Van Gogh didn't have to shill for Audible.com to pissed-off fans of his art.
That was where I had to stop reading.
Van Gogh made money the old-fashioned way -- wearing down his brother by writing whiny letter after whiny letter begging for money
I'm baffled as to why anyone sees being internet famous as anything more than a lottery type path to income. You've got an audience that feels entitled to free content sans ads and product placement. That's not a promising plan for an income stream.
And the artists of the Renaissance didn't do product placement, but they'd paint you and your wife into the Adoration of the Magi if you paid them enough.
Yes to 3. So you spend most of your time producing stuff and giving it away for free. And now you're complaining of a lack of money?
3: They would have chosen a more straightforward path to wealth like robbing banks, but bank robbers hardly ever become famous anymore.
I had been tempted to send in this link. I have thoughts.
First it made me think of a moment in Stripped (the documentary about the decline of syndicated comic strips) in which Roz Chast says, "It always seems like publishing dollars turn into internet pennies." At that point in the movie she feels a bit like a foil, because you've just met a bunch of people who have made money off online comics and she seems older, less internet-savy and, frankly, much less prolific. But she may have a point.
My other thought was that apparently podcasting is the way to make money online. Let me dig up a couple links . . .
Podcast ads are lucrative. As of late last year, podcasters reported CPMs -- cost per a thousand ad impressions, the standard industry metric -- of between $20 and $45. Network TV programs, for comparison, earned about $5 to $20 per thousand impressions, radio ads made between $1 and $18 per thousand, and regular web ads between $1 and $20.
The trouble with podcasts is that they are difficult to grow: while text can be shared and consumed quickly, a podcast requires a commitment (which again, is why advertising in them is so valuable). [Bill] Simmons, though, by virtue of his previous writing, is already averaging over 400,000 downloads per episode. Podcast rates are hard to come by, but I'm aware of a few podcasts a quarter the size that are earning somewhere in excess of $10,000/episode; presuming proportionally similar rates (which may be unrealistic, given the broader audience) The Bill Simmons Podcast, which publishes three times a week, could be on a >$6 million run rate, which, per my envelope math in the footnote above, could nearly pay for a 50-person staff a la Grantland.
This is back to the (wrong) Adam Smith thing about a sure sign of poverty being that you do something for a living that lots of people do for fun.
Well, there's money going somewhere on YouTube, just to a few shareholders and tech executives, not to the producers of content. Thanks Google! Fortunately, it is a modern-day library of Alexandria.
At that point in the movie she feels a bit like a foil, because you've just met a bunch of people who have made money off online comics and she seems older, less internet-savy and, frankly, much less prolific.
And yet somehow, despite being not as prolific, she managed to do ok for herself! Maybe this has something to do with that "dollars"/"pennies" thing. Why should she have to crank it out?
My impression based on not getting through much of the article is that most vloggers talk about sex or fashion. I can't understand why they don't make money because that's obviously such an underserved market.
13: Good point! A vlogger who talked about Lutheran theology or topology could clean up!
Lutheran fashion seems like a reasonable compromise if you know enough about red plaid patterns and hats with ear flaps.
Why should she have to crank it out?
I didn't say that she should.
I'm just saying that the section of the movie which deals with online cartoonists is celebrating the "young, scrappy, and hungry" (to quote Hamilton) which she is not (at this point). But the movie does not give much of a sense of what the business landscape for online content actually looks like -- except to make clear that it's less lucrative than the older syndication model but still sufficiently lucrative that several people* make a living from online comics.
* Several!
Buffalo check: what the mm of the repeat says about your stoicism index.
What the mm of the repeat says about your stoicism index.
I've only read the start if the article but it reminds me of something I read a while back about how recognizable mid-list authors don't actually make a whole lot of money.
