Collaborating on "Creative Things"

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.

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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"

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.

Art and Conversations about Art

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.

• Now Is The Time: Who Or What Inspired You To Play Music?
  
• End Of The Decade: Concluding Thoughts
  
• Roundtable Discussion: The Role Of The Record Label

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:

• Thinking About Etsy In The San Telmo Markets
  
• What Comes After Post Modernism?
  
• Lupe Fiasco's Enemy Of The State Mixtape: A Study In Music Business Models
  
• From Scans To Listens

Suzanne Lainson
@slainson on Twitter

Thoughts on Groupies

In my last blog post, "Involving Music Fans at Many Levels," I made a list of ways fans can get involved with an artist/band and the music. I invited people to add to the list if I had forgotten anything.

Someone suggested "groupies" so I added it to the list. I think he was using the term as it is commonly associated in music: women who sleep with rock stars as their own claim to fame. But people also use the term "groupie" to describe fans who slavishly seek out attention from their favorite celebrities.

I had forgotten about groupies, but when he suggested it, I remembered when I personally started to use it as a pejorative term. That was when I was spending hours each day at what was then the top figure skating rink in the world. A number of Olympic-level athletes trained there. The rink community was made up of skaters, their parents (I was one of those), coaches, and the staffers who worked there. Anyone else who showed up on a regular basis was viewed with some suspicion. It was a public building so anyone could walk in, but the idea that people would spend their free time there when they didn't need to be there struck us as weird. Didn't they have lives they should be tending to? So in our minds either you had a purpose to be around skating that much or you were a groupie. And being a groupie wasn't good.

The term has also been used in skating to describe certain event-going fans. Here's a quote from a 1996 newspaper article.

Ask Tom Collins, owner of the Tour of World Figure Skating Champions, one of the best-known tours on the skating circuit.

No matter what city his cast of about 30 prominent, award-winning skaters perform in, there will be a core group of regulars filling rink-side seats reserved months in advance.

"Almost like a rock star having a following, we have these skating groupies ... (who) see anywhere from six to 20 shows per year," Collins said.

A couple of more quotes:

Skating groupies, a hitherto little known subspecies, followed [Christopher Bowman] wherever he went. "Half athlete, half artist and all showman, national," Sports Illustrated, 2/12/90.

Until about ten years ago, figure skating was a relatively genteel sport, free of the fanaticism that has led to injuries and deaths in soccer melees and similar incidents in other sports. Most people who followed the sport or came to competitions were true fans of the sport, rather than groupies. "Fans or Fanatics: How a Few Bad Apples are Ruining Figure Skating," Golden Skate, 3/25/02.

All professional sports have their share of groupies. For example:

When hockey players first start off in the NHL they're pulled in many different directions since they're making all this money and have no idea that the kind of friends they're dealing with are people that are not the kind of people you want around. This goes into the kind of women who end up trapping a lot of hockey players and many of them are addressed as "Puck Bunnies" these are what you call hockey's term for groupies. Many pro athletes are the prime target of these kinds of females who are more interested in them for the financial and sexual aspect. Many of the athletes who are married or dating are with women who started off as groupies. Most of them are young girls 18-25 and most of them are not really educated because women who are educated would not settle for the role of a side dish. "Hockey Players And The Groupies Who Chase Them," Article Click, 4/1/06.

Within sports there is also a male version of a groupie (albeit, without the sex involved) called a "jock sniffer."

For a sportswriter, being called a jock sniffer is the worst thing that can happen, worse even than finding out you have to pay for the press box buffet. Being a jock sniffer means you're hanging around the athletes just for the thrill of being in their company, and that you'd never write anything negative, even if it was warranted. No one, not even reporters who ignore "no cheering in the press box" warnings, would call him- or herself a jock sniffer. Sportswriters, in fact, rarely use the term on their colleagues anymore, but that's because they've broken down jock sniffing into categories. The reporter with a slavish devotion to the team on his beat is a "homer." The reporter with a slavish devotion to a particular player would be that player's "bobo," "caddie" or "boy." "Kick Out the Sports!" Flak Magazine, 6/16/03.

Although no one wants to be labeled a jock sniffer or the equivalent, some people come to their defense and say these guys are just responding to appropriate status cues:

So instead of admitting -- outside of their fantasy life -- to their desire/dream of meeting with and getting connected to a Bon Jovi, Tiger Woods, or Brad Pitt, they approach the object of their adulation through, for example, the rite of the autograph request (always for someone else, of course) or engineer the desired association through non-fawning conventional means: practical doctor-dentist-financial advisor, career consultant relationships. "Guitars, Gonads, and Groupies Are Wild," Arts & Opinion, Vol. 2, No. 4, 2003.

