| This is an excerpt of the Introduction to Part One of BE THE MEDIA
by David Mathison. Since this is long, we will be posting this in five parts.
If you like you can download a free version of the full introduction at www.bethemedia.com |
BE THE MEDIA: Introduction to Part One: Rebooting the American Dream
by David Mathison
(PART TWO OF FIVE)
Let’s face it. The past systems
mostly sucked.
Before 2000, artists, media company executives, and consumers all had limited choices. The functions of recording, publishing, and distribution were controlled by media conglomerates that had vast resources to take the risks involved in creating, marketing, and selling potential blockbusters. They owned the plants that printed the books, pressed the albums, and processed and distributed the films.
There were few other ways that
creative artists could get their songs heard or their books published, and there
were limited opportunities for them to develop a direct relationship with fans.
With everybody competing for the elusive major deal, supplicants had no choice
but to accept egregious contract terms.
High-quality, low-cost digital
tools, along with the power and scope of the Internet, have changed everything.
Now anyone—this means you!—can have a global sales, marketing, distribution, and fulfillment infrastructure that rivals that of the majors. Furthermore, this digital media renaissance has made possible a flowering of creativity.
Smart artists today don’t chase
publishers, labels, studios, and distributors. Like their progenitors in the
punk movement in the 1970s, the cassette-culture boom of the ’80s, and hip-hop
entrepreneurs in the ’90s, these new DIYers take their career into their own hands and forge direct relationships
with their audience. They are not relying on a lucky break, becoming the next American Idol, or garnering an
appearance on Oprah. They are building
their own future themselves.
Before, the options were either
stardom…or anonymity.
Today, there is a middle way,
proposed by media futurists such as Brian Austin Whitney, Kevin Kelly, Jenny
Toomey, Barry Bergman, Gerd Leonhard, Peter Broderick, and Janet Switzer.
In 2004, Brian Austin Whitney wrote, “I think a new definition of success will be the artist who has 5000 passionate fans who spend $20–$30 a year on [the artist’s] creative output.” That adds up to $100,000 per year, or more: enough to quit your day job, have health insurance, and own a car.
In 2008, Kevin Kelly amplified this with his viral
article 1,000 True Fans (see BE THE MEIDA Foreword). True fans, he wrote, are people who will purchase everything you
produce. “You don’t need a million fans to justify producing something new. A
mere one thousand is sufficient. You don’t need a hit to survive. You make a
living instead of a fortune.”
The very technology that enables
this flowering of creativity, however, simultaneously holds the biggest
challenge. How does an artist attract enough fans and create enough products to
earn a respectable living, such as $100,000 a year?
With the help of fans like
us.
In the past, conglomerates were enriched at the expense of consumers—yes, us—who
unwittingly enabled and perpetuated a system rife with short-term greed,
questionable accounting, and unequal rewards. The majority of revenues from our
purchase of that $20 CD or book went to support executives, lawyers,
accountants, distributors, retailers, and promoters—everyone but the artist.
It was not, and still is not, uncommon for even famous, talented artists to go without health care or a pension plan for a secure and dignified retirement, because at a young age they were exploited by abusive, one-sided American Idol–style contracts…and ended up with pennies on the dollar.
Many consumers simply did not, and do not,
realize that buying through a reseller (such as Wal-Mart or Amazon) gives 50 to
60 percent of the revenue to that reseller,
instead of to the creator of the work.
So, what’s different now? Today, you can rescue your favorite artists from the captive economics of the past. You can reward them directly by buying from their websites, blogs, or widgets.
Peter Broderick refers to this as moving from “consumers
of a product to patrons of an artist.” Direct patronage ensures
that your favorite artists have sufficient resources to create more products for
your enjoyment. What could be more satisfying than that?
Today, fans or patrons—that’s us
again—act as publicists, distributors, affiliates, and even salespeople. Fans forward
e-mails and links to friends and family of their favorite blog posts, books,
music, and videos; they share music playlists at iTunes, eMusic, Internet radio
stations, and music blogs; book selections at Amazon; photos on Flickr;
favorite songs and films on social networks like MySpace and Facebook.
Fans—not corporate executives or focus groups backed by multimillion-dollar
promotional campaigns—pick the hits. A fan’s reward is not money, but the
satisfaction of turning friends on to the hot new band, book, blog post, or
film. (See BE THE MEDIA Chapters 4 and 15, music and social networks.)
Of course, today’s technology
also makes it easy to copy a CD or
song and share it, but that’s stealing, after all, and it means none of the
revenue goes to the artist we love.
In other words, when eating a fruit, think of the person who planted the tree.
Rebooting the American Dream
It’s indisputable. Over the past
few decades, the American dream has been hijacked little by little and more and
more by winner-take-all pirates and their intermediaries, who turned it into a
nightmare of a system that benefitted only them and a few chosen “winners.”
The effect of this cultural hijacking,
on most entrepreneurs, artists, and society itself, has been unfair, unequal,
exploitative, and—let’s face it—in the products it presents to audiences, often
boring.
Then, just when it looked like
most creative people might as well let their dream die, rescue arrived in the
form of a technological and populist revolution.
This ongoing revolution—some,
like our contributing author Douglas Rushkoff, consider it a renaissance—is right
now rebooting the American dream. It is giving it new life. It is bringing back
the traditional all-American dream,
one that is fair and just and that provides equality and opportunity to any and
all dreamers, not merely corporate executives.
Together we can wrest the dream back
and not only reboot it, but also upgrade it, so that the rightful owners—the artists
and their fans—can use it democratically and benefit equally from it.
After all, every one of us dreams.
But how does a dream become
reality? As the following chapters in Be
the Media will make clear, in as few or as many details as you want, there
are three basic steps:
1. Cultivate a Core Audience: Create a
direct relationship with your fans, thus cutting out the intermediaries. This enhances
the bond between you and the fans, while also increasing both opportunities and
profits.
2. Own Your Rights: Control your material so that you have the
freedom to create new products and to “repurpose” existing products differently.
Artists should avoid exploitative agreements that take all rights exclusively
and in perpetuity (which are truly a pact with the devil.)
3. Repurpose Your Work: Because you own the rights, you can constantly reconfigure your material and expertise into a range of progressively higher-value products and personalized experiences for your fans or your clientele.
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