See, my take-away was "there actually aren't a lot of okay entry-level jobs anymore, so vlogging, while on the one hand a crapshoot, is on the other hand a possibility". Several people talk about interviewing for and not even being able to get, like, the shitty service industry jobs that Gen X would have been so bummed to have that we would have had to produce zines on stolen office supplies to relieve our feelings. I bet that most vloggers would give it all up for a moderately tolerable office gig starting in the mid-twenties [or local equivalent] with decent benefits, and the ones who wouldn't are just your standard love-over-gold artist types, even if the art is vlogging about cosmetics.
The economy isn't even crappy here and I still have young friends who are scrambling to get part time coffee house gigs, the lowliest kind of computer store sales jobs, etc. One of them has a tumblr which takes donations - not quite vlogging, but the intent is to produce interesting content so that she can make some money. She does this because her regular job is in the 25-30 irregular and poorly compensated hours a week range.
mid-twenties [or local equivalent]
I'm going to assume this means that in Minnesota, 25 is the new 18. Other interpretations are too depressing.
8: I'd really like to see a citation for that $10k per episode for 40k listeners figure, because it does not at all gel with what I glean from listening a whole bunch of podcasts, and is an order of magnitude above what the CPM implies. But, that said, podcasting does seem to be the solution to the particular problem identified in the OP article - modest fame and at least some income but without the hassle of being recognised everywhere you go. Probably a bit difficult to a makeup tips podcast though.
I'd really like to see a citation for that $10k per episode for 40k listeners figure, because it does not at all gel with what I glean from listening a whole bunch of podcasts, and is an order of magnitude above what the CPM implies.
Good question, the parenthetical comment makes it sound like he's thinking of podcasts which target a particular niche (probably high-tech) and which might have rates higher than average (though it looks to me like he's talking about 100K listeners, rather than 40K listeners -- that's still significantly above the Vox CPM numbers).
D'oh, yes, 100k. Too many 4s in my head at once. That still seems like the very top end of the possible range. Not least because I don't think the likes of Naturebox have the kind of marketing budget that would extend to even $1k an episode across the number of podcasts they've sponsored.Christ, at $10k an episode how much Squarespace have gone through?
Perhaps some podcasts have more than one ad? Obviously there's a limit to how many advertisements someone can do, but that could be the difference between the per/ad and per/podcast numbers?
This is not her first appearance here.
Anyhow, I met someone last week who has decided to market him/herself as the litigation lawyer for talent agents for YouTube stars. My immediate thought was "also sign up to do contract discovery work with a temp agency so you have a shot of sometimes being able to pay rent" but I was too polite to say so. And given my past judgments about such things this guy will probably end up owning a G5 and a chalet in Aspen.
I'm going to assume this means that in Minnesota, 25 is the new 18. Other interpretations are too depressing.
Google tells me
"50 percent of US wage earners made less than or equal to the median wage, estimate to be $26,965"
But the plasma screens are cheaper than ever.
The redundant use of "median wage" in that sentence is also depressing.
One way to make YouTube pay is to be a blond kid from Texas who makes pro-Saudi government "humor" propaganda videos in Arabic. Which is why I've quit the law to focus full time on my light comedy pro Kim Jong Un VLOG.
The whole idea of video on the Internet seems to be passing me by. I'm a crotchety old man about this. At work, YouTube and most other sites or plugins with streaming video is blocked. At home, sure, I'll watch movie trailers or funny pet videos or news clips or other stuff that seems momentarily diverting. But something with a plot, or a series I'm expected to get invested in? Give me something with the duration and production values of a TV episode. Or write it down so I can read it, which is quicker.
But then, clearly there's some audience for these things. It may be hard to monetize, but so are a lot of things. So I'm the weird one here.
Left to their own devices, my two younger kids would watch YouTube videos all goddamned day and night.
My kid doesn't even use his own device. He just steals his parents' devices.
My wife has a long list of subscribed youtube channels and people, and when she presents stuff she thinks I'll like, she's usually right. I can't imagine how much other stuff she watches to find those nuggets though...
