[moe]

I hope you're saying this tongue in cheek because Michelangelo (like most of our great artists btw) ofcourse did have a dayjob. He was struggling for money for the better part of his life, taking on jobs that he hated. Where do you think the "poor artist" or "suffering for art" memes come from?

There was no such thing as a "record deal" in the old times either. You had to suffer until your popularity would pay for itself - and without the leverage of mass media, too.

There's a great book about Michelangelo by Irvin Stone that I'd wholeheartly recommend to anyone interested. It's not dry teaching material but his life told in the form of a novel: http://www.amazon.com/Agony-Ecstasy-Biographical-Novel-Miche...

[trapper]

I'm not sure if what you are saying is that creative people should give their stuff away and suffer until the off chance they get popular and get paid? Just because you want to get their stuff for free?

There was no such thing as medical treatment in the old times either, doesn't mean we should stop it. Hell, there was no such thing as reproducing someones creative work for zero cost in the old times either. Does that mean we should stop that?

I think our world is better off by having creative people paid to be creative. I know the RIAA are bad news, but I haven't seen any realistic alternative offered.

[moe]

I haven't seen any realistic alternative offered

What do you mean by "offered"?

Evolution makes no offers, it selects and extinguishes. In this case it has extinguished the record industry, at least the part that failed to adapt. It also doesn't care much about laws or the outcome of a pirate bay trial.

Time will tell which of the new models can prevail but one thing is already clear: The middleman is gone. The big monopolies that used to shove Britney Spears down our collective throats are mostly gone.

On youtube nobody cares whether you're Britney Spears. If your music is good then people might push the "donate" button. If your music sucks then you can just as well shave your head...

Yes, this will make it probably harder for individual artists to execute their god-given right of raking in millions on end. Cry me a river.

[jacoblyles]

Perhaps I picked a bad example, but for most of his art he was, in fact, paid for it. And it is hard for me to imagine that he would have had the resources to create, say, the Sistine Chapel ceiling if he were doing it for free.

Of course, nowadays our idea of art is a mashup, so maybe that can mix fine with an anti-market ideology.

[jackzombie]

Michael-Angelo (one of the greatest artists of all time) is as good an example as any. But I think that he was commissioned to do the Sistine Chapel, he didn't paint the Chapel and then charge admission to it (I think the church took care of that).

[moe]

If the book is to be believed then he was a sculpter at heart and didn't actually like painting much. He was indeed commissioned to do the chapel but I unfortunately can't remember whether he did it out of free will or whether he was pressed to do it.

[jackzombie]

Thanks for the book recommendation, thats my favourite way to find new material to read. I've put your recommendation on my ever increasing list of books to read this summer.