Hi everyone,
I have a question that has been bugging me for years now:
How do some artists support themselves?
Specifically, there are some artists that I listen to quite heavily who put out CDs and MP3s on a regular to semi-regular basis but to my knowledge don’t really tour, have not licensed their tracks for commercials or movies, don’t seem to offer schwag on their sites for purchase, etc. So how do these folks support themselves? Surely it’s not from CD sales, or is it? I’m referring to artists like:
Boards of Canada
Helios
Kiln
Loscil
Marconi Union
Jumpel
Near the Parenthesis
Biosphere
Johann Johannsson
Julien Neto
Brian McBride
SND
Olafur Arnalds
Do they have day jobs? Teach music? Survive on arts grants? All of the above? I NEVER see anyone discuss this in magazine interviews for instance. I’d really appreciate it if an interviewer would ask the straight up question:
“So, [fill in the name], it’s been three years since your last CD release. What have you been doing to put food on the table and keep the electricity on since then?”
I posted this same question on my blog and in a couple of other forums. I’m hoping to gather good responses and eventually post them to my blog and share them with people. Anyway, if somebody has some insight, please share. Thanks in advance.
(My blog is http://www.nk-e.com. You can get a better though not complete picture of what I listen to hear: http://www.last.fm/user/gnapier3)
How do artists support themselves??
I’d really appreciate it if an interviewer would ask the straight up question:
“So, [fill in the name], it’s been three years since your last CD release. What have you been doing to put food on the table and keep the lights on?”
Specifically, there are some artists that I listen to quite heavily who put out CDs and MP3s on a regular to semi-regular basis but to my knowledge don’t really tour, have not licensed their tracks for commercials or movies, don’t seem to offer schwag on their sites for purchase, etc. So how do these folks support themselves? Surely it’s not from CD sales, or is it? I’m referring to artists like:
- Boards of Canada
- Helios
- Kiln
- Loscil
- Marconi Union
- Jumpel
- Near the Parenthesis
- Biosphere
- Johann Johannsson
- Julien Neto
- Brian McBride
- SND
- Olafur Arnalds
Do they have day jobs? Teach music? Survive on arts grants? All of the above? I NEVER see anyone discuss this in interviews.
I posted this same question in a couple of online forums that I frequent. I’m hoping to gather good responses and eventually post and share them here. Anyway, if somebody has some insight, please comment.
Thanks in advance.
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Artists have been marginalized since the beginning of time. Yet now, with the easy ability to digitally copy music, the marginalization of artists has reached its’ peak. While I see many people argue that this helps artists, I know of no one who this system has worked for. People argue that musicians should only be paid for live performances, and recordings should be considered “advertising”. In no other endeavor of life do people dictate to *you* when you should be paid, and how you should conduct yourself.
Artists are producers: they *create* things. Most people are parasites: they live off of the profits derived from people who create things.
If you want to know why the quality of music keeps going lower and lower, look to the ones who are making it. They will do anything for *fame*.
For me, as an artist, I find fame to be the ugliest form of baggage that needs to be tolerated so that we may do what we were born to do: create art.
The acceptance of the fame machine, the unfettered copying of recorded music, and the fascist demands of artists by the public that their hard work should be free have all worked to ensure that the bar gets set continually lower.
You obviously have a lot of passion about this!
For the most part I would agree with the direction of your post, but not some of the specifics.
For instance, I think that in MOST endeavors in life people DO dictate when you should be paid and how you should conduct yourself. (You are paid when you “show up” for “work” or “produce” your output. In most cases acceptable conduct — be it in the office or an art gallery — is a prerequisite.)
Like most things, “people” and “artists” have their good and bad examples. Some artists create things; some are themselves parasitic hacks. Some people exploit others (but I’d like to believe most don’t)…
As far as the declining quality of music, I can only agree and would add that the labels make it easier for people to debase themselves even more in the pursuit of “fame” and fortune.
I can’t comment on the “baggage of fame” as I have not the slightest insight into what that is like. It sounds like you do, and you don’t like it one bit.
Lastly, music as a free commodity…I don’t have a coherent opinion on that one. It is a reality and must be dealt with, but how? I don’t think (or want) totalitarian DRM measures. At the same time, how do I (or any of us) get compensated for creative works?
I guess that is at the heart of my original question. These folks that I list make wonderful music that I buy and listen to. But even in a world without rampant copying, they are “niche”; in a world with it the pressures are greater. So it can’t(?) be just CD sales. Licensing? Day jobs? What?
How do they support themselves?
I think you missed the point about people telling you when you will get paid. Your analysis is a perversion of what I said, so I will attempt to be more clear.
In other professions, you are paid for when you work. If you own an art gallery, you get paid when you sell a piece of art. The person who wants the art does not get to take it home, without providing you any info, and then keep it without paying for it. So, we now have methods of appropriating recordings without compensating the person who put their life into it. Thus the public, the audience, become like vampires, sucking the life from the creators. Then they make up rules, as if they had the right to do so. Fascism, pure and simple.
As far as I said about “conducting yourself”, people have come to think they have a right to know about people’s private lives, simply because they have become famous. I’m sorry, but that just isn’t right. That again, is fascism.
If I buy a hamburger at McDonald’s, does that entitle me to know about the sex lives of the employees?
Anyway, if they are lucky, they can make money producing or recording other bands and artists. They can wait tables or drive a cab. They can be plumbers or electricians. Maybe they work at a music store or give lessons. Music is not for making money, mostly. Almost all of the live shows I have ever done have made no money. It’s expensive to do promotion for shows, and it can be a lot of work also. If you want to get big time, you’ll probably have to hire a press agent and a manager, and you might want to retain some legal counsel. There are many expenses involved.
