"Probably the best thing you'll read about the economics of music"
Rory Cellan-Jones, BBC Technology Correspondent, praising the original piece
Your Art Is Worthless.
Technology advances, supply explodes, demand flatlines and no matter how hard we wish it were not so: one economic unit of art - one hour of recorded music, one short film, one quirky platformer with unique gameplay mechanics, one book about the economics of art - these things now have a market value of as close to zero as makes no difference. Digital goods cost nothing to distribute, cost nothing to manufacture and there is so much art competing for attention that there will always be a free alternative dragging down the price of the work you put into them.This is the world in which artists have to survive.
I’m Simon Indelicate I’m a singer in a little band you’ve probably never heard of. People listen to my records all over the world - I know they do, I’ve seen the google analytics - just not enough of them to support the kind of lifestyle minor indie frontmen used to expect.
So instead of being handed a hilarious wad of cash in the back room of a Camden pub, I’ve had to spend the last decade learning how to survive as an artist in this new economic reality. I’ve learned how to add value to raw data. I’ve learned how Crowdfunding changes previously unbreakable rules of doing business, and - almost by accident - I’ve learned about hard economics.
Now, I’m convinced that if we understand the way that selling art works then we can embrace the worthlessness of our art and see it as a gift that liberates us from the unpleasant industries we used to have no choice but to impotently rage against. If we do, then not only can we survive but we can make more and better art. We can make a new DIY movement.
Your art is worthless, but in this book I’m going to tell you how you can sell it anyway.
It’s going to be a book about economics, punk rock, business studies and existential despair. I’m going to talk to the artists, economists and audiences who are learning how to turn the collapse of the art business into brilliant, vital art that could never have gotten made before.
I’m going to tell you why sticking it to the man is more important and more possible now than it has ever been; and I’m going to tell you how to do it.
Pledge Now!
SOME EXPLANATION
I feel like, if you’re not new to me - and especially if you’ve supported The Indelicates over the years - I have a little bit of explaining to do. This whole thing is a bit of a risk, for a number of reasons.
Julia and I have been very determined and uncompromising in taking control of every part of our art. We think of everything ourselves, we post things ourselves, we design, fold, mix, master, make and model everything we sell and we see ourselves as being in direct competition with anyone else selling music - no matter how big or well-resourced they are. We think that what we sometimes lose in polish we make up for in artistic coherence. When we say we’re DIY, we mean it.
The consequence of this has been that our audience has condensed from the coal-like lump of generic indie fans who first heard us during the heady days of the late-noughties into the diamond of engaged supporters who have, through their willingness to participate in campaigns like this, allowed us to continue.
There are hundreds of you, not thousands, but you participate in what we make, and you are an audience worth writing for.
We’re pretty confident that we can reach you when we make something new and we could probably continue on for a good while just doing so.
But now I’ve got this book I want to write - and it’s a risk.
It’s a risk because it’s not the normal thing I do. It’s on brand, I think - to be a dick about it - but we’re all used to a situation where I sell CDs and Mp3s and the odd book on the side. I’m not sure we like that sort of thing as a culture.
It’s a risk because, normally, we’d go longer than this before asking you to buy anything new. Elevator Music was just last year, and a lot of you were very generous and we are able to look back on it as a success. I hate it when artists regard the people who support their work as a well which they’re entitled to tap whenever they want to - and I’m worried that to be back with the hat so soon is going to be too much. I hope it isn’t. I hope a world where this book gets written is one you think is worth contributing to.
It’s a risk because I’m working with OTHER PEOPLE. Namely, the publisher, Unbound. After I wrote the long piece that this came out of, I got several emails from people annoyed about the last paragraph in which I asked for help finding an outlet for this book. Why, they demanded, would I write 10,000 words about doing everything yourself and then seek a publisher for a book about the same thing. It was rank hypocrisy.
I couldn’t disagree. My reasons were that I just didn’t know how to make and sell books like I knew how to make and sell LPs. I feel like the bottom hasn’t fallen out of publishing the same way that it has with music. Each book is a commitment in a way that a song isn’t. Even downloading a free ebook feels like an obligation - you’ll have let some vague authority down if you never read it, and that’s liable to take hours and hours. As such, I think that the reading public are a lot less willing to venture away from the mainstream than the listening public are. I only listen to Exotica and Truck Drivin’ Country, but it’ll take a good reason for me to embark on a book that isn’t available in shops. There’s no good reason for it, but I think that’s how it is.
Even so - and as I sat down to write begging letters to agents and publishers, this became a near-physical barrier - it’s hypocritical. I don’t believe in the authority of gatekeepers and I don’t think the edifices that squat between artists and audiences have any business being there.
Unbound come close enough for me to bridging that gap. If you don’t know them, they are half crowdfunding platform, half proper publisher. They make very good looking, proper books and they distribute them effectively to proper shops. At the same time, they hand the ultimate editorial power to gatekeep over to the public (where it belongs) by crowdfunding every release.
This means that, where we would normally treat the crowdfunding of a release as, essentially, a generous preorder of goods where the profit is all made at the start - now the crowdfunding will be more traditional - the pledges won’t pay for my child to eat, they’ll pay for the creation and promotion of something that has a chance of going out to a wider audience. That’s what we’re getting in exchange for total control. It could be great. But it’s a risk.
I know a lot of you enjoyed the article I wrote last year. And I know that a lot of people who have no interest in whichever cult-based bitter space opera I’m recording next got something out of it too. I want this to be a book that goes wider, and ultimately, contributes a little bit to our understanding of what’s possible for artists in this brave new world.
So that’s what I’m doing. I’m selling a stake in a future where this book exists. And where it's available in shops. And where people read it, possibly while on the brink of giving up just before they make some art you'd have otherwise loved... I hope you’ll decide that that’s something that’s worth the money.
You can pledge; watch my fat, smug, stupid face doing a video and read more about the project at my Unbound Campaign Page, here:
https://unbound.co.uk/books/your-art-is-worthless
If you'd like to share this around on twitter, facebook or anywhere - that would be amazing.