Rock music is where groupies are most commonly associated, and some have become minor celebrities for the practice.

"A fan is very content to stay home and listen to the music, but the groupie wants to meet them," said Pamela Des Barres, the ultimate groupie who partied with everyone from the Doors to the Who to the Rolling Stones, and whose 1987 autobiography is called "I'm With the Band." "'Almost Famous' to 'Rock of Love': Groupies Then and Now," ABC News, 8/14/09.

Modern groupies want their 15-minute share of fame, asserting themselves through tawdry memoirs and talk show gigs. They're passing along trivia about penis size, championing songs written in their honor, and demanding a place in show-biz history. "Groupies," SF Weekly, 7/25/07.

[On becoming plaster casters.] Initially it was to get laid because we were shy. And then when we finally got around to learning how to do it, it kind of backfired for me in the sex department, because I wound up being the mold mixer, and I hardly got laid as a result! First it was a shtick to get laid, and then as it progressed, I got this collector's impulse to collect more and more. And then people told me it was art, and it is art in the school of Andy Warhol, art repetition. "Cynthia Plaster Caster: Art with staying power," Salon, 7/12/00.

A subset of groupies had a degree of status.

Such crass approaches are unnecessary for the grandes dames of groupie society, the Super Groupies. Beautiful, usually intelligent, often well-heeled, they are welcome—in fact, sought-after—company. "Manners And Morals: The Groupies," Time, 2/28/69.

But most did not.

Which we actually used to look upon as, uh, gas stations.... "Uh, we're in Cincinnati, so...we need to fill 'er up a little." And the other thing about groupies, it wasn't just boinky-boinky. They used to take care of you. They used to rub Vicks on your chest if you had a cold. Sometimes you'd never do anything. Sometimes they were just...nasty. [laughs] Get my drift? [laughs]...I don't miss them. "Keith Richards On Groupies, Mick Jagger And Curing Himself Of Hep C," Huffington Post, 3/28/08.

This sums it up:

We mock and deride them, dismiss them as tramps and tarts, in order to disassociate ourselves from the ethos that compels them to give themselves away to total strangers. Groupies, as they are eponymously known, are chicks that follow, fawn over and offer themselves to musicians performing in mostly rock and pop groups. "Guitars, Gonads, and Groupies Are Wild," Arts & Opinion, Vol. 2, No. 4, 2003.

So, in review, there are two definitions of groupies.

1. Women who sleep with musicians/athletes as their claim to fame.

2. Fans whose primary leisure-time activity is following a specific musician/athlete to as many events as possible. In most cases these are harmless people who just enjoy watching performances rather than obsessed fans who qualify as stalkers.

What ties the two categories together is that (1) they are fans and (2) they are viewed with some distain.

Based on some conversations I have had, athletes/musicians/celebrities tend to have an ambivalent view of those they think of as groupies. On the plus side, they view having groupies as an indication that someone admires them; on the minus side, they would prefer to hang out with their peers (which the groupies, by definition, are not). Groupies are people whose claim to fame is that they hang out with celebrities, not that they have done anything noteworthy themselves. Therefore they aren't perceived by celebrities as being very interesting. Groupies aren't doing enough in their own lives to need to be anywhere but hanging out with the celebrities. They don't have any important meetings to go to. Or any important parties to be at. The only people who admire groupies are those who are doing even less with their lives.

Groupies aren't even part of the entourage, which is made up of people who, while not necessarily famous themselves, have at least earned their access legitimately, either because they work for the celebrity, are long-time friends, or are relatives.

Celebrities also can feel uncomfortable with groupies because some have had bad encounters with obsessed fans.

Stars have to try to balance the notion of staying relevant and getting press with releasing too much personal information, [fame psychology expert James] Houran said.

"The more a celebrity discloses about themselves, the more they make a fan think they know them in a way that they really don't," Houran said. "Could you become a celebrity stalker?" CNN, 11/05/09.

Celebrities are always trying to build walls around themselves, literally and figuratively, and those walls cost money.

This week, rapper 50 Cent, whose real name is Curtis Jackson, admitted that he spends $20,000 a week on security at his Farmington, Connecticut, mansion.

"My home is surrounded by cameras. I need surveillance not only to look out for me but also to protect me. You get all these crazy lawsuits, and I need cameras to check on things," the 33-year-old told the entertainment news service WEN. "Celebs shell out big bucks for security," CNN, 11/06/09.