How old must one be before "Get a job!" becomes an acceptable retort to anything that a young person complains about?
My kid is up to 57 YouTube subscribers. His goal is 3 million.
Then he only needs $53,000 from each subscriber.
I continue to be mystified by the whole podcast thing. I don't even like to read long blogposts, why would I want to listen to someone reading a long one?
As Cyrus says, I get that I'm the wrong one here, but geez. Granted, I don't have a commute, and listening to talk while I exercise makes no sense to me, but even on our cross-country trip to/from Boulder last summer, my tolerance for podcasts was a few hours every fourth day. And I like audiobooks just fine.
Perhaps some podcasts have more than one ad? Obviously there's a limit to how many advertisements someone can do, but that could be the difference between the per/ad and per/podcast numbers?
Some do, but I don't think I've ever come across more than three different sponsors in a podcast, and one is very much the norm, with one read and maybe one thank you at the end. And I've got 132 different podcasts in my feed, so I feel like I've got a good handle on this.
I continue to be mystified by the whole podcast thing. I don't even like to read long blogposts, why would I want to listen to someone reading a long one?
Do you understand radio? Podcasts are just radio shows you can listen to whenever you like.
42: And perhaps more importantly, they're much less least-common-denominator. You can find a niche that speaks to you.
But yeah, if you get audiobooks, you probably get the important thing about podcasts. They're a background stream of linguistic content for when you're doing something else and don't need your ears. Commute, exercise, chores, whatever.
I suppose I'm the opposite of you--I don't mind audiobooks, but I don't really like them--too much plot and I probably can't focus on whatever else I'm trying to do. I like my books as text so I can give them my complete attention. I'd don't usually mind if I miss bits and pieces of podcasts.
Also the US doesn't really seem to do radio comedy any more (at least, that's not of the morning show variety), so podcasts are by far the way best to mainline standup and improv comedians. If you're a comedy fan and aren't listening to podcasts, you're doing it wrong.
I like podcasts and don't like audiobooks. With an audiobook, I find the low speed maddening -- I can read four or five times that fast. A podcast on the other hand feels more like someone talking, as opposed to a slow book.
Also the US doesn't really seem to do radio comedy any more (at least, that's not of the morning show variety), so podcasts are by far the way best to mainline standup and improv comedians. If you're a comedy fan and aren't listening to podcasts, you're doing it wrong.
We don't do radio comedy or radio drama any more. Not for at least 30 years. (single exception: Garrison Keillor)
I always get surprised hearing about some BBC drama or play and finding out it's on the radio, not TV.
Radio in the US consists of Taylor Swift 24/7, or guys yelling at each other about Peyton Manning.
50: I believe you are missing the highly desirable "blacks and gays are ruining America so the Muslims can take over" demographic.
I have nothing against audiobooks or podcasts in theory, they just don't have a niche in my life. If my eyes are available, reading would be quicker. If I want background noise while doing something else, I'd rather have music. I don't want to use a narrative as background noise because then I miss too many of the details to enjoy it and/or find it too distracting from the main activity. If I'm going to go through the trouble of getting something and putting my time into it, I expect to be able to focus on it well enough to get into it, and I can't while driving in heavy traffic or weeding the garden or whatever. I imagine I'd like them if I were taking long car trips by myself where navigation and traffic aren't problems. I haven't done that in about seven years.
||
My job sucks. It has been busier than this before, but it has rarely been this annoying. All three of my active projects right now are making me feel useless, mismanaged, or both. I can't wait until vacation.
|>
50, 51 -- radio is an interesting business these days. The ratings of sports talk radio are incredibly, stunningly bad. Like, the absolute bottom of the ratings market in most places. But sports talk stations stay on the air and are ubiquitous because the listeners, i.e. mostly desperate, stupid men, are so stupid and willing to depart with cash that they are able to do financially OK from ads for investment scams and sports gambling scams. They survive because they play only to a few marks, but the marks are totally good marks.
