May 23, 2010
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Posted by msaunders at 07:37 AM | Comments (0)
May 16, 2010
MR. MODI RECONSIDERED
Revisiting Kal Penn Modi and a note on preserving your 501 (c) (3) tax emempt status.
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Barry
Posted by msaunders at 08:14 AM | Comments (0)
May 09, 2010
TENACIOUS DREAMERS
A new dedicated venue for jazz in San Francisco, plus a few other dedicated sites - real and virtual - I would like to see.
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Posted by msaunders at 10:36 AM | Comments (0)
May 02, 2010
OMNI-DIRECTIONAL MENTORSHIP
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Posted by msaunders at 10:35 AM | Comments (0)
April 25, 2010
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Posted by msaunders at 12:02 PM | Comments (0)
April 18, 2010
KEEPING YOUR ORGANIZATION OPTIMISTIC
BARRY'S BLOG HAS MOVED TO A NEW PLATFORM
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Posted by msaunders at 08:36 AM | Comments (0)
April 11, 2010
BARRY'S BLOG's NEW LOCATION
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Posted by msaunders at 05:12 PM | Comments (0)
April 04, 2010
WE BETTER START THINKING OF NEW MODELS FOR ARTISTS
Good morning.
“And the beat goes on.............”
BARRY'S BLOG IS MOVING. Starting next week, this blog moves to its' new platform. If you haven't yet re-subscribed, go to the new site and enter your email address in the subscribe box. You'll continue to get notices of new postings for a little while longer on this platform, but soon the only way to continue your subscription will be via the new site.
GIVING IT AWAY
I was in the music business for 15 years back in the 70’s and 80’s, representing rock n roll bands. Back then the model was based on Record sales – bands toured and sold merchandise to increase awareness of who they were in attempts to sell records. Today, the model is the opposite – with so much music downloaded for free, bands try to get noticed through CDs and recordings so people will pay to see them live and buy their merchandise. But that model works best for established acts that are a draw for venues large enough to generate a profit.
An AP article reported on Yahoo cited an L.A. based band that is creating a new album every month and giving it away free. “And as regular CD sales continue to fall and major recording labels pare their artist rosters, up-and-coming musicians have to find ways to promote themselves in ways that were unheard of a few years ago.
Their “album-a-month plan, along with a written blog explaining (their) inspirations, is designed to spur interest and build loyalty among fans. (They) hope that one day some real money can be made from it as well. So far, they have gotten about 100 fans to donate anywhere from a penny to tens of dollars to the project. Some have paid $59 a year for a monthly CD in the mail. As a one-time bonus, they write a personal song to each subscriber on his or her birthday and sent that in the mail, too.
In the past, big record labels paid musicians large advances and then shouldered costs of recording and promoting albums. As song sales rolled in, the labels would recoup their investment. With song sales slowing, largely due to piracy, the system of big advances is crumbling.
And because free songs are so widely available, Vosotros' president, John Gillilan, said musicians' main battle is now just to get noticed.
If someone downloads one of these albums for free and puts it on their iPod and enjoys it, that's victory," says Gillilan, 24. "There's so much content out there, that for someone to care enough to seek it out and to listen to it, long term, that person is going to be a fan. They're going to come back, they're going to want more. That's really the strategy behind it."
Technology has forever dramatically altered how musicians can make a living. It remains to be seen if any new model will work for new artists.
Is this something that might have an application to other segments of the artist community? Are there perhaps more ways various art disciplines might cooperate and intersect with each other to cross promote the artists of each?
Might visual artists give away some of their work – to places (like in theater or dance venue lobbies) where its’ public display might garner them attention, publicity and hopefully new fans (and buyers) and help to move their careers forward? Might point of purchase sales in those venues benefit both?
Might other musicians – jazz artists or choral groups – do the same? Is giving away their music a way to build audiences? Will merchandising eventually be the principal source of income?
Might dance companies distribute their performances via You Tube in order to build fan bases, awareness and ultimately, new audiences? Might dance companies give impromptu performances at museums?
Might theater groups give free performances of new works prior to the official opening of a new play – and thus put more paying bodies in seats as word of mouth spreads?
There is an audience for old movie posters. Would there be an audience for a high class, new genre of theater posters created by contemporary artists? Would that collaboration of visual artists with theater artists produce income for both? Could that kind of model be developed? See this article in Brain Pickings
The new music model hasn’t yet reached the point where giving away music is a tried and true way to support ongoing careers, but new musicians (if not established artists) have to do something to get noticed, to build fan bases, to offset the dwindling sales of CDs. Are we reaching a point where other artistic disciplines will likewise soon be compelled to try new models if they are to survive?
Take the film industry. Movie companies make big money, but theater owners figured out a long time ago, that the model wasn’t working for them. So they changed the model – and now theaters make their profit not from the ticket sales (which largely go to the movie companies) but from the sale of candy, snacks and food. A captive audience, they charge $3 for a soft drink that can’t cost them more than 10 cents. Audiences pay.