But for the most part, groupies aren't viewed as dangerous, and depending on the whim of the celebrity, are sometimes encouraged to hang around, and sometimes not. That's the dilemma. Groupies are kind of appreciated, but not really.

What made me think they are worth writing about is that musicians are currently being told to actively court fans, in ways far more involved than in the past. Internet interactivity is allowing musicians to connect more directly with fans. Many social media advocates feel this is good (e.g., Tribes, 1,000 True Fans).

Taking it a step further, they are saying that musicians and other celebrities should consider selling access as part of a tiered direct-to-fan offering.

... being able to talk to them, or be with them, or have events that they're involved in. Say you really like a band and you sign up for a subscription. From that you get early access to tickets to concerts, you can get the best seat, you can get backstage passes. Interview: Mike Masnick, Techdirt's Founder," The Guardian, 1/11/07.

But others are starting to write about the tradeoffs.

In the age of the super-fan, the musician is charged with conveying the idea that his or her music is worth $100 a year of various and sundry purchases, some or even most of which may not involve actual music. I am not saying that this can't be done, I'm only pointing out that this is first of all a less modest goal than musicians of the past were charged with and second of all requires a different approach to a music-making life.

Some 21st-century musicians appear to be well-suited to this new mode of being. It requires an unmitigated willingness and ability to be a public person in a much different way than is involved when simply singing songs on a stage. Artists for whom such conduct feels natural may not find it any particular kind of burden. "Farewell to the casual music fan," Fingertips, 11/9/09.

Amanda Palmer is someone who doesn't have a problem with it.

a few months ago i was traveling around impulsively after a long tour, taking off-time and visiting friends and family in various cities and discovering the then-newfound magical powers of twitter.
i used these magical powers to put together flash-mob-style donation-shows on beaches and in parks, to find last-minute practice pianos, to find cafe/yoga/wireless recommendations, to find crash spaces for me & my assistant, even to twitter for rides to and from the airport from random fans (twitchhiking!). why the hell not?. call me crazy. but i like these people and trust them enough to do that....

since the birth of the dresden dolls in 2000, i have pretty much been on tour and i have, with very few exceptions due to sickness or mad schedules, signed and hung out with my fans after almost every single show.
if i had to guess how people i have signed for, hugged or connected with…..it’s probably in the hundreds of thousands of people. (literally).
some nights brian (the dolls’ drummer) and i would sign for over a thousand people, for 3-4 hours.
we would take a lot of time to really meet people, talk to them, hear their stories, connect with them. in a lot of cases, stay in touch with them.
and now i know my fans. ...

please understand: i don’t preach this from a high horse, i say this so you (especially who don’t KNOW me) understand that the people i am reaching out to…these people KNOW ME.
a lot of them have MET me. a lot of them have FED me, HOUSED me, helped me carry heavy amps and gear up stairs, promoted my shows in their towns.
to this day, i rely on them for TONS of help. and this is a huge part of why i feel confident that i won’t look like too much of an asshole when i reach out to my fanbase for money.
even those who haven’t helped me directly follow the story, they see how my life functions and they offer what they can.
they’re part of this ride, part of my struggle to live this weird life with it’s many travels and ups and downs.
for the most part, they trust me. and i trust them. time and attention has made that possible. "Virtual Crowdsurfing," Amanda Palmer blog, 10/13/09.

A few, like Palmer, have the personality to give back to their fans and not to mock them for being fans. But not everyone can do it.

Music fans have set different expectations for artists and insist that they are met. While not everyone has interest in messaging their favorite artist, those that do, anticipate a reply back. "The Elsewhere Musician: Making Connections in a Fragmented World," hypebot, 11/12/09.

The HBO comedy series Flight of the Conchords has captured the essence of the hardcore music fan very well with the character Mel. Music needs her, but doesn't quite know what to do with her.

Mel's Flight of the Conchords Fan Blog: January 2009

Mel's Flight of the Conchords Fan Blog: December 2008

Suzanne Lainson
@slainson on Twitter

UPDATE 5/23/10
One person's experience having paid for a $1100 VIP ticket for a Bon Jovi concert.

So I fly in, get to the arena for my VIP treatment and for the next few hours, was treated like shit by everyone from arena staff to band staff to Jon Bon Jovi’s brother. Someone (a heavier girl) wanted a picture with Matt BJ…and he rolled his eyes in a manner that was disgusting. A friend overheard one of the crew guys referring to the fan club as the “fat club”…out loud, in front of people! It was like scheduling a meeting with Michael Corleone and getting Fredo instead.

