it. Ownership of the gift is transferred to the person to whom you give it. However, by its very nature, ownership of information is inalienable. When you send a copy of a document to somebody, you can keep a copy for yourself. Alienability is an important aspect of gift culture; we wouldn't think much of somebody who had given us clothing, for example, if they kept asking if they could borrow it! If the Internet is not a gift culture, we have to return to the question: why do so many people work so hard on something for which they receive no financial compensation? "The Gift of Generalized Exchange," by Ira Nayman in Spark-Online, Issue 17, February 2001.

In my opinion, there is a profound misconception regarding peer to peer, expressed by the various authors who call it a gift economy, such as Richard Barbrook (Barbrook, 1995), or Steven Weber (Weber, 2004). But, as Stephan Merten of Oekonux.de has already argued, P2P production methods are not a gift economy based on equal sharing, but a form of communal shareholding based on participation. In a gift economy if you give something, the receiving party has to return if not the gift, then something of at least comparable value (in fact the original tribal gift economy was more about creating relationships and obligations and a means to evacuate excess, since they did not need it for their basic survival needs). In a participative system such as communal shareholding, organized around a common resource, anyone can use or contribute according to his need and inclinations. "The intersubjectivity of P2P: the The Gift Economy vs. Communal Shareholding," by Michel Bauwens, originally written in 2006, and republished in P2P Foundation Blog, 7/28/10.

If you want to explore more about the Internet as a gift economy (multiple citations), go here.

Next: Music and the "Gift Economy" 3: Commons, Copyright, and Radical Politics

Suzanne Lainson
@slainson on Twitter

Music and the "Gift Economy" 1: An Introduction

2010-08-26T09:10:00.000-07:00

I have been planning on doing a piece about gift economies for quite awhile. I've already discussed pay-what-you-want models, but didn't get into the concept of a gift economy.

I've decided to tackle it now because I'm noticing a shift in conversations about music business models from "we'll all be small business people" to "I'll make music and give it away and see what happens." And Nancy Baym, who has written about fan communities, recently did a presentation on gift exchanges as the basis for fan involvement in music: "Nancy Baym on Changing Relationships, Changing Industries."

Here are two text summaries of her presentation:

"Nancy Baym: Pop music and social exchange."

"Nancy Baym: Changing Relationships, Changing Industries."

Baym was primarily talking about fans giving an artist or band free labor. But does it work the other way? Can musicians give away what they have to offer and still survive?

Let's start with some definitions of gift economies. In a nutshell, a gift economy is based on the idea that people give stuff away to other people. There's no exchange.

Here are some basic definitions of a gift economy:

In a gift economy people do not work to get money to buy things. What people get in the way of goods and services is either what they make themselves or what is given to them free of charge. So why would people work? People would volunteer their work because they realised that some job needed to be done and they could help to do it. They would work on something because they thought it was enjoyable and interesting work. They would do work to get the social status that goes with giving something to other people. In the gift economy, the economy is not owned by private shareholders or by a government. It is owned by a patchwork of clubs, societies and federated hobby groups. "Options for a Sustainable Future - Four Models of Utopia," The Gift Economy, Anarchism and Strategies for Change.
(I have linked to a cached version of this document. The original was available online when I started my research, but doesn't seem to be available now. Here is the information at the author's website: Leahy, Terry "Four Models of Utopia," TASA conference, University of Western Australia, December 2006.)

Gift cultures are adaptations not to scarcity but to abundance. They arise in populations that do not have significant material-scarcity problems with survival goods.

...In gift cultures, social status is determined not by what you control but by what you give away. "The Hacker Milieu as Gift Culture," by Eric Steven Raymond in Future Positive.

In the 1920s the maverick French economist, Marcel Mauss, cited anthropologists who found that moneyless societies rarely use a strict barter system. Instead, most goods circulate as gifts. One person in a community gives something to another who needs it, even though there may be no hope of immediate return. This open-ended giving links both people, and points toward a future exchange. The giver is seen by the group as useful, reliable, and generous, and is accepted into the communal flow of goods and labor, while the receiver is indebted to a system that supports him. "Finding a Sense of Surplus," Toby Hemenway in Permaculture Activist No. 46, 2005.

This article defines gift economies and also provides a list of variations: "Gift Economy."

Intertwined in all the explorations about gift economies and the alternatives are these issues: relationships between people, and dividing up resources. The gift economy places far more emphasis on relationships than the two other types of economic exchange models: command hierarchy (where someone at the top makes all the decisions) and exchange economy (a market economy where we pay or trade for what we want). Here's how one person reduces the concept:

In brief, [Chris] Gregory finally concludes that "the exchange of gifts creates 'personal relations between people,' while commodity exchange creates 'objective relations between things.'" "Response to Barbara Sebek's 'Good Turns and the Art of Merchandising: Conceptualizing Exchange in Early Modern England'," by Scott Cutler Shershow in Early Modern Culture, 2001.

Anthropologist Alan Fiske talks about relationship models rather than economic models:

... people use just four fundamental models for organizing most aspects of sociality most of the time in all cultures. These models are Communal Sharing, Authority Ranking, Equality Matching, and Market Pricing. Communal Sharing (CS) is a relationship in which people treat some dyad or group as equivalent and undifferentiated ...

CS examples: people who share the use of a common area, people in love, people who believe we all share in each other's burdens, "people who kill any member of an enemy group indiscriminately in retaliation for an attack."

In Authority Ranking (AR) people have asymmetric positions in a linear hierarchy in which subordinates defer, respect, and (perhaps) obey, while superiors take precedence and take pastoral responsibility for subordinates.

AR examples: the military, ancestor worship, religious orders, class or ethnic rankings, sports team rankings. "AR relationships are based on perceptions of legitimate asymmetries, not coercive power; they are not inherently exploitative (although they may involve power or cause harm)."

In Equality Matching relationships people keep track of the balance or difference among participants and know what would be required to restore balance.

EM examples: "turn-taking, one-person one-vote elections, equal share distributions, and vengeance based on an-eye-for-an-eye, a-tooth-for-a-tooth."

Market Pricing relationships are oriented to socially meaningful ratios or rates such as prices, wages, interest, rents, tithes, or cost-benefit analyses. Money need not be the medium, and MP relationships need not be selfish, competitive, maximizing, or materialistic ... "Human Sociality."

Virtually all of us give and receive gifts, so gift-giving is widespread. Whether it is a sustainable model to provide people with the necessities of life is a much more complex discussion, which I plan to explore in regard to artists and musicians.

There are a variety of reasons why people sometimes choose to give a gift or work for free rather than get paid: out of love, the desire for status, to create a sense of debt on the part of the recipient, etc. Sometimes people prefer to accept no payment than too little.

Bringing money into the relationship takes the giver’s work out of “gift” market, and brings it into the “pay-for-effort” market. When it was done for nothing, the protagonist was a “donor.” When small money was on the table, he or she became an underpaid employee. "Why Bankers Would Rather Work for $0.00 Than $500K," Dan Ariely Blog, 4/17/09.

Here's an extensive look at the psychology of gift giving: "Between the gift and the market: the economy of regard."

And if you want to get a dense historical overview of the economics and anthropology of gift giving, go here. It is chapter 2.1 in Wrapped gifts, by Àngels Trias i Valls. I'm not going to attempt to rehash it all.

Music and the "Gift Economy" 2: Examples

Suzanne Lainson
@slainson on Twitter

Music in a Declining Economy

2010-08-18T12:00:00.000-07:00

I'm working on a series of blog posts on gift economies. It's a complex subject, so it's taking me awhile to pull it all together in a logical fashion.

In the meantime, I've been seeing a wave of articles on spending patterns during the recession. Not just about people buying less, but even giving away what they already have. I want to collect them here and do a short piece on how all of this might impact the future of music.

Recently the thinking has been that musicians should provide free digital music to create demand for salable merchandise and for shows and other types of experiences. But I haven't seen much attention paid to the fact that people either may not be able to afford what musicians are selling, or if they can, they may not want it.

First let's look at some economic figures (this is just a brief sample of what can be found):

Dubbed “median wage stagnation” by economists, the annual incomes of the bottom 90 per cent of US families have been essentially flat since 1973 – having risen by only 10 per cent in real terms over the past 37 years. That means most Americans have been treading water for more than a generation. Over the same period the incomes of the top 1 per cent have tripled. In 1973, chief executives were on average paid 26 times the median income. Now the multiple is above 300. "The crisis of middle-class America," Financial Times, 7/30/10.

Explained Sanford Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett: “When the bottom 40 percent has [only] $100 to spend every month after shelter, food and transportation, the idea that it’s OK to charge $80 for basic cable is very dangerous. "Analysts Bullish on the Eve of Upfront Week," MediaWeek, 5/16/10.

And when Americans are spending, the money is going to tech and telecom companies, which may not be putting money into musicians' pockets:

Right there up at the top is America’s love affair with mobile devices, where spending has soared almost 17% since the recession started. Also supporting my thesis of a communications boom – spending on wired, wireless, and cable services have risen by 5%. "Where Americans Are Spending More..." Mandel on Innovation and Growth, 8/9/10.

"Tech Gadgets Steal Sales From Appliances, Clothes."

And some people are going so far as to get rid of their possessions.

Many have begun trading in CD, DVD, and book collections for digital music, movies, and e-books. But this trend in digital technology is now influencing some to get rid of nearly all of their physical possessions - from photographs to furniture to homes altogether. "Cult of less: Living out of a hard drive," BBC News, 8/16/10.

Most people live their life trying to acquire more and more things. Living a minimalist lifestyle is completely the opposite. It’s about trying to live with less and less things. It’s about trying to get back to the bare minimum of possessions. In doing that, it frees up your life to pursue the things you most value. "Becoming minimalist: when having fewer possessions means living a better life," SmartPlanet, 8/12/10.

Is it possible to own nothing?

Well, maybe not nothing. Nothing is a little extreme. But is it possible to own close to the nothing? I hope to have the answer to that question soon. Inspired by a a book or two, I’ve decided to try to see if I can rid my life of most of the clutter. The goal? Condense my life into 2 bags and 2 boxes. "Is it possible to own nothing?" Cult of Less Blog, 9/8/09.

If people either can't afford, or don't want, possessions, that knocks out t-shirt sales and limited edition books, albums, and art objects.

On the other hand, the good thing about owning less is that it helps us prioritize what is really important to us. There have been quite a few studies lately about happiness; many indicate that experiences mean more to us than possessions.

We find that only one component of consumption is positively related to happiness — leisure consumption. In contrast, consumption of durables, charity, personal care, food, health care, vehicles, and housing are not significantly associated with happiness. Second, we find that leisure consumption is associated with higher levels of happiness partially through its effect on social connectedness, as indexed by measures of loneliness and embeddedness in social networks. "Does consumption buy happiness? Evidence from the United States."

This might be good news for music, which can be all about the experience. However, given that there is less money to spend, not all experiences are doing equally well. For example, we already know the high end concert market has been hit hard.

Our Top 100 Tours for the first six months have a combined gross of $965.5 million, down $196.8 million, or 17 percent, from the same period one year ago. If you want to find a lower number you’ll have to go back to 2005 when the mid-year gross volume was $730.9 million. "2010 By The Numbers (So Far)," Pollstar, 7/9/10.

And some data has been coming in to suggest the low end might be affected as well, but it's probably too soon to know about that yet.

The live music industry exhibited a productivity gain in 2009 by generating more money through fewer events.

... as reported last year, the gap between the grass roots acts and superstars is widening, both in touring and at events where the big names are needed to attract fans. ... Down in the tail, the closure of pubs (49 a week, according to The Publican) puts more pressure on the low end of the market, which makes it increasingly difficult for emerging talent to find an audience. "Adding up the UK music industry for 2009," PRS for Music, 8/4/10.

Working in favor of the low end of the live music market is that for consumers doing something small on a regular basis can be more fulfilling than blowing a lot of money on an occasional big experience.

Scholars have discovered that one way consumers combat hedonic adaptation is to buy many small pleasures instead of one big one. Instead of a new Jaguar, Professor Lyubomirsky advises, buy a massage once a week, have lots of fresh flowers delivered and make phone calls to friends in Europe. Instead of a two-week long vacation, take a few three-day weekends. "Consumers Find Ways to Spend Less and Find Happiness," New York Times, 8/8/10.

The three-day weekend vacations have worked well for some music festivals. Consumer costs can be kept down if the festival is in your own town and you sleep at home, or it's a festival with a campground.

However, I have long maintained that the heart of live music is local, and this research seems to reinforce that:

Being able to spend money on purchases designed to create positive experiences increased people's happiness. The best way to increase happiness, though, was to make a series of smaller purchases rather than one big one. Think of it this way. The people who went to a series concerts by a few local bands were happier overall than the people who spent the same amount of money but got great seats at a concert by a top band. "Money can buy happiness if you spent it right," Psychology Today, 5/21/10.

I've touched upon just a small amount of research on consumer spending patterns, so this blog post isn't meant to cover the subject in great depth. But I wanted to add to the conversation by suggesting that some of the newly proposed music business models seem to assume that fans are sitting on cash that they will use to buy music-related stuff if only we are smart enough to offer it to them. People will always want music, but if and when they can obtain all the music they want for free, they may not feel the need to spend more for it.

More on the economics of it all in my upcoming posts on gift economies.

Suzanne Lainson
@slainson on Twitter

UPDATE 8/26/10

"Musicians currently have half the gigs they did before the flood, and this work pays less than pre-Katrina," says Gabriela Hernandez, executive director of the non-profit relief agency Sweet Home New Orleans (SHNO), which released the report. "At the same time, the recession has eliminated a lot of the service industry day jobs they've previously relied on. So while the cost of living has skyrocketed in the city, musicians are seeing their opportunities to earn money dry up."

SHNO published the report this morning, using its 4,500 clients to provide insights into the well-being of the city's famed music community. There's good news: Despite fears about the storm's impact on neighborhood-based institutions such as Mardi Gras Indians and the second-line community, those groups are back to pre-Katrina levels of activity. Musicians, on the other hand, have experienced a drop in the average number of gigs from 12 to six in a month, and earnings are down 43% to a ballpark income of $15,000 per year. "The state of working musicians in New Orleans: 'Half the gigs ... and the work pays less'," Los Angeles Times, 8/26/10.

What It Takes to Succeed in Music

2010-08-10T11:40:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of people who will tell you what you need to do to succeed in (or at least making a living at) music.

Unfortunately, people are recommending all sorts of strategies, some of it conflicting.

I decided to make a list of many of the suggestions I've read.

MAKE GREAT MUSIC.
Lots of people start with this, although not everyone does. (People can cite examples of musicians who don't make great music, but still do well.)

But what exactly is great music? Who decides? If it sells, is that a sufficient indicator? Does it have to be perceived as great now, or does great mean it will be revered 30 years from now?

Do you have to write it yourself? Or can you cover someone else's as long as that is great? Or does the music have to be original but not necessarily written by you?

Can great music consist of mashups? Can combining other people's music be the path to success?

How much great music must you put out? A new song a week? A new song a month?

HAVE GREAT PERFORMANCE SKILLS
Since recorded music is getting harder to sell, some people say the key to making it is the quality of the live show. But what is a great performance?

Do you need to play an instrument? Do you need to play it well? Or just in a showy manner?

Do you need to be able to sing?

Does dancing count as a great performance?

Is a well-rehearsed show the way to go? Or is impromptu better? Or are you supposed to make it look impromptu, but you've really heavily rehearsed all of those meaningful moments?

RELATE TO YOUR FANS

On stage?

After the show?

In a blog?

In videos?

In a newsletter?

On Facebook?

On Twitter?

Do you have to do it yourself, or can a team member do it?

Should you hire a band member precisely for his/her social skills and give him/her the job?

Are you running contests for your fans so they are creating videos and remixing your songs?

HAVE STUFF TO SELL

Do you have great looking merchandise? Or maybe not so great looking merchandise, but you made it yourself and you're marking up the price like crazy?

Are you offering merchandise at multiple price points?

Do you have something for the guys and something different for the girls?

Limited edition items?

Vinyl?

A snazzy display table?

A sexy merch person?

Have you created special events?

Are you selling membership subscriptions?

TECHNICAL SKILLS

Can you make frequent videos? At home? On tour? Using split screen? Animation?

Can you do all of your recording in a home studio that you've put together yourself?

IMAGE

Are you authentic?

Or maybe you've totally invented yourself and you keep the fans guessing? What will you be this week?

Have you built a good story? Around yourself? Around your music?

And how do you look on stage? What are you wearing? Do you have lights?

What's your one line description of yourself? Of your music?

EXPOSURE

Do you have a website?

Are you blogging?

Are you microblogging?

Are you on YouTube?

Are you on ReverbNation? What about all the other music websites?

Have you gotten your music on TV yet?

And have you mailed out your music to college radio stations?

And have you contacted all relevant music bloggers? And gotten to know them first, before pitching your songs?

And are you giving away your music everywhere you can? And collecting email addresses? Or not.

Are you going to music conferences?

TOURING

Are you touring? Or maybe you're staying local until you're selling out there first.

Are you booking lots of shows? Maybe 200 a year?

Are you living in a van and/or sleeping on people's floors and couches?

Have you raised money on Kickstarter for touring? Or sold lifetime show passes to 1000 of your best fans to buy a van?

Okay, folks. Now do it. Do it all. Or maybe don't any of it. And then if you succeed anyway, people will go back to figure out why you succeeded and then recommend that as a blueprint.

Have I left anything out? Have you gone to a music conference and then left with your head spinning because you've gotten too much advice, particularly conflicting advice? If so, what didn't work for you?

Suzanne Lainson
@slainson on Twitter

Music, Copyright, and YouTube

2010-08-03T11:40:00.000-07:00

I've never paid much attention to copyright policy concerning YouTube until recently. I understand traditional music licensing, but since I haven't been uploading unauthorized material to YouTube, it's not been my concern.

And while I work with musicians whose songs have been used as background music for fan-generated videos uploaded to YouTube or have been covered by other musicians, and no one asked for permission to do so, the songwriters have been flattered by the attention and would never ask that the videos be taken down.

What got me interested in YouTube's policies was this recent video.
Margaret Gould Stewart: How YouTube thinks about copyright

She talks about YouTube's Content ID system:

Well, it starts with content owners delivering assets into our database, along with a usage policy that tells us what to do when we find a match. We compare each upload against all of the reference files in our database. ...

Now, what do we do when we find a match? Well, most rights owners, instead of blocking, will allow the copy to be published. And then they benefit through the exposure, advertising and linked sales....

By empowering choice, we can create a culture of opportunity.

I realized that although YouTube tells everyone to get permission from copyright holders before uploading material, they have a system in place to deal with it after the fact. This, in my mind, quite as step forward in the world of copyright. YouTube must follow the law, but it has a created a system which gives incentives to rights holders to allow copyrighted material to remain in place even if permission wasn't granted in advance. It's still up to the rights holders to determine whether the content stays or goes, but YouTube has created a system which might facilitate the more creative use of copyrighted material.

Content ID has helped create an entirely new economic model for rights holders. We are committed to supporting new forms of original creativity, protecting fair use, and providing a seamless user experience -- all while we help rights owners easily manage their content on YouTube. "Content ID and Fair Use," YouTube Blog, 4/22/10.

I think YouTube has developed a new licensing mechanism. It has created a database of content, then matches the content to the user, and lets the rights holder decide if the video needs to be taken down, if the sound gets shut off, or if the video stays. And as YouTube gets bigger, makes more money, and finds more ways to make it financially worthwhile to rights holders to be flexible about content usage, it creates a viable experiment to see if and how copyright and user creativity can work together. While pro-copyright and anti-copyright groups are debating, YouTube has actually created a system, though flawed, which is working and pushing the envelope without going so far as to get shut down. Here's more on the fine line that YouTube is trying to walk. "YouTube's Balancing Act: Making Money, Not Enemies."

Not everyone is as impressed with YouTube's database system as I am. Some people argue that YouTube is not doing enough to stop unauthorized material from appearing.

... YouTube is sort of like the pawnshop owner who sells stolen jewelry and says “How was I supposed to know it was stolen”? "Industry Chat: A2IM President Rich Bengloff on the State of Indie," Paste, 7/22/10.

.... Google’s habit of gaming the system, of calculating how to harness a willingness to cross the line of legality and then pull back to something more reasonable, while reaping the business benefits of its initial transgression. "YouTube Gets the Power of Eminent Domain," Digital Society, 6/26/10.

Others think YouTube is taking down videos too quickly.

YouTube's Content ID tool fails to separate the infringements from the arguable fair uses. And while YouTube offers users the option to dispute a removal (if it's an automated Content ID removal) or send a formal DMCA counter-notice (if it's an official DMCA takedown), many YouTube users, lacking legal help, are afraid to wave a red flag in front of Warner Music's lawyers. That's a toxic combination for amateur video creators on YouTube. "YouTube's January Fair Use Massacre," Electronic Frontier Foundation, 5/3/09.

Let me start first that I hope I do understand a bit of YouTube’s motivations in creating the Content-ID system. YouTube certainly has a lot of copyright violations on it, and it’s staring down the barrel of a billion dollar lawsuit from Viacom and other legal burdens. I can understand why it wants to show the content owners that it wants to help them and wants to be their partner. It is a business and is free to host what it wants. However, it is also part of Google, whose mission is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” and of course to not “be evil” in the process of doing so. On the same blog, YouTube declares its dedication to free speech very eloquently.

As such YouTube does want to avoid the blocking of non-infringing videos while trying to help content owners get rid of actual infringements on the site. These recommendations apply on what to do for partial Content-ID matches where the upload is not simply a verbatim audio/video copy of the content owner’s work, but is possibly transformed into something else which may be non-infringing. "YouTube makes statement on Content-ID takedowns," Brad Ideas, 4/24/10.

He goes on to outline how YouTube could deal with challenged videos in ways other than its current system.

Here's YouTube's response to someone whose account was closed:

Under the DMCA, the relevant law, service providers like YouTube are required to adopt and implement a policy to terminate the accounts of repeat copyright infringers. YouTube implements its repeat infringer policy in a way that has become the industry standard, and the courts have confirmed that other companies with similar policies adequately implement this legal requirement.

Of course, we do everything we can to help our users avoid being in the position of being accused of repeat infringement and losing their accounts. We have clear copyright warnings when people sign up for accounts and when they upload videos; we have a copyright tips section in the Help Centre; we make it easy to file counter-notices if users feel they've been falsely accused; and we provide clear notice to our users when a video taken down for infringement that we will close down their account if they continue to post infringing content. Also, we make it easy for rights holders to use our Content ID system so that their matched content can be monetised instead of taken down under the DMCA removal process if they so choose.
"Jimmy Carr killed my YouTube account," The SocialITe, 2/26/10.

It's important to note that although YouTube is moving forward on creative ways to encourage content usage, it hasn't eliminated copyright laws. So there's still a potential risk in uploading unauthorized content to YouTube.

Let's start with two facts:

1. If your video incorporates copyrighted material owned by someone else (like a clip taken from a movie, TV show, or song performed or written by someone else), the copyright owner could sue you at any time. They don't have to warn you first, they don't have to use the Content ID tool, they don't have to send a DMCA takedown notice.
2. As far as we know, no typical YouTube user has ever been sued by a major entertainment industry company for uploading a video. We have heard of a couple special cases, involving pre-release content leaked by industry insiders, but those aren't typical YouTube users. And there have probably been a few lawsuits brought by aggressive individual copyright trolls. But no lawsuits against YouTubers by Hollywood studios or major record labels. That's right — millions of videos have been posted to YouTube, hundreds of thousands taken down by major media companies, but those companies have not brought lawsuits against YouTube users. "Guide to YouTube Removals," Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The system seems to be sorting itself out little by little. Copyright laws haven't changed, but video creators haven't been slapped with massive lawsuits either. (Instead, the lawsuits have gone to YouTube, which luckily has the financial resources to deal with them. "Judge Throws Out Viacom Case Against YouTube.")

People who upload content created by someone else (e.g., movie and TV clips, recorded music) seem to run the most risk of getting it taken down because there are usually multiple rights holders involved and any one of them can flag the same video. People who upload videos of themselves singing songs they didn't write also have been asked to take down videos, but there seems to be less of a problem here. In fact, it has been widely reported that some artists have launched their careers this way. Given the apparent success of such a tactic, many artists upload themselves singing covers so they are more likely to turn up in YouTube searches. This is what I will focus on for the rest of this blog post.

