09-12-2016, 11:01 AM
(09-01-2016, 02:52 PM)taramarie Wrote:(09-01-2016, 01:33 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: First of all, I can't say much to defend continued income streams of such people as George Gershwin or Hank Williams, Sr. no material enticement will ever bring them back to the creative activities wherein they excelled. Publishing companies get the revenue and creative people often get $crewed.
What could be even more troublesome to creative people is that just about anyone with a modicum of talent and effort can be a creative person. Competition is not only with free stuff streamed, but with fellow creative people. How many people can write a good op-ed or a good song? Many who never made the star system.
It's very difficult to find recordings of classical music -- in part because there was so much competition in the business. There were forty or so competing versions of such a warhorse as the 6th symphony of Peter Tchaikovsky. As a rule it was the newest recording that could sell at a full price, but the recording companies then flooded the market with old ones on various 'budget' arrangements -- two for one, five for two, etc. The market collapsed. The CD is so durable that people can listen to a 30-year-old CD with no audible loss of sound...
The recording industry is doing much the same with pop. The biggest seller of recorded music may have been Tower Records at one time -- but that entity went belly-up. It's now Wal*Mart. It sells lots of compilation discs for $5 each. So if you are a singer starting out you are competing with old recordings of Simon and Garfunkel, Carly Simon, Johnny Cash, Alabama -- you name it. Add to that, one can buy a second-rate or dated DVD of a movie for about the same price.
Contrary to myth, it was ever easy to be a creative person, whatever one's class. The poor always had to struggle to meet the demands of employers and outright owners. The middle class is largely a recent phenomenon, and a creative component within it a small part because the middle class was mostly obedient retainers, enforcers, and technicians. Getting the inspiration to do something creative implies taking a break from paid work... But even in recent times, the Beatles, arguably the most polished of all pop groups ever, put in about 10,000 hours of practicing and into performances in utter dives before going onto the world scene. 10,000 hours? That's about what one needs to achieve just about anything remarkable in entertainment, musical performance, athletics, or some high-level careers (law, medicine, architecture, engineering). That's time not spent on raw labor (as most must perform) or activities not meaningful to one's art, like tooling around in cars. As an example, symphony musicians have a reputation for being underdeveloped in their love lives; for all practical purposes they spent more time with perhaps a violin than with any person.
There will always be garage bands, and of course most of them will simply be obnoxious noise to distressed neighbors. Remember, of course, that much creative activity is rubbish... and most creative people who fall short will end up milking cows, doing oil changes, clerking in stores, or driving trucks.
Most of the money for creative people would seem to be funneled through advertising, the biggest use of creative talent, if not the most obvious. Most of the writers, photographers, and graphic artists making a genuine living do so in advertising. That may not be the noblest of activities, but it is the one in which creative people can most hone their talents, get steady work if they are good, and be certain of payment.
Yep advertising, tattoo designs, logo design (which is part of advertising). I have also recently started tutoring. Art classes. People saw my work on job pages through fb and suddenly whoosh i am getting a lot of requests. Also getting paid to do fine art. I was unhappy in my job, I quit and making a living doing this. Now, I fall short of becoming a concept artist due to the degree i received teaching you to be a generalist.....so I am taking their advice and scouting which school would be appropriate for what i want to do specifically. Some design schools are almost a waste of time if they do not allow you to specialize in what you want to specialize in. It is ending up as a mere stepping stone that showed me what i enjoyed and what i didn't. Concept art was only an elective. Super hard to get into the field i want to anyway, but worse given the fact it was just an elective at my school. I refuse to do work now that makes me unhappy. Entitled, maybe. But my mother settled for that and she is one of the most miserable people I know who has given up and does not believe in herself. Always a dream is unattainable for her. Something about that line of work and the disrespectful, and controlling influence from others tends to change mindsets of the cleaners/kitchen hand workers to believe that is all they are good for and that they deserve that treatment. Control. That is all it is. One wrong move and instantly fired. Never again. You can make money doing something creative whether it is in advertising, or others i mentioned. Put yourself out there. Get the experience. Continuously learn. Go back to school like I am. I am thinking of another bachelor degree. This time in fine art specializing in film. Or maybe go to a school specifically in animation. There are always options and if there are no jobs go online, find job pages on fb and advertise your skills. Make your own work. It can be done. I am swamped in paid design work atm. Ok off to start my morning. Art does not design itself.
I am a creative person who has written over a thousand song lyrics, eleven of which have now been demoed to music. Also have self-published three books, one of which deals with the dark side of office politics. Your comment about one wrong move, instantly fired, brought this to mind. We all know that in today's workplace office politics and political correctness trump reason, and there are countless horror stories of the mind games played in said workplaces to get rid of those not liked for whatever reason, even if they are reliable and productive workers. They can get away with this because they know that they've got the law on their side and they know it. What I am wondering is how I can apply the principle you did with your art to my area of expertise.