... I take my seat and the guy next 2 me asks what I paid, I tell him and he begins to laugh out loud. He goes on to tell me that he paid nothing, was given free tickets by the management team and that people like me pay for his tickets. He had been drinking but I couldn’t stop listening. He went on and on and told me that the band makes all their money from people like me who are dumb and foolish enough to spend the money (which was confirmed by the NYT article). "E-Mail Of The Day," Lefsetz Letter, 5/23/10.

UPDATE 7/13/10
About the site RentAFriend:

While some of the suggested uses for the site do seem pretty practical (having someone show you around town or teach you a skill), many of them seem a bit like a crutch. Has social networking changed real-life interaction to the point where we need to pay someone to be a real-time friend? "Stuff We Didn’t Know About Until Today: You Can Rent A Friend," TIME NewsFeed, 7/6/10.

Read the comments. Some of them express the same distain that people feel for groupies.

UPDATE 10/20/10
Here's a column written by a singer/songwriter, John Roderick, acknowledging how important superfans are in launching bands and how they inevitably get pushed aside when the musicians become more popular and hence busier.

So this letter from the superfan girl affected me. She felt that her love, to say nothing of all the hard work she did promoting the band, was going unappreciated. Suddenly the backstage was crammed with newcomers, and the band was too young even to look at her with knowing, apologetic eyes. But I feel for the band too: They're swamped, barely keeping their heads above water. They're at the start of their journey, and already the people who loved them first are pining for a simpler time. "Superfans: They Love You First. They Book You Shows. It Gets Complicated," Seattle Weekly, 10/19/10.

UPDATE 11/11/10
Part of an interview with Paige X. Cho, Administration and Promotions Manager for digital distributor Valleyarm and author of the Melbourne music blog Paper-Deer.

The term "superfan" reminds me of Mel from Flight of the Conchords - sometimes a little creepy, borderline stalker behavior but all done with good intentions. Like John Roderick writes, these are the obsessive fans that have a lot invested in bands and feel that their over-the-top and unsolicited help means that they should be friends with the band and get thanked on stage or first dibs on anything. I've even known a superfan who weirdly knew the shampoo her favorite singer used!

The problem with these fans is they aren't happy with just getting newsletters or buying autographed merch. They feel they deserve more, and the problem is that these fans get offended very easily. If you walk by them outside a venue without hearing them go "hi" or you don't personally reply to their emails, they seem to get upset and could possibly "turn" against you.

I suppose one solution that might appease some (but not all) is to set up a street team and make your biggest superfan the director of the street team. Not only are they likely to do a damn fine job for free, it's a good way to turn their obsession into something manageable. "Bands As A Business: Invest Money In Marketing," hypebot, 11/11/10.

More on Sharing the Artistic Process

Amanda Palmer has tossed out another interesting blog post.

i am shameless, and fearless, when it comes to money and art.

i can’t help it: i come from a street performance background....

if you think i’m going to pass up a chance to put my hat back down in front of the collected audience on my virtual sidewalk and ask them to give their hard-earned money directly to me instead of to roadrunner records, warner music group, ticketmaster, and everyone else out there who’s been shamelessly raping both fan and artist for years, you’re crazy. "Why I am not afraid to take your money," Amanda Palmer blog, 9/29/09.

I've written about Palmer a lot. I particularly like to reference her as someone who is raising issues about the artist and her community. Here's my most recent blog post about the subject: "The Artist and Her Fans." You can also click on the "Amanda Palmer" tag to see other posts where I have used her as an example.

Zoe Keating, another musician using the Internet to increase her visibility, is also contributing to the discussion.

What is great about Twitter is that, like I said in the interview, it allows me to be myself to as many people as possible. Me and my music are the same thing and I've always had this stubborn, egotistical belief that if I just had a chance to get the real me across....people would be interested. The belief that what I'm doing is worthwhile, even if no one hears it, has sustained me through a lot of rejections and hard times. ...

Because there aren't very many mouths to feed, I don't feel any pressure to continually be selling more, more, more. I have never done an ounce of official marketing or publicity. I make enough to pay the mortgage, the bills, go out to dinner and a movie every now and then, go on vacation and save money for the future. I'm not rich, my car is old, but I have enough to live well and not be continually worried about money. That's really all I want. I want to exist and keep making more music. I'm in this for the long haul. Slow and steady is fine by me. "Deep thoughts on my music career," Zoe's Incredibly Interesting Blog, 9/27/09.

Keating has talked how Twitter has increased sales for her.

