TheCapitalClinic

Recently, The3rdStreetButcher sent out a blog to the fuzz community about a proposed Artists’ Compilation CD of “Greatest Hits” in order to “test the waters” about how artists might get together to see if, acting in cooperation rather than individually, many of their best work might get heard that is not being heard. Because of its potential to achieve that desired result, I undertook to do what I could to promote 3rdStreetB’s idea in my own blogs and at our collective Nightschool For Entrepreneurs so more participants could weigh in with ideas and support regarding a proposal that seems to be gaining some traction.

Artists banding together to become a more effective force for change at fuzz is, of course, a replay on a technology platform of the age-old notion of the Artist Collective. Such collectives have occurred throughout history, but have not yet coalesced in the web-based environment. There are many successful “artist colonies” in a geographic context. However, nothwithstanding the improved business dynamics on the cost side of the equation for working musicians in the web-based era [such as in music production, marketing, and distribution], initiatives for artists working together to help themselves have not yet succeeded in an online context to help the artist “middle-class” [the large category of artists who have honed their professional skills but still can’t “make a living” with their music], and one must ask why.

As an artist trying to get one’s music heard, you likely note with some concern that there are in excess of three million other artists or bands that have profile pages on a single platform and that number grows daily. This is a staggering and revealing statistic. Various artist pages on MySpace receive notable traction and it is probably beneficial to have a node on this network, but over-all, individual artists get lost in the chaotic marketplace or, worse, become tired of the worst elements of humanity that inevitably lurk on this space [as elsewhere on the wild and wooly web] without a strong collective voice of artist participants resisting the forces of darkness through collective self-help.

In the newer, and by definition more focused, online music communities in process of their own evolution such as fuzz striving to become a different [and perhaps, according to some, a “cooler”] place for independent artists, a stronger sense of civility prevails. However, the notable inability of artists to have their best work heard will become an issue as the sign-up of artists gains momentum [as it has in recent months]. For fuzz artists to gain the “critical mass” of collective action that redounds to the benefit of individual artists, there are a number of lessons to learn and thereafter utilize in concrete action that I would like to reinforce at our collective Nightschool for Entrepreneurs.

A major issue with the OtherSpace is that artists on that plaftform tend to operate in isolation with little or no cross-over into the space of other artists. It’s largely “dog eat dog”, without intra-artist communication and cooperation and a self-policing of over-all network civility that can only derive from a sense of true community rather than being a node on a shared platform without common interest. It will be important for fuzz to continue down the different, and I think, more productive path of collective action and assistance and group adherence to a basic level of civility as ”fuzz artists”. Let’s see if we can start a dialogue about how this notion of an online “Artist Collective” can be consolidated in concept and execution.

First, as a conceptual matter, in order to guide this community in a different direction [because in essence it belongs to and is driven by the artists who chose to be here], consider the following wiki-takeaway about artist collectives that is instructive:

”Artist collectives are significant to the artists practice in part because of the increased collective intelligence made possible by the cross-combination of multiple creative minds and disciplines, the cross-fertilisation of ideas and approaches and also due to the social richness and networking capacities involved.”

Initiatives such as that of The3rdStreetButcher are, in my view, really powerful because they reflect a growing recognition by artists that the “sum may be greater than the individual parts” and artists banding together may well constitute a precondition to gain web-based critical mass in the new music ecosystem. That is, working together is better than working alone based on (i) increased collective intelligence, (ii) cross-fertilisation, (iii) social richness, and (iv) networking [how to “network” may well be the key success variable here]. Artists by nature tend to be fiercely independent and it is contrary to their nature and world-view to have a “collective mentality” about anything. But it is important to recognize that there is a critical difference between how one “creates” one’s art and how one “promotes” it. One does not compromise one’s artistic integrity by working as a collective group to leverage one’s outreach and I commend 3rdStreetB for trying to make a breakthrough in the cacophony and chaos of the web which is becoming increasingly strident and “lonely”.

Second, as a practical matter, artists’ getting together to help themselves may be just a necessary, but not a sufficient precondition to gain critical mass. In the “pre-digital” era, artist collectives tended to stay small and “exclusive” until “discovered” by a growing number of “taste-makers”, being “cognoscenti” of [the elusive quality of] cool . In the web-based era, use of technological tools such as the Mixtape in conjunction with filtering initiatives such as the one proposed by the3rdStreetButcher [who seems to be a true entrepreneur] will enhance the leverage of the most effective of the “intermediaries of cool” [whoever you are] that will be essential to help deserving fuzz artists to reach the scale necessary to make a difference in their lives and their art.

Would that it be so. TCC