[LAU] Campaign: "The most remarkable album on this entire planet"

Simon Wise simonzwise at gmail.com
Tue Jun 1 07:21:52 UTC 2010


Arnold Krille wrote:
> Hi,

> And before that time, it was:
> 
> 1) Produce great work.
> 2) Give it away for free.
> 
> 
> Doing music (or any) art for a living, that is with being paid, is a very hard 
> thing to do. Not only do you need people buying your stuff (after you made it, 
> who on earth pays an artist/designer/plumber before they at least started?), 
> you also need to deal with those 'real art has to be free'-blockes...

Musicians, indeed artists of all types, have been supported, allowing them to 
produce their work, by society for very many centuries. This support has had 
many forms, selling individual copies to paying customers is only one variation 
on this. Working under a contract for someone else, who then sells the result to 
customers for their profit is another variation, the rewards to the original 
artist vary in this case.

With current internet and computer technologies there are more ways to sell 
directly to a huge range of potential customers, and the production of recorded 
music is a hugely cheaper prospect than even a few years ago, so the middlemen 
who got very rich a few years ago may be feeling the pinch a bit.

But supporting artists in other, more direct, ways through public, semi-public 
or private patronage, through institutions like grants from governments or 
through universities now, or in the past through the powerful social 
institutions of the time .. churches, kings, the aristocratic courts or 
whatever, is and has always been part of any culture. In even older social 
structures this was achieved by allowing some to produce art or music while 
others produced food or provided other services, and the results were in various 
fair, or unfair, ways shared.

Playing music has been both recreational for many, and a way of living for some, 
for as long as we have had social structures, and way before any written history.


Simon


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