Also, until about 2008 radio ratings were done by people self-reporting what they were listening to and how long they listened. It turned out people were stunningly bad at reporting that information. They tended to way overstate the amount of time they spent listening to talk people like Howard Stern and way understate the amount of time they spent listening to the pop song of the moment. In about 2008, the industry switched to actual monitors of what people listened to in order to calculate ratings, and the result was a massive decrease in talk-type shows and increase in pop-hits radio that play the same songs over and over and over.
Audiobooks are a completely different animal to reading because of the speed, but if the book is good enough that can be an advantage. I've been listening to the Smiley books, usually something I would read really quick on a plane, but having them unfold more slowly allows me for example to see clearly all the moments when if you just turn left instead of right you end up in a Pym book instead of an East German star chamber. For example when Leamas comes to grips with his job at the metaphysical library (they have only v 4 of Archaeo Discoveries of Asia Minorin 4 vol) we are just a hop, skip and a jump from the marvelous disquisition on the office tea rituals in Jane and Prudence.
It passes the time at the gym, at any rate.
The biggest problems with audiobooks are crap readers and the dearth of good contemporary fiction. But the sort of top tier of pop fiction is the audiobook's sweet spot.
53: I was in a cab the other day where the radio was tuned to some vaguely political talk program (not obviously left or right as far as I could tell). Man, the demographic picture of the presumed audience painted by the commercials was absolutely grim. Poor health, paranoia, sufficient stupidity to fall for obvious financial scams: those were the assumed characteristics of the listeners.
53: So what you're saying is only sports talk radio gets the Glengarry leads. Glengarry leads are for closers!
Podcasts are just radio shows you can listen to whenever you like.
What makes you think I listen to "radio shows"?
I basically hate all forms of talk radio. I don't want to hear news, interviews, or stories. I can enjoy e.g. morning drive radio as long as they play a fair amount of music (and the stuff in between is clever, which it rarely is). But some schmuck jabbering at me? Why do you think I read books at parties?
The place where I spend most of my online time other than here is a Pirates blog. The founder and another FPP who actually has a paid radio gig do a podcast. I read every word those guys write, but I never listen to the podcast. Two people talking to each other, and I listen? Ugh.
43.2: Ah, see, I don't think I'm capable of having the spoken word as background. Basically the only things I can do while listening to talk radio/audiobooks is drive and do dishes. Sometimes cooking if it's mostly labor, but it's annoying if it's a complex or new recipe or whatever.
FWIW, I love radio baseball as background. For me, nothing else compares. I can kind of do football, but if you stop paying attention, the situation can change completely without you noticing in a way that doesn't happen in baseball.
56 -- exactly. I think, but don't know, that right-wing political radio works on the same principle. Few listen but those that do are the suckers' suckers. But I think its more true for sports and the sports audience is younger.
I don't understand why radio networks haven't started playing podcast programming. Kinda like how they play music with "jack" formatted stations that have no DJ. Except instead of pop music, it would be podcasted talk shows.
Cyrus pretty much gets me in 52.1. But at this point I can't imagine any activity during which I could hear Ira Glass and not want to punch him in his smug face. And pretty much every podcast targeted at me is like that.
Wait, that's not clear. What I mean is 2 things: first, every podcast that owes a debt to TAL is dead to me; second, as 57.last indicates, there is practically no degree of interesting subject+person I like that could drive me to want to listen to jabbering. Why those are connected does have to do with Ira, whom I briefly liked well enough, but whose style has become so ubiquitous that I basically can't stand anything remotely similar. So you either have TAL-style, well-produced talk that I hate, or two-guys-with-mics jabbering, which I also hate.
Maybe the comedy stuff, I don't know. But as Ned said, that's so alien to me that I wouldn't know where to start. I haven't paid attention to standup since the '80s, really. I think Jake Johannsen in '92 was the last standup thing that I got really excited about (to be clear, this is mostly a matter of access to cable; I don't think I've outgrown it or it's gotten worse, it's just not been a thing for me for 20+ years).