I don’t know what model will work for artists in the future, but with traditional funding down from all sources, and the competition for scarce leisure time discretionary income increasingly fierce in the open marketplace, it may be time to at least consider other ways artists (and the arts) will survive in the future. Giving away art for free as a strategy to get more people to ultimately pay for the artists’ work is a risky and unproven strategy – but one that may force itself on the creative community. We should probably think about this and figure out if there is any way it might work for us. We may not have any choice.
LINKS: Speaking of Brain Pickings – the weekly newsletter of wonderful items from TED – here’s something cool
Have a good week.
Don’t Quit!
Barry
Posted by msaunders at 10:52 AM | Comments (0)
March 28, 2010
WILL CURRENT CUTS END UP PERMANENT?
Good morning.
“And the beat goes on...........”
THE “NEW NORMAL” – COMING SOON TO AN ARTS ORGANIZATION NEAR YOU?
Two articles in the L.A Times -last week give testimony to the continuing cutbacks and closures of arts programs & services across the country. In the first article, The Los Angeles County Arts Commission’s vaulted summer internship program was saved from total elimination by the local Board of Supervisors with a vote to approve $250,000 for this year’s program – down from $500,000 last year. This program is one of the best internship programs in the country, and a benchmark model for mentoring new arts leadership for the future. The second LA Times story - chronicled the severe cutbacks to the Los Angeles City Department of Cultural Affairs staff roster and the city plan to privatize a number of satellite art centers run by the Department so as to cut more jobs. Additional layoffs and early retirements loom over a department that expects staffing to fall from 63 last summer to 36 by July 1.
And in another sign of the times, last week Bob Booker, Executive Director of the Arizona Commission on the Arts, sent out an email message entitled: “We’re Not Dead” to reassure the Arizona arts community that the Commission was still alive and still awarding grants, though with downsizing and cutbacks.
These three incidents are emblematic of what is now commonplace across the nonprofit arts landscape as the dire predictions of further cuts made by a host of funders last year are coming true. We continue to measure our success, not in growth, but in maintenance of the status quo - in saving some of our programs, organizations and jobs out there. We are saving fewer of those than we did in the past. This isn’t a surprise, we knew it was coming. Still, the shock and reality of it are daunting. It’s likely to get even worse next year.
The strategy seems to be to hang on and survive; to more narrowly focus on our missions and insure that we enable and produce great art – even if less of it, or less access to it – until good times return. But the question looms – is this really temporary? When the economy is again strong and robust, and more Americans can find jobs -- when stock portfolios rise and tax coffers again swell so as to reduce the deficits, will we return (as we have on numerous previous occasions) to meaningful arts funding and then be able to begin to re-build the part of our infrastructure that we are now losing? Are we just in one more of those cyclical economic slumps that we in the arts have seen many times before?
OR is that more likely a false hope, and might the reality be that this scaling back, these lost jobs, these shelved programs, these changes in our structure, these shifts in our funding sources are all permanent? Are things fundamentally different this time, and does it presage a new era for our sector that will not follow past rules and probabilities?
And if it turns out that these adjustments and adaptations we are now making are not permanent, do we really want to go back to our previous modus operandi and once again create the same fragile structure we had – one subject to the same pressures and fatal flaws when new bad times come around? Isn’t that a bit like building the same house on top of an earthquake fault after a major trembler, or building the same house on the same waterfront after a big hurricane? Is that smart?
It seems to me that we are once again so involved with simply trying to survive the hard times, to get by with at least the framework of our past efforts still intact, that we haven’t really given much thought to whether this crisis is a repeat of what we have previously seen and weathered, or this one is different and will result in a forever altered landscape for the way we do business in the future.
I think many arts organizations and leaders are just assuming that this is a temporary crisis that can be weathered and that the model they have painstakingly created over time will survive and again serve us all well. We just have to wait it out and things will get back to normal. I think perhaps that assumption is erroneous, and that when this crisis is over we may not be able to return to the way things were. I think maybe our revenue stream model will never again be the same as it was two years ago, nor perhaps will our past approaches towards staffing, marketing, and even strategic planning work anymore.
Is it time to question our model, our structure, our approaches, and even our basic assumptions ?
We don’t really know what will be the outcome once the economic crisis is past (and it will pass), but it is something we should be thinking about and asking ourselves about with an eye to what new approaches we may need to adopt, and what directions we may be forced to take when things return to a “new normal”. I think it might be smart if we consider – both as isolated, individual organizations, and as a sector – what a “new normal” for us might actually end up looking like. If things don’t (can’t) go back to the way they were, then to the extent we anticipate what changes might be here to stay, the better we might be able to adjust and adapt to some new paradigm. And if they do go back to the way they were, don’t we have to ask ourselves if we want to do this over and over again with each new economic downturn cycle? If we’re to not only survive, but thrive and prosper, we need to take a cold hard look now at the phenomenon of change as it pertains to our field, not after it’s already here. In this, like advocacy and a host of other areas, the arts simply must become proactive instead of reactive. Right now may be the time to look around at your organization and begin to wonder in earnest whether or not the changes that are taking place are likely to redefine what you do and how you do it -- permanently. It’s possible a “new normal” will soon be upon you, and you need to grasp what that means for the future and how you can adapt and make it all work for you. Something to think about anyway.
Have a great week.
Don’t Quit!
Barry
Posted by msaunders at 10:12 AM | Comments (2)