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    Starving the Artist: How the Internet Culture of
    Starving the Artist: How the Internet Culture of
    Starving the Artist: How the Internet Culture of
    Ebook86 pages1 hour

    Starving the Artist: How the Internet Culture of

    By William Aicher

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    About this ebook

    A discussion of the current state of affairs regarding the value of creative works and intellectual property.This is not a book about copyright, nor is it a book about the evils of free.This is a book about right and wrong.This is a book about respect.This is a book about the value of creative work.This is a book for the creators. May you keep on creating.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWilliam Aicher
    Release dateJun 4, 2010
    Starving the Artist: How the Internet Culture of
    Author

    William Aicher

    As the Director of Web and Marketing for online sheet music retailer, Musicnotes.com, William F. Aicher (Bill Aicher) brings over a decade of experience in e-retail to leading online sheet music publisher and retailer Musicnotes.com's marketing and web teams, with a focus on design, user experience, and communication with customers through the web site, e-mail and social media. Aicher also oversees the company's free guitar tablature community, MXTabs.net. During his tenure at Musicnotes, the Musicnotes.com web site has been ranked within the Top 500 Internet Retail Web Sites for six consecutive years, and was recently selected as one of the Hot 100 Web Sites to watch in 2009 (both by Internet Retailer magazine). Musicnotes has recently surpassed 2 million paying customers and over 7 million paid downloads, and continues to grow at a sales rate of over 25% year-over-year. You may have seen him present at industry events, including for a recent webcast for Adobe's Omniture, Internet Retailer Conference (IRCE), eTail, the Madison Advertising Federation, WebSideStory and others. His most recent book, Starving the Artist: How the Internet Culture of "Free" Threatens to Exterminate the Creative Class, and What Can Be Done to Save It, released in April of 2010. In it, he takes his decade of experience in the online music business and applies it to examine the current state of creative works, their value, and why we need to preserve it. He is also the author of the philosophical thriller, The Trouble With Being God. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2000 where he double-majored in Journalism and Philosophy. He lives in Madison, WI with his wife, Hope, and sons, Liam and Nolan.

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      Book preview

      Starving the Artist - William Aicher

      Starving the Artist

      How the Internet Culture of Free Threatens to Exterminate the Creative Class, and What Can Be Done to Save It

      William F. Aicher

      Published by William F. Aicher at Smashwords

      * * * *

      ©2010 William F. Aicher

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission from the author.

      www.williamaicher.com

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      * * * *

      For the creators: may you keep on creating.

      * * * *

      Foreword

      I’m a media junkie. I love music, movies, videogames, books, art…pretty much anything people can create. Even though I don’t like everything I’ve come across, I have found within each of those categories quite a few creations that I simply adore. For me, that’s one of the great things about artistic mediums—they provide enjoyment that is both personal and subjective.

      When someone asks me what kind of music I like, my answer is usually the good kind. Creative works mean a lot to me, and I know they mean a lot to others as well. They’re an integral part of our culture and our economy; they’ve become something I care deeply about.

      Without the artists, filmmakers, musicians, authors and other creators, however, none of these creations would exist. Our world would be empty, boring, and devoid of beauty or discourse. The intent of this book is to remind people of the value creative works provide our culture.

      I’ve been working in the online space in some way or another since 1996; my first big Web site was an online music review site called Music-Critic.com. (Even though I sold this site years ago, you’ll still find my old reviews, articles and interviews there).

      During college at the University of Wisconsin-Madison I majored in journalism and philosophy, with the intent to someday write for the online version of a music or entertainment magazine, like Rolling Stone. That didn’t happen—instead I joined a local sheet music web startup called Musicnotes.com.

      At Musicnotes.com I started out as a marketing assistant, but mostly I was a guerilla marketer. This type of marketing occurred before the rise of affiliate programs—and definitely before anyone had ever heard of Google or Adwords. So, my job was pretty much to e-mail fan sites (like the ones Geocities used to host) and ask them to link to us.

      Let’s flash-forward a couple years, and a few intermediate positions to my current position as the Director of Web and Marketing for Musicnotes.com. In my years working for Musicnotes.com, I have also overseen the rebirth of MXTabs.net—the world’s first free and legal guitar, bass and drums tab community.

      As such, most of the examples in the pages ahead are focused on the music and print industries, since that’s where I have the most experience and knowledge. That being said, the artist in the title of my book really applies to anyone who is part of what Richard Florida termed The Creative Class in his book, The Rise of the Creative Class. This class not only includes artists, musicians, and authors, but also game designers, inventors, architects, rocket scientists, drug researchers, or anyone else whose livelihood is reliant on thought and creation and whose ultimate product is a form of information.

      During my time working for Internet-related companies, I’ve also seen a lot of things go sour. There was the dot-com bust, of course, where unrealistic business models met their fitting end—but there has also been a disturbing trend among the people who actually utilize the Internet for personal use. In the past decade, file sharing and illegal downloading has practically destroyed the old music industry model, and it threatens to do the same with books, movies, television and other forms of creative works. Underlying this trend, however, is a growing expectation that creative works and information should be free, due in part to the fact that most creative works can ultimately be reduced to simple 1s and 0s.

      In writing this book, my hope is to remind people of the value of creative work and why it’s something we need to protect. I also hope to inform creators about where things currently stand and where we could or should go next.

      Whether the price of creative content drops to zero and stays there is a question we are only starting to learn the answers to, but it’s a decision that we should consciously make—not just face as an inevitability.

      * * * *

      Starving the Artist

      * * * *

      Introduction

      According to dictionary.com, one of the common uses of the word free is to say without cost, payment, or charge. Another definition is provided without, or not subject to, a charge or payment.¹ While these are concepts most of us can grasp, they are, in reality, just concepts. Free is an idea that exists in our minds, but can never be fully attained, as everything in life has some sort of cost attached to it, financial or otherwise.

      For most people, the concept of free applies to the idea of an item or service, whether tangible or intangible, available to consumers without any monetary obligation. By this definition, television and radio are oftentimes considered some of the best examples of free. Premium or subscription programming aside, there is a large variety of commercial content available to see or hear, and the listener or viewer is not held liable for any of the financial burden. Of course, this programming is not free because it is supported by the money brought in through advertising (or in the case of public television and radio, through grants, underwriting, and donations from a small group of viewers and listeners).

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