As the Internet continues to turn the entire world upside down (more or less), those of us in the creative arts have been left in particularly bipolar state, at once manic about the possibilities of essentially free distribution and depressed about the fact that it must come with a devaluation of our art.
As a musician, I am particularly sensitive to this fact. Since I'm not Lady Gaga (I'm still waiting on the millions of album sales and the sex change), I make pretty much nothing from my creative output. It's more of a hobby than anything else, even though I would love for it to be my main source of income.
If you want to be depressed about the state of the music industry, there are plenty of places to look and things to read. But if you want to be really unbelievably depressed about something you thought was cool before, check out this amazing infographic about how little musicians make from music online: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/how-much-do-music-artists-earn-online/.
It's a bit old and perhaps a little outdated in the details at this point, but it's pretty astounding. The most incredible figure is this: in order for a solo artist (yes, one person) to make a monthly minimum wage from his music, his album would have to be played 4,053,110 times on Spotify in a month.
Yes, 4,053,110 times.
For listeners, Spotify is a truly unbelievable -- free music, supported by minimal (though admittedly annoying) ads. For artists, it provides exposure but is, sadly, a nightmare financially.
Of course, artists can make money from other sources -- selling CDs, touring, etc., but the point is that most of the online business models (many of which are included in the infographic) pay virtually nothing.
So what does this mean for writing?
As creative economies move more and more toward being Internet-based, literature is a hold-out but no exception.
With the explosion of the blogosphere, content is astonishingly cheap -- ad rates on a news site for every 1000 views are something like $4. To be viable, sites need to attract millions of viewers, something along the same lines of magnitude as artists on Spotify.
E-publishing companies like Hyperink have already popped up, and a new generation of authors publishes its books only on Kindle for very low prices -- without the price of printing a book and without the cumbersome middlemen of a greedy publishing company, authors can make a decent margin on low-priced e-books.
Sound familiar? That's the promise that musicians were first sold when we all realized the Internet economy was here to stay -- each artist becomes his own publisher, cuts out the middlemen, eliminates the manufacturing costs, and makes great margins on goods that are lower-priced for the consumer.
Perhaps it's only a matter of time before new writers release their books on an ad-supported platform, the literature version of Spotify where you can read books for free as long as you agree to watch an ad every 10 pages.
I'm not saying I can predict the future or that we should all destroy our laptops -- only that, as a musician, I'm keenly aware of how my creative comrades are suffering and struggling in the Internet-based music economy. I hope, for all of our sakes, that literature can find another way through the digital age, a way that respects readers but also places a premium on rewarding good writers financially.
a new dilemma
Elizabeth Metzger — October 19, 2011 - 15:49I find this really interesting, and have been considering it a lot lately with friends who are writers and musicians or starting publishing company jobs where the e-book sometimes helps and sometimes hurts. I actually wonder if this dilemma might be a new question art will in someway address. In the same way Modernism or Abstract Expressionism in painting raised questions of where the source of art lies (in the creator or the viewer?), likewise, putting the need to make a living aside, there is a new dilemma now: should we be more concerned with art reaching and having the chance to move/affect the most listeners or readers, or more concerned with keeping the quality and forum in which art is shared exclusive/elevated?
The former means anyone can be an artist so that great art often suffers, the latter means that many people will never have the ability to discover great art and that some great artists will not bother fulfilling their potential. I think the problem has shifted with poetry from nobody reads poetry to nobody has the time to figure out what poetry is worth reading. We have the benefit now of reading the slush piles ourselves, some gems which without connections etc. would never get to print otherwise, and many works that one might harshly say should remain slush and melt away.
My hope is that art itself will in some ways express or deal with this conflict. To look on the brightside, if we weren't always concerned about the future or permanence of art, it wouldn't have the value it does. I think it is that doubt/fear that art will not be rightly appreciated in our lifetime that makes for risk and makes great art, ironically, immortal. Great artists must create in spite of their circumstance or uncertainty about their greatness, recognition, success...whatever you want to call it.
I think the contemporary tragedy as a result of what you write about, the internet's affect on music, poetry etc, lies in the life of the artist today not in the life of the art. I may be old-fashioned but I still believe great art will rise to the top over time. I also think with people blogging photos and quotes all over the internet without citation, copyright is dying. So, it may be that we are entering an age of anonymity in the arts. Maybe the artist, by name, will be less immortal...But then again, I swear by Dickinson...so even if we never know the person, even if the names are erased and their memory dies, I still think the poetry (music, painting, novel) will survive. It is those artists who would rather their work last than their name, that I think will continue to create greatness.
Certainly an interesting
marcustullius — October 23, 2011 - 18:58Certainly an interesting topic and I like how solid your points were.