Young amateur singers often sing other people's songs in "cover" versions. The first video Justin Bieber ever posted on YouTube was his cover of So Sick, a song by Ne-Yo. But Bieber, at the time only 12 years old, probably didn't get copyright permission to post his cover of Ne-Yo -- or, for that matter, any of the other artists Bieber later covered. The lack of express copyright permission creates a precarious gray area -- is a noncommercial cover video posted on YouTube infringing or fair use?

Hard to say, given how open-ended the fair use standard is. In these gray areas of copyright law, YouTube sometimes yanks down the videos, as it did with all of the videos of the amazing fifth grade PS22 chorus from Brooklyn. The chorus covered numerous artists, such as Tori Amos, Fleetwood Mac, Jay Z, Rihanna, and Kanye West, and posted the videos on YouTube -- all apparently without copyright licenses. Only after much pleading from the chorus's director, Gregg Breinberg, did YouTube reinstate the PS22 chorus's videos. Of course, YouTube did the right thing, as Tori Amos, Stevie Nicks, and other artists later praised the chorus's singing of the respective artist's song. "Edward Lee: On Being Justin Bieber in the Age of YouTube," Huffington Post, 7/1/10.

Traditionally when artists want to cover someone else's song, there are well-established paths to do so.

If they want to record someone else's song, they obtain a mechanical license, usually from the Harry Fox agency, and pay 9.1 cents per song per recording (i.e., $91 per 1000 CDs).

If they want to cover a song in a live performance, a fee is collected by one of the performance rights organizations (ASACP, BMI, and SESAC). Generally the venue handles that, so it isn't anything the artist has to deal with.

If they want to perform a song in a movie or TV show, the producer generally handles that and obtains a synchronization license from the songwriter and publisher and then also pays a performance fee to one of the PROs.

For YouTube, the performance rights are handled by YouTube (although that hasn't been going all that well).

Licensing negotiations between YouTube and the German music rights group GEMA have broken down, and GEMA is now demanding that the video share site take down or block access to hundreds of works. "Music Rights Holders to YouTube: Block Our Songs," NewTeeVee, 5/10/10.

"GEMA CEO Reaches Out To YouTube."

In May, YouTube was ordered to pay [ASCAP] $1.6 million plus future payments to account for the public performance of music on the video-sharing website. "The future of embedded video will (or will not) be televised," Hollywood Reporter, 11/16/09.

The synch rights would fall to the creator of the video, which means the performer is supposed to contact the songwriter and get permission. This is pretty easy to do if the songwriter owns all the rights and is easily accessible. Send him/her an email saying you'd like to perform his/her song and upload it to YouTube. Chances are the songwriter will be quite flattered and happy to give approval.

If it gets much more complicated than that, the performer wanting permission to do the song may either not know how to get permission or may decide it isn't worth the hassle. I'm not sure if this information is correct, but this person says that publishers aren't even set up to handle such requests.

We talked to a friend about this issue at Warner/Chapell Music Publishing today... and they said that W/C has a blanket deal with YT but that some songs were on a 'restricted list' whatever that means. Not only that but they had no idea how one would go about getting specific license to merely to cover a song on YT. It's not a mechanical license, and it's not a sync license, it's basically a new type of license altogether. And this is someone who has worked for the world's largest music publisher for over five years. So the reality is, there's basically no way to do what YT requires, at least not at Warner/Chapell... (at least according to our friend). "Possible solution to YouTube's cover song 'problem'," YouTube Help, 5/3/10.

Here is a more detailed explanation from a company, Web Sheriff, hired to monitor unauthorized use of Van Morrison's songs.

As many of you may be aware – and as pointed-out by Leflaw - in order to synchronize video / film footage with an artist’s music (and assuming, for present purposes, that you are not re-arranging or adapting the artist’s / writer’s songs), a synchronization license is actually required from the relevant publishers / sub-publishers, which, unfortunately, can be a lot more complicated than you might imagine. If the publishers then seek to enforce / protect their rights on-line – some do, some don’t, others have yet to catch-up – then that’s where issues start to arise.

That being said - and in relation to Van Morrison specifically – Exile have been conducting on on-going review of these matters, specifically aimed at opening-up as many copyright exemptions for fans and YouTubers possible / feasible ... .. thereby cutting-through the publisher-red-tape with a series of special, automatic, copyright clearances. Initially, these exemptions were secured for fans performing their own, personal covers / renditions of Van songs, as well as usages that were either educational (eg. high school concerts etc) or compassiontate (such as weddings and funerals – events where, so often, Van Morrison’s music means so much to those concerned).

As part of on-going process of rolling-out these copyright exemptions – and as was the case with our friend Cooperweb - we are very happy to be able to announce that, subject simply to providing an industry standard, courtesy credit, Exile shall now also be able to provide bands with direct permission to keep their professional Van Morrison covers on YouTube (and, indeed, any other cover clips featuring Van’s music, provided, again, that the lyrics and arrangements are not changed - as this would require yet further clearances with publishers and, of course, the consent of the author himself). The text of the credit should simply say "Copyright music and lyrics reproduced by kind permission of Exile" and this should be prominently displayed at the very beginning of your description of the clip ... .. so, Mike / Shmoo and Sixstringlass, we’re glad to say that, not only will your covers no longer be pulled from YouTube, but they shall also be a very welcome addition to the constellation that goes to make-up Van’s on-line presence. Naturally, these permissions are conditional / revocable, so we would kindly ask anyone posting a cover to ensure that your clip and the accompanying wording is not rude or obscene and that it does not infringe Van Morrison’s moral rights in his music and lyrics – which, of course, would not have been the case with either Mike or Sixstringlass.

For the avoidance of doubt – and as also mentioned by Cooperweb - these permissions / exemptions ONLY apply to the use of Van Morrison’s music in conjunction with fans' and artists' own footage / recordings and NO permission shall be granted for the use of Exile copyright footage / recordings or footage / recordings that actually feature Van Morrison ; for which many thanks, again in advance, for understanding and respecting the artist's and label's wishes. "Web Sherriff and Van Morrison discuss You tube "cover" issue," Boycott-RIAA.com, 7/30/08.

If a YouTube license was similar to a movie or TV show license, it would spell out whether the song was only going to be used in this particular video, whether the video is only going to be shown on YouTube and not on other websites, whether the video can only be broadcast for a few years or forever, etc.

So let's say you skip obtaining permission and go ahead and cover someone else's song in a video and upload it to YouTube. What will happen?

Chances are, nothing.

But some people have had their videos taken down. Here are some reasons:

1. The publisher doesn't give permission. For example, musicians have been spreading the word to avoid covering songs by the Eagles because many covers of those songs have been taken down at the request of Cass County Music.

2. Fraudulent claims. If YouTube gets a request to take down a video, it does so. But sometimes the people or companies making the request don't actually own the rights. Therefore, you could protest and get the video uploaded again, but not everyone wants to go through that hassle. Here's some discussion of the matter: "So, about false DMCA claims... is there any way to *really* defend yourself?"

3. Mistakes. Sometimes videos using songs that fall under public domain, have been legally licensed, or fall under fair use have been taken down. It's then up to the video creator to argue his case to get the video restored.

... my son once got his knuckles rapped by youtube for posting his rendition of ..... a Mozart sonata movement. We got a notice that there was an alleged copyright infringement and they threatened to pull the video down. I responded that the piece was almost 250 years old and that any damn fool would know that it was in the public domain. Well, I didn't say it quite that way, but I do recall being somewhat curt. They backed off. "Youtube Cover Removed for Copyright Infringement," Piano World Digital Piano Forums, 3/30/10.

We had two YouTube videos that WMG claimed were violating their copyright. Neither were music vids, just cool islandy stuff. The audio was ambient noise (no music AT ALL) and I added a bit from the sound effects that came with our iMovie software. Absolutely nothing in it was owned by WMG.

YT removed the audio from them and sent us the notice. For months I didn't do anything (trying to stay under the radar), but eventually I decided to dispute it.

The audio has been restored on those videos. I have no idea why they were tagged. We have dozens of covers on our channel and not peep about them. "I got a little warning on YouTube," Ukulele Underground, 7/31/10.

"Use of Royalty Free music gets three copyright strikes!"

If you have three of your videos taken down, YouTube closes your account. Here's an article about a popular performer who did many covers and then had his account suspended for a week until he was able to work something out with publishers.

The suspension, Choi said, came because he did a cover of “What Wonderful World.” Covering other artists' songs, in addition to creating his own music, is something Choi said he did since his first YouTube post.

Singing cover songs like Katy Perry's “California Gurls” and Lady GaGa's “Telephone,” Choi said he had to be careful because “technically you're not supposed to do covers.”

“I do a lot of covers,” said Choi, who is Korean American. One of the cover songs got a strike on YouTube, he added.

“Three strikes on YouTube and you're out. I just had to get the publishers to retract the strikes.” David Choi Talks Fame Via YouTube, Pacific Citizen, 6/18/10.

For a lot of musicians, uploading cover songs had become a try-it-and-see approach. Put it up and see if it stands. Of course, if you get three videos taken down and you can't get it worked out with the rights holders or YouTube, you can lose your entire YouTube account.

That's the flaw in the system. You may find out that the rights holder is happy for you to upload your videos, but you may not find out until after you do and it is left standing. And in some cases what might be acceptable now might not be in the future. People who uploaded Warner Music Group content found out that when WMG broke off talks with YouTube, it began issuing takedown notices.

The ideal system would be for each video creator to run content past YouTube's system, find out if it is considered acceptable, and if not, have it barred without getting a "strike" on his/her record. And if it is okayed, then to receive a license agreement outlining the rights holder's terms so that there is some record of permission, even if the rights holder is allowed to ask that the video be taken down at some future point (with no penalty to the video creator).

Another wrinkle you should be aware of is that YouTube has been forming partnerships with some musicians who have attracted large audiences. But according to the discussions, if you have received a take down notice, you won't be eligible. So what do you do if you want to cover someone else's song, but don't want to run the risk of having it taken down? Obviously one way is to seek permission beforehand. If you can't or don't want to do that, you might consider having a fan upload such a video of you, or setting up a separate account for your more questionable videos so they don't drag your good videos down with them.

Here's advice from someone who has done quite a few cover songs on YouTube.
"Critical Info for Youtube Musicians Who Perform Cover Songs."

So in summary, here's my take on YouTube and musicians.

1. YouTube has been a great way to promote musicians.

2. YouTube knows this and has been publicizing this and expanding music programs, especially among unsigned artists. Success stories about artists covering songs are part of the news.

3. Legally YouTube must say everyone needs to post original material or get permission, but it doesn't really want to discourage users from uploading content.

4. There is no good system for fans and most musicians to obtain permission to cover songs on YouTube, so it is rarely done and YouTube and the musicians know this.

5. Content ID is an automated system to identify copyrighted material and can be set to allow varying degrees of usage without the user having to ask for permission.

6. Content ID right now is being presented to copyright holders to show they have control over their content.

7. Unfortunately at the moment users rarely know if what they have uploaded will be flagged unless it is entirely their own content (and even then they can be caught up in the system via fraudulent claims). There are on-going discussions among users about how to deal with these grey areas.

8. YouTube is likely to keep tweaking the system so that there is more transparency and fewer takedown requests.

Suzanne Lainson
@slainson on Twitter

UPDATE 8/8/10
I just found this paper which greatly adds to my above discussion.

Even beyond transaction costs, sometimes the copyright holders may actually prefer to allow third parties to use their copyrighted works, but without formal licenses. This informal arrangement gives the copyright holders effectively a “hedge.” Under the hedge, the copyright holders can “wait and see” what happens with all the different uses of their works. Some uses the copyright holder may end up liking—whether for free advertising, promotion, or even discovering new talent. For example, Nick Haley, a 19- year-old student in the UK, made an unauthorized mashup video of an iPod commercial, synched in with a copyrighted song and posted on YouTube. Once Apple saw it, Apple hired Haley to produce one of Apple’s new television commercials.

The advantage of hedging instead of granting formal licenses is that copyright holders can get the best of both worlds: free promotion and talent trolling from various unauthorized uses of their works, but also the ability to later protest other unauthorized uses of their works. "Warming Up to User-Generated Content," Edward Lee, University of Illinois Law Review, Vol. 2008, No. 5, 2008.

UPDATE 8/10/10

Record labels and publishers have already come to grips with one Google service: YouTube. In fact, they love YouTube now that they have worked through their many tussles. YouTube has taken steps to prevent the uploading of copyrighted material. It provides value by being a substitute for a good amount of piracy. It offloads IT and network costs to Google. And Vevo wouldn't be Vevo without the power of YouTube to create 90% of the video network's views. "Analysis: Will Google Music Be Good For The Industry?" Billboard.biz, 8/9/10.

UPDATE 8/12/10
Here's an article that gives a good overview of YouTube and music.
Saint or Sinner? YouTube's tricky relationship with music

UPDATE 9/6/10
Pomplamoose covers a number of songs on YouTube. According to this interview, the duo first obtains a mechanical license. That's generally done for physical or digital copies of a song and is priced according to the number of copies of the song made available. Technically a mechanical license wouldn't cover a video of them performing the song on YouTube, but perhaps taping the process of recording a covered by a mechanical license is being treated as something different than a video of someone performing a song.

... we make sure that we have all our ducks in a row. We bought mechanical licenses to all of our covers before we put them on iTunes. So it's all legit and legal. "Pomplamoose: Making A Living On YouTube," NPR, 4/11/10.

If You Want to Change Intellectual Property Laws

2010-07-01T12:20:00.000-07:00

I haven't entered into the debates on copyright and other forms of intellectual property. I understand the copyright laws as they apply to me and the other creative people I know, but I don't feel strongly enough about the issue to argue for or against it. I'm saving my energy for other matters.

However, in reading comments from various anti-IP folks (some people more credible than others: snarky anonymous posts don't elevate the discourse), I've found some of their points less compelling than others. Why, I think to myself, should lawmakers change current laws if a strong case hasn't been made to do so? After all, there are all sorts of other issues requiring national and international action.

With that in mind, I decided to make a list of comments I've read on why IP protection is bad, ranking them in ascending order of persuasiveness. For the most part they go from arguments that focus on individual benefit to arguments that focus on societal benefit (without sacrificing the individual in the process).

1. I want it (e.g., content, music, ideas, images) for free, and they won't give it to me.
This comes off as self-centered.

2. I want to use it, and they won't let me.
This is a little stronger than the above statement because it implies you're going to do something proactive with the idea rather than just consume it, but it also implies that you can't come up with something on your own.

3. Culture was built by taking other people's ideas.
Again, not really a strong reason to dump IP protection, especially copyrights. Society has functioned pretty well so far within copyright restrictions. Creative people usually can find legal ways translate inspiration from multiple sources into something they can call their own.

4. I have already used it and now they want to sue me.
This has to do less with the rightness or wrongness of the laws and more with to do with how they are administered and whether or not any person/company has the money/time/wherewithal to sue. In other words, we can have laws that are fairly enforced. We can have laws that are unfairly enforced (e.g., suing people for minor infractions). And we can have laws that are no longer enforced. Perhaps we should decide which needs to be addressed first: the laws or the enforcement of them. Sometimes it is a matter of reasonable laws badly executed rather than the laws being inherently unreasonable. And sometimes the problem takes care of itself when we simply ignore old laws.

5. I want to use it because I have a business, but my plan will only work if I can get some or all IP for free or minimal cost.
Average people and most legislators don't care about your business per se. If you can't show voters and lawmakers how your business will help them, then they aren't likely to listen to you. And since you may come into conflict with other businesses that don't want you to have their IP for free or minimal cost, you need to show how these IP holders will benefit from your plan. If you've got a great idea that depends on cooperation from them, you've got to sell it to them. Telling IP holders and legislators that they are stupid for charging you is not the way to win friends and influence people.

6. I want to use all or parts of it, but I don't want to go to the trouble of getting permission.
The way to deal with this is to create easier ways to obtain licensing, so that both IP holders and potential users benefit.

7. I want to use parts of it to include in a critique or to pay homage.
Fair use allows for this already. So if certain uses are currently being prevented but should fall under fair use, then perhaps the fair use concept should be expanded or better defined. However some people argue that they are afraid to test fair use and therefore they self-censor rather than include other people's works within their own. I think this is often more of an education problem than a legal problem. If this can't be settled outside of court, then academic and creative groups may want to set up a fair use fund to cover legal challenges to their members.

8. I want to use it because I know how to make more money from it than they do.
This anti-IP argument is a crowdsourcing construct. People are saying, in essence, "Let the concepts be out in the marketplace and the rewards will flow to those who best execute." But the results may favor those companies and individuals with the most investment resources. On the upside, throwing concepts out into the marketplace may make the concepts most widely available. On the downside, the financial rewards may not be evenly distributed. So citing this as a reason to drop IP protection may be a tough sell to creative individuals and small companies unless there is a way for them to directly benefit from creating the concepts without holding any rights to them. Altruism is nice, but doesn't necessarily pay the bills.

9. I want to use parts or all of it to improve it.
Some people have suggested that IP locks up certain concepts with people/companies who do nothing with those concepts or utilize them badly. Most patents expire in 20 years, so there is already that. However, there is an on-going debate as to whether having to wait 20 years makes sense in these fast moving times. And copyrighted items are tied up even longer.

If it is true we're all being disadvantaged because people can't tweak other people's concepts when they wish, there are at least three possible solutions:

change the IP laws;
have people/companies/organizations decide it isn't worth their resources to enforce IP laws;
or develop new ways to share concepts.

I'm guessing that of the three scenarios, changing the laws will be the last to happen. And if one or both of the other two scenarios happen first, it won't really matter much if the laws aren't changed.

10. I want to use it because society as a whole will benefit.
Some concepts are already freely available to everyone. They are in the public domain. Chances are that if they are currently in the public domain, they will remain so. So let's assume that's not an issue.

That leaves concepts that aren't currently in the public domain or concepts yet to be created that might not be placed in the public domain in the foreseeable future.

I can't see legislators altering protection for concepts currently protected. Telling someone who has complied with the laws that his concepts are now going to become freely available years before he had planned won't go over well. Therefore, let's assume currently protected concepts won't enter into the public domain before their patents or copyrights expire.

But perhaps legislators can be persuaded that IP protection is currently too long and is hurting society. A logical response from them would be to let currently protected concepts live out their days under IP protection, but to shorten or eliminate protection for concepts yet to be released. But I don't think there's enough evidence yet to persuade legislators to go this route. Right now we don't have any side-by-side comparisons to show that countries without IP protection laws have a better quality of life than countries that do have IP protection.

What we are likely to see in the interim are experiments by certain groups of people choosing to make their concepts freely available as they publish them. If there are then demonstrable economic and societal benefits, we may see widespread support for downsizing IP protections. In other words, show the positive results first; then lobby for change of the laws.

Here's a good outline of the potential benefits of having concepts placed in the public domain:

In attempting to map the public domain Pamela Samuelson has identified eight “values” that can arise from information and works in the public domain, though not every idea or work that is in the public domain necessarily has a value. Possible values include:

Building blocks for the creation of new knowledge, examples include data, facts, ideas, theories and scientific principle.
Access to cultural heritage through information resources such as ancient Greek texts and Mozart’s symphonies.
Promoting education, through the spread of information, ideas and scientific principles.
Enabling follow-on innovation, through for example expired patents and copyright.
Enabling low cost access to information without the need to locate the owner or negotiate rights clearance and pay royalties, through for example expired copyrighted works or patents, and non-original data compilation.
Promoting public health and safety, through information and scientific principles.
Promoting the democratic process and values, through news, laws, regulation and judicial opinion.
Enabling competitive imitation, through for example expired patents and copyright, or publicly disclosed technologies that do not qualify for patient protection. "Public domain," Wikipedia.

11. Some concepts are so important to society that they shouldn't be patented.
Rather than trying to eliminate or reduce IP protection for all categories of concepts, perhaps we should focus on those that are too fundamental to be owned by one person/company, or are so important to the future of mankind that they should immediately be made available to everyone (e.g., basic scientific discoveries, new sources of energy, biomedical research). To accomplish this, it may be up to world organizations to set the parameters. However, there are issues which will still need to be addressed:

If certain companies or organizations have invested considerable resources in creating these concepts, will there be ways to compensate them?
Will secret societies be formed to give certain groups knowledge not available to everyone?
Will wars be fought to keep these life-changing concepts within certain groups?
If there is a cost to execute these concepts, who will pay for that? A concept that is publicly available, but can only be utilized at great cost may be less beneficial than a protected concept that can widely reproduced and distributed inexpensively. How do we guarantee equitable use of these freely shared concepts?

So, that's my reaction to some of the IP debate. I'm not for or against, but I do note when justifications one way or the other are poorly presented.

Overall I think IP protection has functioned well in some cases and has been abused in others. On the one hand, I believe a lot of the paperwork and legal maneuvering related to IP could be better spent elsewhere.* But on the other hand, I'm not sure doing away with copyrights and patents will necessarily transform the world anytime soon. For example, poor nutrition and inadequate health care in Africa are not IP issues. The solutions are already in the public domain; they just aren't being distributed.

* For the same reasons -- less paperwork and more efficiencies -- I like the idea of universal health care.

Suzanne Lainson
@slainson on Twitter

UPDATE 10/24/10
Rarely has the case for lessening IP protection been made so that it is relevant to the average person. When we go to vote, IP issues tend not to be a priority.If anything, the emphasis on copyright and music lessens the perceived relevance because most voters don't see that as a major issue in their lives. Here's is an good discussion about how environmentalists were able to transform their concerns into a national issue and what might be learned by those in the IP debates.
"Chapter 10: An Environmentalism for Information." The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind. James Boyle.

An Overview of Transmedia

2010-06-21T10:00:00.000-07:00

In this series of three blog posts, I started with The Rise of the "Creative Thing," (i.e., a conceptual project that can involve music, theater, graphic arts, textiles, food ... whatever).

I ended the next post, Collaborating on "Creative Things," with a discussion of music and theater.

As an extension of that I want to discuss transmedia, a concept currently trendy in some circles, particularly in film, video, and games. While music hasn't been a significant part of transmedia so far, I feel this grander form of cross-media is at least worth a mention. There are whole sites devoted to transmedia, so I'm not going to duplicate what they do. This post merely serves as an introduction.

Let's start with the Wikipedia explanation.

In Transmedia storytelling, content becomes invasive and permeates fully the audience's lifestyle. A transmedia project develops storytelling across multiple forms of media in order to have different "entry points" in the story; entry-points with a unique and independent lifespan but with a definite role in the big narrative scheme.

According to Wikipedia, Marsha Kinder first coined the word in 1991 and then Henry Jenkins popularized it in his 2003 Technology Review article and 2006 book Convergence Culture. Here's his definition:

Transmedia storytelling represents a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience. "Transmedia Storytelling 101," Confessions of an Aca/Fan, 3/22/07.

He goes on to talk about synergy, complex fictional worlds, different media for different audiences, the need for each media contribution to stand alone, collective intelligence, and more. If you want to understand transmedia, his article is a good place to start. Then you can move on to these, where he covers the topic in even more depth:

Seven Principles of Transmedia Storytelling (Well, Two Actually. Five More on Friday)

The Remaining Four Principles of Transmedia Storytelling

And here's a visual of Jenkin's seven transmedia principles.

Jenkins isn't the only person defining transmedia. To some, it's basically what Disney as been doing for decades (i.e., creating characters and incorporating them in everything from film, TV, books, products, theme parks). To others, it must involve significant audience participation. Gary Hayes writes a great piece on why it's hard to know what transmedia represents.

Transmedia like a black hole in the universe it tries to describe sucks in everything that has come before (cross media, 360, social media, augmented reality, pervasive gaming and so on). "What makes the perfect Transmedia Producer?...," Personalize Media, 5/25/10.

Here are a variety of attempts to explain transmedia.

According to Behnami Karbassi, there are three types of transmedia.

We've whittled it down to a three-fold explanation:

1) franchise transmedia: extending a story world across media

2) marketing transmedia: stories that support another brand or transmedia

3) native transmedia: stories intended to weave across media from their inception

The holy grail for us is, of course, native transmedia, but both funders and audiences have to change their thinking before it is widely created and accepted.

