The Future of Arts

[thefutureofarts]

http://igg.me/at/thefutureofarts

[thefutureofarts]

Goal Setting for The Future - On Three We Go!

Being an artist is a very cool job! You’re your own boss. You decide what you do. You work creative, and you’re free.

But being  an artist has annoying sides too. Sometimes it is really hard work. It costs a lot of time, so many artists are having problems with their relationships to partners and friends. Especially music and films are expensive, so as a musician or a filmmaker you need investors. And to publish a book or produce another creative product you need money and help, too. Most artists have a second job at the beginning of their creative career, to survive. And it’s absolutely annoying, if you say “I am an artist!” and the other person says “Oh cool! And what is your real job?”.

The social status of an artist is a difficult matter. Everyone wants to hear music, read books, watch films and photography and consume other creative products. An artist can be famous. An artist can move thousands of people. Many people need art to overcome crisis, do their work, fill their free time and show others their attitude. Arts accompany most of us our whole day. So, our society needs artists. Without them, nobody is happy.

Financing the arts is important for our all happiness. In the times I worked in retail, I met other artists doing the same work, too. A few musicians, a disk jockey, a dancer and a filmmaker. In Germany, in this job you earn 1.100€ to 1.400€ a month. You have to pay taxes and health insurance, so in the end you have 600€ to 900€ to pay other bills. The rent for your apartment, energy, mobility and food. You work five days a week at a job you don’t like, and you earn just enough to live. And you have only two days a week to do creative work.

But if an artist would earn a higher percentage of his or her earnings of their creative work than in the present creative industry,and the consumers of arts would regain a sense for the arts’ worth, it wouldn’t be difficult to earn those 1.100€ to 1.400€, even at the beginning. The artist can live off his or her creative work, can work the whole week on art, and can grow bigger and bigger and earn more. Having a family or financing other dreams can be real for artists.

Artists can live off their art! That has to be the objective for the future!

[thefutureofarts]

Time for an all-embracing look at the Status Quo of the arts.

[thefutureofarts]

Buy Me! Or: A Story About Arts And Retail

Today, I want to give you an insight into my personal view on art in retail.

I remember a couple of years ago, I was at a little bookshop in Freiburg, Germany. The stock was focusing on darker novels and thrillers. The interior was made of wood and stone in dark colors. It had the right atmosphere and ambience for this store. In my opinion, it was almost perfect.

Those little shops, no matter what kind of art they sell, underline the arts during the buying process. An entirely different experience buying arts would be electronics discounters or supermarkets, where you can buy music, movies or books like cables or shampoo. Neon lights without atmosphere.

As a musician, I wish that my art is sold in a respectable manner. Every song I wrote is like a child. Writing a song up to the final version with all instruments can be really hard work! It costs time and much energy. And then in retail, the CDs stand alongside cheap printers, HDMI cables, computers and coffee machines? In my mind, that isn’t the right place for creative products.

For a while I worked in retail for different brands of consumer electronics in electronics markets in Berlin. And it doesn’t matter if you are selling phones, dishwashers, computers or CDs. In these markets every product is sold the same way. The products are placed on pallets, without love and without charm and with statements like “Now 50% cheaper than Market xyz!”. That distribution strategy is OK for toasters and fridges. But a book or a CD is different to these goods.

I think in the future most creative products are bought on the internet. Downloads, and physical products too. And I find that OK, because on the internet you find every song from every musician or every book from every writer, you can buy photos or copies of paintings. That is amazing because every artist can sell his or her creative work to clients in the whole world. But outside of the internet, we need shops where a consumer who is searching for the artistic feeling when buying art gets that feeling, with the right atmosphere.

Sure, every person buys and consumes art in their own way. But I think, as artists and art lovers we have to support the smaller shops for specific genres and customers and the internet for the general overview, where you find book x from writer y.

[thefutureofarts]

10 Posts!

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(Photo via Cyle)Interestingly, Britain has become more and more bookish in terms of its dream career, that’s according to the latest poll of a market research company YouGov. The poll had over 14,000...

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The future cannot be predicted, but futures can be invented."

Dennis Gábor

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Tense Typography project.

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Futuristic traditional interior design...

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The Arts And The 21st Century

Yesterday, Björn was debating why the old school music industry, as evil and as people-eating as it often may be, was important.

He basically concluded that artists need four things: Promoters who actually listen to them and hand their things to the right people, managers who organize their success, distributors who ensure that when fans want to buy a CD they actually can, and publishers who protect the artist’s rights and royalties.

Even though written specifically for the music business, I think he clearly hit the point of what every artist who wants to be able to live off doing art needs. Whether you’re a fine artist looking to be shown in big galleries and sell posters with your work on, a film maker dreaming of hitting the cinemas or an author who just wants his book printed – you will need these four things. You don’t necessarily have to hire people to do them. But you will need yourself or friends to do it then. You got a friend who manages your booking for free? Well, say hello to your manager!

So, you may be thinking, fine, some things about the past were good, but didn’t you want to change things in the future? Why the heck are you still talking about the past?!