What I find quite interesting is not only the authors', but the audience's reluctance to change. There are many people in an older (and even our own) generation who lament the death of vinyl. Its clicks and pops and white noise were endearing and lent it something special as a media format that we can never recapture. Gone are the days when bands like The Beatles can innovate not only in their musical composition, but also in their artistic license by enclosing unheard of cutouts and bits of memorabilia specifically tailored to vinyl. When one goes out and purchases (a CD if you're old-fashioned or, more likely,) an mp3 version of Sgt. Pepper's, you don't receive the cardboard mustaches that shipped with the original album. There's something to be said for that in that an aspect of the art (holistically speaking) has been sacrificed in order to streamline it for its more modern form. The Beatles made Sgt. Pepper's with the form of a vinyl product as their end goal.
So too do modern readers bemoan the loss of the book as a medium. I have many friends (and am myself) guilty of discussing the crispness of pages, the sense of progress, etc entailed in reading a book. But I have to agree with Elizabeth that true art defies the constraints of medium. The Illiad was composed with euphony in mind - its purpose to be read aloud and memorized by the ancient Greeks. Even now that it has been transcribed and tanslated into countless languages, I daresay its epicness (if you will) has not been diminished.
Will writing change if the author no longer conceptualizes his or her end product in book form? Perhaps. But it will not necessarily be change for the worse.
Is the medium the message?
deans55 — November 20, 2011 - 19:41Thanks to both of you for your comments. @marcustullius, I think your thoughts on medium call for a bit of an elaboration, since I myself have been thinking about medium quite a bit lately.
The interesting thing about vinyl, to take one example that I think is applicable elsewhere, is that it only (mostly) became romanticized in retrospect. I have friends who have record players; they often talk about how great the "warmth" of a record is, how pleasant the hisses and pops that give the music character. When I ask my dad about this, he laughs at me, remarking at how his record collection is slowly disintegrating into dust and white noise. To him, digital music and CDs are miracles, inventions that make music immortal, in perfect quality (never mind the debate about the low quality of commercial mp3s, which is an entirely different conversation).
It's only young people who never had to endure vinyl records who romanticize them. Very few people, relatively speaking, from my parents' generation actually have an attachment to records. (This is somewhat of an educated guess, but I'm fairly confident in it.) It's only when a medium becomes unnecessary and irrelevant that we start to look at it as anything more than strictly functional -- records stopped being a way to hear music and started having sentimental value that they may not have had before (at least not to the same degree and in so many ways), and only to people who never *had* to buy them to enjoy music.
I do agree that the digitalization of media has made it impossible (or at least impractical) for artists to do things like include moustaches with the final product. It's too bad. I do agree that there's something special and worth holding onto about the physical incarnation of music, books, etc. Would the eyes of the Mona Lisa be as mysterious if she were only seen on computer screens?
That said, I find it fascinating how we hold onto old mediums once they become obsolete. I'm not sure I'm making a coherent overarching point here, but I enjoy the discussion and am glad to have written down some of the thoughts I've been ruminating over.
Conflicted
EFuhrer — December 1, 2011 - 12:08I think the conflict I face comes from the fact that I love the idea of the free distribution of ideas, but that I also would like to believe that I will one day be able to make some kind of money off my art, or at least buy lunch or something with the meager royalties. However, when I think about it, I ultimately feel at peace with being poor if it means that I will have exposure to an infinite amount of art. Unlike the author of this post, I am less pessimistic about the devaluation of art if it follows the current trend. Sure, more trite confessions will be posted on blogs and sites and even facebook, but some of it (as in the current print publishing model) will be brilliant. There are amazing online journals now, which pay not a penny, but are superior to print journals. For example: Muzzle, Mudlark, the Cortland Review. Am I the only one who reads the poems in the New Yorker (even those by very good poets, those whom I love) and wonders what the hell the editor was thinking? The poems in the New Yorker are so boring and stagnant. Yes, there are print magazines that print poems with more energy and experimentation and life, but wouldn't it be great to have more of them? The internet allows for a multiplicity of journals to grow and expand, infinitely. I am a fan of many postmodernist texts and ideas, and I think that the expansion of the definition of art will be possible with new technology. That does not mean I don’t also value traditional art, and that I am not skeptical of a lot of postmodern art. This also does not mean that the old definitions of art will waste away. No longer do you need grants or a trust-fund to start up a journal and publish what you wish, you only need the will. This, like everything, can produce bad or good results. But hey, if you didn't know the taste of vinegar, would honey be as sweet? Also, if I am reading a bad online journal, I'd rather be able to quickly leave the site and not have paid 5 bucks for it.