Words    Words    Words

The Artist Business Models series is based on a paper written by Reesa Brown and Kit O’Connell, with assistance from Steven Brust, Ken Brown, Deborah Ibarra, and many others. At the close of the series, the entire business model paper will be posted to Continuous Labs. The business model paper and blog posts are released under the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial 3.0 license.

21st Century Artistic Business Models, or What’s In It For Me?

by Reesa Brown and Kit O’Connell

with Ken Brown, Steven Brust, and Deborah Ibarra

When exploring the ideas of 21st century storytelling, one of the most frequent questions asked is “where is the money?” Many writers, visual artists, performance artists, game designers, and other creative people are dissatisfied with the traditional publishing and money-making models currently ruling the market. Indeed, as we integrate more art with the tools and technology of the 21st century, the traditional models become less and less viable as long-term profitable ventures. When we began to research this topic, we found that even industry professionals are no more sure of how to adapt our current models to the changing times than the amateurs are. Such a transitional time is ripe for innovation, exploration, and vibrant new ideas for anyone willing to rise to the challenge and do the work.

However, ask most people involved in creative pursuits about their business model and you will receive an almost panicked response. Most artists seem to avoid or fear acquiring business knowledge, even such information as is directly related to their own work. Some fear that to consider such thoughts will somehow ruin their talent or devalue their work. And yet in recent years even traditional book publishers, for example, are encouraging more participatory advertising from their artists–not just book signings or tours, but internet blogging, tracking online sales, soliciting reviews, podcast interviews and more. Retaining the illusion of an artist creating works in isolation from the rest of the distribution process is a luxury that will be less and less available to most as time progresses.

This series of posts collects in one paper as many different artistic business models which use some aspect of modern technology as we’ve found; there is much information available already from innovative forward-thinking artists that hasn’t previously been collected into a single accessible place. We also provide explanations (usable by artists of all kinds) on how to interpret the collated information and adapt it to individual projects. We hope to make business model concepts less daunting for artists while encouraging them to embrace the idea of earning income by spreading their art to new venues and audiences through new media.

Presuming the words “business model” haven’t already scared off our artistic readers, how do you start approaching this topic? Well, the same technology that provides new means of telling stories and sharing art provides new means of deriving income from the stories. You need a basic understanding of both the trends in modern storytelling, and the acceptance and use of at least some of the many integrations of modern technology with art (see our presentation on 21st century storytelling for more on this).

For the purposes of these posts, we are assuming that you (whether the individual or group “you”) have some sort of artistic endeavor in one or more format media that you are ready (or nearly so) to begin marketing your art to a larger audience. We are also presuming that since “computers are no longer science fiction, but science fact” (quote credit: Marissa Lingen), you have a rudimentary grasp of navigating your personal computer and the internet. Many of the suggestions we give will involve you having at least some sort of presence on the internet; we won’t require anyone to get a degree in web design, but a simple webpage or blog can be put up with no outside help and only minimal looking on the internet. WordPress is one of many available services for creating blogs. And don’t forget the social networking options such as Livejournal, MySpace, and Facebook. Remember Google Search is your friend! There are simple website creation options as well, but remember that a poorly-constructed or downright ugly website will potentially impede your later growth and success. Quality matters, even–or especially–in the beginning stages. If you find you need some extra help in the basics of internet navigation, there are already many excellent resources out there for you, both online and offline; many cities and universities have places that offer 1-2 day basic classes on many areas of internet communications.

So at this point, you have a really` great idea for an artistic project; you’re willing to use modern tools in the generation, application, and distribution of your project; you’re even willing to develop a business model for your project. But how? Tune in tomorrow and we’ll dive in.