Part 3: How Artists Can Make a Living
Jeremy: What if you don’t want to do that? What if you’re like, who’s that Celtic lady in that Scottish tower — Enya.
Pearl: What about her?
Jeremy: She doesn’t tour because her music is so intricately layered that you couldn’t do it live without just playing back the recording. So, she doesn’t tour, she just sits in her castle and records.
Pearl: You’re telling me Enya needs my five dollars?
Jeremy: No, because she’s very successful because a lot of people bought her CDs, but if nobody did, she’d have no other way of supporting herself.
Pearl: You know what, your key words were “they were buying her CDs”.
Jeremy: Yeah. But increasingly a lot of people aren’t gonna care about physical product. They’re just going to want to download it.
Pearl: I don’t know, me right now as of 2017, I still want a CD in my collection, I don’t know what it is.
Jeremy: Yeah well I’ve already said that’s good for you, but I’m just saying that it doesn’t scale. Once the people who don’t want a physical copy of a CD becomes too many, the music industry couldn’t support itself that way.
Pearl: In the same way a photograph that you take on your phone and never print out doesn’t ever seem as real.
Jeremy: Yeah, for some people. But the number of people for whom that’s true is probably going to get less over time. People who never handle a real photograph. People who never had a CD. Like [my sons] Doyle and Leo probably won’t ever buy a CD. And so they’re not going to place the same value on it as you. So eventually the people who buy physical products are going to die out and the market for sale of recordings is going to become zero.
Pearl: Well it’s already like that now, because like this one N-Sync album sold the most albums, and no album [will ever beat it] no matter how popular it is.
Jeremy: Well up until recently yes, though I think last year Adele’s album actually broke physical sales barriers for the first time in a while.
Pearl: And it’s just like, there are people out there who will pay for a digital download of Adele’s album, but I’m not one of them. Maybe they’re out there and they’re doing their thing and they’re paying for their albums and that’s great, but there’s also the group of people that don’t, and I still think either one is fine.
Jeremy: So projecting into the future, they’ll come a point where the market for the sale of recordings to individuals is probably zero. In that case, some artists and some types of how it could no longer be made.
Pearl: What do you mean? That has nothing to do with it.
Jeremy: It does. After that point, types of art that can only be marketed through the sale of recordings is no longer sustainable.
Pearl: No, you wouldn’t judge it by that. You would judge it by popularity. We’re living in a Kim Kardashian culture. She doesn’t even sing. Imagine if she did sing, you know what I’m saying? She could be paid even more. You don’t get paid anymore by your album sales. You get paid by your appearances on TV, and your cameos in the apps that you make, and Pepsi backing you, and paying you to make commercials.
Jeremy: Yeah so what I’m saying is, going forward, unless you’re the kind of artist who wants to go through all of that…
Pearl: Those are the times we’re living in.
Jeremy: It’s your responsibility if you want to be a starving artist and not market yourself, that’s on you.
Pearl: Yes, because that’s how it is exactly for painters as well.
Jeremy: So if you’re an artist and you’re not willing to market yourself, it’s your own fault if you starve. OK, that’s a nice pithy tweet. Otherwise you want to be in a monastery doing it for the glory of God and hoping that someone is going to be your patron.
Pearl: No not necessarily, you’re doing it because you want to do it!
Jeremy: OK, but if you’re a human being who also doesn’t want to die…
Pearl: You’re going to have to go out there and take some [indistinct] pictures, or something like that.
Jeremy: Or do something else, have another job. That’s your responsibility.
Pearl: Yeah! That’s how the world works.
“[Millennials are] saying that requiring people to pay for recorded music is unethical. Which is exactly what Richard M Stallman says about software! Mind blown.”
Jeremy: OK. It’s just an interesting ethical perspective. And it’s a useful insight. So as I was going to say before, the title of this interview should be, “Millennials are not unethical. They just believe artists have an ethical responsibility too”—a responsibility to support themselves, either through their music or otherwise, without relying on monopolizing sales of recorded music. In other words, they’re saying that requiring people to pay for recorded music is unethical. Which is exactly what Richard M Stallman says about software! Mind blown.
Pearl: Boom.
Jeremy: Richard Stallman thinks it’s unethical to require people to pay for software, not just unethical to pay for software. He’s regarded as a weirdo for thinking that, but it’s now starting to make sense to me. It’s not just that it’s ethical to download anything for free, to copy anything for free. It is unethical for the author of that stuff to think they can stop you. Because it’s their responsibility to find another way of making money that doesn’t involve monopolizing culture. I might even write a book about this, because it’s so fascinating.
Pearl: You should!
Jeremy: I think it would be really useful. I could start each chapter with a segment of our conversation. And then break into an analysis. And the transcript of this conversation could be what I send to the publisher to get an advance on it. But I wonder if I’ll sell any paper copies, you see that’s the thing.
Pearl: You just worry about getting on the Today Show.
Jeremy: So if I can’t use this as a book, I can use it to benefit myself in some other way. Or else too bad, I should get it out there anyway, publish it on Medium. I should write a book for free and do something else to support myself.
Pearl: You should write the book, of course sell it for money, you want to sell as many books as possible. But if someone couldn’t afford your book, you’re going to say like, “Hell no, I’m not going to give you a copy of my book, I don’t want you to have my knowledge that I have. You’re just going to stay stupid because you don’t have $15.” You really believe that?
Jeremy: So it’s unethical to restrict access to knowledge. So Millennials are not unethical, they just flip the ethics onto the author.
Pearl: Would Beyoncé be like, “No, I don’t want you to hear my inspiring voice and songs, you can’t afford it”? No, she’s above that. You know, and that’s why she is who she is. Because she will drop an album on you without even having to use the marketing to hype it up, she just trusts that her fans will show up and download it. And they did.
Jeremy: So that’s why it’s so much easier to make money if you sell out, because you want to appeal to the most people. So that’s why the artists who appeal to the fewest people have the highest cred, because they’re earning the least money for it.
Pearl: And sometimes the best artists are broke. That’s a reality. But you can’t just hate people for not buying your art.
Jeremy: So do you respect the suffering artist more than the rich artist?
Pearl: I respect both of them, equally. That’s why I won’t buy from either of them, equally! It’s art, man! It’s not a campaign I’m consuming, it’s not a bagel, it’s art. I can pay you if I want to pay you. I’m not commissioning you to do this for me. You’re putting it out into the world, and you want me to like you, you want me to agree with you. So if I’m not getting anything physical, like a shirt or a CD with a booklet with your face on it, you know I’m not going to pay for it I guess.
Part 4 of this interview, titled Internet Intermediaries, was published on January 18.
