Do We Really Need a Creative Industry?17 June 2002 Digital technology makes it possible to cut out the "middle men" and allow artists to deal directly with their audience. And that might be the best thing to happen to artists in hundreds of years. Reason Online published an article recently by Mike Godwin called "Hollywood vs. the Internet." It's one of the best overviews of the ongoing content vs. tech war that I've seen so far, and I highly recommend it. One of the quotes in the article really got me thinking. It reads: "One technologist for News Corporation who is working on a watermark-based DRM scheme says he thinks Napster signals the end of the music industry. He argues that since record companies generally have most of their catalogs available on unprotected CDs, which can be 'ripped' and duplicated with CD burners or distributed over the Internet as MP3 files, music lovers already have gotten out of the habit of paying for records, which means an end to big profits and thus an end to big record companies. 'Within five years,' he says, 'the music industry will be a cottage industry.' " The more I thought about that idea, which I'm sure instills fear and panic in the hearts of pretty much everyone in Los Angeles, the more I started to like it. Think about why we have the situation we have today. Back in the day, most artists, bards and storytellers were local fixtures. They had local audiences and were only rarely known to outsiders. Over time, publishers, record labels and eventually, motion picture companies arose to provide creators with access to widespread distribution and marketing. These companies were a "necessary evil" to reach wider audiences. Somewhere along the way, we started believing that the creators worked for these companies rather than the other way around. Publishers and record labels became "content filters," providing the public with the useful service of weeding out inferior works. At least, in theory. Is that what we really have today, though? How many times in recent years have you thrown a book aside in disgust, or not even thought it was good enough to buy in the first place? How many songs have you heard on the radio that sound just like everything else, and not in a good way? And while I enjoyed Lethal Weapon as much as anyone, how many "buddy action movies" are we going to have to sit through before this sub-genre formula burns itself out? One of the "New Economy" terms Amazon.com introduced to the English language was "disintermediation," the process of removing extraneous "middle men" by using digital technology to sell directly to the consumer. Maybe it's time to disintermediate art. Publishers and record executives are quick to equate not using their business model as not compensating the artists. It's in their best interest to maintain the illusion that they're an integral part of the chain. This isn't necessarily true. Napster may have begun the end of the music industry, but it doesn't have to be the end of music. Publishing and recording could easily sidestep the old guard industries and use digital technology to sell directly from the artists to the audience. Creators are no longer locked into local venues. Digital formats and the distribution of the Internet allow artists to cultivate a global audience without the hand-holding of a parent corporation. Remember, the most powerful form of marketing, even in the twenty-first century, is word-of-mouth. Digital technology removes the need to rely on a fat corporation for production and distribution. MP3s make trying out a new artist just a download away. Ebooks allow authors to have unlimited "print runs" and books that never go out of print. Even movies have become remarkably affordable thanks to digital tools. A digital camera and an iMac are enough to produce homemade DVDs that rival many television shows for production quality, and thanks to George Lucas, most theaters will be equipped to show entirely digital movies in only a few years.* Imagine, if you will, a publishing "industry" of the future. Instead of consisting of basically ten publishing houses, it encompasses tens of thousands, each publishing only a handful of books and passionately marketing them. Using digital distribution-- and print-on-demand, for those that still want to read on paper-- these "cottage industry" publishing companies could reduce their overhead enough to make authors an equal partner in publishing and yet still remain profitable. Title diversity and selection would be far greater than it is today, and new authors would be able to get their voices heard. Sounds great, doesn't it? Jeff Kirvin
* While Star Wars: Episode II was shot and edited entirely digitally, it was distributed mostly on old-fashioned analog film. However, Lucas has issued theater owners an ultimatum. Star Wars: Episode III will be distributed exclusively digitally, so theaters that haven't upgraded to digital projection by 2005 will not be able to screen the film. |