Keating says that the long-term effects of this rapid ascent in the Twitter-verse are yet to be determined, she did see an immediate jump in business. "Around the time that I went on the [Twitter] Suggested User list, my CD ['One Cello x 16: Natoma'] went to No. 1 on the iTunes classical chart, and it's stayed in the top 20 ever since," she says. "I've also gotten a lot more sales from my Web site, and I get lots of fan mail that says, 'I found out about you from Twitter.'" "TWEET CHILD O' MINE," Billboard.biz, 5/30/09.

And I have also cited Imogen Heap using the Internet to connect with fans. "Fan Interaction the Imogen Heap Way." Here's additional info from her about the process.

"We live in this instant world. It feels wrong to not play anything and keep it all secret," Heap states between sips of water at Toronto's Intercontinental Hotel. "I wanted to share the process in the same way I would with a friend who drops in at the end of a work day; I'd want to play them what I'd been up to." ...

"That turned out to be brilliant for me to look back on and feel my process," remembers Heap, "otherwise one day to the next just feels like you haven't done anything, so it's great to look back at blog No. 1 and see the state of my studio and then see blog 19 when it's finished. The Twitter thing was just my way of filling in the gaps." "Imogen Heap Twitters her way to world dominance," MSN Canada, 9/8/09.

With so many people now attempting to sell themselves and their music via Twitter, I'm not sure there will be enough money to go around. But I do like exploring how all these communication tools might be changing our perception of what it means to be an artist and to create. Here's a relevant quote from an author who interviewed thirty "visual artists, comedians, animators, documentary filmmakers, musicians, writers, and others who’ve pioneered new ways to build a creative career online (and off.)"

[Q] New media is a constantly evolving landscape from trends to platforms, do you expect a few standards to come out of this or are artists forced to constantly change their game plan? And is it important for them to?

[Answer from Kirsner] I think there are some things that are constants, like making people feel like they’re part of your process, involved, and are in some way supporting what you’re doing. But I do agree that there’s a constantly-evolving landscape out there. MySpace was once much more powerful than it is today. E-mail newsletters were once more effective than they are today. And you always have new things, whether it’s Twitter or live video Webcasting from mobile phones with services like Qik, that can be effective ways of communicating with your fan base. "Interview with Scott Kirsner on Fans, Friends & Followers," CineVegas Blog, 3/31/09.

Some people are pointing to interactivity as a way to evolve the art itself, not just as a way for artists to talk to fans.

Media used to be made at what could be described as the “front end” of the process. I produce a song or book and release it to the market where it is consumed and talked about.

A product leads to a conversation…

But now that my cost of experimentation is zilch—and networks enable me to be in constant communication with people who share my interests—the diagram can just as easily be flipped and start at the “back end.” I can talk about and share my ideas with you, and once we have a collective vision of the “thing,” I can produce it (to then have you consume it).

A conversation leads to a product…

Furthermore, if the thing I produce (or we produce) is dispensable (like songs or stories), you might consume more of it and the process can stop being linear altogether… "From product to process," The Storybird blog, 5/28/09.

Looking for more discussion about how the artistic process might be changing, I found this from Scott Adams, creator of the comic strip Dilbert. It doesn't directly address fan input, but it brings up the idea that the creator may put forth a starting point which can then be refined over time.

If you are planning to create some business or other form of entertainment, you will need quality at some point to succeed. But what is more important than quality in the beginning is some intangible element that makes your project inherently interesting before anyone has even sampled it. That initial audience will give you the luxury of time to create quality. "Quality Follows Popularity," Scott Adams Blog, 2/13/2009.

He's essentially reversing the artistic process. Rather than coming up with a wonderful creation first, he's saying, "Come up with an idea, build an audience around it, get their input, and THEN make it better."

As I find more discussions about interactivity and the artistic process, I will add them here or do additional blog entries. I'll close with an excerpt from an interesting article exploring the history of Western art and its relationship to money.

In Arts & Consciousness we have always taught our students that art is intrinsically valuable. We haven’t emphasized the commercial aspects of art, but have instead focused on art’s connection to self-affirmation, health, cultural identity and spiritual truth. We have proceeded from the assertion that if these things are adequately achieved, then money will be received by the artist as a natural and inevitable result of having created new value in the world....

When the recovery from the current crisis occurs, it seems possible that the world will re-discover the value of art as an essential part of culture – not as a coveted object but as living and breathing part of everyday life. "Post-Modernism, Economic Collapse and the Search for Value in Art." Arts and Consciousness, 2/4/09.