I basically hate all forms of talk radio. I don't want to hear news, interviews, or stories.
I'm the same way, but I have come to like certain types of YouTube videos. I actually have watched some of the ones made by the author of the article in the OP, and liked them. (I don't think they'd be that popular with Unfogged commenters, though; definitely aimed at a younger crowd.)
Relatedly, I think what she's mostly doing in the article (which I appear to be the only commenter to have read all the way through) is explaining to fans of videos like hers what the economic reality of making them is, and why so many YouTube stars "sell out." Basically, she's saying the choice non-superstars face is to either go for broke on endorsements etc. or get a real job and (likely) stop making videos. This probably seems obvious to anyone who understands how the working world works, but again, the fanbase for this stuff is generally pretty young and naive.
60: But per 43.1, I'm not sure that works, because so few podcasts target anything but a tiny niche.
Although, since most podcasts are weekly at best, perhaps it would make sense to have a given hour slot tied to a given theme, rotating among shows. Maybe?
Streaming it now, the '92 special is holding up much better than I expected.
61.last: there's any amount of good BBC radio comedy. Buy some of that and stick it on your mp3 player.
I guess I don't understand what you're trying to convey by "jabbering". Are you opposed to any format that involves people having a relatively informal, mostly unscripted conversation, even if it is in fact highly structured and prepared?
Also, there's clearly a temperament issue at stake because I'd have thought that weeding would be the perfect time to listen to podcasts.
60: But per 43.1, I'm not sure that works, because so few podcasts target anything but a tiny niche.
I guess it depends what you mean by tiny niche. I mean, clearly many do, but at the same time, "movies" isn't a tiny niche. "Tech" isn't a tiny niche. "Football" isn't a tiny niche". And, at least in the UK, a good chunk of the most popular podcasts are repurposed radio shows, a la TAL.
Yeah, you could play a different tech podcast every day at 5:00, a different current events one at 6:00, etc. Put a schedule up on your website so people know when to tune in.
Also, modern HD radio enables you to squeeze out 7 different radio channels in the same broadcast space that one used to take up, so it might make sense to do that and give each sub-channel a separate theme.
66.1: Pretty much. When in my life do I want to just stand around listening in on the conversation of others? I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but it's a rare talent to me. It's not like I tuned in to Letterman for the interviews. And pretty much every other late night host I never watch/listen[ed] to the interviews.
66.2: Yeah, that's where I part ways from Cyrus, but that's also what reinforced to me how little I want to hear any of that crap.
I dunno man, I skip 90% of the interviews on the Daily Show etc, and I avoid chat/late night shows like the plague, but there are a lot of great podcasts. Some people are funny, you know? Or they might have something interesting to tell you about Genghis Khan or cephalopods. The great thing about podcasts is that they're (mostly) not beholden to that publicity merrygoround that makes the talk shows so horrible. They just do whatever it is that they're interested in.
Garrison Keillor
Apparently, the bar is so low for radio comedy that you aren't required to say anything funny for decades at a time.
That Genghis Khan thing was a good podcast.
LOOKS LIKE THOSE CLOWNS IN CONGRESS HAVE DONE IT AGAIN
WHAT A BUNCH OF CLOWNS
The actress in the AT&T cellphone ads does a youtube show whose genre seems to be young awkwardness humor.
What I mean is 2 things: first, every podcast that owes a debt to TAL is dead to me; second, as 57.last indicates, there is practically no degree of interesting subject+person I like that could drive me to want to listen to jabbering.
Strong recommend: Hrishikesh Hiriway's Song Exploder podcast. (Not necessarily to JRoth, who seems to enjoy being cranky about podcasts, although it is not excluded by those criteria.) He interviews musicians about the making of a single recording, then edits himself out of the interview and edits in the individual tracks of the song. They tend to be around 10-15 minutes, which is the podcast sweet spot for me.