The key element that is shared across any definition is story (and the world that this story creates). Applying this essential narrative base to the right media for the right audience is our formula for creating compelling transmedia. "Behnam Karbassi - Transmedia world-building," Boing Boing, 6/16/10.

Christy Dena says there are four approaches:

Transmedia Concept: designed to be transmedia at the concept stage
Transmedia Project: multiple media platforms make up one transmedia project
Transmedia Transformation: changing an existing mono-media property into transmedia
Transmedia (Franchise): Multiple mono-medium projects
"YSA Creating a You Suck At Transmedia Website," You Suck at Transmedia, 6/16/10.

She has also put together a helpful list of various subsets of "cross-media" to help everyone sort out what is what.

One of the better articles on how transmedia is different than cross-media comes from Brooke Thompson.

What differentiates the two, and also fully separates them from multiple media, is the degree of interdependence in their relationships. In cross-media, the various platforms in use may be closely related and one piece may rely upon another for meaning, but that dependence is not returned. In transmedia, the platforms are strongly linked. While one piece may be digestible by itself, it is meant to be viewed as a part of a larger whole and, as such, the meaning changes for both it and the other pieces if they are left unseen or viewed individually. "Towards a definition of transmedia…," GiantMice, 4/16/10.

Thompson's diagrams are quite helpful. And here are other articles illustrating transmedia via diagrams:

Types of Transmedia

WTF is Transmedia?

Where Is Our Transmedia Mozart?

TranSocialMedia Story Telling Workshop Sheet

TranSocialMedia Play, Experience & Alternate Reality Design

Another useful resource is this video, What is Transmedia?

Transmedia projects are complex, which Jenkins acknowledges:

Because transmedia storytelling requires a high degree of coordination across the different media sectors, it has so far worked best either in independent projects where the same artist shapes the story across all of the media involved or in projects where strong collaboration (or co-creation) is encouraged across the different divisions of the same company. "Transmedia Storytelling 101," Confessions of an Aca/Fan, 3/22/07.

To give you some idea of the level of planning that goes into transmedia projects, here are these articles by Robert Pratten.

Moving Filmmakers to a Transmedia Business Model

A 5-stage Development Process for Transmedia Projects

Transmedia: 5-Steps to Selecting the Right Platforms

Transmedia Documentation

Transmedia Workflow

Transmedia Storytelling: Getting Started (ADDED 7/13/10)

Given the level of complexity, it's not surprising that transmedia projects can be expensive to pull off, which would seem to suggest that many can only be accomplished by big organizations with deep pockets. Notes Maureen McHugh:

Making a transmedia project, like making a movie, can be expensive. We often do video and audio recordings. Streaming requires bandwidth. Websites have to be designed. Email and phone calls to thousands are expensive. Creating events and experiences in cities is also expensive. A project can easily run to the low seven figures. That’s a million dollars. Chump change in the movie industry, but not something you find lying around in the couch cushions. To raise that kind of money we need to reach a pretty large audience, but making transmedia narrative dependent on puzzles eliminates a vast percentage—probably the majority of that audience. "A New Frontier in Storytelling," MimeFeed, 4/28/10.

Here are some specific transmedia projects:

Groundbreaking Transmedia Project Built Around the Audience' Social Activities

Developing a Transmedia Project

Jurassic Park Slope Production Blog

Transmedia Narrative Ecosystems & Experience Cultivation

For on-going transmedia coverage, here are some websites:

Culture Hacker

You Suck at Transmedia

Transmedia Storyteller

And another resource:
Transmedia Narratives DDB

Here's a huge list:
Transmedia Resources (ADDED 12/9/10)

Suzanne Lainson
@slainson on Twitter

Collaborating on "Creative Things"

2010-06-04T10:56:00.000-07:00

The post below was originally the last half of this post, The Rise of the "Creative Thing," but to keep the amount of reading to a manageable level, I moved it into its own post.

___________

Of the three ways to create multimedia productions (do it yourself, hire someone, or collaborate) collaboration is the most complex because establishing how everyone gets paid can be tricky. Payment can be based on:

everyone's individual contribution, or

an equal distribution, no matter who does what, or

an unequal distribution based on what everyone brings to the table in terms power/influence/prestige.

Denver-based John Common reached out to artists while working on his most recent album. They were invited to decorate wooden boxes which, in addition to serving as fancy CD packages, would be displayed and sold in an art gallery. The band, the artist, and the gallery would each share equally from the sale.

Completed boxes will be returned to the Bailey/Common team where they will be prepared for exhibition/sale. All boxes will be exhibited from July 9 -17 at Abecedarian Gallery. Base prices for each artwork will be mutually agreed on by the artist and Bailey/Common team. Once sold each artist receives 35% of the sale price, along with a copy of the new CD. Common Box Project: Prospectus

Amanda Palmer has done multiple collaborations. In most cases she hasn't said who gets paid what, but she did go on record in this case, involving a troupe of performance artists who went on tour with her.

Lisa: Is it true The Danger Ensemble perform with you for free?

Amanda: I can’t afford to pay them, so we have been touring for five months cutting costs wherever we can, staying with fans and handing out donation baskets after the show, sometimes the fans even bring food in. This system has been working well, if it didn’t they wouldn’t be here, so far they have been making more money from tips than their regular jobs. "Who Killed Amanda Palmer? An Interview with the Queen of Punk Cabaret," LifeMusicMedia, 2/26/09.

Here is what she says in general about collaborations.

Having done a long career with the Dresden Dolls and a couple of years with a solo career, I've really been able to divine what's important to me. And it's not money. It's not commercial success. What I really want to do is make art with my friends. And if possible make people happy by doing that. ...

That being said, I've also seen enough friendships destroyed by creative collaboration that you have to choose very carefully what you're doing and who you're doing it with. There was once in this collaboration -- not creatively, because we work creatively and business-wise really well together -- but when it got to the point that some people got upset about the project, that really strained our relationship. Because all of a sudden -- our intentions are completely good, we were loving our recording and loving planning our tour and playing this wonderful game with our fans. But as soon as critics from the outside came and rained on our parade, we had different recactions to it. And that was a challenge for us. We're wise enough people and good enough friends that it only lasted a day. "Interview: Amanda Palmer on Neil Gaiman, Frances Bean Cobain, and why her people think Evelyn Evelyn is career suicide," The Phoenix, 4/12/10.

Denver-based photographer Lucia De Giovanni told me her collaborations are often friend-based projects as well.

It's usually a mutual interest - a lot of friendships are born out of photoshoots for which I get approached, and then people get interested in what else I have cooking up and start collaborating, usually over dinner or drinks! I would say that people are very respectful of certain artistic boundaries - for example, I usually have carte blanche for a photoshoot, but I don't think of that as my project, it's something I do to promote them. And vice versa - when I select music for a slideshow, it's certainly a collaborative project, but the composer is providing a piece of the big project... they're a part of it, under my umbrella. And it works because we're all friends and supportive of each other's creative outlets - I don't know if it would have the same "feel" if we didn't know each other. Then, I guess, it reverts to a service provider, you hire me. But that doesn't mean it's not their project as well, they're a HUGE part of it... it works because creatively we are on the same wave length.

And here is what David Byrne has to say on collaborations.

I have done a number of collaborations myself – with designers, other musicians, theatre directors and choreographers. It’s always a little bit different one project from another, but the collaborative process has certain similarities. I find someone has to be boss. Though we might claim open source, no censorship and willingness to listen, veto power resides somewhere, and has to be acknowledged as such. Someone, as subtly as possible, has to keep things on track and focused. There are ways to do this that are dictatorial and other ways that are benign, subtle, almost invisible – but the guiding hand needs to be there. In my experience I sometimes choose to defer to the other collaborator, and I make that clear from the start; other times it’s the other way around. "Interview: Bruce Mau and David Byrne," Contemporary, Issue #69, 2004.

Here are three resources which might be of use if you are thinking of collaborations.

Building a Collaborative Entertainment Property

Small-Scale Network Modeling for Interdisciplinary Art Collaborations (Powerpoint presentation)

Dividing Ownership in a Group Project (Added 10/4/10.)

Palmer's latest project, Evelyn Evelyn, is also a collaboration.

“It was really a wonderful, true collaboration,” Palmer says of Evelyn Evelyn’s origins, on the line from a Prague tour stop. “Jason [Webley] and I, looking back on having written some of these songs two years ago, can’t remember who did what. We can’t remember who wrote which line, who came up with which melody idea. And I think that’s actually a really good sign that our minds really melded during the songwriting process.

“It was like playing a really manic game of songwriter Ping-Pong,” she continues, “where one of us would come up with a concept and we would just bat ideas back and forth over Thai food, cracking each other up. It’s so funny—you can come up with all sorts of artsy, highfalutin ideas and reasons why we did this project, but really, we just wanted to hang out together.” "Amanda Palmer and Jason Webley make Evelyn Evelyn twice as fun," Straight.com, 5/13/10.

I think it’s important to point at that this record never had a “message”. But in that Malcolm McLuhan way, the record itself is the message. We are two artists who love games, theater and dark humor. In giving ourselves permission to do a project this ridiculous, we’re probably saying something that we’ve never said with our more self-serious solo records. "An interview with Amanda Palmer and Jason Webley on Evelyn Evelyn," NewBeats, 5/10/10.

In addition to the album, there will be a graphic novel, a concept that has been embraced by other musicians as well.

Is the pairing up of the graphic novel and the album the future? Palmer isn’t so sure. “As artists are getting cleverer about capitalising on their releases, some will do some groundbreaking stuff with graphic novels. But for others, it won’t make sense. Sure you may see the pop star du jour putting one out but that doesn’t mean it’s this great new thing. I’d love to read what a brilliant mind like Robyn Hitchcock would do in the genre but, to be honest, I don’t know if I’d want to see the Beyonce graphic novel.” "Pop stars branch out into graphic novels," Financial Times, 4/16/10.

Cynthia Von Buhler, who will do the artwork for the Evelyn Evelyn graphic novel, is herself a multimedia artist and frequent collaborator.

Cynthia von Buhler is an internationally exhibiting visual artist, illustrator, children's book author, and performer living in New York City. Von Buhler uses traditional as well as unconventional media: painting, sculpture, performance, video projection, installation, living fauna, collage, photography, human detritus, and electronic audio.

... Von Buhler's paintings have appeared in more than a thousand magazines, books, publications, billboards, and CDs. ...

Von Buhler is also involved in the music industry and performance art, and has performed at museums, galleries, and nightclubs in major cities around the country. Von Buhler's seminal, underground performance troupe, “Women of Sodom” won a Best Music Poll Award from The Boston Phoenix and paved the way for the revival of burlesque and cabaret acts in Boston such as the Dresden Dolls. ... Von Buhler also formed and managed the band Splashdown, who were for a time signed to Capitol Records. She also co-owned Castle von Buhler Records with her ex-husband and Splashdown member, Adam Buhler and Clifford Stoltze. Castle von Buhler released a series of three art and music CD compilations which won many art and design awards. The Curriculum Vitae of Von Buhler

Some of her projects are more lucrative than others.

Cynthia von Buhler entered the field in the mid-1980s but found it slow going at first. In fact, she contemplated being a stripper so she could work on illustrations during the day. “I got two jobs my first year, but then it picked up and I quit my day job.

... "Through the years, I have tried other fields like band management, record label ownership, and running my own band, and in all I was disadvantaged due to my sex, but in illustration I have always felt that it doesn’t matter what I look like and it doesn’t matter that I’m a woman.” "What Inequality?" Step Inside Design, Nov/Dec 2005.

I’m getting royalties from my books now and it is a nice surprise to receive unexpected money in the mail. It isn’t enough to live on yet but I’m working on it. I do fine art, illustration and run my own gallery/event space so I make my money from various sources. I see my book royalties as my retirement fund. "Getting Published—Myth or Reality?" Communication Arts, 7/5/07.

I have found nothing specific about how she gets paid on her collaborations, but I did find this, which suggests she doesn't expect everything to make money.

Illustration is her bread and butter; von Buhler's works have appeared in The New Yorker and Rolling Stone, Atlantic Monthly, and Vogue, on the cover of the Juilliard String Quartet's ''Intimate Letters'' CD, and in countless periodicals. But her immediate focus is on creating an exhibition space for ''artists who want to do things that aren't market-driven, that aren't necessarily for sale, that are cutting-edge. Art that you probably wouldn't want to put in your house but is really interesting to view, and opens your mind to new ideas.'' "Original Cynthia." Boston Globe, 3/30/2000.

Another musician/designer is Nathan Johnson. He does film scores, produces visual art, and is a member of a design studio. He also created The Cinematic Underground, a performance ensemble, which included multiple siblings and a sister-in-law.

Imagine this: a film composer, a classically-trained piano instructor, a log-cabin builder, a high-school student, a dancer, a grade-school teacher, an actor, an architect, a struggling novelist, an illustrator and a landscape gardener all move together under one Boston roof. "Interview w/ The Cinematic Underground," Sounds Good, 11/9/05.

Their big project was Annasthesia.

We wrote basically a literal concept narrative album, which is quite different from your standard concept album because . . . it actually is a literal story with exterior characters. It's called Annasthesia. The story is about love and escape and risk. And kind of the choice you make that either has to do with numbing yourself or engaging with life . . . it's sort of an anti-love story, and that's the album we're touring. . . The album comes with a 24 page color graphic novella that my brother Zach did all the illustrations for. So you actually read it like a comic book as you listen to the album. And what we're doing this year is we're taking that and putting it on the stage, so the show becomes a mash-up between a concert and a graphic novel, and kind of a weird narrative storytelling form.

It's not acting 'as such,' but I'm in character on the show and my sister is as well . . . So the way that we do it is we actually play all the songs live, but we project all of the graphic novel onto the stage on this big screen behind us. I'm kind of the [lead character.] So it's not acting in the sense that . . . well, we don't have lines but we definitely perform it as an abstract theater piece, a concert, and a comic book. It's really fun.

The thing that really drives it is the storytelling aspect of it. And that's something that I think is apparent in the way we made the album. We wrote the story before the music. I recorded it in my brother's bedroom in my parents' house. We had these massive charts up all over the wall where I was madly working out how to structure this story and what was drawn. That really laid the groundwork and the restrictions for the music. The music came out of that and filled the different parts we needed in the story. "Interview w/ The Cinematic Underground," Sounds Good, 11/9/05.

The Past, Present, and Future of "The Creative Thing" Musical Production

Creating a story and then writing music to fit has long been part of opera, operettas, and musical theater. And perhaps that's the way it should be done. Green Day's American Idiot was turned into a musical after the fact. But as one critic pointed out, you'll get a more cohesive production if you coordinate a story with the songs from the beginning.

... the qualities that can make an indie-rock album so compelling — attitude, mood, grit — are probably not going to be able to sustain a theatrical journey. Drama needs more connective tissue. "Critic's Notebook: 'American Idiot' and the fate of the contemporary musical," Los Angeles Times, 5/20/10.

Aside from the fact that most bands don't have the talent to write a rock musical/opera, there are at least two challenges which may limit the popularity of this format: not all fans want to follow a linear story line at a concert and not all music venues can accommodate a stage production.

Still, Byrne's latest release, Here Lies Love, about Imelda Marcos, appears to be headed that direction.

The package contains a small illustrated book, with notes and lyrics by Byrne, plus an additional DVD of documentary footage. If he can secure the financial backing, Byrne hopes to present this in future as a sort of club-based musical.

“Some people may feel it’s a bit too close to Evita, but I’ve made a point not to see that show, so I don’t really know,” says Byrne. In truth, he says, he’s not that keen on straight musicals, but he accepts that this is what Here Lies Love will probably end up being. He prefers to see it as a drama set to music, a portrait of a flawed and needy attention-seeker. "Imelda Marcos gets the Evita treatment," Times Online, 2/21/10.

To put today's musical into context, here's a good overview of music combined with theater down through the ages.

And for fun, here's a big list of concept albums, the vast majority of which will never be turned into musical theater or movies.

At this point, I'd like to expand into a discussion of transmedia, but I'll save that for the next blog post: An Overview of Transmedia

More Examples of Multimedia Projects or Collectives that Involve Music

Ride, Rise, Roar

The songwriter essentially invited three choreographers to wrap him up within their sometimes faux-naive, sometimes sexy, often transfixing compositions, and even fans who hang on [David] Byrne's every gesture may have a hard time keeping their attention off the dancers who leap over him, dart between him and his microphone, coast by him on office chairs and cavort abstractly around the stage.

Color performance footage is intercut with black-and-white behind-the-scenes material that offers some insight into the choreographers' creative agendas and hints at the collaborative process that led to the latest Byrne/Eno record, "Everything That Happens Will Happen Today." "Ride, Rise, Roar," The Hollywood Reporter, 3/16/10.

77 Million Paintings

Hard to say what this Brian Eno invention is. Part book, part screen saver, part gallery painting, part DVD video, part music, part software. It slices and dices your perceptions! The accompanying book in this package makes it clear that this an art piece that is normally exhibited in a large room. Here it comes disguised as DVD that you load onto your computer (Windows or Mac). "Cool Tools: 77 Million Paintings," kk.org, 12/19/06.

Ghostly International

Ghostly International is a multi-platform cultural curator, a tightly knit aesthetic universe fulfilling the roles of art gallery, design house, clothing designer, technology innovator, music-publishing company—and, yes, record label—in one. In the years since its birth in 1999, Ghostly has grown from a boutique label known for its experimental-pop and -techno acumen to an internationally recognized platform for the work of the world's best visual artists, designers, technologists, and musicians.

Alligator Mouth Improv

Drawing on theater, movement, vocals, music, storytelling, and video, and using audience stories, themes and ideas as inspiration, we offer one-of-a-kind performances created in the moment.

Suzanne Lainson
@slainson on Twitter

UPDATE 6/6/10

Here's a very good overview of how new American musicals are differing from older forms and the fact that traditional forms still sell better. My take is that the newer forms are going to be more popular with audiences that never attend Broadway-style shows. That means reaching those audiences elsewhere. But to do that means staging productions which are much cheaper to produce and can be offered in a bigger variety of venues. "New York 2010: Out with the old American musical"

And here's a piece on Jim Lewis, who collaborated on Fela!, one of those new musicals.

The idea that [choreographer Bill T. Jones] and I could create a new kind of show that would appeal to a really diverse audience, more accustomed to MTV than a well-made play, fueled our work over the next five years. How could something closer to the energy of a concert also tell a story and inspire young people to strive to change the world? ...

... our dreams of that alternate space were replaced by a new reality: to do the show we’d created would cost too much to run anywhere but Broadway. "Fela! Scribe Jim Lewis on the Show's Wild Ride to 11 Tony Nominations," Broadway.com, 5/25/10.

Here's an essay that discusses the Internet and collaboration and how "art" is no longer a fixed object anymore.

... where art is concerned the single most important effect of Wiki-culture may be what it portends for the very idea of a tangible art object like a book or painting and what this would portend for industries dedicated to art. Take the Johnny Cash Project again. Like much Wiki-Art, it is organic and ever-changing. The work may reside on the Internet, but, in truth, there is no work — no single art object. It is an ongoing, dynamic series, potentially infinite. "Technology changes how art is created and perceived," LA Times, 6/6/10.

UPDATE 6/13/10
An exploration of where today's music is headed.
Broadway rocks, conclude The Times' theater and pop critics

UPDATE 6/15/10
I had been waiting for more information about this project before posting it, and now I have it. What looked like a good music/graphic novel/theater presentation isn't.

Gorillaz' planned opera with Watchmen and V For Vendetta creator Alan Moore has been ditched....

Going on to explain he had already "wrote a third of it", the writer added that "nobody had done anything else upon the opera" and that other commitments from both parties had decided the fate of the collaboration.

"I had too many commitments as well," Moore admitted. "And since I had never received any money or a contract, I was alright saying, 'Yeah, I'm pulling out of this. You can do your own opera about Dr Dee, I don't own Dr Dee, I don't own the concept of opera'." "Gorillaz ditch opera project with 'Watchman''s Alan Moore," NME.COM, 6/14/10.

UPDATE 6/21/10
Here's another resource on collaborative projects.
Co-creating Value through Collaborative Entertainment

UPDATE 6/27/10
Here's a story about Cirque du Soleil's attempt at creating a scripted show which didn't fare well.

The show struck executives as a little of everything (vaudeville, theater, clowning, acrobatics) but neither entrancing nor memorable by the standards of Cirque — whose popular shows include “Ka” (a gravity-defying production, inspired by martial arts performers) and “O” (a water show). ...

“The reality is, people have very specific expectations with Cirque shows, and ‘Banana Shpeel’ turned out to be neither fish nor fowl — neither circus act nor theatrical vaudeville entertainment,” [Paul Binder, the founding artistic director of Big Apple Circus] said. “So I think it was probably difficult to get a large audience excited about a show when many didn’t really understand what it was.” "When Cirque du Soleil Met Theater - ‘Shpeel’ Failure," New York Times, 6/26/10.

The Rise of the "Creative Thing"

2010-05-31T20:15:00.000-07:00

The Devaluation of Music

A number of people have embraced the idea that since it costs nothing, or nearly nothing, to make unlimited digital copies of your music, you should freely give it away for the exposure and then sell limited objects and experiences to those who want more and are willing to pay for it.

What recorded music becomes, then, is the promotional or marketing vehicle for something else. Increasingly it can't be sold as a standalone product because people expect it to be free. Our perceptions of recorded music have changed.

For example, consider these two scenarios:

1. Buy the CD and get the T-shirt for free.
2. Buy the T-shirt and get the CD for free.

If getting music for free has conditioned people to think it has no monetary value, then whatever monetary value they assign to the bundle will be for the T-shirt.

(In contrast to how music is being presented these days, the infomercial trick is to assign a value to the bundle by telling people that all the items in the bundle have a value.

For $20 you get a $15 CD AND $15 T-shirt. A $30 value!!

A smart infomercial person would never say, "Hey, we're not losing any money if you download our music for free, so please do.")

Once we come to accept that recorded music isn't much of a standalone product, we start looking for what we can couple it with to enhance its value. Even Justin Bieber’s manager, Scooter Braun, says as much.

... he was willing to admit that, “music has to become a multimedia business.” The product is no longer the music in and of itself. The product is the musician’s story and the experience of being a part of it. "TechCrunch Disrupt - Day 3," SoundCtrl, 5/27/10.

One of the most obvious shifts in music presentation has been the move from just recording a song to including it in a video. That's increasingly how we consume music.

[Comparing the same one-week period] the ten most-played music videos on YouTube racked 57.3 million views, while the top ten on MySpace Music generated 7.5 million. "YouTube v. MySpace Music: What a Difference Two Years Makes..." Digital Music News, 5/12/10.

Another example to illustrate that the video can be more important than the music is OK Go.

Their new video for This Too Shall Pass is another viral smash (8m views and counting), but their record sales have been nothing short of a disaster. It hasn't even sold 25,000 copies in the US. ...

[This Too Shall Pass is] endlessly watchable, using a panoply of junk to create a colourful, impossibly complex Rube Goldberg machine. [The video is] certainly popular, but might be just as viral if it contained no sound at all. "OK Go find more viral success – but not real success," The Guardian, 3/18/10.

Thus, combining music with video appears to be good for exposure, but you still need to find something to sell. That leads us to a point where musicians are looking for even more stuff to tack onto the music.

Speaking at Twitter's first-ever developers' conference, Black Eyed Peas frontman, Will.i.am outlined a vision of the music industry of the future where developers will be just as important to a band as the musicians that play on the record. He claimed:

"A band's going to be a singer, a guitar player, a bass player, a code writer, a guy who makes applications, a guy who does computer animation; that is a group. It's going to be self-contained content providers and digital distributers." "Why musicians need digital creatives," StrategyEye, 5/27/10.

Explaining the "Creative Thing"

I'll take it a step further than Will.i.am. I envision a day in the near future where music will be so intertwined with additional forms of media and experiences that it may become nearly meaningless to speak of it as a distinct entity. It will become an inseparable part of a bigger concept, which I will call a "creative thing." There won't be a discernible line between the music and what it is bundled with, which will mean the music business as such will no longer exist. There will be people who continue to specialize in creating music, but since the packaging of music (in whatever form: sound, performance, products) will involve more than just music, music becomes an adjunct of a bigger whole.

