Status Updates From How Artists Make Money and ...

ppl above always trying to take advantage and exploit.
recording strike 1942-44. bc people not making money off recordings (talkies, now no more orchestra pit, for ex) wanted royalty structure. Columbia & RCA didn’t crack for 2 yrs bc of vocal recording loophole. singers not in unions. and so backing tracks by vocal groups and so singers used as scabs.
it’s rock that changed the game

‘The plight of musicians over the last century and a half is not much different than that of any worker thrown into an open market: the surplus of labor and concentration of capital will always make their position precarious and allow for exploitation.’

‘The market has always been set up to reward and increasingly small percentage of actual artists.’

regarding spotify CEO— ‘…you don’t make $345 million in one year by paying other people daily.’

sigh

while music industry shift. from live bands to restaurants to juke boxes and record players but the albums were making artists significant enough money, touring was just publicity. now no album sales bc streaming. worse and worse deals. always higher ups controlling. monopolies on touring venues using certain ticket platforms etc etc

discussion on canada art scene and how had to be purposefully funded bc most ppl avoided canadian labeled art within the country. wanted different HEATED RIVALRY WILL CHANGE THIS bahahaha

‘Indigenous arts get to be arts because they have now been deemed to fit within the identity Canada wants to project.’

most govts will maintain most of what was established before them. most museums and national support for arts were just for archiving and nation/culture building as the admin saw fit. museums not living spaces; competing against dead canon artists is hardly a far fight. served the nation not artists.
same w new deal, CEMA. about mythmaking, about cultural supremacy, about not letting certain people in the canon

‘there’s no better way to secure your legacy than to pay an artist to help
make it for you.’

Cennino Cennini treatise on painting 1400s. notion of artist as noble and deserving recognition, helped both sides cause patron was seeing as someone w ability to recognize this talent. two people honoring each other and validating their standing
patronage started to dwindle during enlightenment and w end of feudal system bc shared wealth so indvids had less to splurge
hosting salons&connecting people became new way

‘A major part of this involved, convincing people with money that you were not interested in doing things for money: that what they were buying was the opportunity to provide an enlightened soul with a chance to express that enlightenment.’

most poets were rich ppl with leisure. peak ex of this in imperial china, the bureaucracy created art bc they had time and need to prove themselves enlightened. scholar exams for positions.
craftsmen often more skilled but they were excluded bc ‘they were creating things for the market and not to express the inherent worthiness of their souls…Circular logic is useful for keeping certain ppl out of the circle.’

modern conception of patronage has roots in renaissance, artist on payroll of some powerful person. Titian for ex. a lot of what made art special was who was paying for it not who made it per se****

‘Whatever claims the buyer and the artist are making, material realities are precisely what art is supposed to be above and so the more they creep in, the further art gets from the ostensible reason it’s being bought in the first place. The best time for artists’ cultural prestige comes right before the best time for them to make money…’ right before other ppl start to make money off their art

more money means more specialization means commerce built around this activity which means more people pursuing the skill etc; ‘With all this money and prestige flooding in, the original purpose gets more and more overwhelmed until eventually it’s hard to see how the work really fulfills that purpose.’

poetry~maybe first recognizable art. leading to theater. mostly religious festivals and rituals/retellings etc. and thus funding and paying for these showed your status and power.
rise of guilds was reason people able to be paid more. but then infamia and connection to sex work, which separated church from theater a bit. but church always needs art.
panem et circenses of rome

artist needs buyer to have the same delusion—which is defensible—because the claim is that art is above money because it traces its roots to the divine.

‘Placing money above art feels like blasphemy because, in some practical sense, it is. Priests aren’t supposed to be in it for the money either, and the first artists were essentially priests.’

gift mentality. art historically has been proof of spiritual capacity or tribute to the divine. and buying art is proof that you are capable of recognizing the talents of an artist.

but-artists as someone worthy of recognition makes money more of a tribute rather than payment. ‘This contradiction not only makes of exceedingly hard for the artist to get a fair deal, it actively discourages a fair deal.’

‘Part of the discomfort of putting art next to money is the recognition that money is the more powerful force.’