If this becomes the case, we may end up not valuing the art as an object or even as an experience, but for its contribution or effectiveness.

And here's a good resource. This paper was published in 2001 to foster a discussion of Silicon Valley as a creative community, but it covers creative communities throughout history. Some of the same concepts can be applied to creativity and the online community.

Suzanne Lainson
@slainson on Twitter

The Artist and Her Fans

Another sidetrack from the "selling stuff" series, but I saw a quote last week from Amanda Palmer, which I wanted to address.

Let me start off by saying Amanda Palmer is important.

Not because she is reinventing the music business. (She isn't. What she does works for her, but won't work for many others.)

Not because she has made some money using Twitter. (There are more lucrative ways to make money.)

But because she makes insightful comments about her life as an artist in an age where technology allows her to have some semblance of intimacy between herself and thousands of fans. She's not actually having a real dialogue with thousands of fans, but she's giving enough of herself to a few, and allowing everyone to watch, that it approximates intimacy.

She's also less guarded than many. She lets fans come to her gatherings. She gets rides from them when she's in their towns. She crashes at their houses. Most people would have trouble doing that, and celebrities have run into enough crazy fans that many won't go out into the world without a protective entourage, but Palmer appears to be comfortable with it.

... there's a real implicit sense of trust and honor. I trust my fans so much it's almost absurd. I just know that they're good people. I meet them. I hang out with them. I know them. And when a creepy one shows up, it doesn't take long before the crowd calls them out and rejects them from the pit. It's self-policing. "Interview: Amanda 'Fucking' Palmer, Part 2," hypebot, 7/21/09

She has thought about her relationship with her fans quite a bit.

Why are we so connected at all times through text and twitter, with our artists, with our friends, with THE WHOLE WORLD? To what end? "Interview: Amanda 'Fucking' Palmer, Part 1," hypebot, 7/20/09

And her conclusion:

i started making the music in the first place not because i wanted music, but because i wanted human connection.
music was the bridge there.

(it took me a long time to admit this to myself, because i felt guilty and like a naughty/bad/inauthentic artist when i truly discovered this, in my mid-twenties, classic crisis time).

BUT this is, hands fucking down, also why people listen, why they search, why they want art.

connection = primary.
music/art = secondary.

"AFP Responds to Bob Lefsetz re: Imogen Heap/music as a means of connection," The Shadowbox, 8/15/09

This triggered a response from fans about whether they just need the art to connect to the artist, or whether they need a direct connection to the artist as well. (You can read some of their comments at the above link.)

Bob Lefsetz also wrote about connecting.

The new Joni Mitchell is not a musician, but a blogger, detailing his or her own truth in the hope that someone, somewhere, will read the words and the writer will not feel so alone. "The Lost,"Lefsetz Letter, 8/2/09

He's talking about the writer seeking fans to connect. But his thoughts also apply in reverse: the fan seeking the artist to connect.

It's a topic we can explore at length when discussing the future of the music business and, even further, how the entire world of art is changing as new communication tools develop. Look for more blog posts from me on the subject.

Suzanne Lainson
@slainson on Twitter

A Few Thoughts on T-Shirts

The core of all music merchandising is the T-shirt.

And yet, when I went to look for examples of great music T-shirt design, I found remarkably little. There are some classics, like the Rolling Stones tongue logo, but a lot of the designs, even the famous ones, aren't particularly good art. They have become famous because of the bands or the shows, not as free-standing art.

Why are some a hit and others a bust within a similar category? Matt Hautau, vice president, licensing and marketing, for Signatures Network, believes it's difficult to pinpoint why. "We've always found that album sales have absolutely nothing to do with the ability for an artist to really build and support a merchandising program. We have artists who have sold, and who sell, tens of millions [in record sales], but for whatever reason, the connection with that artist is about pure music—not about who that artist is necessarily. Then [there are] other artists whose album sales are good, but they've got that extra offering that seems to resonate with the consumer."

Defining that "extra something" image wise, to whom it relates and translating the two to an actual product or product line is the formula that goes into today's music artist branding. Like all brands, some are well thought out and executed, and others are disastrous. (Although for many music artists, disastrous can simply translate to mediocre junk.) "Selling Branded Merchandise in Music Industry," brandchannel.com, 6/6/05.

Which opens up a lot of opportunity for music T-shirts. Make your shirt designs particularly memorable and chances are people will buy them even if they haven't heard your music or come to any of your shows.