You can find good examples of "creative things" on Kickstarter. Artists are trying to raise money for all manner of creative projects. To entice people to contribute money, the project creators offer a variety of premiums. Often neither the projects nor the premiums fall into any sort of neatly defined box. (Examples: A musician offered home-cooked meals. A performance artist offered lip prints. A magazine publisher offered handmade quilts.) The creativity of the project, the offerings, and the presentation/communication of it all blur into a gestalt. Every aspect of each Kickstarter "creative thing" is connected to and reinforces the concept as a whole.

The publisher who offered quilts on Kickstarter is Lee Tusman. One of his music-related activities is serving as a traveling art/music show host.

For Lee, “Running with the Night” is only moonlighting: his day job is curator of the Riverside Art Museum, but his list of artistic extracurriculars is extensive. He created the quilts (or “quiltz” as he likes to call them) that spill out of the Vanagon, as well as many others; he runs a micro-record label called Jewish Noise, which combines abstract electronica/noise with traditional chanting and singing; he sews one-armed cloth dolls; he operates an occasional pizza delivery service out of the Vanagon—people call him, and he makes a gourmet pie from scratch, puts it into a hand-painted pizza box and drives it to the door; he curates the Vanagallery, a mobile art space that’s housed a carousel of artistic works; and most recently, he’s producing a magazine called JANKY. "Behind the Zine," Inland Empire Weekly, 3/11/10.

Not associated with Kickstarter, but one of the best examples of someone in music thinking three-dimensionally is Amanda Palmer.

The wonderful thing about rock is that it's a truly multimedia forum. There's the album artwork, the posters, the live shows, the stage design, the costumes, the videos....it's perfect for a gesamtkunstwerk hound like myself. "Art Space Talk: Amanda Palmer," myartspace> blog, 1/6/09.

In the above interview she also talks about her experience as a performance artist, living in a building housing artists from a variety of media, and having painters creating art during some of her shows.

Who Does the Creating?

To function in this world of "creative things," musicians will need at least one of three approaches:

Personally be able to create more than just music.

Hire people or work with a team who can supplement what they don't/can't do.

Collaborate with artists in other media so that together they create multi-dimensional packages/experiences.

There are a variety of economic and creative ramifications to each arrangement (e.g., Who is going to generate the creative vision? Is everyone going to be paid for their efforts and if so, how?).

The Multidimensional Musician

When the musicians can do everything by themselves, it keeps the economics simple. Whether the music leads to an art sale or the art leads to a music sale, it's all going to the same creator.

Jeffrey Hoover creates works that include both music and visual art.

People sometimes wonder whether the music or the art comes first. It can be either way, and sometimes the work develops simultaneously. In the case of Peacock Blue and An American Toccata the music was written first, then the paintings were created. I wrestled with the idea of how to best represent the music. Would a graphic score be appropriate, or some type of freely conceived representation? I resolved this dilemma by the majority of the painting being an intuitive representation of the music, inserting a graphic score/sonic representation as an entablature on the bottom of the painting. "new work for the eye and ear," Composer NewsUpdate, Vol. 3, No. 1, January, 1999.

Brian Eno has always done art and music together.

Neither my visual nor my musical directions would have taken the shape they did without each other. I make no distinction between the development of my visual and musical output as the two have been growing together, feeding and informing the other. "Brian Eno: The life of Brian," The Independent, 7/25/06.

Another example: A Denver-based band, Lil' Slugger, is putting out a series of comic books they have created themselves.

[Band members] Martin and Couch wrote the books, and Martin’s girlfriend, Beth Link, drew all the pictures, which Martin himself then manipulated in Photoshop. “All credit goes to her,” he says, “and all blame goes to me. It was a totally nightmarish process and no one should ever do it.” "Lil' Slugger's art rock and comic books," The Denver Post, 5/21/10.

Using Specialists to Fill in the Blanks

More typical is the musician/band/label paying creative contractors to do the non-music art. Generally this is a work-for-hire arrangement where the contractor is paid a fee and whoever commissions the art owns it outright and can do whatever he/she/they want with it. A work-for-hire arrangement usually costs more money upfront, but if the musician/band/label think they can sell a lot of copies, it's probably a better deal in the long run because they don't have to share any revenues with the contractor.

Do you ever approach bands you would like to design for?

Sometimes, but mostly they approach me... I prefer working on assignment. ... I need a frame for my work. ... there is a message to be sent to the audience. By looking at my poster, people should be able to see what to expect from a band or gig. An interview with graphics designer Wytse, FuryRocks, 10/4/08.

However, as music is declining as a standalone product, I anticipate we'll see more visual artists realizing what they create is what actually sells. Therefore they may not relinquish their rights so quickly.

The self-supporting graphic-art scene that's flowering now has its own back-story. It was the music business that first really allowed graphic artists off the creative leash; from Milton Glaser's kaleidoscope-haired Bob Dylan poster for CBS in 1966 through to Peter Saville's emotive imagery for Factory Records in the early 1980s, by way of some far-out Pink Floyd gatefolds. As King notes, "Even at the end of the 1980s people went into graphic design because they wanted to produce record sleeves, and that link sadly faded away when vinyl disappeared."

With this avenue of free expression shut down, graphic artists moved over into the rag trade. During the 1990s, the likes of James Jarvis and Fergus Purcell helped create a new trend for limited-run printed T-shirts. At the same time, bookshops such as Magma had started selling monographed design products, and a new breed of graphic-design nerds and collectors was soon multiplying. Once the internet arrived, there was no stopping them. "Warning: graphic content - how a new wave of illustrators is blowing the art world apart," The Independent, 5/16/10.

If designers anticipate more income down the road rather than upfront, they might start asking for a percentage of each sale (often in the form of a licensing fee) rather than a one-time payment. Or, for that matter, leverage might shift entirely. We may find designers commissioning music to go with the art and paying the musicians a fixed, work-for-hire fee. (It's less likely that we'd see the designer creating the art, finding music to go with it, and then giving the musician a percentage of each sale because music has already established itself as the marketing vehicle, not the product itself.)

On to Collaborations

Since this blog post has grown rather long, I'll discuss collaborations in my next post, Collaborating on "Creative Things."

Suzanne Lainson
@slainson on Twitter

UPDATE 8/3/10

We used to give many of these tchotchke items away for free in an effort to entice people to pay for the music, but we're considering flipping our strategy so that people pay for the toy and receive the music for free. Just a thought. "Sub Pop's Considering Selling Band Merch and Giving the Music Away For Free," Seattle Weekly, 7/30/10.

UPDATE 10/23/10
I knew Liz Clark awhile back when she was still living in Denver. Now she spends part of her time in NYC, part in Ireland (where her bandmate/partner is from), and part of the time on the road. According to their bio:

Liz and Tessa’s philosophy of simplicity manifests itself by spending part of their year as homeless troubadours, touring the USA and sharing their love of music. The rest of the year is spent in Ireland, working a 10 acre organic garden and running an award-winning cafe on the Emerald Island’s West Coast.

They have developed this idea which is a nice variation on the usual house concert.

... we are starting a new concert series to raise money for the album and we are calling it "Beat Roots". It is going to be a food and music series. ... So the idea is that we, L & the M, will come to your house and cook a 3 course gourmet meal for you and your friends, using the finest produce from your locality and while you are eating your dessert we will treat you to an acousic house concert of our L & the M songs. There is a price of course and for the works (which includes a glass of wine or 2) it is $50 a head but we are flexible. Maybe you just want appetizers and wine and we could probably do that for about $30. "Beat Roots," Lonely and the Moose, 10/23/10.

Music Creation for the Untalented, the Untrained, the Lazy, and Those with Some Time to Kill

2010-05-07T12:30:00.000-07:00

I've been checking out iPhone and iPad music creation applications. Some are geared for experienced music professionals who already know their way around equipment. But I like the stuff that is intuitive and can produce results in a minute or two. I suppose you could say I was looking for the equivalent of tambourines, finger paints, bubbles, or beach volleyball. In other words, stuff that is so simple to use it is hard to screw up.

Here is some of what I have found. Some are iPhone and iPad apps; others are website-based. (I looked at more apps than I included here, but some of them weren't all that interesting or seemed to make sounds rather than music or musical tones.)

DRAWING

Sonic Wire Sculptor 2010: "The Sonic Wire Sculptor turns your 3D drawing into sound. It introduces a simple yet deep connection between visual and audio composition."

Squiggle: "Squiggle is an iPad application that allows you to draw lines on the screen which turn into stings and can be played like guitar."

Soundrop: "Soundrop is a sound toy application for iPad, iPhone & iPod Touch which allows you to create sounds by drawing lines on the screen and have ball bouncing off them. Each time the ball touches the line, a sound is generated. Depending on the location of the line on the screen, the tone of the sound is set."

gliss: "Gliss is a new sound application which lets you play sound files and mix them easily by drawing on your iPhone."

MusicDraw: Another drawing-based app. More about it here.

Artikulator: "While traditional sheet music is cryptographic for the uninitiated, Artikulator is as simple to understand as a child’s toy. A line that curves upward creates a higher-pitched sound. A line that is bigger makes a louder sound." (ADDED 5/19/10)

Singing Fingers -- Finger Paint with Sound: "While you drag your finger across the screen, your voice or any other sounds nearby are turned into colors on the musical canvas. The pitch of the sound is translated into a color, while the loudness of the sound determines the size. If you start on a blank white space you are recording. If you start on a colored space you are replaying. Use up to five fingers to play back many sounds at the same time, forwards, backwards or sideways." (ADDED 10/21/10)

Bubble Harp: "Bubble Harp draws bubbles around your fingertips, recording and replaying your movements while creating music based on the animated forms. It’s a combination of drawing, animation, music, art, geometry, and games." (ADDED 10/21/10)

Reactable mobile: This isn't a drawing tool. Rather it is a synthesizer you control by moving objects around on the screen. (ADDED 10/21/10)

TONES

Raindrop Melody Maker: This is web-based, so you can go on this site and immediately begin playing with it. It creates beautiful wind-chime-like sounds by clicking on the raindrops.

Here's the iPhone version. Dropophone (ADDED 6/16/10)

Melodica: An app that also allows you to play around with tones.

Euphonics: This application is good if you want to create piano-like songs without actually having to know how to play the piano.

rain.: "Rain. is a minimalistic audio visual composition app for the iPhone created by Rainer Kohlberger. Tap to create black sound stripes, double tap to create moire phases, shake to create a colored beat, double swipe to change background loop. The longer a stripe the lower its pitch. After creating a stripe, use your second finger to alter the length."

SoundGrid: This one is a bit more complicated. "Even if you have never composed music, you will find SoundGrid simple and exciting to play with and will start creating unique compositions in minutes with just the tips of your fingers."

Flourish: Seems to be more visually interesting than musically interesting.

ToneMatrix: "Simple sinewave synthesizer triggered by an ordinary 16step sequencer. Each triggered step causes a force on the underlaying wave-map, which makes it more cute." (ADDED 5/17/10)

Pulsate (ADDED 5/17/10)

Incredibox: This website allows you to create an online beatbox a capella group by dragging symbols of instruments, percussion, effects, chorus, voices onto online cartoon singers. (ADDED 6/4/10)

Beatwave: Allows you to create patterns, choose from three basic instruments (with others available to add), control tempo and pitch, and manipulate layers of sound. (ADDED 6/10/10)

SoundPrism (ADDED 10/21/10)

MUSIC GENERATORS

Bloom, Trope, and Air: Three different apps created by Brian Eno and/or Peter Chilvers that produce patterns and melodies. This site (not associated with Bloom) supposedly offers both a web version (though it didn't come up for me) and a downloadable PC version.

Lexikon-Sonate: Classical pieces generated by software from composer Karlheinz Essl. "Essl creates electronic and interactive music (with emphasis on algorithmic composition and generative music), and has produced numerous real-time compositions and sound instillations." You can find a downloadable program here.

WolframTones: This site generates songs based on mathematical formulas.

AMG: Ambient Music Generator: "There are no notes to play, no multitouch, no buttons to play sounds, simply shake iPhone and leave the iphone by your side to fill your space with ambient tones."

Aura Ambient Music Generator

Melody Generator: This software will generate melodies (in three forms: basic, chord-based, or scale-based) which can be edited and also saved as an audio file and in print form.

Musical Images: This is a brand new app that creates music from whatever image you plug in. There isn't anything about the application up on the web yet, but I found this at the website of the organization which created it and appears to be an earlier exploration of the concept. Lotto Lab : Music from colour

C O D E O R G A N: Plug in a URL and it generates music based on the text on that page.

Chimes: An older downloadable program that generates random sounds based on an African thumb piano and a Native American drum.

Marvim Gainsbug: This looks interesting, though I can't find place where you can enter lyrics. So it appears more of a demo of an experiment rather than a working application. "Marvim Gainsbug is a software that acts based on Twitter, implemented to compose and to play songs, with music and lyrics, in real time."

The Crooked Road: Build-A-Lyric Song Generator: This site actually produces a song for you, although the melody is set and you have a limited number of lyric options.

Synthia: It creates a song from an uploaded image. (ADDED 5/17/10.)

Sonic Charge Patternarium: This provides randomly computer generated patterns and rhythms. You can vote on each one to influence which combinations are more likely to develop in the future. (ADDED 6/10/10)

LYRICS GENERATORS

None of these generate music, just lyrics. But I anticipate that before long lyric generators and music generators will be combined so that you'll get finished songs based on the genres and subjects you select. Will any of them be great songs? Well, think of them like digital photos. You may need to produce a lot to get the right one, but you just discard those that don't work. And if you have something that almost works, you tweak it with the equivalent of a musical Photoshop.

Song Generator: Fill in the blanks and the program gives you song lyrics based on what you have written.

Love Song Generator: Another fill-in the blanks program by the same creator as above, but this one more narrowly focused on love songs.

More sites:

Country Song Generator

Country Western Song Generator

Random Pop Song Generator

Alanis Morissette Lyric Generator

And consider these for lyrics, too (there are actually far too many poetry generators in Google to list them all, but it should give you an idea of where to look if you're stuck when writing lyrics for a song):

Poem Generator

Poetry Generator

The Genuine Haiku Generator

Dada Poetry Generator

Love Poetry Generator

Another Love Poetry Generator

If you want to sound vaguely Shakespearian

Poetry Forms

Once you have found some lyrics you like, this application will create a song around them.

Songmaker for iPhone: "... simply speak the lyrics you want into the microphone while pressing the keys to enter the melody you want. After recording completed, SongMaker will play the song with your voice following the given melody along with background music." (ADDED 10/21/10)

I'm sure I have missed some good applications. So let me know about them. Again, I'm not looking for apps that require much training. This is a list for products which will allow the average not-very-musical person to create something worth listening to and perhaps sharing. I anticipate that as more products and tools are developed, the creations will become more sophisticated.

Suzanne Lainson
@slainson on Twitter

UPDATE 5/9/10
This doesn't have to do with music, but if you are going start promoting your app generated music, you might need these to help you create your web page. 55 Astonishing Online Generators for Web Designers

UPDATE 6/29/10
Here's a video where two developers demonstrate a new, easy-to-use iPad music creation tool. They also explain their motivation. And they mention finger painting.
CultureLab: The first ever iPad music performance

Creativity and 10,000 Hours

2010-04-28T09:55:00.000-07:00

Due to the fact that this post is rather long, I've broken it up into sections to make it a bit easier to follow. Unwieldy though it may seem to be, I wanted to keep it as one blog post rather than dividing it into several shorter ones. Every few years we get another book telling us that if we'll put in our 10,000 hours, we might become experts, too. But the subject is more complex than that, and I wanted to lay it out as fully as I can. And for those of you who want to explore it on your own, I've provided links to what I have found available online.

My last blog post, "Will Your 10,000 Hours Be Obsolete," was about specialization. I was asking (1) whether specializing in too narrow a field puts you at risk of spending years in an area that might become obsolete and (2) how you can prepare for a field that has yet to be invented.

Some of the comments got me thinking about the subject in even more detail. One of the questions: Are success and skill necessarily linked? In terms of celebrity and pop music, most people would say no. You can become quite famous, and sometimes make money from that fame, without having to the best at anything. Or maybe you are the best at something, but not what we commonly measure. For example, maybe entertainers who do well have spent their whole lives learning how to audience-ready. Maybe they are, in fact experts at something, just not necessarily anything artistic.

I was trying to think of another example, besides easy-to-perform music or reality TV, where training has value but perhaps does not require 10,000 hours to elevate you to the top of your profession. Acting came to mind. There are child actors who have had no acting experience but are cast in movies and become instant stars.

What exactly is an expert actor? Does the training mean you can play any role? I can't think of many actors who would fit that description, but perhaps they haven't been given the opportunity.

What would years of acting training give you? I assume you'd acquire skills related to professionalism (e.g, learning how to memorize better; learning how to move on stage and project your voice; learning how to play love scenes; learning how to react to the unexpected).

But do actors become better over time? It's often hard to tell because acting is so role-dependent. An actor can leave a great impression in early roles and then be written off in later years because of bad roles. And we often have differing standards for actors. Some we like to see in a variety of roles and others we want to see essentially play the same role over and over again.

We have awards for acting, but they aren't necessarily given out for expertise. The "best" actors don't always win. Perhaps not surprisingly, there isn't really a lot information available about expertise in acting.

... except for [Helga Noice's] research dating from the late 1980s--virtually no studies on the cognitive processes of professional actors can be found in the literature. These experts not only routinely memorize hours of verbal material in a very short time, but they retrieve it verbatim along with the accompanying gestures, movements, thoughts, and emotions of the characters. "The Nature of Expertise in Professional Acting," Thinking & Reasoning Arena.

So if success and expertise aren't necessarily linked, then what, exactly, is expertise?

K. Anders Ericsson, who most people cite when discussing the years of training it takes to become an expert, says that you can't establish expertise in every field.

How, then, can you tell when you’re dealing with a genuine expert? Real expertise must pass three tests. First, it must lead to performance that is consistently superior to that of the expert’s peers. Second, real expertise produces concrete results. Brain surgeons, for example, not only must be skillful with their scalpels but also must have successful outcomes with their patients. A chess player must be able to win matches in tournaments. Finally, true expertise can be replicated and measured in the lab. As the British scientist Lord Kelvin stated, “If you can not measure it, you can not improve it.” "The Making of an Expert," Harvard Business Review, July-August 2007.

Here's another definition:

Characteristics of Experts (Glaser & Chi, 1988)
• Experts excel mainly in their own domains
• Experts perceive large meaningful patterns in their domains
• Experts are fast
• Experts seem to utilize working and LTM [long-term memory] effectively
• Experts see and represent a problem in their domain at a deeper level than novices
• Experts spend a great deal of time analyzing a problem quantitatively
• Experts have self-monitoring skills
(Glaser and Chi are cited by many authors, but here is my source of that information: "Expertise and Creativity.")

As it turns out that a lot of what passes for expertise isn't. Studies have shown that:

highly experienced computer programmers are not always better than computer science students,

physics professors are not always better than students on introductory physics problems,

clinical psychology skills are not related to training and experience,

extensive software design experience isn't related to proficiency,

wine experts aren't better at judging wines than regular wine drinkers,

well-trained financial advisors aren't better at forecasting than novices,

general physicians become less accurate at diagnosing heart sounds and x-rays the longer they practice.
(Ericsson cites all of the above examples, including bibliographic info, in "The influence of experience and deliberate practice on the development of superior expert performance," The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance, 2006.)

Ericsson says that if you have experienced people who don't do any better than the average person, then they aren't experts. This seems to provide a good loophole to explain why average people can sometimes beat those with more experience. What he seems to be saying is that his theories are right, and when there appear to be exceptions, the exceptions don't count.

Clifford Morris points out another issue with some of the conclusions about experts and extensive training:

Taken together, these findings demonstrate that experts presumably have chosen to do what they love. And why do they (or did they) love what they do? Because they were good at doing it -- relative to doing other things -- in the first place. Yes, experts become experts because they study and practice that at which they eventually excel. But they choose to study and practice that which they like to do, and they like to do those things for which they had some talent to begin with. From this argument, one could easily conclude that the editors and chapter authors have proved nothing beyond what most of us know from experience, casual observation, and good old sound common sense. Experts are born with certain talents and then they become experts because they cultivate those talents. Experts are born and made. But first, they must be born with a degree of talent that allows them to make themselves into experts. "Hard Work Tops Talent if Talent Doesn't Work Hard: A Book Review of The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance," 2008.

Others have also suggested that those who excel start with some inherent advantages. Two examples:

Higher-level musicians report significantly higher mean levels on innate characteristics such as general intelligence and music audiation, in addition to higher levels of accumulated practice time. "Becoming an expert in the musical domain: It takes more than just practice," (Ruthsatz; Detterman; Griscom; Cirullo) Intelligence 36, 2008.

In the language of logic, researchers generally agree that deliberate practice is necessary; disagreement exists regarding whether it is sufficient. "Nature and nurture interact to create expert performers,” (Joseph Baker) High Ability Studies, June 2007.

Dean Keith Simonton is another who doesn't believe practice alone is sufficient. Here is a summation of his position:

Geniuses are those who "have the intelligence, enthusiasm, and endurance to acquire the needed expertise in a broadly valued domain of achievement" and who then make contributions to that field that are considered by peers to be both "original and highly exemplary." "Is Genius Born or Can It Be Learned?" Time, 2/13/09.

Yet another wrinkle has been suggested by Rosemary Reilly. She says that when the activity is ill-defined, experts don't do any better in decision-making than novices, and that groups of people pooling their collective experience will do as well or better than an individual expert.

Expertise need not be embodied in a single individual, but can be collectively created through processes of reflective dialogue. "Expertise and Creativity"

So, based on Reilly's concept, if we don't know what it takes to be an expert in certain fields, then potential "experts" don't necessarily need to have 10,000 hours of personal experience. The whole movement towards crowdsourcing seems to suggest that we are willing to substitute the knowledge of many different people for the knowledge and expertise of just a few. It's a way to harness the power of the network to generate just as many ideas as tapping into the mind of a few experts.

In fact, the company InnoCentive is based on the concept that people who specialize in certain fields may be less equipped to solve problems and create innovation than motivated people who haven't pursued traditional paths to domain-specific expertise. The site posts problems that need to be solved and then offers financial rewards to those who find solutions.

According to this article, "If You Have a Problem, Ask Everyone," InnoCentive problem-solvers come from 175 countries. More than one-third have doctorates, which means that nearly two-thirds don't. InnoCentive founder Alph Bingham says in this recent video, "Some Problems Are Too Important to Leave to the Experts," that if you think of traditional experts as the head of a long tail, then 95% of the ideas are coming from people in the long tail. For example, Dwayne Spradlin, president and CEO of InnoCentive, described a request to find a biomarker for ALS.

What’s amazing about this was that solutions were coming from not necessarily from the medical field. The solutions were coming in from people they had never heard of before—computer scientists, experts in bio informatics who were suggesting algorithmic approaches, machine manufacturers who knew enough about the disease to say the following kind of approach might provide a highly predictive model of who might be susceptible to this disease. They were getting solutions from outside the establishment that ended up generating some of the most innovative thinking in that field in recent years. "Crowdsourcing Innovation: Q&A with Dwayne Spradlin of InnoCentive," Fast Company, 12/15/08.

Even more remarkable, Karim R. Lakhani, a professor at Harvard Business School who studied InnoCentive

found that “the further the problem was from the solver’s expertise, the more likely they were to solve it,” often by applying specialized knowledge or instruments developed for another purpose. "If You Have a Problem, Ask Everyone," New York Times, 7/22/08.

It will be interesting to see how crowdsourcing and collaboration shape our concepts of expertise in the future.

The next phase of my research involved finding out about expertise in creative fields.

According to Mark Runco, Ericsson doesn't focus much on creativity.

... Ericsson et al. largely ignore the role of creativity. This is unfortunately not uncommon in studies of achievement. There are numerous possible paths to achievement, some individuals attaining it by virtue of their creativity, but others by virtue of their traditional intelligence, charisma, or contrarian ways. Not all eminent persons are creative (Runco, 1995). Yet some are, which means that achievement cannot be fully understood without acknowledging the possible or occasional role of creativity.

... In Ericsson et al.’s own words, ‘the expert performance approach starts by identifying reproducibly superior performance and then works backwards to explain the development of the mediating mechanisms’. The methodology is in some ways (e.g., experimental control) impressive, but again, just because one path leads somewhere (to expertise), this does not mean there are no other paths. "Achievement sometimes requires creativity,"High Ability Studies, June 2007.

