[WalterBright]

> The tragedy is that we want artists to have reliable income

If artists create art that people are willing to pay for, great!

I don't really want to pay artists for art I don't like.

I remember when Nirvana suddenly became successful. Many in the local community called them "sellouts", which is quite unfair.

[advisedwang]

I like the kind of output artists make when they work on individual creative projects. I don't really like the kind of output artists make when they feel they need to crank out something every week that has to have roughly equal appeal to the exact same audience.

But the way the internet (and other mass media) scales means that only the latter can really have a business model and reliable income attached.

[WalterBright]

Lots of people have erratic income, such as anyone who owns a business. The options are:

1. buy a Lambo, then get it reposessed

2. save/invest on the peaks

[inigyou]

That's a problem.

[Eridrus]

I think artists are too attached to solo work and should hire people to crank out variants on their successful vision or license their ideas so that they can continue having new ideas.

[sevenseacat]

Songwriters do this! Write the songs, give them to others to perform