"Matt is right, in that scripting is the new literacy, and a growing
form of artistic expression. Tech-savvy artists are creating apps and
developing sites to put their art into the world. Whether its Matt
Inmann creating his work and coding his site at The Oatmeal or young
app developers likeRobert Nay, artists are becoming coders and vice
versa, since, as Mullenweg states, scripting is “new literacy”."
2012: The year of the artist-entrepreneur | Entrepreneurial
Here's plain text:
2012: The year of the artist-entrepreneur
DEC 30, 2011 14:04 EST
(This article by Michael Wolf originally appeared in GigaOm.)
(GigaOm) – While 2011 was a big year for political unrest, another
uprising was afoot in the world of content creators and artists.
Everywhere you look, artists are taking more control over their own
economic well being, in large part because the Internet has enabled
them to do so. You see it in all forms of content, from books, to
video to music.
A few examples from this year:
e-books: Probably the most active area in large part because there is
huge shifts taking place in digital publishing. From former mid-list
writers like Barry Eisler to superstars like JK Rowling, writers are
increasingly making waves in digital publishing.
Video: The story of the year for artists-as-entrepreneur came at the
tail-end, with Louis CK saying no thank you to corporate middlemen and
putting his new concert video online for $5 a pop.
Radio/Music: All sorts of independent entrepreneurs are putting audio
entertainment online, from the rise of podcast kings like Leo Laporte
to a huge number of independents like Adam Carolla and Marc Maron.
Music artists are being given freedom too, through new platforms to
create and share their music like Soundcloud.
So what is driving this movement towards the artist-entrepreneur that
will give it huge momentum in 2012? Here are a few underlying trends:
The distribution chain is collapsing across content verticals
The middleman is under attack on all fronts, whether its in video,
music/audio and e-books.
As devices like TVs become connected, as books become e-readers and
tablets, and music is now digital, the storefront is fast-becoming the
entire distribution chain. With e-books it’s Amazon or Apple, with
radio it’s iTunes, with video it’s Google/YouTube, Netflix and other
upstarts who are investing in original content, or simply direct-to-
consumer efforts using web-payment platforms like Paypal.
Louis CK, who created his own site, paid for bandwidth, and used
Paypal for payment, captured how many artists are beginning to think
when he said in an interview with Bill Simmons that he “didn’t want to
cut out the middleman, I just didn’t need one. There wasn’t any reason
to have someone there. I just thought make this thing and put it up.”
Content production, distribution and monetization tools are becoming
democratized through the web
In e-books, distribution and storefronts have already collapsed into
one, but managing distribution across multiple channels is difficult
since storefronts are still siloed (Amazon is separate from Apple
iBooks, which is walled off from Barnes&Noble, etc). However,
companies like Smashwordsenable creation and distribution across
multiple storefronts, while Vook, post-pivot, is working on SaaS tools
to create e-books and manage their distribution, complete with
reporting and management dashboards.
In music, artists are starting to embrace sites like Soundcloud to
create music and share it, while others direct-to-fan sites like
Topspin Media are enabling artists to create commerce sites to sell
music in turnkey fashion. And it’s not just music sales, but actual
concert tickets. The Pixies used Topspin to sell tickets for a recent
concert, utilizing email campaigns and to notify fans and processed
the tickets using an iOS app at the door.
With video, big middlemen still dominate, but that is changing as
video creation and distribution costs come down in a world of
connected devices. As Ryan Lawler wrote in a piece for GigaOM Pro:
“independent content creators stand to gain the most through massive
reductions in the cost of recording equipment and editing software, as
well as the greater availability of streaming video service on
connected devices. They gain new distribution opportunities for their
content and greater possibility for monetization. Consider any of the
top YouTube video channels, which probably wouldn’t be able to survive
in the pay-TV universe but have created thriving businesses due to the
cost structure online.”
Generational shifts towards technology savvy-artists
As Matt Mullenweg put in in his New Year’s resolution on GigaOM:
“For a year now, I’ve said scripting is the new literacy. That’s
something I strongly believe. In Douglas Rushkoff’s latest book, he
talks about “program or be programmed.” That is, if you’re not in
control of your inputs, you’re not really in control of your outputs
either. You’re just a reactionary force.”
Matt is right, in that scripting is the new literacy, and a growing
form of artistic expression. Tech-savvy artists are creating apps and
developing sites to put their art into the world. Whether its Matt
Inmann creating his work and coding his site at The Oatmeal or young
app developers likeRobert Nay, artists are becoming coders and vice
versa, since, as Mullenweg states, scripting is “new literacy”.
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