I am up to 50 YouTube subscribers.
Ginger Yellow do you have any recommendations for good podcasts for someone (namely me) who really likes Melvyn Bragg's In Our Time and Doug Henwood's Between the Lines? Something like that, political or historical, informative and with people who actually know what they're talking about.
I like podcasts a lot and use them to get to sleep if I can't find something interesting to listen to on streaming radio that I find engaging enough to help me drop off. Usually that means BBC Radiio 4 or WNYC.
Radio Four "analysis"?
(I'm making one in February but there are lots before then it's safe to listen to)
Yeah, the Analysis series is good. I don't listen to many politics shows, but on the history side Hardcore History does deep dives on specific periods, while The Memory Palace is much more eclectic. 99% Invisible is like The Memory Palace but with a history-of-design focus. Stuff You Missed In History Class focuses on obscure events.
At the risk of just plugging Radio 4, you could also check out the podcasts of old one-off series like Memories of a Nation or The History of the World in 100 Objects.
The most horrifying thing about YouTube is the videos of people playing video games and making jokes. Though now I want to make a video of watching a video of people playing video games and making jokes.
53: I'm going to assume, in the absence of contrary evidence, that men were listening to Taylor Swift 24/7, and covering it up by claiming to be listening to sports radio.
I like podcast and audiobooks for background noise. They suck up enough mental bandwidth to make some tasks tolerable. Music sort-of works but if I'm not listening to a playlist I compiled myself there are inevitably songs that irritate me in the mix.
50, 51 -- radio is an interesting business these days. The ratings of sports talk radio are incredibly, stunningly bad. Like, the absolute bottom of the ratings market in most places. But sports talk stations stay on the air and are ubiquitous because the listeners, i.e. mostly desperate, stupid men, are so stupid and willing to depart with cash that they are able to do financially OK from ads for investment scams and sports gambling scams. They survive because they play only to a few marks, but the marks are totally good marks.
It's that Angus Steak House/Nigerian Spammer business model again. Once you know it, you see it everywhere.
All you have to do to claim your $20m is to spend £10 on a shitty prawn cocktail.
shitty prawn cocktail
"Because that's not a 'vein'."
The most horrifying thing about YouTube is the videos of people playing video games and making jokes.
My kid loves these. He has taken over my nice, dual-screen PC, such that on one screen he is playing Minecraft, and on the other screen he is watching other people play Minecraft.
I'll bite on the OP - it does seem problematic. Obviously entertainment is not and will never be a meritocracy and there is always going to be much of the lottery in it. But what's described seems more like people who have gotten comparable levels of popularity, to, say, a mid-tier cable show, with much less budget, but they're not rewarded commensurately to the utils they're providing, probably because they're not crafted around consumption and advertising in a thoroughgoing enough way. Perhaps it points to the need for a Halfordista socialized-entertainment scheme? Or just a bigger-budgeted national foundation that gives out a lot of grants, vestigial here but I think more substantial still in Canada.
It's an interesting contrast with webcomics, where one sees a number of people getting, not big bucks, but at least thousands a month from loyal fans who want to see them keep working. It might work for podcasts too, I don't know. Similarly, the YouTube channel Healthcare Triage now has a Patreon getting $2,480 a month. But I can see how the majority of the world of online video would attract more casual followings with less money to spend.
And then there's the side of things highlighted by Frowner supra - doing a shitty service industry job alongside a creative endeavor is not a great way to live, but it keeps body and soul together, and it seems like even that's falling out of reach for people.
And not to discount how much TV exploits people, and/or is itself doomed, but it's still pulling in bucks for now.
And then there's the side of things highlighted by Frowner supra - doing a shitty service industry job alongside a creative endeavor is not a great way to live, but it keeps body and soul together, and it seems like even that's falling out of reach for people.
Hearing about the career of George Scialabba, I think most readers probably thought "Wow! That sounds a lot better than being a professor."