According to Impressions, a clothing industry trade publication, Americans spend around $40 billion a year on decorated apparel. At CafePress, a Web site that lets anyone customize and sell merchandise, users sold more than $100 million in goods in 2007—pocketing $20 million in profits—and overall sales are growing an average of 60 percent a year.

As you might expect, the T-shirt economy is a long tail phenomenon, with comparatively few people making a full-time living while millions earn only a few hundred or thousand bucks a year. On the high revenue end, you've got companies like BustedTees—an offshoot of the funny-video portal CollegeHumor—which, with a staff of eight, expects to clear a 20 percent profit on sales of 350,000-plus shirts for 2008. In the middle are outfits like RightWingStuff, which hawks T-shirts mocking the left. And on the far end of the tail are people like David Friedman, a New York photographer who cooks up three or four witty ideas a year—like his series of T-shirts adorned with fictional corporate logos that are blurrily 'pixelated,' as if on reality TV—and makes just enough money to cover his hosting fees, plus a bit of pocket change. "Clive Thompson on How T-Shirts Keep Online Content Free," Wired, 11/24/08.

To give you some ideas, here's a list of top T-shirt designers.

The most logical place to start for your first T-shirt is your band logo. Hopefully you've picked a good one.

The next logical design might be based on an album cover. Not necessarily a duplicate of the cover, because that might involve more than one color printing, which can get expensive. But perhaps a simpler design using the cover as a theme.

If you have minimal graphics skill and don't want to hire a designer, you might look at royalty-free clip art. Dover carries a nice collection of designs.

Another way to get some creative T-shirt ideas is to invite fans to contribute them. Amanda Palmer has an extensive clothing page on her website. The first T-shirt on the page, Beach Ninja, was designed by a fan. Another example: the T-shirt for Danielle Ate the Sandwich was designed by a fan.

There's considerably more to explore if you plan to make T-shirts a major part of your music income. Here are a few resources.

How to start a Clothing Company

T-Shirt Magazine

Tee Biz

PopCultureTees

Suzanne Lainson
@slainson on Twitter

UPDATE, 7/31/09
To inspire you: ThinkGeek :: Meh Hoodie

UPDATE, 11/28/09
"47 Essential Resources for T-Shirt Designers," GoMediaZine, 11/24/08.

UPDATE, 10/23/10
Read about someone who started out making pins and working part-time in a silk screening business and record shop. Then he started designing t-shirts for bands and was in a band himself. Eventually he went full-time into creating his own t-shirt company that sells his branded cupcake t-shirts nationally. Johnny CupCakes / Story

New Music Business Models

Here's a dance I've seen conducted quite a few times in the past year:

An artist experiments with a new way to make money and has some success. This innovation is cited by some industry observers as an example of the future of music business.

Skeptics respond by saying the idea isn't scalable and won't work for most artists. Therefore it isn't really any sort of new business model at all.

The observers counter it was just an example, not a blueprint for every band.

Then I respond (I can be a skeptic) by saying that for them to expect every band to come up with an original money-making idea is not realistic. Bands look to each other for any promising ideas. For example, if one has success with giveaways, they all do it. If one has success with street teams, they all do it. (Speaking of which, how come we don't hear much about street teams anymore?) If one has success on a new website, before long millions of bands will be there. What was once a clever idea becomes standard operating procedure until it doesn't work anymore and everyone moves on in search of the next great music promotional idea.

Therefore, to spare people a lot of wasted effort, I'll explore some of the ideas currently being tossed around as new music business models and discuss their limitations.

1. Give music away for free to fans who buy an item (e.g., a collectible box, a T-shirt, a poster).
In other words, sell "stuff" fans will buy. Forget about selling the music.

This can make sense for some musicians, especially those who have the talent to design the "stuff" themselves. But other musicians shake their heads and say, "What does selling 'stuff' that have to do with music? If fans don't want to support the music itself, then what's the point?"

This is such a big topic, I plan to go into it in more detail in future blog posts. Suffice it to say that selling "stuff" is a separate business from creating music, so it's not a business that comes naturally to all artists/bands.

2. The special event.
Some artists are offering special events for a fee. Here are two widely cited examples.

Jill Sobule posted this as one of her sponsorship levels. "$5,000 — Diamond Level: I will come and do a house concert for you. Invite your friends, serve some drinks, bring me out and I sing." Jill's Next Record!

Josh Freese offered low end packages that included a phone call or a lunch all the way up to $10,000, $20,000, and $75,000 packages. “Josh Freese. What are you doin’? This summer,” Topspin, 2/20/09.

Freese was so successful that he found he was spending a lot of time on these events and not so much on his music itself.