Simonton, cited above, says that fields differ in the types of knowledge required. Here's a summary of Simonton's position by Jonah Lehrer:

While physics, math and poetry have always been dominated by their most inexperienced practitioners, other disciplines seem to benefit from middle age. Mr. Simonton suggests that people working in fields such as biology, history, novel-writing and philosophy might not peak until their late 40s. ...

What accounts for these variations? Mr. Simonton suggests that they're caused by intrinsic features of the disciplines. Those fields with a logically consistent set of principles, such as physics and chess, tend to encourage youthful productivity, since it's relatively easy to acquire the necessary expertise. "Fleeting Youth, Fading Creativity in Science," Wall Street Journal, 2/19/10.

It would appear that there are not universally accepted concepts of expertise and creativity. There are at least two groups -- the "expert" experts (e.g., Ericsson) and the "creativity" experts (e.g., Runco) -- and they aren't necessarily working together.

So given that, let's backtrack a bit and try to define creativity.

Robert Weisberg, who has written extensively on the subject, says this:

Most critically, we will not be able to determine definitively what products are creative and what individuals are creative. This problem arises because the value of a product can change over time: an artistic innovation valued by one generation can be considered sentimental treacle by the next; a scientific innovation considered groundbreaking by one generation can be considered nonsense by the next. Theorizing about creativity will therefore be built on a constantly shifting foundation, as individuals and their works become “creative” and “not creative” over generations. We would continuously have to consider whether our previously established conclusions hold for the now-creative people, which is an impossible situation; we need criteria that do not change over time. The goal-directedness and novelty of some product, once determined, cannot change, so we should be able to determine the phenomena and individuals to study. Thus, I assume that any innovation generated as part of the goal-directed activity of an individual is, ipso facto, creative, whether or not it has value to anyone. The value of a person’s work may change from one generation to the next, but its creativity cannot. "Expertise and Reason in Creative Thinking: Evidence from Case Studies and the Laboratory," Creativity and Reason in Cognitive Development, 2006.

As an example of how he would link creativity and expertise, he provides

an outline of a situation facing a poet who has recently given birth and who is stimulated to write a set of poems expressing her feelings about the experience and its implications. One can here also hypothesize a set of domains of expertise that the poet might bring to bear on her project. In addition, she may use logic as the basis for constructing aspects of her new work.

GENERAL EXPERTISE
Science, Mathematics, Logic
Humanities
Other Arts
Other Poets' Other Works
Poet's Other Works
Other Poets' Works on Giving Birth
Poet's Own Prior Works on Giving Birth
Poet's Ideas and Feelings on Giving Birth
DOMAIN-SPECIFIC EXPERTISE

So Weisberg suggests you can start with some general knowledge and then use your expertise within your art to produce your creation. One of the better papers I've seen on combining creativity with diverse sources of inspiration came from a study of 11 Finnish product designers. The authors, Björklund and Eloranta, pulled some good insights from the research.

The experts pick up ideas from diverse sources: hobbies, previous projects, neighboring fields, vacation trips... They see potential and analogies in even seemingly unrelated concepts and then develop the idea further. "Fostering innovation: What we can learn from experts and expertise."

Another who has explored this concept is Robert Scott Root-Bernstein, a biologist, historian, and artist, who feels creativity, music, and science serve each other well.

... the histories of music and quantum physics are inextricably linked ... Einstein [said] that his own relativity theory "... occurred to me by intuition. And music is the driving force behind this intuition. My parents had me study the violin from the time I was six. My new discovery is the result of musical perception."

... no one with monomaniacal interests or limited to a single talent or skill can, to my mind, be creative, since nothing novel or worthy can emerge without making surprising and effective links between things ... To create is to combine, to connect, to analogize, to link and to transform.

... Creativity comes from finding the unexpected connections, from making use of skills, ideas, insights and analogies from disparate fields. Thus, my concept of correlative talents and its own correlate, synosia, help explain for me why true creative ability is so rare. Of the set of multi-talented people, who are in turn a subset of all the people who are singly talented, only some will develop the necessary integration of thinking modes necessary to make their talents interactive.

... We will therefore be able to recognize the greatest breakthroughs in the use of the human imagination precisely by their inability to be subsumed into the existing categories of sciences or arts. Each such advance will create new possibilities that we could not even have imagined before ... "Music, Creativity and Scientific Thinking," Leonardo, 34:1, 2001.

Here's more on Einstein and his relationship to music.

For Einstein, insight did not come from logic or mathematics. It came, as it does for artists, from intuition and inspiration. As he told one friend, "When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come close to the conclusion that the gift of imagination has meant more to me than any talent for absorbing absolute knowledge." Elaborating, he added, "All great achievements of science must start from intuitive knowledge. I believe in intuition and inspiration.... At times I feel certain I am right while not knowing the reason." Thus, his famous statement that, for creative work in science, "Imagination is more important than knowledge." ...

In other interviews, he attributed his scientific insight and intuition mainly to music. "If I were not a physicist," he once said, "I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.... I get most joy in life out of music." His son, Hans, amplified what Einstein meant by recounting that "[w]henever he felt that he had come to the end of the road or into a difficult situation in his work, he would take refuge in music, and that would usually resolve all his difficulties." After playing piano, his daughter Maja added, he would get up saying, "There, now I've got it." Something in the music would guide his thoughts in new and creative directions. "Einstein On Creative Thinking: Music and the Intuitive Art of Scientific Imagination," Psydir News. (Check the article for the sources of the Einstein quotes.)

While I am talking about what it means to be creative, I'll point you to another resource. Runco, who I have cited above, wrote a book, Creativity: Theories and Themes: Research, Development, and Practice, which concludes with the chapter, "What Creativity Is and What It is Not." He makes a distinction between creativity and related concepts: intelligence, imagination, originality, innovation, invention, discovery, serendipity, intentions, and adaptability. So keep in mind that what some of us might call creativity isn't considered to be such by those who study it.

While they write about different topics, some "creativity" experts do agree with some of the "expert" experts that you can't be creative without a deep knowledge of your field.

A person who wants to make a creative contribution not only must work within a creative system but must also reproduce that system within his or her mind. In other words, the person must learn the rules and the content of the domain, as well as the criteria of selection, the preferences of the field. Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention, (Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi) 1996.

Weisberg believes in the 10-year-rule, but before he makes his case, he reviews a variety of theories:

He starts with those who say that creative thoughts are so unprecedented that they aren't based on what has come before. Therefore extensive training is of limited help.

Then he discusses the inverted-U concept which says that you need a certain basis of knowledge to create something new, but too much knowledge will lock you in to old thinking. Therefore your most creative point is somewhere between too little and too much.

Finally, to reinforce his own thoughts on the subject, he mentions a number of studies which show that people in various creative fields did not turn out any memorable works until a period of years after they began.

... if one does not know the discipline, one cannot go beyond it. "Creativity and Knowledge: A Challenge to Theories," Handbook of Creativity, 1999.

Similarly, Richard Hass (who worked with Weisberg) offers this summary of creativity theories:

Productive thinking: "creativity represents a complete break from past knowledge."

... the criteria for productive creativity in music are as follows: (1) increasing novelty of musical elements in songs as career progresses, (2) little or no reproduction of musical elements already used by the composer, and (3), more novelty and variation of musical components in hit songs compared with non-hit songs. Development of Creative Expertise in Music: A Quantitative Analysis of the Songs of Cole Porter and Irving Berlin, 2009.

Reproductive thinking: "creators develop a core collection of kernel ideas early in their careers and continually recombine those ideas in novel ways." He says that this is common in popular music. For example, rock draws upon blues, rhythm and blues, folk, and so on. "... the stylistic changes were not breaks with the past, but recombination of past ideas."

... the criteria for reproductive creativity in music are as follows: (1) consistency of musical components across songs (2) little or no introduction of new musical kernel ideas throughout later stages of career, and (3), hit songs should feature more continuity with past knowledge than non-hits.

Field specialization: "creativity represents an interaction between the individual creator, the domain in which the creator works, and the field, or collection of institutions that evaluate creative products." He says that success in popular music tends to reinforce doing more of the same rather than coming up with anything truly innovative. He uses Lou Reed as an example of someone who didn't follow the "more of the same" approach, and as result was not a commercial success. In hindsight Reed is now considered a major influence.

Ericsson makes the distinction between play (which is largely unstructured), deliberate practice (where you try out different approaches to explore and see what works), and work (where you are expected to perform at a high level and not make mistakes). Of these three periods of activity, the primary opportunity for creativity is going to be during the deliberate practice days. If you play too much or work too much, you may not develop anything new.

He also says that if experts don't push themselves throughout their careers and instead reach a point where they rest on their laurels and don't continue to improve, they are in a stage of "arrested development." Such a description would be applicable to anyone in a creative field who appears to have hit a plateau.

To reinforce the idea that creative people need years of training to become great, here are the results of quite a few studies.

J. R. Hayes (1981) confirmed that 10 years' experience is necessary in another domain, musical composition. He calculated an average of about 20 years from the time individuals started to study music until they first composed an outstanding piece of music. ... Those who started at ages younger than 6 years did not write their first eminent composition until 16.5 years later; those who started between ages 6 and 9 and older than 10 years of age required 22 and 21.5 years, respectively to compose their first distinguished work. ...

Long periods of necessary preparation can also be inferred for writers and scientists, although the starting point of their is more difficult to determine. ... Raskin (1936), who analyzed the 120 most important scientists and 123 most famous poets and authors in the 19th century, found that the average age at which scientists published their first work was 25.2; poets and authors published their first work at the average age of 24.2. Moreover, many years of preparation preceded first publication. The average ages at which the same individuals produced their greatest work were 35.4 for scientists and 34.3 for poets and authors. That is, on average, more than 10 years elapsed between these scientists' and authors' first work and their best work. "The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance," (Ericsson; Krampe; Tesch-Romer) Psychological Review, 1993, No. 3.

COMPOSERS
John R. Hayes looked 76 classical composers (who created more than 500 master works). He noted the time between when they began studying music and their first notable work (defined by at least five recordings of the composition in the Schwann record catalog). Out of those 500+ works, only three were composed before year ten of the composer's training, and those came in years eight and nine. "Cognitive Processes in Creativity," Handbook of Creativity, 1989.

PAINTERS
Hayes also looked at the careers of 131 painters. In every case it was at least six years from the time they started painting until they produced a notable work (defined by being reproduced in at least one of several standard histories of painting). "Cognitive Processes in Creativity," Handbook of Creativity, 1989.

POETS
Nina Wishbow studied 66 poets. None had a noteworthy poem (defined by being included in a major anthology) written earlier than five years into the poet's career. Fifty-five didn't have one until ten years into their careers. Studies of Creativity in Poets, 1988.

CONTEMPORARY FICTION WRITERS
Scott Kaufman and James Kaufman analyzed 215 contemporary fiction writers and found that on average it took 10.6 years between their first published work and their best published work, with the fewest being zero years, and the most being 45 years. The average age at first publication was 32.8 years, with the youngest being 20 and the oldest being 61. The average age for the “best” publication was 43.4 years, with the youngest being 21 and the oldest being 74. The average writer produced 10.0 works of fiction and 12.4 total works.

Perhaps relevant to today's culture is this:

... authors who were born later were more likely to debut and peak younger, and the number of years separating their debut and peak was smaller than those authors who were born earlier. This suggests that perhaps as time progresses, the gap between first and best work decreases. "Ten Years to Expertise, Many More to Greatness: An Investigation of Modern Writers," Journal of Creative Behavior, Second Quarter, 2007.

This could mean today's writers need less time to develop. Or, as the authors note, perhaps some of the writers still living have not yet produced their best works. Therefore the years between first works and best works may rise over time. On the other hand, they also note that for 17% of the writers, their first work and their best work was the same.

MODERN SONGWRITERS
Hass and Weisberg collected information on the recordings of Cole Porter and Irving Berlin songs. Each composer’s career was marked by an initially low hit ratio, followed by a substantial increase in hit ratio 10 to 20 years into their careers. "Creative development in American popular songwriters: A test of equal-odds rule," Creativity Research Journal, 2009. 21.
Also see: Development of Creative Expertise in Music: A Quantitative Analysis of the Songs of Cole Porter and Irving Berlin.

Hass, Weisberg, and Jimmy Choi studied three popular collaborative writing teams.

Two of the three teams examined (the Gershwins and Rodgers and Hart) exhibited increasing hit-ratios throughout the formative years of their careers. The Rodgers-Hammerstein team exhibited no such trend. However, when the careers of Rodgers and Hammerstein were analyzed separately, increasing trends were found for each member, and it was concluded that Rodgers and Hammerstein had developed separately. Thus, the data suggest that when the members of collaborative songwriting teams begin their careers together, the team develops creative expertise as a unit. However, if collaboration begins subsequent to individual development, further development may not be observed. "Quantitative Case-Studies in Musical Composition: The Development of Creativity in Popular-Songwriting Teams."

Weisberg concluded that the 10-year rule was evident in the collaborative partnership of Lennon and McCartney, since the duo started writing songs in 1957 and began their most creative period around 1967. Creativity: Understanding Innovation in Problem Solving, Science, Invention, and the Arts, 2006.

IMPROVISATIONAL JAZZ
Charlie Parker has been cited as someone who drew creativity from a vast repertoire of jazz formulas. According to James Patrick

Parker based his solos on the underlying chord structure, endlessly creating new melodies with no obvious resemblance to the originals. In doing so, Parker often used a process known to musicologists as centonization whereby new works are created out of short, preexisting melodic formulas. “Charlie Parker,” The Oxford Companion to Jazz, 2000.

Keep in mind that these examples are based on looking backward. We have the benefit of determining in hindsight that these were historically creative people and then to establish measurement standards after the fact. Lore Sjöberg makes a good point that the farther away we are from creativity, and the less we have to compare it to, the more it looks like art.

Let’s examine:

0 to 25 years old: Almost nothing is true art. Certainly nothing common or popular. Art is created by a few geniuses denied popular acclaim by their own uncompromising vision.

25 to 100 years old: Not everything is art, but a lot is, even some of the popular stuff. At the time, people thought they were just enjoying something fun and entertaining, but actually they were in the presence of true brilliance.

100 to 2,000 years old: Any creative work made by anyone is worth investigation, preservation and in-depth academic criticism. Every painting, poem and rustic folk song is indicative of the ineffable zeitgeist of the cultural disposition. People were surrounded by art all the time and didn’t even realize it.

2,000 to 30,000 years old: Everything is art. Not just words and pictures, but pottery and baskets and huts. Even if they just wanted to make something to boil the tannins out of their acorns, these artists were actually participating in an age-old ritual where the creative soul and utilitarian necessity united into a singular expression of their culture’s unique viewpoint. And if they scratched a little picture into the rock that meant “stand here to watch the women bathe without them seeing you,” they were the Michelangelo of their time. "Alt Text: Are Videogames Art? Time Will Tell," Wired.com, 4/23/10.

Okay, now to the realities. Yes, I think practice pays off. Musicians who play more and songwriters who write more tend to get better over time. But if it is true that musicians/artists/bands don't begin to hit their peaks until after ten years of "deliberate practice," then we've got to look at where popular music is headed:

1. Today there are fewer opportunities for pure songwriters, like Berlin and Porter, who might take decades to hit their peaks. While people can spend years writing new songs, if no one is recording them, then today's songwriters, unlike those in the past, won't have anything prove they are "experts.”

Here's a list of some of the most prolific/successful from the relatively recent past. One of them is Diane Warren, who has written hits for Elton John, Tina Turner, Barbra Streisand, Aretha Franklin, Roberta Flack, Roy Orbison, Patti LaBelle, Cher, 'N Sync, Gloria Estefan, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Reba McEntire, Whitney Houston, Enrique Iglesias, Aerosmith, Ricky Martin, Faith Hill, Celine Dion, Mary J. Blige, and LeAnn Rimes. She's written over 100 songs that have charted on Billboard. Here are some of the most recognizable.

While some think of her as having perfected the "generic power ballad" (not necessarily a desirable distinction), she has learned her craft well enough to have become very successful.

I’ve been doing this since I was 14 years old. It’s like Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers, and that theory of having 10,000 hours of experience in something. I’m like the poster girl for that — someone getting good at their craft by putting all those hours in. It took me a long time to make a living doing this. "Diane Warren: One-Woman Hit Factory," Keyboard, April 2010.

While Warren isn't comparable to Porter, Berlin, and Gershwin, the bar has gotten even lower now. Here are writers who are being called today's "superstars."

Thaddis "Kuk" Harrell, co-author of recent smashes "Umbrella" and "Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)"
Jane't Sewell-Ulepic, a co-writer behind the recent smash, "Empire State of Mind"
Ashley Gorley, the Nashville-based creator behind "You're Gonna Miss This"
"The Secret Lives of Superstar Songwriters," Digital Music News, 4/23/10.

2. With the emphasis on youth, music careers tend to be short. Unless artists/musicians start their training at age 10 so they can peak at age 20, they probably aren't going to have the opportunity to display whatever expertise they accumulate as adults.

3. Given the reduced number of music sales in today's market, if that is the criterion of success, then no one today is likely to reach anything comparable to what was achieved by popular musicians/artists of the past. So how will we decide who are today's most creative artists? What measures will we use?

4. If today's artists are going to make most of their money on tour, then when will they also have time to devote to the "deliberate practice" that is required to get them to the top of their games and keep them there? When will they have time to practice and experiment if they are touring perhaps 300 days a year?

5. Would we get better, more creative songwriters if we encourage them to listen to more genres, or are some of them right to focus very narrowly on how to write the next hit? Here's what Diane Warren says:

So a great song should transcend the genre, but it also should transcend the time period in which it was written.

... I had a lot of influences growing up. I had my Mom and Dad playing show tunes in the house, and my sister playing Elvis, Buddy Holly, and the Beatles. And then there was top-40 radio, which truly was a mix of everything. And what all those songs had in common was that they were all hits. So I got fed a diet of really great stuff. The level of writing when I grew up — if you look at the top ten in 1967, just randomly — most of those songs are still around today. Whether it’s the Beatles, or Motown, or Burt Bacharach, just in terms of craft, that was the heyday. I was lucky enough to grow up during that time. "Diane Warren: One-Woman Hit Factory," Keyboard, April 2010.

For her background, she cites diversity in pop music. Is that how pop writers should be groomed? Or should future writers look beyond that to include classical, jazz, and world music?

6. Can we create music databases that allow musicians to draw upon more pieces of music? If we want more innovative songs created in a shorter number of years, should we provide more tech tools so that aspiring songwriters and musicians don't have to learn it all themselves? Can technology eliminate the need for years of training?

Now, after all of the above research, my views haven't really changed.

While I agree that practice is important and I absolutely believe we should keep learning until we die, I'm not sure it's always possible to foresee in advance the end goal or how to get there. If you haven't put in the time, you may find ways to compensate for what you haven't already learned (e.g., put together a team to help you, find the necessary tools). Or maybe you'll find a completely new route to get where you want to go or need to be.

The 10,000 hour (or 10-year) rule is an interesting concept, but may encourage people to invest far more time in activities that turn out not to be significant to them. Sometimes those random unplanned occurrences become the more life-defining.

On the other hand, if your passions lead you to invest 10,000 hours into something anyway, you've got your training. Maybe you can do something with it.

Suzanne Lainson
@slainson on Twitter

UPDATE, 5/1/10
Since songwriters have been cited as an example of the 10,000 hours/10-year rule, I thought this was a relevant addition to the discussion:

Mr. Sondheim may be the last great songwriter, in a lineage that runs from Jerome Kern through the Gershwins to Leonard Bernstein, who pushed the Broadway musical from a brash, vaudevillian entertainment into a loftier realm. But of all of them, Mr. Sondheim went the furthest in deconstructing and reinventing a populist art form as a highbrow version of itself.

Mr. Sondheim’s music examines the entire pre-1960s tradition, from Gilbert and Sullivan and Viennese operetta, through the Gershwins’ satires, Cole Porter’s burlesque musicals and beyond. The pastiche songs of “Follies,” particularly, recycle the styles of classic show tunes, matching or outdoing their antecedents in quality while subverting their escapism. "The Unmistakable Sensibility of Sondheim," New York Times, 5/1/10.

UPDATE, 5/5/10
Here's an interview with an interesting fellow whose career path seems to have grown out of thin air, but he appears to be very good at what he does, which is to come up with fanciful or futurist vehicles and work place solutions. He became a senior analyst in the future trends department at Honda Research & Development, North America.

[Steven] Johnson, whose only art training consisted of a few classes at Yale in the 1950s, claims to have discovered his “ability” only after Roger Olmsted, editor of the Sierra Club Bulletin, asked him, in 1974, to invent recreational vehicles (RVs) that by design would satirize those that were tearing up the nation’s delicate ecosystems. Olmsted asked for 16; Johnson gave him more than 100. Those RV sketches, Johnson recalls, allowed him to discover that, “The method of turning and churning and imagining new shapes and humorous contexts for those shapes — and never-before-considered combinations of those shapes — is akin to a pleasurable activity and can go on for hours. I stop only because I tire of drawing up so many ideas — my hand becomes fatigued — and not because I run out of ideas!” "Searching for Value in Ludicrous Ideas," design mind, Issue 12.

UPDATE 6/10/10
This article discusses career paths of writers.

... an essential truth about fiction writers: They often compose their best and most lasting work when they are young. “There’s something very misleading about the literary culture that looks at writers in their 30s and calls them ‘budding’ or ‘promising,’ when in fact they’re peaking,” Kazuo Ishiguro told an interviewer last year. "How Old Can a ‘Young Writer’ Be?" New York Times, 6/9/10.

UPDATE 11/12/10
This article suggests that the very skills that make you an expert may also lock you into a certain type of thinking. The better your brain becomes at perceiving patterns within your field of expertise, the more your brain is taken over by that expertise and the less able you are to process new information. "The Cognitive Cost Of Expertise."

Will Your 10,000 Hours Be Obsolete?

2010-04-13T12:07:00.000-07:00

Several books have discussed the idea that it takes approximately 10,000 hours to become great at what you do. The message: practice is more important than innate skills. I've been following the subject for a number of years. What triggered my interest in writing a blog post about it was this recent book review:

Whatever you wish to do well, Shenk writes, you must do over and over again, in a manner involving, as Ericsson put it, “repeated attempts to reach beyond one’s current level,” which results in “frequent failures.” This is known as “deliberate practice,” and over time it can actually produce changes in the brain, making new heights of achievement possible. ... “You have to want it, want it so bad you will never give up, so bad that you are ready to sacrifice time, money, sleep, friendships, even your reputation,” he writes. “You will have to adopt a particular lifestyle of ambition, not just for a few weeks or months but for years and years and years. You have to want it so bad that you are not only ready to fail, but you actually want to experience failure: revel in it, learn from it.” "How to Be Brilliant, a Review of 'The Genius in All of Us' by David Shenk," New York Times, 3/21/10.

Like Shenk, the authors of these books reference the work of psychologist K. Anders Ericsson.

Ericcson's scholarly work is considerable (in addition to publishing numerous articles in scholarly journals, Ericcson has edited and contributed to four books on expertise, including the magisterial "Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance"). But his recent fame is due to his prominence in several popularizations: Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers: The Story of Success," Daniel Coyle's "The Talent Code: Greatness Isn't Born, It's Grown: Here's How," Geoff Colvin's "Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else," and I suspect David Shenk's optimistically-titled "The Genius in All of Us" (due to be released in 2010). "Can Anybody Be A Genius? A Combined Book Review," The Buck Stops Here, 11/14/09.

Gladwell's book has gotten the most attention. Here's an excerpt:

"In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice-skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals," writes the neurologist Daniel Levitin, "this number comes up again and again. Ten thousand hours is equivalent to roughly three hours a day, or 20 hours a week, of practice over 10 years.... No one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery." "Extract from Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers: Is there such a thing as pure genius?" The Guardian, 11/15/08.

In his blog post, "The 10,000 hours rule," Jason Kemp talks about Gladwell and provides links to some related videos. (Actually quite few people have referenced Gladwell and the 10,000 hours concept, but I thought Kemp's post was particularly interesting.)

Of course, it's not just a matter of practice. You need to have the resources to be able to practice, and then you need to have certain opportunities to do the most with that skill.