Before we head into the future, let’s have a look into the present. What has changed, how do things work these days?

Didn’t the digital revolution…well…revolutionize things, make them easier and better and quicker, and now everyone can become famous overnight as long as he or she knows how to use a computer?

Right. Things shifted a little bit. In the past (there it is again!!) the general mantra was that if you managed to get to the right people, you would get a small chance to become famous overnight and a big one to at least make a decent living. These days, it’s hitting the right keys on your keyboard, uploading your stuff to the internet, have it go as viral as possible in social media and then you will be maybe famous or at least making a decent living. At least, in theory.

In practice, this may be as untrue as it was when managers used to promise pie in the sky to artists back in the day. But some things are undeniably great about the 21st Century.

First of, there is the fact that while the world is still as big as it used to be, the gaps between you and me and all of us have become smaller. The next person who will help me out with something important is just one click away, and everyone has cheap if not free possibilities to push his dream and infuse it into others’ heads. This is by far the biggest achievement of our time when it comes to the arts, at least for me. All of a sudden you can build a fanbase even if traditional media is not fond of you, and you can interact with your fans like you never could before. And they will interact with their friends, helping you out on your dream, and you get the finest word-of-mouth marketing you can wish for.

A close second is the way how the internet has changed trade. You can now buy every small artist’s CD, book or poster even if you live in the middle of nowhere, again, with one click. An artist can reach buyers where it would have been impossible in the past. Some artistic goods can be offered as download, for instant use and enjoyment. How great is that?

I’d like to conclude that the 21st Century has brought awesome possibilities and chances. And it would be a shame to not use them.

[thefutureofarts]

Some Good Things About The Good Ol' Music Industry

Just recently in the Metro: Two men are having a conversation about the music industry. I overheard one of both say that music labels are very evil. Artists are slaves to them! Around the whole world musicians are caged up in studios and forced to do number one songs. And if they sell less than five million CDs, the record label terminates the contract.

OK, admittedly that was a little overdone! But in the 21st Century, many people think like these men. On one side there are poor musicians, enslaved by labels, managers, publishers, etc. On the other side there is the music industry which has many skeletons in their closet.

In the last years, the music industry digs a social grave for itself. Many things went wrong. Poor distribution strategies, poor public relations, poor cooperation with musicians and so on. But there are good things about the old way the music industry worked. Let´s have a look at these!

Firstly there are the contacts to radios, magazines, newspapers, blogs and other platforms for promotion. Promotion is a big part of the old school label work. And it costs so much time that a musician can’t do this work alone, if he or she wants to record albums or play concerts. But without this work, the musician can’t sell all the albums and concerts. The musician needs helping hands for promotion, preferably a self-owned label with staff for this work, or a fair record deal!

Secondly there is the work of managers. Musicians need a manager if they want to manage their success. It’s the same problem like with promotion: It costs too much time. So, musicians need managers at eye level.

Thirdly there is distribution. Musicians need distribution in order to sell music. With a major or big indie label, that isn’t a problem. But with a self-owned label or a small label it is difficult to find a distributor for "traditional" physical distribution. But the market of CDs and Vinyl is too important to ignore it. A possible solution for this problem: If musicians on self-owned labels and fair small labels unite, they are big enough to assign old school physical distribution to a distributor.

And fourthly, there is the work of publishers. The musician has to protect his or her rights to creative contents. Rights are difficult but very important, and I think that I don’t lie if I say that nearly 100% of musicians don’t want to do this work themselves. So, we need the music publishers.

To sum up, I have to say, we do need old school music industry working methods. But we also do need transparency, fairness and trust. For artists, for fans, and for the music industry, too. Now!

[thefutureofarts]

The Present of The Music Industry

The past ten years have brought huge changes to the music industry. As many or probably most of you will be aware of, the "classic" industry, meaning big music labels, publishing companies and similar folk, had to undergo massive cuts - to the benefit of streaming services, self-publishing platforms and online distribution services available to everyone with a few dollars to spare. And, of course, as we hear quite a lot, to the benefit of the musicians themselves, who now can keep all the money they earn themselves and don't have to share the main part of it with their labels or managers anymore.

But is that even true?

When reading interviews, for a while now it can be noted, that when asked about how the changes in the music industry affect their career and work, musicians for some reason will not jump in the air and pledge eternal troth to the internet and the companies who have made it everyone's free choice to become a musician. Instead, you can hear that being a musician has become harder than ever.

How is that possible? Are they just whining?

The thing is that what used to make life hard for musicians back in the day, was that often, a label would pay them huge advances which then took years to pay back. It's also a fact though, that without the money the labels spent on artists, a lot of great, life altering music, would have never happened (and, think about it, is maybe not happening right now).

Today, there's no label dependencies - but also no advances, no one even jumping in for the cost it takes to produce an album or go on a tour. The situation is so bad that 80% of musicians would rather go back in shackles and take a classic label deal.

But is making steps back really the way forward?

What do you think? What is the future of music?

Let us know: #futureofarts

[thefutureofarts]

The Present of Music - A Quick Overview in Motion