Tuesday
I took that bit of video sometime last week. Why put art on the walls, when I can watch the shadows dance…
I am getting ready for today’s rehearsal.
Yesterday I read this:
Chase Jarvis Blog: Priced To Sell: Gladwell vs. Anderson Considering Photography
“…And there’s plenty of other information out there that has chosen to run in the opposite direction from Free. The Times gives away its content on its Web site. But the Wall Street Journal has found that more than a million subscribers are quite happy to pay for the privilege of reading online. Broadcast television—the original practitioner of Free—is struggling. But premium cable, with its stiff monthly charges for specialty content, is doing just fine. Apple may soon make more money selling iPhone downloads (ideas) than it does from the iPhone itself (stuff). The company could one day give away the iPhone to boost downloads; it could give away the downloads to boost iPhone sales; or it could continue to do what it does now, and charge for both. Who knows? The only iron law here is the one too obvious to write a book about, which is that the digital age has so transformed the ways in which things are made and sold that there are no iron laws.”
Counter to some predictions, photography and video are are not bound to ‘Free’. I’m in agreement with Anderson that ‘Free’ is most certainly carving out its space–even reasonably so–in every digitally based industry, but I’m in complete alignment with Gladwell that the two markets ‘Free’ and ‘Not Free’ can and will continue to co-exist reasonably nicely. The trick is/will be in finding the balance.
Read the whole piece here. A lot of very good food for thought.
Somewhat related is this entry at Slashdot:
Slashdot Technology Story | If You Live By Free, You Will Die By Free
“Internet entrepreneur Mark Cuban writes that the problem with companies who have built their business around free is that the more success you have in delivering free, the more expensive it is to stay at the top. ‘”They will be Facebook to your Myspace, or Myspace to your Friendster or Google to your Yahoo,” writes Cuban. “Someone out there with a better idea will raise a bunch of money, give it away for free, build scale and charge less to reach the audience.”‘ Cuban says that even Google, who lives and dies by free, knows that ‘at some point your Black Swan competitor will appear and they will kick your ass’ and that is exactly why Google invests in everything and anything they possibly can that they believe can create another business they can depend on in the future searching for the “next big Google thing.”
Anything generic is moving towards free. Anything truly original is moving towards value.
Latin or Blues electric guitar moves towards free. Santana moves towards value. A photograph of the Pantheon can be found for free on the internet, an original and completely different photograph of the Pantheon cannot.
For an artist the lesson might be this:
If you want to fit into a certain category of music or want to fit into a specific radio format, you will have to fight free – because similar content WILL be available for free!
If, on the other hand, you are developing something truly original, a different sound, a new expression, then it might take you longer to find recognition, but you will develop value.
If, what you are creating is too far out… maybe you just have to wait a few months (((or sometimes years))) to let the world catch up. Suddenly you might find that your strange new sound fits in quite nicely.
In other words, I get the sense that the current economy and internet-culture should push a young artist towards more original and away from trying to fit in. And that would be a good thing.
Please discuss.