Ten thousand hours is, of course, an enormous amount of time. It's all but impossible to reach that number, by the time you're a young adult, all by yourself. You have to have parents who are encouraging and supportive. You can't be poor, because if you have to hold down a part-time job on the side to help make ends meet, there won't be enough time left over in the day. In fact, most people can really only reach that number if they get into some kind of special programme - like a hockey all-star squad - or get some kind of extraordinary opportunity that gives them a chance to put in that kind of work. "Extract from Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers: Is there such a thing as pure genius?" The Guardian, 11/15/08.

But the concept of 10,000 hours raises a lot of questions in my mind:

What if you put in all that time, and then the world has moved on? What if, when you began, everyone thought your sport or your music or your career pursuit was cool, but now it has fallen out of favor? What if you are very good at something now perceived as obsolete?

And how do you train for a career that hasn't been invented yet?

And does training year after year make sense when our world changes so quickly now?

In other words, how do you know, in advance, where to spend your 10,000 hours?

Let me backtrack a bit and say that I got interested in the "10,000 hours" concept when I was writing about sports careers. There is tremendous pressure on young athletes to begin specialization at an early age to rack up those hours. This paper - "To sample or to specialize?" - gives a good overview of what we currently know about grooming elite athletes. Unless an athlete is in a sport where the world's best may be in their teens (e.g., figure skating, gymnastics), early specialized training confers no advantage and in fact may lead to increased dropout.

According to Jason Gulbin, who studied elite Australian athletes, ten years of training isn't necessarily required, particularly among athletes who had been in sports, but not in the ones they ended up in.

The frequency distribution of the number of years required from first ever experience in their scholarship sport to achieving senior national representation (i.e. expertise), revealed that 70% of athletes required less than 10 years to achieve expertise. However, 1 in 4 athletes (28%) had achieved national representation in ≤ 4 years. In comparison with those achieving expertise in 10 years or more, these ‘quick-developers’ were characterised by transferring relatively late into their scholarship sport (17.1 ± 4.5 years), had experienced a greater variety of sports before specialisation, commenced at higher levels of competition, and seldom oscillated between junior and senior competition pathways. Thus, for a large proportion of the Australian high performance sporting system, the 10 year developmental ‘rule of thumb’ does not apply, and furthermore, accelerated development can occur with late specialisation. "Why Deliberate Practice isn’t Enough."

Here are several other resources which suggest experience in a variety of sports, rather than 10,000 hours in one sport, prepares athletes for elite competition.

The Myth of Early Specialization

Early Specialization in Youth Sport: a requirement for adult expertise?

Sport-Specific Practice and the Development
of Expert Decision-Making in Team Ball Sports

Now, moving on to music training, Robert Maddocks writes in "Getting There: 10 Years or 10,000 Hours" that there are variables other than 10,000 hours which factor into success. Classical music takes years of practice, but rock music generally does not. And if you are good at what you do, but the world isn't receptive to it, then you may toil in obscurity. In terms of achievement, he feels focus comes first, because it allows you to put in whatever hours are required.

Seth Godin's theory is that it depends on the field. When you're embarking on something new, you don't have a lot of competition.

For me, though, some of the 10k analysis doesn't hold up. The Doors (or Devo or the Bee Gees) for example, didn't play together for 10,000 hours before they invented a new kind of rock. If the Doors had encountered significantly more competition for their brand of music, it's not clear that they could have gotten away with succeeding as quickly as they did. Hey, Miley Cyrus wasn't even 10,000 hours awake before she became a hit. "10,000 hours," Seth Godin's Blog, 12/29/08.

Bill Wilkie describes his experience around well-trained musicians, a sentiment I've seen expressed about other music schools as well.

I attended the New England Conservatory for a few years. The freshman class was made up of blindingly good kids who wowed everyone back home. ... The problem was that most of the young ones, including me, sounded like skilled typists or impersonators. Few became real artists .... "10,000 Hours to Mastery?!?" Escape From Excellence, 5/9/08.

Moving on to science, in this article, "Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, 'Outliers,' and the 10,000 hour rule," Michael Nielsen gives four examples of significant discoveries (quantum mechanics, the structure of DNA, algorithmic information theory, the cause of extinction of dinosaurs) made by people who didn't have 10,000 hours in these fields.

Similarly Sabrina Mach and James Page - in "Utopians & Idealists: Who Can Handle Innovation?" - raise the possibility that in times of change having those 10,000 hours in an established field might turn out to be a waste. When you need a new way of thinking perhaps being an expert in an older way of thinking may hold you back.

So in at least three fields (sports, music, and science), some people are not accepting the 10,000 hours at face value. Here are two articles that seek to define more carefully what practice can give you.

This author says that 10,000 hours will give you enough experience to know when to break the rules. There's a nice chart that compares levels of training to levels of order and chaos. The musician, for example, who has played for years is less likely to be thrown by unexpected problems at a show.

10, 100, 1000, 10000 hours; a couple of days, a couple of weeks, half a year, five years; trainee, apprentice, journeyman, master. A useful rule-of-thumb to describe four different and distinct layers of skill. "10, 100, 1000, 10000," Thinking side-wise, 7/12/09.

Aubrey C. Daniels points out in "Expert Performance: Apologies to Dr. Ericsson, but it is not 10,000 hours of deliberate practice" the key appears not just to practice the same thing over and over again, but to try enough different options to develop responses to fit whatever circumstances arise.

To be fair, Ericsson said the same thing. Here is a quote from from Philip E. Ross in “The Expert Mind” for Scientific American.

Ericsson argues that what matters is not experience per se but “effortful study,” which entails continually tackling challenges that lie just beyond one’s competence. That is why it is possible for enthusiasts to spend tens of thousands of hours playing chess or golf or a musical instrument without ever advancing beyond the amateur level and why a properly trained student can overtake them in a relatively short time.

Even the novice engages in effortful study at first, which is why beginners so often improve rapidly in playing golf, say, or in driving a car. But having reached an acceptable performance–for instance, keeping up with one’s golf buddies or passing a driver’s exam– most people relax. Their performance then becomes automatic and therefore impervious to further improvement. In contrast, experts-in-training keep the lid of their mind’s box open all the time, so that they can inspect, criticize and augment its contents and thereby approach the standard set by leaders in their fields. "Quality, Continuous Improvement, and the Expert Mind," Quality and Innovation, 2/24/09.

Okay, now having injected some shades of grey into what is sometimes portrayed as a black-and-white situation, I'd like look what the 10,000 hours concept means moving forward.

There seem to be at least three points to contemplate.

1. Some of us are putting 10,000 hours into something, not necessarily with any particular goal in mind, but which will turn out to be useful. Take gaming, for example.

So, consider this really interesting statistic. It was recently published by a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University. The average young person today in a country with a strong gamer culture will have spent 10,000 hours playing online games, by the age of 21. Now 10,000 hours is a really interesting number for two reasons. First of all, for children in the United States 10,080 hours is the exact amount of time you will spend in school from fifth grade to high school graduation if you have perfect attendance.

... And so, now what we're looking at is an entire generation of young people who are virtuoso gamers. "Jane McGonigal: Gaming can make a better world," TED, February 2010.

McGonigal believes gaming will translate into skills that can be applied to solve the world's problems. Here's a summation of those skills.

Urgent optimisim – a belief that you will ultimately be successful, even if you experience many failures.
Social fabric – a sense of trust that others will help you.
Blissful productivity – a desire to work hard and purposefully.
Epic meaning – an understanding that one is individually capable of changing the world. "10,000 Hours of Gaming," TalentedApps, 2/17/10.

2. We don't necessarily have to put in 10,000 hours while we're young. Daniel Rasmus suggests that lifelong learning will turn out to serve us better.

As the world changes, as technology and ecology shift before our eyes, as political situations and business models, come and go rapidly, we all become amateurs eventually. Our learning, our formal learning, becomes relatively meaningless against what we have taught ourselves and learned from life. ... [the model will be] the person who strives to add value based on their talent despite the lack of interest in formal studies in an area, a lack of aptitude for an approach or technique -- but with a keen insight into problem solving that may in fact, be innovative, too innovative perhaps, and too time consuming to be supported in an academic world driven by the productivity of publication. "Genius At Work," Windows Live, 5/8/07.

He also says that we might be too narrowly defining what expertise/genius is. A person who can discern new ideas via pattern recognition (a skill which may develop from multidisciplinary training rather than from specialized training) may be more important to society than someone who narrowly excels.

Problem solving ... is not the only representation of genius. Collaboration is right. Obsession is right. So are many other attributes, like pattern recognition, building consensus, creating relationships, and incremental and purposeful innovation. Let us not be so narrow in our definition of genius because with change we can not foretell what kind of genius we will need so as we do with learning, pushing toward life long learning, we should be pushing for life long pursuit of insight, because we never know who, or where or what may be needed as the world's values and economics and technologies shift around us.

3. Our concept of expertise may be changing. Charles Leadbeatter believes that much innovation will come from people who aren't perceived as experts, but who have devoted time to their passions.

Longer healthy life spans will allow people in their forties and fifties to start taking up Pro-Am activities as second careers. Rising participation in education will give people skills to pursue those activities. New media and technology enable Pro-Ams to organize. "Amateur Revolution," Fast Company, 10/1/04.

My takeaway from all of this is that if you have focus and are well-trained (either by others or self-taught) you'll have valuable tools to draw upon. But doggedly training in one particular area may result in great skill in that area, but without the flexibility to see the future and to adjust. The 10,000 hours concept, while useful in stressing the importance of hard work to success, seems most applicable in fields where achievements are already well-defined. If you want to be a great golfer, classical musician, or chess player, you're going to start by practicing what others have already learned.

But for future innovations, you might be better served by drawing upon a mixture of skills that you acquired from broad-based learning.

You might invent something new because you pull together ideas and skills in unusual ways rather than practicing what is well-estabished.

Your 10,000 hours may have come from a variety of activities rather than from just one.

You may not know which of your 10,000 hours will be useful to you until you are already in the middle of your expertise.

As Jason Kemp writes:

My first year at university was 1977, when I studied Vietnamese Politics (very current at the time) and eventually law, arts and business – however computer technology changed my life in early ’80’s and that was something I could not have studied even if I had wanted to. Fortunately – being a creative generalist by inclination I was able to leverage a very wide range of experiences into a new emerging sector. "Creativity & Innovation Linked," thinking: relating- celebrating :-), 6/16/07.

Suzanne Lainson
@slainson on Twitter

UPDATE 8/16/10

Beyond the 10,000 Hour Rule

The messiness of Hamming’s speech contrasts with the rational cleanliness of another popular model of becoming excellent: the 10,000 hour rule. ...

This rule reduces achievement to quantity: the secret to becoming great is to do a great amount of work. What Hamming emphasizes, however, is that quantity alone is not sufficient. ... Those 10,000 hours have to be invested in the right things, and as the disjointed nature of Hamming’s talk underscores, the question of what are the right things is slippery and near impossible to nail down with confidence.

In other words, becoming excellent is not the result of a well-behaved tallying of hours, it instead emerges out of a swamp of roiling ambiguity. If you’re not ready for this reality, he implies, you’re unlikely to last long on a path toward greatness. "Beyond the 10,000 Hour Rule: Richard Hamming and the Messy Art of Becoming Great," Study Hacks, 8/9/10.

Hypercompetition, Scarcity, and the Economics of Music

2010-03-22T12:30:00.000-07:00

I saw this last week and decided to pull together a blog post on several topics I've been thinking about:

About 1 million design students in China, compared to about 40,000 in the U.S. Implication: your competition for jobs is about to expand exponentially. Welcome to the flat world. ...

The supply is currently outstripping demand, so compensation for things like logo design is going to be low. "Crowdsourcing & Disruption Event at Pratt: Realities & Denial," eyecube, 3/11/10.

And also this:

There are too many films out there, there are too many filmmakers. "SxSW: Nobody Wants to Watch Your Film: Realities of Online Film Distribution," Magnet Media, 3/14/10.

Because of the Internet and global competition, we're seeing declining income in a number of creative fields (e.g., design, writing, music, video). People are competing for these jobs even when there is little or no payment.

RU Sirius, former editor of Mondo 2000 summed up the problem at a recent Net 2.0 conference in Amsterdam: “Get people to work for free.” That has essentially become the motto of the post-scarcity economy. "NET 2.0: Post-Scarcity Economics and the problem with Google," Medialternatives, 2/2/08.

One line of thinking is that if you give away your digital content, you'll gain exposure, build an audience, and then sell "scarce" goods and services. Here are two posts on the subject:

The Technium: Better Than Free

The Grand Unified Theory On The Economics Of Free

While I am not going to argue the rightness or wrongness of "free" (it's already a reality, so I don't think there is much to be gained by exploring the concept here), I am skeptical that there are a lot scarcities to sell. At least not in the areas related to creative content and to human labor. Pretty much anything you offer as "scarce" in these areas can and will be duplicated. Once people see there is money to be made, they will begin offering their own versions until the price is driven down. This is what is now commonly referred to as hypercompetition.

You may think your business offers rare and valuable goods and services. But the chances are that, somewhere, a recent entrant or potential competitor is preparing to do something similar, for a lower price. As the author says: "Everything becomes a commodity eventually." "A more virulent form of hypercompetition," FT.com, 12/16/09.

Here's a definition:

Hypercompetition:
A situation in which there is a lot of very strong competition between companies, markets are changing very quickly, and it is easy to enter a new market, so that it is not possible for one company to keep a competitive advantage for a long time.

And two more explorations on the subject:

From our financial models, such as using net present value analysis to value projects, to our investment models, which presume more or less predictable and long life-spans for given business activities, we have built a lot of operating frameworks on the idea that our lines of business will be around for a while. And not only around, but profitable.

All this began to change in the early 1990's, when a number of scholars, such as my colleague Ian MacMillan and his co-author Rich D'Aveni, started talking about a phenomenon they called "Hypercompetition." In hyper-competitive environments, to paraphrase Hobbes, the life of a competitive advantage is nasty, brutish and short. In other words, advantages don't last for very long before competitive entry, imitation and matching erode their edge, or customers move on, or the environment changes in such a way that the advantage becomes irrelevant. "Competitive Advantage Is Fleeting (And It's Okay to Admit It)," Harvard Business Review, June 2009.

"Welcome to Hypercompetition—Competitive Advantage at its Fastest"

Barriers of entry have kept some competitors out, but technology is reducing some of those. For example:

The tools of factory production, from electronics assembly to 3-D printing, are now available to individuals, in batches as small as a single unit. Anybody with an idea and a little expertise can set assembly lines in China into motion with nothing more than some keystrokes on their laptop. A few days later, a prototype will be at their door, and once it all checks out, they can push a few more buttons and be in full production, making hundreds, thousands, or more. They can become a virtual micro-factory, able to design and sell goods without any infrastructure or even inventory; products can be assembled and drop-shipped by contractors who serve hundreds of such customers simultaneously. "In the Next Industrial Revolution, Atoms Are the New Bits," Wired, January 2010.

The revolution that is brewing now will get us much closer to another seemingly impossible Star Trek technology: the Replicator. You won't be able (for some time) to press a button and get a whole meal synthesized on the fly, but we are at the stage where a short time after pressing the button you can have a wide variety of objects appear magically. These range from tiny, fully functional gears to large, colorful pieces of art and cover materials as broad as glass, ceramics, metal and plastic. Yes, glass, ceramics and metal! "Communicator: Done. Replicator: Next. The Future of Making Stuff," usv.com, 3/22/10.

The music industry used to have significant barriers of entry, but now that everyone can cheaply record and distribute music, the flood gates have opened. There are still some barriers (e.g., getting on broadcast radio), but artists are being told there are many opportunities for them these days. Sure, they may have to give away their recorded music to get some attention, but to make money they can offer fans goods and services that aren't easily duplicated.

However, I'm saying that just about everything an artist or band can offer can be duplicated:

Develop some interesting merchandise, and it will be copied.

Representatives for the jam-band Phish are due in federal court this afternoon to argue that it should be allowed to stop bootleggers from selling T-shirts, jackets, bumper stickers and other merchandise bearing its trademarked name during its upcoming reunion tour. ...

The issue isn't necessarily about money, the lawsuit says. The band says the unauthorized merchandise sales "threaten" the band's reputation because it relinquishes control over the quality and appearance of the merchandise, according to the suit. "Phish in court this afternoon to block bootleg merchandise," The Virginian-Pilot, 3/5/09.

Create a great live act, and that can be copied as well.

... the sheer number and variety of tribute bands has exploded, branching out to modern-era acts such as Pearl Jam, the Dave Matthews Band, and even the Arctic Monkeys. "Tribute bands are music to fans’ ears, wallets," The Boston Globe, 3/6/10.

Even relationships aren't perceived as scarce. While it's nice to think that artists/bands will hang on to their fans for life, the reality is we're a society where people too often change friends, even spouses, when they see someone better. Toss in commitment phobia and you have a situation where relationships aren't a sure thing.

Given all of the above, I question the usefulness in talking about scarcities as a music business strategy. In addition, much of what we buy has little to do with scarcity anyway. Sometimes it just comes down to being in the right place at the right time. For example, if we want a cup of coffee, and we see coffee vendors on all four sides of the street, the reason we pick one over the other isn't a scarcity issue. Similarly, if every girl on our block is selling Girl Scout cookies, we may end up buying from whomever comes to our door first. Or maybe we'll buy a box from each one of them.

Buying behavior is much more complicated than saying people will pay a premium for scarcity. Here are a few resources that outline the many factors which determine why we buy what we buy:

Factors Which Influence Consumer Choice. If you want the PowerPoint version, go here.

Buyer Behaviour: Stimulus-Response Model.

The Black Box Model of Consumer Behavior.

So I think talking about "selling scarcity" can be the wrong strategy. As I have already mentioned, hypercompetition suggests that as soon as you have an idea, someone else will copy it and drive down the price. For musicians, that means being on an endless treadmill trying to find scarcities to sell. As soon as you come up with something fans will pay for, many other bands and artists will try it too. There will be a glut.

You may make money in music, but I doubt that offering scarce goods and services will be the key. For virtually every option that an artist/band offers, there already is or will be someone else offering something similar. And it won't take much effort for fans and potential fans to find it. All anyone has to say is, "I want ... " and the marketplace will provide it, often in multiple ways. Think of the various "saleables" that artists/bands currently offer (e.g., entertainment, merchandise, community, engagement, celebrity access) and there are equivalents both within and outside of music.

We're running out of scarcity. ...

It seems as though once a category becomes successful, the headlong rush to knock it off is stronger (and quicker) than it ever was before. ...

While there are almost half a million lawyers practicing in the United States today, there are (gasp!) more than 125,000 in school right now. ...

The same thing is true for doctors, Web sites, T-shirt shops, sushi restaurants, thumbtack manufacturers, and brands of blank CD-ROM disks. ...

If it's remotely digital (like music), then it's easy to mimic. And if it's easy to mimic, someone wins if they can knock off the original--the sooner the better. When someone starts to sell exactly what you sell but for half the price, how long does your good-service, first-mover, nice-person advantage last? "The Scarcity Shortage," Seth Godin's Blog, 8/27/07.

And even the fallback argument, that talent is scarce and people will pay for access to it, doesn't really hold water because making money in music and having the most talent do not necessarily go together.

SUCCESS = SOME TALENT + LUCK
GREAT SUCCESS = SOME TALENT + A LOT OF LUCK
Nobel prize-winning economist Daniel Kahneman quoted in "FORMULAE FOR THE 21ST CENTURY," Edge.org, 10/13/07.

Godin acknowledges there might be a few scarcities, but even those may not confer a lasting advantage.

So what's scarce now? Respect. Honesty. Good judgment. Long-term relationships that lead to trust. None of these things guarantee loyalty in the face of cut-rate competition, though.

Some people are even suggesting that we're surrounded by so much abundance that now we want less. J. Walker Smith, president of Yankelovich Inc., lays it out in an article, and then Mike Heronime, Partner/Strategic Services Director, Numantra, expands upon the idea in a presentation.

Enough of Too Much

Marketing to Consumers in a Post-Abundance Economy

However, these models tend to benefit people and companies that provide filters rather than artists trying to sell their music and music-related products. It would be a bit like having a musician say, "Pay me to go away."

So let's jump ahead and envision a world where there's more stuff than any of us can consume. Imagine a scenario where people are making a ton of music and art, but there are few economic transactions. So how do artists (or anyone for that matter) make a living in the post-scarcity society?

In the post-scarcity world, technological advances will facilitate decreasing costs until conceivably almost everything is “free” to the consumer. Scarcity will no longer exist in this world, and, without scarcity, the concept of charging a price to consumers as a means of generating revenue will be unworkable. The post-scarcity world will put tremendous pressure on current business models, potentially rendering them irrelevant and obsolete in the future. If traditional businesses do not adapt to this emerging “free” world, many of the strong, traditional organizations of the early twenty-first century will cease to exist over the next 50 years. "The Post-Scarcity World of 2050-2075"

If products are no longer scarce, does this mean that the only jobs left will be service positions? Are there enough service positions for everyone? Or do people do the services that they find fulfilling, leaving others to lounge around and/or be non-productively creative?

I'm not a regular Burning Man attendee -- the schedule rarely works out -- but I have gone. My first time wandering the playa, visiting the various camps offering gifts of art, services and/or more physical forms of entertainment, I was struck with a realization: this is one model of what a post-nanotech world might look like. Assume your material needs for food, water, shelter and toys were met, and that you no longer needed to work; what might result is a world where creativity, mutuality, and the gift economy ruled... or a world where sex, drugs and sleeping until 2pm ruled. Or, as with Burning Man, both. "Abundance, Scarcity and Beta-Testing Tomorrow," Open the Future, 9/12/06.

How are we to survive as producers and creators in an age, in which value is no longer determined by scarcity, but rather the accumulation of bits and bytes, the 1s and Os that describe information?

... We figure out a system of revenue sharing, in which the exchange of information is granted value. ...

One day we will awake to find the proverbial Google cheque in the mail. It will be a dividend in which all the clicks on the internet have been divided by the total population of the world and squared with the amount of money earned by the earth’s service providers. The legend will say: You are user # 51 298 123 187 here is you ten-cents (US$) for the 8kb of data we actually siphoned off your site. We know its yours, because the IP number says it’s yours.

The result, I predict, will be a practical and infinitely rewarding utopia in which everybody would have a guaranteed income, courtesy of Google Corporation. This is the kind of error, which could make life worth living. "NET 2.0: Post-Scarcity Economics and the problem with Google," Medialternatives, 2/2/08.

The above scenarios, where EVERYTHING is abundant, are still in the future. But the world where music (and everything associated with it) is abundant is already headed our way. The oft-proposed solutions, based on some sort of scarcity, are going to be hard to sustain. So I suggest we look beyond that.

Suzanne Lainson
@slainson on Twitter

UPDATE 4/4/10
This article says that there are now so many photos online available for licensing that the price paid per photo has gone down significantly.
For Photographers, the Image of a Shrinking Path

UPDATE 7/14/10
This article talks about how museums sometimes pay a great deal of money for something that turns out to be fake. The value isn't in the object itself, but in the perceived artist. Therefore, if you can produce a copy and convince someone it is real, they may pay you the same amount as if it is real.
Testing Art for Authenticity at London’s National Gallery

UPDATE 10/17/10
I mentioned in the post that as a society we will even replace personal relationships if someone better comes along. Here's a recent article on the same subject.

[Writes sociologist Eva Illouz in Cold Intimacies,] "Romantic relations are not only organized within the market, but have themselves become commodities produced on an assembly line, to be consumed fast, efficiently, cheaply, and in great abundance.” In other words, as dating (or ersatz love) has migrated to the internet, it has undergone the same changes as everything else that has moved online: it has been remade by the ethic of convenience into something more solipsistic and disposable. "Love Worth Fighting For," The New Inquiry, 9/30/10.

Everything Is for Sale

2010-03-09T11:38:00.000-08:00

I went to a music industry networking event on Thursday and one of the people there wondered why bands aren't selling tickets to sound checks. He mentioned that some venues are now selling VIP backstage passes.

So I began to think what is and isn't for sale these days and if there are limits to what can or should be sold.

Here are some music-related examples of what extra money can and does buy:

PRIVATE PARTIES

The volume of business in that rarefied sector has surged dramatically in recent years. It's now quietly commonplace for A-list stars to sing to middle-aged billionaires as they blow out candles.