Hmmm. I may have misinterpreted what you said; Perversion usually implies an intent to distort or misrepresent. (I assure you that I have no desire to do that.) Your second email adds info that was not in the first and makes your position much clearer for me. Thank you.
As it stands, I agree with your analogies, particular the bit about “private lives”. (If I can digress for a minute because I actually feel quite strongly about that one.)
There has been a general decline in the level of “civility” IMHO. By civility I mean not only comity and consideration, but also the ability of people to respect others’ privacy, self-regulate the baser aspects of “nosiness”, and rein in their personal sense of entitlement. (These combine into the “I have a right to know!” attitude you cite.) Unfortunately there are many media folks who stand to make money by encouraging just those attitudes and so appeal constantly to these baser impulses.And folks seem to continually respond to the temptation…
In any case, about the original subject…your last paragraph is pretty much in line with many of the responses I’ve gotten on other forums. There’s been some really great comments and feedback and I’m going to pull some of the more interesting ones together and post them here.
Thank you for responding.
I would have to disagree that perversion requires intent. Perversion simply requires a different viewpoint, whose conclusion is arrived at not by the intent of the original statement, but by the preconceived notions of the responder or reader/listener, which may or may not be consciously applied.
In this case, as in many, I try to use brevity to limit the attention span required by the reader. Obviously, this is a case that would have benefited from a more verbose explanation.
Personally, I see these things very clearly, but cannot always find the logic behind how I arrive at a decision or conclusion. I know the reason for this, but I’ll keep it to myself, as it has gotten me into too many arguments in the past.
As for base responses to external stimuli, these social directions are easily predictable. You’re obviously an intelligent fellow, so you must certainly be able to correlate the decline in civility with the decline in general intelligence. Perhaps that decline can also be predicted by a number of social factors:
The “Barney” syndrome: everyone now believes they are special, so in effect, no one is special. We both know that some people *are* smarter/more talented than others. To deny this is…well, it is simply denial.
Tabloidism: pretty much self explanatory.
Consensus: This may be the largest problem here. The masses have a loud voice and carry a big stick.
To quote John Milius: “There’s no shame in the world, and without shame, you cannot have honor. Our world is ruled by consensus now. There is no sense of honor”
Idiocracy. If you’ve seen it, you know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, then you should.
Cheers.
BTW, every time I post a reply here, I get the following error:
500 – Internal Server Error
This is a temporary server error.
Please try to reload the webpage later.
If you are the webmaster of this site please log in to Cpanel and check the Error Logs. You will find the exact reason for this error there.
Common reasons for this error are:
* Incorrect file/directory permissions: Above 755. In order files to be processed by the webserver, their permissions have to be equal or below 755. You can update file permissions with a FTP client or through cPanel’s File Manager.
* Incorrect Apache directives inside .htaccess file. Make sure you have not specified unsupported directives inside the local .htaccess file. Such include PHP settings and Apache module settings.
That has happened to me on occasion … fortunately things post, but I have to track that down. Thanks.
Hello, and thank to have invited me here.
I could answer with my whole website http://julienbayle.net because I’m often writing about life, lifestyle and more about how I live and I work.
In my case, I’m an ableton certified trainer and a max6 expert. It means I often give courses & training to support my lifestyle.
But it is more rare than before, also because I decided to transform my business model into a full product one instead of pure services.
My answer here isn’t absolutely a tip, a trick or an exhaustive answer.
I’d need more than a life I guess to debate about that, but I wanted to comment here as you invited me through Twitter.
This is just an introduction, I could write.
I’d suggest you to dig a bit my website to be a bit more aware of me, my universe, in case of you didn’t do it yet.
Basically, I decided to quit my IT Security Engineer day job a bit more than 1 year ago.
I created designthemedia.com & protofuse.net existed already.
Because I didn’t want & still don’t want to be dependant of external funds, I decided to dive into personal branding model.
Btw, it is near from my way of life so it wasn’t too much difficult.
Thus, I decided to bet on me, my uniqueness, what I can bring to the world of music, art & technology.
A lot of people talked about egocentricity, which isn’t right considering all what a person using this kind of approach share with the world.
This is just I know I can contribute to this world and I’m doing my best to share this motivation.
My target/vision would be, if I had to define it, to make sound design for some nice & interesting project, to make & release my own music again & again, to play live 5 gigs per month and then to continue to build my own tools, hardware & software and to teach about that.
I aimed that, I’m approaching it more & more, getting closer each day.
If I succeed this next (close) year, I’ll do my best to sustain this my whole life.
Btw, I can only suggest to follow your instincts, to erase those wrong pretexts which can bring us far from our goals and to aim at the real and high-prioritized tasks each day.
About the engine under the hood, I’m using GTD method, a bit modified in order to make it fitting better with my mind. It is very powerful to keep focus.
Feel free to contribute on my http://julienbayle.net
Wow Julien. I can only commend you on taking the plunge and going for it without reservation.
And I wholeheartedly wish you every success possible.
I suspect we are at different stages of life with different demands and responsibilities. I could be wrong of course and I do not offer that as any sort of excuse.
Our targets/vision are not very different actually. I’ve a real interest in sound work for film and less interest in gigging. Other than that, your vision sounds like something out of my project diary!
I have a game plan for making the transition. It has a 3 to 5 year timeframe though and I have to be very methodical about the groundwork I have to lay before I take the plunge you have.
But I am committed to it; My wife is on board. I just need to do it “smart” so I can provide what I need to provide to the family while still pursuing this dream. It is not impossible, just complex. But things worth doing often are….
Your interest in this post / topic has spurred me to write up the finale for the subject and share some of the responses I received from many others. I will do that over the holidays.
Thank you.