It's an interesting contrast with webcomics, where one sees a number of people getting, not big bucks, but at least thousands a month from loyal fans who want to see them keep working. It might work for podcasts too, I don't know.
It does demonstrably work, though maybe not for all types of podcast. A lot of the ones I listen to are on the Maximum Fun network, which is a donor pledge supported system (and they do take some ads, but less than most podcasts). They've steadily increased the number of podcasts under the umbrella, so it must be at the very least sustainable. But they're not swimming in money. And I know a fair few Patreon funded podcasts that have hundreds of episodes, though the hosts all have other jobs.
Another big comedy podcast network, Earwolf, has gone to a subscription model, though it's a bit different. The ordinary podcasts are still free-to-air, but the archives beyond six months are only on the app, which also includes a dozen or so exclusive podcasts (which so far have proven pretty irregular) and perhaps more valuably a very large range of stand-up comedy specials from the likes of Louis CK, Bob Odenkirk, Jen Kirkman and Paul F Tompkins.
85: Maybe he should stream his experience with his commentary, so we can begin an infinite Youtube Minecraft recursion inception.
Is BBC Radio 4 still state funded? That alone is a nice legacy of postwar high-culture socialism, speaking of things that feel like distant traces of a lost civilization.
Perhaps it points to the need for a Halfordista socialized-entertainment scheme? Or just a bigger-budgeted national foundation that gives out a lot of grants, vestigial here but I think more substantial still in Canada.
Or just universal basic income
Well, it's funded by the licence fee (until Whittingdale has his way), which is basically a hypothecated tax on TV owners.
Maybe he should stream his experience with his commentary, so we can begin an infinite Youtube Minecraft recursion inception.
Well, he's certainly done videos of him commenting on other videos. There is a whole sub-genera of "Herobrine Sighting" videos, which comes with a corresponding set of "Herobrine Sighting Debunking" videos in which one watches the sighting video and picks it apart with comments like "that's so fake!"
Some of the videos he's made that have gotten the most views are Herobrine Sighting Debunkings.
UBI would have all kinds of nice benefits but if you want culture you're still gonna have to pay for it specifically somehow; no conceivable UBI will actually get people to do sustainable full time culture work for free. As I always say, you have three choices for paying for culture -- socialism, commodification (through copyright or otherwise), or patronage. YouTube is now a combo of mostly 2 and 3 -- YouTube itself has figured out a way to make a ton money while paying almost everyone almost nothing, except those folks who get sponsored by brands or have independent patronage streams, like white Texan Saudi Arabian government guy, and everyone else basically lives on patronage, often from their parents.
no conceivable UBI will actually get people to do sustainable full time culture work for free.
Do you mean that we don't have sustainable full time culture work in the US? There are certainly plenty of people doing it for free.
I hate the word "podcast" so much that I can't imagine ever listening to one, even though I do like talk radio shows (as a format--in general the content is terrible).
Sure but you can't actually get anything like sustainable cultural production at any level you'd want without some plausible structure for people to get paid for it. Don't get me wrong -- I think everyone having a guaranteed unconditional $20,000 per year would lead a lot of people to take chances on making dubiously commercial art (and to take a lot of other risks, too, and that this would be a good thing for lots of reasons that have little or nothing to do with cultural production). But it's not going to be enough to support cultural infrastructure without a lot more -- you'd still need (more) socialism, commodification, or patronage.
70, 72: Loved the Genghis Khan series.
98 -- this blog's comment section effectively subsists on patronage by employers (including universities) who have decided that not monitoring their employees at work/having them lose productivity is on net OK, given that in return they get overeducated, mildly competent employees.
I'm not sure that "not enough cultural production" is currently one of the main problems facing humanity. It seems like there is actually a massive glut of cultural production these days - not to mention a huge backlog of stuff that has been produced in the past - and that's why it really can't be expected to pay very well, at least through any kind of market-based system.