"You have a lot of people who want to celebrate their 40th or 50th birthday party and have someone there whose music meant a great deal to them during a part of their life," [Robert Norman, who heads the corporate and private events division for Creative Artists Agency] said. "They have the money, and if they are willing to spend enough of it, they can get the Rolling Stones. Their wives might also say, 'I love Green Day, and I want them for the 30th birthday party.' You can make that happen these days."

The notion of Grammy-winning artists moonlighting as wedding singers at the peak of their careers would have been scoffed at a decade ago. But times and taboos change. Now, according to Norman, it's rare to find an artist who won't at least peruse the offer sheet. "You too can rent a rock star," Los Angeles Times, 1/11/07.

John Wesley Harding: 20 Reasons Why A Private Concert By Me Is Worth $5,000

EXCLUSIVE CONCERTS

For the exorbitant price tag, ticket buyers will get the chance to see Prince, Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds, Billy Joel, James Taylor and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers in separate shows during July and August in an "intimate' outdoor setting." "Only in the Hamptons: a $15,000 Rock Concert," ABC News, 7/12/07.

FANTASY MUSIC CAMPS

Musicians are also offering non-music packages as a way to generate extra money and sometimes attention. The artist who has gotten the most publicity for doing this is Josh Freese, who has sold lunch dates and trips to Disneyland.

Another variation are the VIP packages are being offered by artists, venues, and events. A few examples:

Moody Blues VIP packages
Rock The Earth! VIP packages for Flyleaf
Britney Spears VIP package
Crossroads Guitar Festival VIP Packages Available From American Express

Here's a company, All Access Today, that will put together VIP packages for artists.

Not all artists and venues offer these packages, though. One reason is the recession.

It also makes sense that VIP packages would be on their way out. Paying a couple hundred bucks for preferential treatment seems strange at a time when all signs point to more cautious spending. "The big ballers just don't have the money to come out and drop $500 on bottle service any more," says [Travis Hellyer, who handles talent for Mezzanine], who has had to adjust offers to touring acts based on a drop in VIP sales. "Tough economic times hit Yoshi's, VIPs, and your CD collection," SF Weekly, 12/10/08.

(On the other hand, Rolling Stone says VIP packages are doing well. But the magazine only cited major acts.)

"VIP Tour Packages In Demand, Despite Slumping Economy"
"How to Rock Like a VIP: Five Pricey Packages Competing for Summer Tour Bucks"

Another reason why you may not see a VIP package is if there is no financial benefit to the artists/bands and therefore they don't agree to it.

Although most VIP deals sell access to bands, the offers usually don't have an impact on how much money a group makes. Sometimes artists, promoters or venues split the extra cash. But most headliners work for a guaranteed amount that the venue has to pay, regardless of how many tickets it sells. Typically, the VIP ticket just helps the promoter reach that amount. "VIP FTW!: How bands are using VIP packages to give fans more bang for their buck," St. Louis Music, 9/23/09.

In some cases VIP packages fall short because the people who have the money to spend on them want more than just a meet-and-greet. They actually want to have some serious face time with the stars.

We used to include in our definition of access places you couldn’t normally gain entrance to. VIP access to a major sporting event, for example, used to sell fine on its own merits. But even those types of lots have lost their allure, if the buyer isn’t sure that they’ll be building a relationship while they attend it. "Sell Relationships Not Stuff at Your Fundraising Auction," Reynolds & Buckley Fundraising Blog, 11/3/09.

Okay, so now I have established areas of music where selling access is pretty common. But is there a line beyond which one shouldn't sell access?

Sometimes celebrities will do for charity what they might not be comfortable doing just to raise money for themselves. Here are three examples of "celebrity access for charity."

Clothes Off Our Back: Celebrity Clothing Auctions
charitybuzz | Celebrity Experiences
NIN's Trent Reznor Raises More Than $645k for Fan in Need

(In case you want to know which celebrities are most successful in helping to raise money for good causes, check here.)

(And, as a cautionary tale, here's an article about someone who got carried away at a charity auction: "I blew our £27,000 life savings on dinner with Neil Diamond.")

In fields outside of entertainment and sports, selling access is sometimes frowned upon. For example, while in politics donations often come with invitations to special events where the donors can hang out with politicians and the celebrities who support them, the practice has raised many concerns. Here's an example of another type of VIP offering that was aborted because of controversy.

Washington Post Publisher Katharine Weymouth yesterday canceled plans for a series of policy dinners at her home after learning that marketing fliers offered corporate underwriters access to Post journalists, Obama administration officials and members of Congress in exchange for payments as high as $250,000. "Washington Post Publisher Cancels Planned Policy Dinners After Outcry," Washington Post, 7/3/09.

The stakes aren't so high in the music business, so presumably selling access to those with money won't trigger the same objections. However, are there situations where musicians have or might cross a line? Where does good business end and tackiness begin? If you have an opinion, please share in the comments section.

I'll leave you with this.

So just wanted to keep you all updated on my open house Garage Sale! There's so much stuff there that I can't even go through them all! I don't have time! The ONLY thing I'm taking with me from that house is my Piano and my 2 flatscreen TV's. Everything else is for sale. From High end dresses, to super sexy shoes, stilletos, to a refrigerator, to my washer and dryer, my California King size Bed INCLUDING the bedframe, lamps, personal love letters, I mean, pretty much EVERYTHING is for sale.

I WILL ALSO BE AT THE GARAGE SALE TO MEET EVERYONE THAT GETS A CHANCE TO COME INSIDE! "TILA TEQUILA OPEN HOUSE GARAGE SALE MARCH 7TH," Tila's Hot Spot, 2/28/10.

Suzanne Lainson
@slainson on Twitter

UPDATE, 4/8/10

[Gang of Four] really went off the deep end with their reward for fans who donate £45 — along with a book showing “ceramic tiles depicting the last 40 years of world history” created by band members and “a book of drawings of our emotions,” 500 “Ultimate Content Cans” will contain vials of blood....

Let’s hope GoF meet their funding goals before they start selling toenail clippings and old retainers, too. "Gang of Four Sells Vials of Blood to Fans to Fund Album," Paste Magazine, 4/8/10.

UPDATE, 4/15/10

Comin' to see the Vandals tonight in Anaheim w/Bad Religion? I'm going to be selling my CD out the back of my station wagon tonight from 7-7:30 on the NE corner of Chapman and Harbor in the Mega Shoe Factory/Del Taco parking lot. Come say hi and buy a CD (I might be selling other bands CD's and some clothes too. Maybe some energy bars?) Facebook | Josh Freese, 4/15/10.

UPDATE, 4/18/10

Paying someone like Gotti, Kardashian or Snooki four or five figures to step foot inside a garishly decorated club may seem like a rip-off. But C-listers are considerably cheaper than hiring the bigger-name musicians who used to pack clubs. Doing some quick math, [Andrea Hayes, an entertainment broker] adds up the cost of music: fat performance fees, expensive sound systems and needy entourages. "Reality show stars cost less." ...

One other difference between hiring a musical act and a fameseeking reality star: a certain amount of humiliation is part of the package. "We paid [Snooki] for three hours but I actually had to ask her to leave after two hours," [George] Fox says. "She was sweating so hard on the dance floor that her spray tan bled on my girlfriend's $300 Ed Hardy tank top." "Inside the Bizarre World of Reality TV Nightclub Appearances," Gawker, 4/18/10.

UPDATE 11/10/10
I'm just getting around to adding this, but here's an article exploring the idea of VIP tickets: "Are VIP ticket packages good or bad for fans?"

Art and Conversations about Art

2010-03-03T12:40:00.000-08:00

In the last few days I've

met with a musician I used to work with so we could get caught up on what was happening in our professional and personal lives,
had a meeting with a group of people I am working with to discuss new forms of artist funding,
been monitoring what's been happening in the world of music and the arts,
have been commenting about music on a variety of blogs hosted by people other than myself.

Add to the mix a rather animated discussion going on at Amanda Palmer's blog about her latest project (Evelyn Evelyn) which has triggered comments from her about what it means to be an artist today (including what it means to be engaged with and accountable to fans). And a discussion over at Music Think Tank on "elaborate plans."

All of the above led me to jot down some ideas about making art and talking about making art, which I view from two perspectives: as a person who creates (I've been a professional writer for 30 years) and as a person who deals with people who create (musicians).

Over the last year, I phased out much of my work with individual bands/artists and have instead been focusing on the future of the music business as a whole. I still am approached by artists wanting help, but I haven't jumped back into it other to lend a hand on some short-term projects.

The primary reason is that I don't have the time. The secondary reason is that I've "been-there-done-that." But this last week it occurred to me that there's a third reason. My day-to-day conversations about music are now much more interesting.

When I was working with individual musicians, my conversations revolved around practical issues: booking, PR, mailing lists, ordering merchandise, touring, and so on. I volunteered to do much of it because I wanted it to get done. And I have no regrets doing what amounted to office work. It's absolutely the best way to understand the music business, especially in these days of DIY artists. However, doing all of that didn't come with an easy way to connect with musicians at a creative level. Many of them express themselves primarily through music. Which means if you aren't co-writing or playing music with them, you live in separate worlds, even if you are working alongside them. (The same thing happens to non-musical boyfriends, girlfriends, and spouses. They live with musicians and yet often find themselves leading separate lives because they aren't sharing a creative experience.)

In contrast, after I rejoined the writing world, and started tapping into conversations about music, theater, media, culture, and technology, I connected with people who wanted to talk about creativity and innovation. Noteworthy are the artists who get us thinking not only about their "product" (e.g., visual arts, film, music, theater, design) which they are usually hoping to sell, but also their process. Unlike those who hate to blog, these communicative artists have enough introspection to be cognizant of what they are doing as creative people, have the ability to write down those thoughts, and have the necessary social skills to engage others in the discussion. They may even have a sense of purpose, not just to create a work of art, but also to create a synergistic community.

Pre-Internet, if you didn't know artists personally, there were limited options to find out what they thought. Maybe you could read a profile in a magazine or see one on television. Perhaps you could take classes or workshops if they offered them. And even if you got that far, rarely did you get the chance to have an on-going dialogue with them. But now blogs, and in some cases Twitter, have opened up the discussions to many more of us. Here's the perfect example, Jerry Saltz. He's the art critic of New York magazine. His art is writing about art. In the past, his work appeared on paper, but more recently he has also moved into a more interactive medium.

In the year or so since, Mr. Saltz’s Facebook page has become a phenomenon, having undergone an unlikely, organic transformation that turned it from an inconsequential personal profile into a highly trafficked, widely read discussion board about the art world. Populated by dedicated and predominantly serious-minded artists, curators, gallerists and assorted art-world denizens—many of whom check the page compulsively and post their thoughts multiple times a day—the page has become home to a vibrant community and an essential extension of Mr. Saltz’s practice as an art critic. ...

“I find it a pleasure and a thrill,” he said. “It’s exciting to be in this room with 5,000 people. It’s like the Cedar Bar for me, or Max’s Kansas City, neither of which I was ever in and probably wasn’t cool enough to be in. Now I get to kind of be one of the barmaids in this place, to put an idea in the air and see what happens.” "The Many Friends of Jerry Saltz," The New York Observer, 2/16/10.

My first post about artists blogging about being artists came out a few months ago. Taking those thoughts a step further, I want to link to six blogs which I think are good examples of conversational communities. They aren't all written by artists, but what they share in common are high quality posts with high quality comments.

Amanda Palmer The best musician blog that I've seen.

Monitor Mix Blog This is a blog on the NPR site by Carrie Brownstein, a member of the rock band Sleater-Kinney. She covers a variety of topics, some focused on creating music, some on music business, and some about listening to music. Here are a few posts to check out.

Jerry Saltz These are the Facebook notes cited in the above quote. They should be viewable to you even if you aren't his Facebook friend.

Music Think Tank One of the best music blogs that I know for fostering discussions about music (both by musicians and by music industry people).

Nathan Bransford - Literary Agent I just discovered this. It's directed to writers, so it's not surprising that there is a big community of commenters who express themselves well.

A VC A non-music blog by venture capitalist Fred Wilson. It's noteworthy for its active and intelligent group of commenters. Here are a few posts from his blog that deal with art, culture, and music:

Suzanne Lainson
@slainson on Twitter

Five Degrees of Separation in Music Income

2010-02-16T11:38:00.000-08:00

After reading too many posts by non-musicians about how musicians should give their recorded music away for free and then make their money selling something else, I decided to create a "degrees of separation" chart. If you create music and also have an income stream from something, you are likely to fall somewhere along this continuum.

At one end, you make music and profit directly from it. And at the other end, you make music and don't make any money from it. Both of those options, and everything that falls in-between, are acceptable.

If you look at your two goals (to make music and to make enough money to pay your bills), you can combine them into a variety of different ways. Ask yourself (1) what allows you the most time to make the music you want to make and (2) what allows you to make the most money. What mix of skills can you bring to your career planning which will provide you the optimum level of creative activity and income?

And if you have a spouse and kids, you've also got to factor in those obligations. Maybe you would love to travel the country to expand your fan base, but if you aren't making enough money to take your family along, you may find the sacrifice is too great. So between music, income, and personal goals, you've got to combine them in some mix that works best for you. More than likely, you'll compromise somewhere, but that's what this blog post is about. It's okay to compromise. Most people do.

Here's my chart:

No degree of separation: Sell your music.
This includes selling your recorded music, performing live, working as a studio musician, and so on. You are being paid directly as a musician.

One degree of separation: Sell stuff related to your music.
A lot of people talk about this as a way to make a living in today's music environment. The idea is that your music will make you a brand. Then you'll use that brand to sell goods and services around your music. If you are popular enough and good enough at marketing, this might work for you.

Here are two examples:

Jimmy Buffett’s Business Empire

Sammy Hagar's Tequila Dreams

Two degrees of separation: Use your existing music to sell other people's stuff.
Using your music for marketing doesn't have to be limited to items you're selling directly to fans. After all, a lot of musicians don't want to bother with developing a line of products to sell. An alternative can be letting your music sell another company's product. Often what happens is that you have a song already out, the company likes it, and you make a deal. But you could also approach a company and work out a partnership where you provide the music and they provide the goods and services to sell.

This level of music income covers everything from licensing your music to having corporate sponsors. But in each case, you've already written the music for your own use and then you use it to market someone else's goods and services.

Some examples:

Olympics GM Commerical with Brandi Carlile

"Bacardi approached us and, we found out later, they had tried so many songs for that commerical. A slew of tons, and songs, and knew 'Daylight' was the one which stood out and worked more than any others." "Interview: Matt and Kim," Alter The Press! 2/6/09.

More stories of bands whose songs have been used in commercials: Selling Out to Survive.

Three degrees of separation: Write music specifically to sell other people's stuff.
While people have gotten used to artists having their music licensed for ads, it's still not as common for artists to write music specifically for commercials. Of course, there have always been people who do this for a living (one of the more famous musicians who was also a jingle writer was Barry Manilow) but it's not nearly as common as just having a pre-written song in a commercial.

Two examples:

Robert Schneider, singer/songwriter for The Apples in Stereo, also does commercial work-for-hire.

For Schneider, who's worked both sides of the fence, he relishes the opportunity to release his inner Tin Pan Alley songsmith and write on demand. "It's like, 'Oh, now I have to write a song about having fun in a new pair of shoes!'" he laughs. "To me, that's a legitimate song topic. Fun in the sun? I'd write a song about that anyway.""Songs that sell," 'boards, 6/01/08.

Recently the band Franz Ferdinard was commissioned to write a song for an elaborate promotional campaign by Dior.

Four degrees of separation: Play music. Use your visibility as a musician as a way to promote your real profession.
Now we are into the grey areas of new music business models. Some of the examples being used to illustrate how musicians can make a living are stretching the connection between music and income rather thin. I mentioned some of them here. Musicians are auctioning off their possessions, selling lunch dates, and so on.

Basically the concept is to use music as a way to generate attention and relationships, but then sell non-music goods and services to fans. Given that concept, why stop at selling your time as a lunch date or selling stuff out of your closet? A lot of goods and services are fair game. If you have skills as a lawyer, or a plumber, or a caterer, you can use your music as your positioning and then sell services and items that people want to purchase anyway. Instead of just being a singer, or just being a plumber, you become the singing plumber. Plumbing, after all, is something people need more than having lunch with you or getting an extra t-shirt. This way you are selling something of real value, and making it more distinctive because it is coming from you, the popular musician.

Examples:

A musical doctor.

Carl Ellenberger, who has managed to combine a successful medical career (as a neurologist) with enough musical skill to have been principal flutist in several orchestras, beginning when he was preparing for medical school. As a student of Joseph Mariano at Eastman School of Music, Ellenberger never thought of giving up flute for medicine or vice versa. Medicine, he says, allowed him to avoid teaching music to “indifferent students” (among other things musicians do to pay the bills). And music helped him survive the stress of medical school.

In addition, he has told me, “As a tenderfoot doctor at the bottom of the medical hierarchy, when the vast universe of medicine seemed overwhelming, regular calls for my services as a professional musician did wonders for my self-confidence.” "Musicians with two careers: Pro or con?" Broad Street Review, 12/22/09.

A musical priest. "Baton and Sacrament, Tools of Dual Career"

Blair Tindall, who interviewed a number of dual career musicians, points out, for example, that "mathematics and proportion learned through musical form may plug directly into another field, such as architecture or computing. Other musicians find more abstract uses for their musical training, citing the competitive nature of performing, the discipline of practicing and flexibility learned from irregular scheduling as among their professional assets."

"Counseling is much like playing a symphony," says Rae Ann Goldberg, a Bay Area violinist who is also a certified marriage and family therapist in Oakland's Early Childhood Mental Health Program. "There's a rhythm. There are silences. Intensity and release."

Goldberg completed her master's degree at the California Institute of Integral Studies after her orchestra, the Sacramento Symphony, folded in 1996. With a full schedule and increased income, she now cherry-picks only the gigs she really wants instead of accepting everything in order to survive. "Musicians add second careers to their repertoires," Los Angeles Times, 1/11/09.

Five degrees of separation: Play music. Don't mix it with any money-earning activity. Keep your hobby and your income-generating activities totally separate.
This is what many "amateur" musicians do. They don't play music for income. Just for fun. And there's a lot to be said for this approach. If you don't play music for income, you don't make decisions about music based on money. Which also means, you may be more realistic about your day job, too, if that's your sole means of financial support.

The reason I want this discussion out in the open is to get us past the idea that today's musician needs to concentrate on fan purchases for financial support. It's certainly one way to survive as a musician, but not the only way. If you can find a non-music day job that pays well, it may be far more time and cost-effective to do that than to jump through hoops looking for music-related projects you can do. Don't assume that being a musician means everything you do for money somehow has to point back to your music.

To illustrate where I am coming from when talking about the "new music business model," let me point you to some comments I made on this MediaFuturist blog post, "Content 2.0: New Ways to Monetize," which was looking at ways to make money if you are giving away your content (which, for musicians, is usually recorded music).

I have several thoughts in regards to music:

1. Labels are in the content business because they already own content. But for individual musicians, it isn't really about the content business anymore.

2. Musicians are in a relationship or service business these days. While they can sell merchandise, all the emphasis on social media plays up their relationships with fans. However, lots of other people (the vast majority of them non-musicians) are also in the relationship business and can deliver many of the same services (e.g., community).

3. Music is a powerful force and the people who make it have something to offer. But as we pull away from selling the music directly, that means other companies can grab on to that music and link it to what they are selling. Unless there is some special reason for the fans to connect directly with the music creators, then they can have access to exactly the music they want and exactly the "reasons to buy" that they want, but not necessarily coming from the same sources.

In essence, what I am trying to say is this:

Just as it is possible to couple your music with non-music goods and services to generate income, it is also to possible to decouple your music from non-music sources of income.

And this means that while you can bundle your music with t-shirts or online fan communities, so, too, can non-musicians bundle your music with their t-shirts and communities. (Even if they don't have an agreement with you, there are multiple ways to tie your music to their stuff, which most musicians like anyway as a way to get extra exposure.)

In other words, there's no rule that says a musician's music is going to automatically be linked with the musician's source of income. They can, and often are, two entirely different worlds. And sometimes it makes financial sense to approach it this way. Don't get so caught up in what you can do to make money from your music that you fail to see what you can do to make money from any source. Don't let people convince you that if you aren't making your living from your music, you aren't a REAL musician. Do what you have to do to survive.

@slainson on Twitter

UPDATE, 2/17/10
I wanted to move one of my comments from the comments section into the blog post itself to further explain my reason for writing "Five Degrees of Separation."

Some of what is being called Music 2.0 isn't really about music. When Amanda Palmer auctions off her personal possessions, it isn't any more about music than having a day job selling stuff on eBay. True, music has made Palmer a celebrity, but what she is doing to generate income can be done by anyone, in any profession, who has a degree of fame.

So I'm trying to explain that in situations like this we aren't talking about music, we are talking about marketing and celebrity. Getting a spot on reality TV is probably a faster route to celebrity than doing music. That's the reason for the "degrees of separation." At each stage you get further and further from earning your living directly from music. So at some point it makes sense to accept that the money isn't coming from music and quit trying to pretend that it is.

UPDATE, 3/9/10
While owning a restaurant might not necessarily be a more profitable side business than music, here are some people who are doing that.
Ten Musician-Owned Restaurants

Participatory Art Is Revolutionary

2010-02-09T12:00:00.000-08:00

In my last post (But Is It Art?) I wrote about how technology enables more people to make music. And I have done blog posts on fan involvement and audience participation. The reason I think all of this is relevant is that some are touting a wealth of opportunities for musicians today because the Internet allows them more direct access to fans than in the past. But I have been pointing out that this concept is still based on the idea that there are artists and there are fans.

But what about a world where there are only artists, and no fans? If we are going to anticipate the future of the music business, we need to think about this possible scenario. And based on what I have seen in terms of audience participation both at shows and online, artists who provide the most opportunities for engagement seem to do well. I've been taking it a step further to suggest that not only might you want to provide ways for fans to interact with the music and the artists, you may want to provide ways for the audiences to feel creative themselves.

Now I want to go into the subject even deeper because while these ideas have been an on-going discussion within some circles, they haven't filtered out to all who potentially might be affected. There are two different aspects to the topic. One is "everyone is an artist," which involves providing tools to enable creativity. The other is participatory art, which has traditionally involved a high level of social interaction. In this particular blog post, I'll focus more participatory art.

It's not a new concept. People have been talking about it for quite some time, particularly as a counter to the idea that art is to be created by a professional elite.

This paper by G.S. Evans explores the concept in depth and begins with the idea that an artistic elite has not been the norm over the course human evolution.

This alienation from art is a relatively recent phenomenon. As we shall see, the making of art was a central part of people's lives for most of human history--that is, until the relatively recent advent of a capitalist, commodity-based culture in Europe and North America in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. At that time the emphasis in art shifted from participants, who could satisfy their own artistic needs, to specialists, who demanded a paying, non-participating audience to buy their 'products'. Essentially, the art-commodity came to replace participatory-art in most people's lives, and art increasingly became a source of alienation. ...

We live in a society where art is primarily a commodity, something people buy instead of make. Consequently, very few people are actively involved in making art. Because of this general lack of participation, many find it difficult to believe that societies have existed in which literally everybody sang, danced and made their own crafts, all on a daily basis.

Evans extensively covers the history of the arts and how societal and economic conditions transformed them from something everyone did to something mostly done by professionals. There is far too much in the paper to quote, but this is particularly relevant in light of the direct-to-fan discussions dominating music right now.

A radical monopoly [as distinguished from a commercial monopoly] occurs when pre-recorded music as a product comes to replace the making of music in society; in other words, people stop making music themselves and start buying pre-recorded music instead. A further aspect of a radical monopoly is that it becomes an entrenched and structural part of society. People who only listen to music and do not make it for themselves, for example, will normally put on pre- recorded music, no matter what the situation, rather than make their own. This is partially because of conditioned habit, but also because they will no longer be capable of making music among themselves. In addition, the radical monopoly will set up modes of performance that are exclusive to it and will push more personal modes out of style, i.e., make people like or relate to them less and less. "ART ALIENATED: An Essay on the Decline of Participatory-Art."

The idea that "everyone is an artist" has been something of a radical approach during the 20th century. There are political and economic ramifications in giving more people control over their arts experiences. Rather than excluding people for lack of talent/experience/resources, they are included as part of a community. In a paper discussing arts participation among Bay Area immigrant communities, Pia Moriarty explains the dynamics of participatory arts using a church choir model. It has considerable relevance to music because (1) church is THE live music experience for many people and (2) she points out how participatory music strengthens those community bonds. Imagine if secular musicians incorporated some of the same techniques.

