| Definitely contains interesting ideas. But the problem with the lottery ticket mentality is that I think it mostly stems from the fact that the 'greedy and seedy suits' exert so much control over other peoples art on top of collecting all/most of the profits (even more so in the past). Examples are ample:
musicians not owning the actual music (in the past not even owning the actual recording masters), not able to decide how/when to (re)release albums, directors/creators of movies not owning 'video rights' and as such not in charge of how crappy a DVD is put together, comic book artists/writers not even having control over a character they invented from scratch... The only reason you would ever put up with such ...ahem... 'fascism' is that you get compensated beyond a 'living wage'. Also: I don't equate control/copyright over your own art/work with being able to control weather someone can get a hold of your art without paying for it. That kind of thinking is completely obsolete this day and age and again only serves one purpose: maximize profits by ripping of (cfr. Nine In Nails album pricing in certain countries) or pestering consumers (cfr. DRM & unskippable 'do not steal' intros on DVD's you just bought) Once the control problem goes away, new and equally profitable means of monetization can and should be created without feeling cheated (cfr. Radiohead In Rainbows) We all know how it feels to work a job that has a crappy commute or crappy hours/people but
happily put up with it if you're compensated more than enough. When it comes to losing control over your art, only billions are 'more than enough' it seems ;-) |
And sites like Etsy are doing exactly this. By empowering artists to sell directly to their followers, we can help.