103: We need to start destroying cultural products in order to make room for new ones. Maybe I should run with this idea and apply for a grant from the NEA.
Well, all kinds of things, global warming/clean water/fighting all kinds of disease/general inequality/ending horrible factory conditions are definitely way more important, I'll give you that. But the costs of socialism or commodification to create a lot of culture are pretty low, and the benefits high. It's just that people and often governments don't want to pay those costs or, as in the case of YouTube (but not just YouTube, eg film studios do this to the extent they can) people have figured out ways to siphon more and more of the funding stream that exists for culture to capital and ownership of existing assets and less and less to cultural labor.
Tigre, can you clarify what you envision by "socialism"? A super NEA? Double your basic income for being a verified artist?
no conceivable UBI will actually get people to do sustainable full time culture work for free
Because it will be too low, or …?
Basically any form of government spending on the arts, funded ultimately by taxes. The BBC counts, I think. A super NEA would be great. Maybe a subsidy program for registered artists. Who knows, there are lots of possibilities, some better than others, many that haven't been tried.
But the costs of socialism or commodification to create a lot of culture are pretty low, and the benefits high.
I think the cost of socialism are low, but the costs of commodificaiton are substantial. The limits that get imposed on the way that cultural artifacts can be remixed, reused, or adapted has a dampening impact on culture itself.
Sometimes, sure (try doing music clearances on a documentary these days!), sometimes not (try winning a lawsuit claiming that some novel or, pace the Marvin Gaye heirs, song, stole your idea). The question is really what matters most on net, but I absolutely agree that more socialism is a better solution to a lot of these problems, in general, than a racheting up of restrictions on use and remix, especially in the internet era.
Here's your periodic reminder of Dean Baker's Artistic Freedom Voucher.
I like Dean Baker a lot but as I'm sure I've said here before the artistic freedom voucher is a bullshitty economist's idea. The numbers and scheme just doesn't add up, in part because there's no serious accounting for costs of distribution or promotion or all the other business aspects that get paid for through copyright, in part because the psychological model of how people would use it doesn't reflect reality, and the results of any plausible AFV scheme (certainly the one he advocates) would be a disaster.
If you're going for a similarly utopian scheme, a much better idea would be a government-run Napster in which people can download music for free but the government administers a statutory royalties program, paid directly to artists, based on number of downloads or something. But my own view is that this kind of thing misses the real problem, which is not that people pay too much for mass culture (that problem has lomg since been solved) but that the amounts paid for mass culture don't get reasonably distributed to encourage more artists and more high culture. Just reviving something like the WPA's Federal Project 1, which cost like 1/1000 of 1% of GDP and is something that the government in this country actually did, once, would do so much more for sustainable cultural production than things like Baker's scheme.
79 Thanks GY (and Nworb)
...people have figured out ways to siphon more and more of the funding stream that exists for culture to capital and ownership of existing assets and less and less to cultural labor.
Where can I read more about this (other than your comments scattered in the archives through the years)? Any good books or articles that you would recommend?
This book is about as close to my view on these things as you can find (not identical, but close) but far more coherent and less influenced by rage, alcohol, heavy metal, and working for corporate clients.
Thanks. Though I do like 3 of 4 of those things.
Sites like YouTube get so unfairly maligned in these discussions that it makes me wonder if people were too hard on the record labels all these years. Making YouTube is hard, and expensive. There aren't Internet fairies that deliver Beyonce videos down the tubes to your laptop. A high volume website is a genuine achievement, more of an achievement than the latest variation on three chords and the truth.
I have three cords, a double rainbow, and the truth.
Also, rage, alcohol, and corporate clients.
videos of people playing video games and making jokes
From what I can tell, the jokes primarily consist of guys screaming obscenities at the screen.
Youtube is a legitimate way for anyone to make money. I admire anyone that will create videos for the world to see which also means enduring daily criticism.
Now that spammers are on my side I think I need to reconsider my life choices.