Most church choirs are composed of volunteers from the congregation. This is key: the singers are already members and have entry and identity in the larger life-world. Their singing is an expression and deepening of a shared cultural goal, to pray together. To that end they are given a lot of support: physical space, a defined role in the rituals, and perhaps even microphones, songbooks, and instruments. The cultural life of the worshipping community moves forward together, and it carries the singers with it as full members. The line between audience and artistic actors is blurred, overlapping, and permeable; this is typical in participatory arts. The choir practices; it rehearses, but more importantly it engages socially as practicing singers. People learn as they go, but they are already within a living social context....

With our church choir, “audience development” means that we all learn to sing better together. The community that invites us to develop artistically is the same community that provides entry, actively recruiting us as members in a diversified web of reciprocal relationships. ...

Participatory art’s membership approach shortens the distance between “who pays” and “who plays,” and so it can develop past the self-limitations of exclusively patronage or sponsorship models. ...

At a time when non-profit arts organizations are particularly vulnerable to the economy’s protracted woes, the participatory model of “informal,” “folk,” “amateur,” or “unincorporated” artistic production is vibrant and resilient. Participatory arts offer a working alternative for non-profits that will always struggle to survive when they are forced to compete on the terms of a commercial arts model. "Participatory Arts: The Stranger Brings a Gift."

What is bringing participatory art back so prominently now is the connectivity that the Internet facilitates.

The internet with all its manifestations is transforming participatory culture, shifting its orientation from the object to the subject and more recently from subject to data. Ideas are no longer collated in sections or categories but tags. The archive has transformed into a ‘cloud’. Participatory dependent internet art is expanding exponentially. Server-side programming enables a cross-cultural, cross-language, cross-border collaboration where the ‘location’ of the artwork is accessible on demand. The reproducible copy of internet based work is one and the same as the original, albeit perhaps, as only a fragment of the dynamic whole. "Thoughts on Participatory Art," by Yiannis Colakides & Helene Black, NeMe, 6/26/09.

Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flickr and Hunch, says:

Systems such as Wikipedia, Flickr, Delicious, Facebook, Twitter, Hunch and various parts of the open source movement are based around small contributory systems, bodies of work in which there are incremental improvements by multiple contributors, or exposing small actions that would be insignificant in isolation, but are meaningful in the aggregate. These types of software and platforms are specifically designed for conversation and contribution. That is the point. There is no final product such as a book, movie, song or album. "Participatory media and why I love it (and must defend it)," Caterina.net, 1/19/10.

A number of people make the distinction between interactivity and participation. This distinction is also very relevant as musicians hope to engage fans and audiences. Some websites deliver interactivity to fans, but don't include the more creative, more social aspects of participatory art.

At this stage, I also find it important to differentiate between participatory art practices and the much broader term "interaction," wherein the relations established between the members of the audience or between them and the art objects are much more passive and formal (usually directed by certain formal instructions, given by the artists, that are to be followed during the exhibitions).

... I want to reflect particularly on the most recent shift of the artists’ focus: from dealing with objects and installations towards dealing with subjects and enabling their participation in art activities." "Participatory Art," Springerin, 2/2006

The author, Suzana Milevska, goes on to cite the five levels of art participation suggested by Alan Brown.

Inventive Arts Participation engages the mind, body and spirit in an act of artistic creation that is unique and idiosyncratic, regardless of skill level.
Interpretive Arts Participation is a creative act of self-expression that brings alive and adds value to pre-existing works of art, either individually or collaboratively.
Curatorial Arts Participation is the creative act of purposefully selecting, organizing and collecting art to the satisfaction of one’s own artistic sensibility.
Observational Arts Participation encompasses arts experiences that you select or consent to, motivated by some expectation of value.
Ambient Arts Participation involves experiencing art, consciously or unconsciously, that you did not select. "The Five Modes of Arts Participation," The Artful Manager, 9/14/05.

Here's another essay on the subject: Interaction vs Participation.

In a previous blog post, "Elements of Music Participation," I explored some ways to create music projects which facilitate participation by a wide variety of people with different skill sets. Henry Jenkins, one of the most important voices writing about the future of media and entertainment, gives his definition of participatory culture.

For the moment, let's define participatory culture as one:
1. With relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement
2. With strong support for creating and sharing one's creations with others
3. With some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices
4. Where members believe that their contributions matter
5. Where members feel some degree of social connection with one another (at the least they care what other people think about what they have created).

Not every member must contribute, but all must believe they are free to contribute when ready and that what they contribute will be appropriately valued. "Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century (Part One)," Confessions of an Aca/Fan, 10/20/06.

Jenkins also goes on to make a distinction between interactivity and participatory culture.

Interactivity is a property of the technology, while participation is a property of culture. Participatory culture is emerging as the culture absorbs and responds to the explosion of new media technologies that make it possible for average consumers to archive, annotate, appropriate, and recirculate media content in powerful new ways. A focus on expanding access to new technologies carries us only so far if we do not also foster the skills and cultural knowledge necessary to deploy those tools toward our own ends.

Another resource on the topic of participatory art can be found here: "Participation & Participatory Platforms." This article mentions the origin of "happenings" which became popular in the 1960s. Flash mobs and Burning Man could be considered descendants of "happenings." Here's a more recent example of a participatory Burning Man-like event.

A caravan of 19 such trucks were arranged inside a vast indoor garage on the waterfront of a desolate Brooklyn neighborhood. Nothing was for sale, and you needed to bring your own food & beverages.

The key here is that the event was participatory, meaning you didn’t go simply to passively view art, you were invited to experience it.

Yet, what made this particular event so fascinating was the many inventive ways each participant completely transformed their truck from something empty and uninspiring into great fun. All I could think was how the next time I see a box truck out on the street, it might be one used here. "Lost Horizon Night Market: Party in a Box Truck," reactions, 1/17/10.

For all my discussions on participatory art and audience participation, I'm not saying that it is necessarily preferable to take down the walls between artists and fans. There are especially talented individuals who I would like to see have enough financial support in some fashion to be able to devote as much time to their creativity as possible.

Rather, what I am trying to do is to prepare the music world for what I see happening anyway. The concept of a passive fan, who happily pays money to buy whatever the musician puts out, be that music, performance, art object, or personal interaction, seems to be changing. When fans start getting more attention for themselves by what they are personally doing rather than what they are buying or who they are associating with, they tend to find their own self-expression and creativity preferable to what they can purchase from someone else.

There can still be a role for the artist in all of this, but it often involves having the artist give up some degree of ownership of the creativity. Here's one artist's take.

Patricia Reed: I’m also interested in the ways in which such participatory modes of working subvert the branding strategies of institutions by way of clearly identifiable authors and names. ... In participatory practice, it is perhaps the artist who initiates something in the form of an object, idea, interaction, etc., but unleashes it to the influence of the many for further manipulation, engagement, etc. So the artist is the one who “proposes” or instigates certain processes but the authorship is ultimately obscured—it occupies this important space of the “co-,” where a work is partially made with and not by. ...

Perhaps it’s useful to look at the distinctions in the notion of authorship involved in participatory practice that expands this “artist-as-proposer” we’re discussing. To propose or initiate something is vastly different than to author something. It’s the first step in a process—obviously an important step, but one in a potentially long road. It’s the launching of an idea—and a “hosting” of that idea throughout a process. Crucial, however, to this notion of “hosting” is equally the capacity to “un-host”—for a conventional host assumes situational authority. What I mean by “un-hosting” is not to relinquish authority completely within a group dynamic, but to view the process as a partiality—that is, both being and not being a “host” simultaneously. Throughout the process of un-hosting a certain degree of control (not all) is dispersed and it is precisely that dispersion of “control” that blurs conventional notions of authorship. "What Is a Participatory Practice?" Fillip 8, Fall 2008.

Game developers and other designers of multimedia think like this because user engagement is their goal.

For the artist, this means giving up traditional notions of authorial control. “I’m a writer, but I’ve discovered that sometimes writing has to take a backseat to gameplay to ensure people have the most fun,” comments David Varela, who helped create the successful alternate reality game Xi, designed to promote Sony’s PlayStation Home. ...

“In my work, people spend 30% of the time playing and 70% socialising. We should be facilitating that social experience,” says Lance Weiler. "Participatory Storytelling: A Thousand Authors in Search of a Character," jawbone.tv, 11/11/09.

Nina Simon makes a particularly good distinction between inviting the public to design a project and designing a project that invites their participation.

Which of these descriptions exemplifies participatory museum practice?

1. Museum invites community members to participate in the development and creation of an exhibit. The exhibit opens. It looks like a traditional exhibit.
2. Museum staff create an exhibit by a traditional internal design process, but the exhibit, once open, invites visitors to contribute their own stories and participation. The exhibit is dynamic and changes somewhat in response to visitors' actions.

The answer (for me) is both. But the difference between the two examples teases out a problem in differentiating "participatory design" from "design for participation." In the first case, you are making the design process participatory. In the second, you make the product participatory. "Participatory Design Vs. Design for Participation: Exploring the Difference," Museum 2.0, 4/7/09.

Simon's distinction gets at the heart of what is happening in music among those hoping to engage their fans. Some are letting the fans create the product, while others are letting them participate in something that has already been at least partially developed.

The reason I have been exploring this to such a degree is that I feel if popular music doesn't at least participate in this conversation, it's going to be outside the wider artist community. Certainly many artists in other fields are talking about ways to generate income for themselves, so I'm not suggesting that music is unique in its discussion of developing careers that involve sales. But I'd like to see more conceptualization about the future of music beyond what is currently being discussed at music conferences and online. The 1,000 True Fans and Tribes models, where the artist is the core surrounded by adoring fans, may not remain the norm. As Evans points out:

For the most successful of the art-specialists this hero worship has made it possible to sell millions of dollars worth of their art-commodities on name power alone, and gained them large and loyal followings that would do a head-of-state or television evangelist proud.

... the prevailing belief is that legitimate art is produced solely by art-specialists and anybody else's efforts are secondary at best. This belief becomes, then, an essentially self-perpetuating definition of art, namely that art is what art-specialists produce.

The underlying assumption is that this vast number of artistic non-participants will have their artistic needs met, not by actually making art themselves, but rather by consuming the products of the art-specialists. ...

All of this is the logical result of a commodity culture. If participatory art was a part of our everyday lives, large numbers of people would be actively involved in the making of art. This, however, would severely limit the potential sales of art-commodities and the celebrity status of the specialist. "ART ALIENATED: An Essay on the Decline of Participatory-Art."

Suzanne Lainson
@slainson on Twitter

UPDATE, 3/19/10
"SXSW: LaDiDa iPhone App Lets Anyone With a Voice Make Music in Seconds"

Here's a video of Henry Jenkins talking about participatory culture and how most creators do it to share rather than as a way to make money.

UPDATE 9/10/10
Here you can find a long discussion about whether or not DJs and mash-up producers are artists.

Some DJs rebel actively against legal and commercial institutions, while others simply avoid them as a matter of course; in both cases, these factors have helped to break down the artificial distinction between artists and audience. As UK-based musician Matt Wand told me: “I can’t draw the line, I definitely don’t draw the line – he’s artist, she’s audience – I can’t do that at all." "Aram Sinnreich: ‘Mashed Up: Music, Technology, and the Rise of Configurable Culture’ - Book Excerpt," Truthdig, 8/27/10.

But Is It Art?

2010-01-26T11:23:00.000-08:00

Recently Tod Machover, whose work I discussed in a recent blog post, wrote a guest editorial for The New York Times.

It fits in with a topic I have been wanting to cover anyway, the increasing use of electronic tools to easily create music.

As a point of reference, let me say my personal tastes skew toward acoustic music with minimal production. Give me a solo voice or a solo instrument, as unadulterated as possible, and I'll savor the purity of it. I'm partial to warm, uncompressed sounds. Here are two examples:

Danielle Ate the Sandwich She has recorded herself in her apartment playing either guitar or ukulele. It's her voice that I love.
Chet Baker A great example of emotive jazz.

However, I've been reading some very thought-provoking discussions about how new technologies are or aren't good for music and decided the topic was worth exploring. Let me start with this:

Gary Jarman, singer and bassist for UK indie rockers the Cribs, believes some of the passion has gone missing now that anyone can record and release a song.

"It shouldn't be easy [to be a musician], you know? Nowadays it's just like everyone's got a laptop, everyone's got GarageBand, everyone's got a MySpace page," Jarman tells Spinner. "People can have a band or do a song as if it's a vanity project." "The Cribs Think It's Too Easy to Make Music," Spinner, 1/11/10.

In contrast, the people pushing the technology think the ease of creating music is what is valuable.

Most of the skeptics I talk to aren’t upset by the use of computer software or programming in and of itself; in fact, many of them are artists and composers who use technology in their own work as well. What upsets them about my work is the way I give up control over the creative process to people who are not necessarily trained musicians and are often complete strangers.

My response to these critics is to clarify my focus in many of these works: the creative process rather than the creative product. Many of the most exciting, fulfilling, and spiritual experiences of my life have been about creating and performing music. I am trying to share the experience of those moments, not the music that resulted from them, in my own works. "Interview: Jason Freeman," Networked Music Review, 3/11/07.

A lot of singers I know don’t like Auto-tune. They grumble that they shouldn’t have bothered to do all that practicing and studying. Auto-tune makes things easier in the studio, and increasingly on stage, no doubt about it. This bothers people who care about how difficult music is to make. Auto-tune threatens some of the myths we have about musicality: that it’s a special talent possessed only by an exceptional few, and that there’s something noble and admirable in the lifetime of discipline it requires. When Lil Wayne goes into a recording studio, smokes a blunt or three and freestyles an Auto-tuned melody off the top of his head, it calls our European-descended assumptions about romantic musical heroism into question.

In my opinion, this is all for the best. Music isn’t fundamentally about technique. It’s a transmission medium for emotions. A confident and definite performance comes across, accurate pitch or no. When you have a singer do take after take after take in search of technical perfection, you often end up with the sound of a bored and annoyed singer. ...

It’s way too late in the history of technology to be worrying about authenticity. What’s so authentic about recorded sound to begin with? ... What’s so authentic about multitrack recording, compression, EQ, pop filters, artificial reverb, or selecting from multiple takes to find the best one? All that matters to me when I listen is how the music makes me feel. "In praise of Auto-tune," Ethan Hein's Blog, 12/3/08.

Music Creativity Through Technology is dedicated to music educators working with the "Other 80%" of students in our schools who do not participate in the traditional performing ensembles and music classes. With the latest tools in music technology, these educators are finding ways to unleash the creative potential of many of these students....

The impact that GarageBand had can be seen in the overnight emergence of virtual composers sharing their GarageBand creations on the web and reaching out for comment and guidance. As a music educator, I found this especially exciting as it renewed my interest in finding ways to reach those students in our schools that drop out of the traditional music programs as they progress up through the grades, the traditional programs where more and more emphasis is place on traditional performing ensembles and performance expertise of selected repertoire (see Williams 1987). Through lectures, presentations and keynotes, and the work of my graduate students, I began to focus on what I termed the "non-traditional music student (NTMs)," the other 80 percent of students in our school programs that are disenfranchised from music education in one way or another. "The Other 80% Music Home," Music Creativity Through Technology (www.musicCreativity.org).

I watched people go through the same dilemma with online writing. Back in 1998 or so, (a few) people had elaborate personal sites built by hand that would update once a month or so. Then blog software came along and they all thought it was the death of online publishing because anyone could do it, and update not just daily but several times a day.

And that attitude has been shown to be pretty much total bunk.

There are now millions of people writing online and if you know where to look, you can find plenty of great things. That also means there are millions of sites that one might call "crap" that don't interest them, but it's worth it to increase that 1% of really good stuff.

I see the same parallel with music and movies. It's great that things are getting easier. I wish anyone with an idea would write down the idea and have software completely form that into action. I know people invest years in learning tools and they kind of hate it deep down when some kid can pick up the same techniques in ten minutes that took them ten years, but get over yourselves.

Seriously, the mass democratization of everything is one of the crowning achievements of the Internet. In the long run it will mean tons of great music and tons of great short movies and tons of great writing. Don't worry about the problems of millions of people making music -- there are already tools in place to filter out just the best music (like garageband.com's rating system).

posted by mathowie at 8:28 AM on December 4, 2004 "Is Reason and other programs making music production too easy?" Ask MetaFilter.

Finally, to wrap up the pro-technology folks, let me cite a reader comment on Tod Machover's editorial.

... think about musical instruments. How much time does a violin student spend learning to play in tune? Imagine a digital violin that always plays in tune. That frees up hours and hours of time the student can then devote to higher-level exploration of musical expression. (And, yes, the intonation of the instrument can be made contextually 'aware' - q.v. Hermode tuning, an algorithm that tunes digital instruments on the fly according to the harmonic context they are in). ...

So this is the future I hope we see: digital instruments imbued with context-aware, programmable and customizable musical intelligence. Having tools like that will free people to create music we can't even imagine.
Paul Henry Smith

Smith's comment led me to his website where he posted an interview he did.

This is one of the most exciting and important contributions digital orchestras can make in our musical life. They enable composers to get their music played without the cost and resistance of an acoustic orchestra. My hope is that this new-found avenue for orchestral composition will result in a flowering of activity supporting innovation and refinement in orchestral music, necessary to keep this mode of expression alive and thriving for both acoustic and digital orchestras. In my view, then, acoustic orchestras ultimately benefit from the emergence of very good digital orchestras. Just as interest in acoustic guitar music has been immeasurably increased by the emergence of the electric guitar. "Paul Henry Smith Interview in Beat Magazine," Paul Henry Smith, 9/23/09.

And this:

Which brings us to now. The digital instruments are still limited, but they’ve gotten much better than they were even in 2003, and they’re still improving. They are improving faster than acoustic instruments. My five-year investment in learning how to play them, how to master them, is paying off. And within the next ten years there is no question that I will be able to follow my musical imagination anywhere it leads with more suppleness, expression and ease than the current generation of digital musical instruments allows. "Can digital orchestra instruments be musically compelling?" Paul Henry Smith, 8/10/09.

Among those who do accept technology, they sometimes make a distinction between technology used creatively versus technology used in a banal manner. Here's what Machover said in his editorial.

Technology has democratized music in ways that are surprising even to me, revolutionizing access to any music anytime with iPod and iTunes, opening interactive musicmaking to amateurs with Guitar Hero and Rock Band (which both grew out of a group I lead at the M.I.T. Media Lab), providing digital production and recording facilities on any laptop that surpass what the Beatles used at Abbey Road, and redefining the performance ensemble with initiatives like the Stanford iPhone Orchestra and YouTube Symphony. ...

But we can’t take such freshness for granted. Musical technology is so ever-present in our culture, and we are all so very aware of it, that techno-clichés and techno-banalities are never far away and have become ever more difficult to identify and root out. It is deceptively challenging these days to apply technology to music in ways that explode our imaginations, deepen our personal insights, shake us out of boring routine and accepted belief, and pull us ever closer to one another. "On Future Performance," Opinionator Blog, NYTimes.com, 1/13/10.

Influential musician/producer Brian Eno says that the reason we don't always get great music from technological tools is that, unlike the piano or violin, we haven't worked with them long enough yet.

On the synthesiser: 1

"One of the important things about the synthesiser was that it came without any baggage. A piano comes with a whole history of music. There are all sorts of cultural conventions built into traditional instruments that tell you where and when that instrument comes from. When you play an instrument that does not have any such historical background you are designing sound basically. You're designing a new instrument. That's what a synthesiser is essentially. It's a constantly unfinished instrument. You finish it when you tweak it, and play around with it, and decide how to use it. You can combine a number of cultural references into one new thing."

On the synthesiser: 2

"Instruments sound interesting not because of their sound but because of the relationship a player has with them. Instrumentalists build a rapport with their instruments which is what you like and respond to. If you were sitting down now to design an instrument you would not dream of coming up with something as ridiculous as an acoustic guitar. It's a strange instrument, it's very limited and it doesn't sound good. You would come up with something much better. But what we like about acoustic guitars is players who have had long relationships with them and know how to do something beautiful with them. You don't have that with synthesisers yet. They are a very new instrument. They are constantly renewing so people do not have time to build long relationships with them. So you tend to hear more of the technology and less of the rapport. It can sound less human. However ! That is changing. And there is a prediction that I made a few years ago that I'm very pleased to see is coming true – synthesisers that have inconsistency built into them. I have always wanted them to be less consistent. I like it that one note can be louder than the note next to it." "On gospel, Abba and the death of the record: an audience with Brian Eno,", The Observer, 1/17/10.

Musician Jonathan Coulton says that new technologies allow for more experimentation.

I’ve recently become very interested in all sorts of electronic gizmos and gadgets and composition and performance tools because you can only do so much with a guitar. And I love to play the guitar. I love to listen to the guitar, but there’s really something satisfying about putting it down and picking up a ridiculous piece of equipment with a lot of buttons that’s going to make a lot of noise and also inject a lot of chaos and randomness into what happens. The Zendrum in particular, when I play that, it’s always a little bit different. That’s because I make mistakes and some of the buttons go off by themselves, but you can feel the audience getting sort of excited when that happens. That’s what live performances are about: that process by which you accidentally find something awesome. So for me that’s what I love about those devices and that’s what I love about technology and music: the potential to sort of shake things up and bring you to places you wouldn’t otherwise get to. "Jonathan Coulton Talks Music, Technology and uPlaya.com," The Blogs at HowStuffWorks, 10/28/09.

In this blog post, producer/composer Spencer Critchley explains why he likes one musician's use of technology, but not another's.

Thomas' use of technology was creative, taking things apart and reusing them in imaginative ways. His music presented technology through an emotional filter, such as affectionate parody, as in 'She Blinded Me With Science', or a haunting nostalgia, as in much of The Golden Age of Wireless. ...

The Rhinestone Cowboy's use of technology wasn't creative, just productive. He was simply saving himself the expense of hiring background singers. The harmonizer didn't add anything new to his music, apart from the slightly creepy effect of hearing two perfect clones of the Rhinestone Cowboy. "More Creativity in a Can: When Thomas Dolby Met the Rhinestone Cowboy,"
O'Reilly, 3/4/09.

Ethan Hein, who I already quoted above, had this to say about sampling.

DJs are to traditional instrumentalists as photographers are to painters. You can’t make blanket statements about the validity of the entire medium; you need to go on a case-by-case basis. DJs and photographers have a lower barrier to entry than cellists or painters but the path to mastery is every bit as long.

We’ve become accustomed to lavish production values in our recorded music, and that comes at a steep price tag if you want live instruments and analog tape. The expensiveness of lavish, dense live recordings forces conservative choices. The effortlessness of sampling leads to more risk taking, more experimentation, more innovation. Also more amateurish nonsense, but that’s the nature of the beast. A low penalty for failure is a necessary precondition for success. "Copyright Criminals," Ethan Hein's Blog, 1/25/10.

In summary, music technology appears to be either a positive (allowing more people to create music) or, at worst, a neutral (delivering music that may not be artistic, but isn't the fault of the technology).

Is it bad that technology enables people who might not have talents in the traditional sense to make music? No. If "untalented" people create musical careers because the technology provides a "crutch," then so be it. If the quality of music has gone down as a result of production tricks, then perhaps the solution is to provide exposure to a broader range of musical influences, which does appear to be happening.

Suzanne Lainson
@slainson on Twitter

UPDATE, 1/30/10
Jazz guitarist Pat Metheny is going to tour with an orchestra of 40 musical robots. They are specially created musical machines which he programmed to play.

Not only does the visual spectacle of robots playing along with Metheny’s always-impressive guitar work hypnotize the viewer, but it sounds great for the same reason live orchestras sound so much better than CDs: They’re essentially 100-point surround sound speaker systems housed in a massive acoustic space with its own resonances, and no home theater (well, no home theater without robot or human performers) can duplicate that sound. ...

These musicians may be machines, but their performance varies significantly each time. “Even if you wanted it to be exactly the same every time, it’s not,” said Metheny, adding that subtle variations are caused by the robots’ mechanics, timing and the room in which the machines are playing — and that he can toggle musical parts between the players to switch things up. "Robot Band Backs Pat Metheny on Orchestrion Tour," wired.com, 1/28/10