I’m driving back to the Cheesecake Factory for the 11th time this month, and I’m turning down other work because, yeah, I’ve got a guy flying down from Canada. People will call me for a session, but I can’t show up because I’ve got to give someone a tour of the Queen Mary and a drum lesson, and then they gotta come over and pick stuff out of my closet. "Drummer Josh Freese Sells Himself, Famous Friends, Dinner at Sizzler to Promote His New Album," OC Weekly, 6/25/09.

To make this strategy work on an on-going basis, you've got to calculate what your time is worth. You don't want to price a special concert less than what you would normally charge to play a private party anyway. On the other hand, if you want encourage people to book you for private events, packaging the concept as a sponsorship and charging the same amount or a little bit more might be a good marketing tactic.

3. Rent-a-friend.
Some musicians have become known as personalities as much or more than they are known for their music. Amanda Palmer has become the role model for this. (I've cited her a number of times, so search for her name in this blog to see what she has been up to.)

In many respects it is the essence of social marketing. The artist cultivates a group of fans who are more than happy to chip in (via sponsorships, purchases, or subscriptions) to keep things rolling.

The primary limitation for this is personality. Some artists are social and know how to keep a crowd happy. Think of them as cheerleaders. But other artists are more introspective and can't engage in multiple conversations with fans.

Again, an example of musicians moving away from the music itself and into another occupation which may or may not be more lucrative than what they are currently doing for financial support.

4. The garage sale/auction.
Palmer pulled this off quite well. She held a three-hour online auction of random stuff and made $6000. Amanda Palmer Made $19K in 10 Hours on Twitter

There's really nothing stopping every band from doing this online or offline. People have garage sales and auctions all the time. But generally two things have to happen for this to work. One, you've got to have some level of fame or some exceptional junk to sell. Two, this has to be an infrequent occurrence to be special. Otherwise you're basically in the eBay or resale business. If you are holding a sale on a weekly basis, that IS your job, and your celebrity cache is likely to go down.


So there's a look at some of the new music business models making the rounds. With the exception of the private concerts, these ideas aren't really about music. And that can be a major dilemma. People who took up music because they wanted to write songs, sing, and play instruments may feel like they are spending too much time on non-music projects. And if it comes to that, maybe they should just look for the most lucrative day jobs they can find (which may have nothing to do with music or fan management) and use that income to support their music. It's not as glamorous as running an online party, but it might make more financial sense.

Another issue that has been raised by the skeptics is the whether these new music business models are gimmicks. The topic doesn't come up so much when we're just talking about music. Music delivery systems themselves remain relatively static (i.e., CDs, MP3s, vinyl, live shows). People aren't trying to come up with new products every week. There is variety, but it comes from the music itself.

However, when bands/artists feel pushed to come up with non-music ideas, there probably will be a high level of churn as innovators experiment and then move on to something else. So every time a new marketing technique gets touted, we'll ask if it is here to stay or is just a gimmick to generate some publicity.

Suzanne Lainson
@slainson on Twitter

UPDATE 7/14/09
Here's a great example of why the Amanda Palmer model probably won't work for most artists. She just posted this on Twitter.

"what was s'posed to be 1 benefit show @ #comiccon has turned into 3 signings, a naked drawing class, a perfume unveiling & a ninja uke gig."

UPDATE 7/27/09
I missed this article until now, but it confirms what I am saying.

After a series of re-tweets, many more followers, who may or may not have known she was a musician, were following the conversation. Palmer got 400 pre-orders - 200 that night, 200 the next day - for a T-shirt that had nothing to do with music (it read, 'Don't Stand Up For What's Right, Stand Up For What's Wrong' ... a phrase that is all but certainly not part of any merchandising contracts, by the way). Proof that people responded to Amanda for reasons other than her music can be seen in SoundScan sales data for her September 2008 solo album, Who Killed Amanda Palmer. Since the May 15, 2009, Twitter conversation and T-shirt sale, there has been no discernable effect on album sales. "Lessons Learned From Twitter Windfalls," Billboard.biz, 7/01/09

UPDATE 7/13/10
About the site RentAFriend:

While some of the suggested uses for the site do seem pretty practical (having someone show you around town or teach you a skill), many of them seem a bit like a crutch. Has social networking changed real-life interaction to the point where we need to pay someone to be a real-time friend? "Stuff We Didn’t Know About Until Today: You Can Rent A Friend," TIME NewsFeed, 7/6/10.

Some of what musicians are encouraged to do for income seems very close to the RentAFriend concept.