We all savor professionally produced creative works. A few of those creators become very wealthy. A fair number make little, but it may be enough to supplement another, non-artist income source. Many live in that nether region in between, of being able to support themselves but knowing that income will ebb and flow with each passing year. This portion of the income graph is by far the most important, however, because it is by far the largest motivator to new entrants. Sure, some people will be motivated purely by the hope of being one of those lucky few to make it to the top and earn big bucks — all of the kids out there practicing jump shots in hopes of playing in the NBA someday, even though the odds are against them, are an example of that — but the prospect of being able to support oneself at something one loves to do is a major, major motivator. If your only choices were wealth (for a very few) or poverty (for nearly all), how many would even try?

I raise this question because a recent blog on RecProAudio focused on this middle tier, what the author called the "middle class." (Tip of the hat to Dean Kay.) The blog is focused on the music industry, but frankly the argument could apply to publishing, cinema, software, photography, arts, the list goes on. He focuses on the so-called "free music" model, where income is instead earned through merchandise and touring. (His focus seems to be on recording artists.) After acknowledging certain fixed costs that must be covered (no professional music is truly "free"), he notes that in this model, there is a natural reduction of potential income, and thus many artists that otherwise would have been self-supporting aren't.

If the free music model truly were better for artists, as some argue, then he says they should have already discovered it and moved there en masse. The fact is that artists by and large haven't done that, with the exception of some unsigned groups. He then notes: "It should also be mentioned that in my empirical experience (and
for reasons beyond the scope of this document) there appears little
public interest in free-music made available by new artists devoid of
the cachet of record company representation."

He argues highly successful bands and artists could survive a shift to a free-music model because their other income sources are so high, although I'd note that just because they can survive a pay cut doesn't mean they deserve one. He has a different take on the "middle-class artist," however:

What this means is that should the industry choose to distribute music
free of charge, the best-case scenario would be that we will find
ourselves with fewer mid-level choices amidst a shrinking roster of
professional artists; a condition to which piracy, strictly by the
numbers, must have already contributed.

This is something I've been mulling in my brain for a long time. Take a look at the charts below:

Okay, they're not the prettiest things you've ever seen, but I'm no artist. Most readers will recognize this classic curve, which Chris Anderson has taken to calling the Long Tail. Imagine on these graphs that revenues for artists are the Y axis, and the X axis is an ordinal system, with the artist at the XY junction earning the most and the artist furthest away from the junction earning the least (many artists actually would be in the negative column, as they spend more on their art than they make, but I'm keeping the curve above zero in these examples).

The left graph is pretty much what you'd find in the music industry, in film, in publishing, etc. A handful make a whole lot of money. A bunch make very little (the graph is cut off for space, but that long tail goes far beyond where we see it, but naturally is pretty low the whole time). The middle class we're discussing is that long band in between, which produces significant area under the curve. Those are all people making a decent living at their art. I would suspect many hope to move up the curve, but they have to realize the curve only accommodates a few people at the top.

The curve on the right is where we seem to be migrating in the digital age. The blogger above said piracy is playing a part in this. I fully agree. I'll admit other factors are affecting this as well, but everyone needs to be aware of the impact the digital age is having on individual artists when considering the role of copyright in the digital age. What the second graph shows is that there are still a few artists doing well, although there are fewer of them and the drop-off in income is happening earlier than before. It also shows that there remains a long tail of little profit, but that long tail begins far sooner in terms of ordinals than it has in the past. Finally, it shows that as a result of these shifts, the area under the curve is much smaller. That is, the middle class of artists, the self-supporting artists, is much smaller.

The smaller the middle class gets, the more those artists move on to jobs that will put food on the table and support a family. The smaller the middle class gets, the fewer artists take the leap and try to make it professionally. Thus, we lose artists we already have, and we deter the entry of new ones. Culture is poorer as a result. 

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This entry was posted on Monday, November 26th, 2007 at 1:37 pm by Patrick Ross and is filed under creators, economy, market forces. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.