Slashdot Asks: Is the Internet Killing Old and New Art Forms or Helping Them Grow? (nytimes.com)

The thing about the internet is that as it gained traction and started to become part of our lives, it caused a lot of pain -- bloodbath, many say -- to several major industries. The music industry was nearly decimated, for instance, and pennies on the dollar doesn't begin to describe what has happened to the newspapers. But things are starting to change, many observers note. As Netflix CEO Reed Hastings noted at the New Yorker Tech Festival last year, the internet is increasingly changing the way people consume content and that has forced the industries to innovate and find new ways to cater to their audiences. But some of these industries are still struggling to figure out new models for their survival. Farhad Manjoo, a technology columnist at The New York Times, argues that for people of the future, our time may be remembered as a period not of death, but of rejuvenation and rebirth. He writes: Part of the story is in the art itself. In just about every cultural medium, whether movies or music or books or the visual arts, digital technology is letting in new voices, creating new formats for exploration, and allowing fans and other creators to participate in a glorious remixing of the work. [...] In the last few years, and with greater intensity in the last 12 months, people started paying for online content. They are doing so at an accelerating pace, and on a dependable, recurring schedule, often through subscriptions. And they're paying for everything. [...] It's difficult to overstate how big a deal this is. More than 20 years after it first caught mainstream attention and began to destroy everything about how we finance culture, the digital economy is finally beginning to coalesce around a sustainable way of supporting content. If subscriptions keep taking off, it won't just mean that some of your favorite creators will survive the internet. It could also make for a profound shift in the way we find and support new cultural talent. It could lead to a wider variety of artists and art, and forge closer connections between the people who make art and those who enjoy it.

Comments

The landscape has always been in-shift

[TWX]

If the Internet is forcing a change it's only because it's one of the more recent agents of change in a long line of changes. Music at one point was by-ear and with live performance. Then it was by notation in the form of sheet music requiring someone to actually play it themselves to enjoy it. Then it was fragile media, then radio, then more durable media, then copyable media, and finally electronic media. Funny thing is, it's still by-ear, in-notation, on the radio, on durable media, on copyable media, in addition to being electronic, and each variation has had its problems with theft (originally stealing ideas, then copying sheet music without paying, etc) so while changing it's not like the old forms are discarded.

The Internet allows for a global audience, but it does not necessarily mean that the global audience will appear, nor does it mean that everyone will value the work the same.

Re:The landscape has always been in-shift

[Anonymous Coward]

If anything music has a wider audience with the "Internet." The music mafia has been in decline but the artists are thriving and previous generations of music are easily accessible and discovered by new audiences now. For all of the mainstream music groups promoted via traditional means, there are thousands of lesser known musicians, singers, songwriters, and performers gaining exposure on a global scale. Better to buy direct from the artist than pay a middle man who skims the majority for themselves.

You Can't Kill Culture

[bistromath007]

The music industry is defunct. Music flourishes. Newspapers are irrelevant, but awareness and engagement with current events is so high it's probably deeply unhealthy.

Media as a business is effectively on hiatus while society sorts out how to monetize things and what problems those monetization schemes cause. Media itself is in a golden age.

Not remembered well.

[sims 2]

For many years archive.org has operated in the background to save pages for the future but now many sites are choosing to opt out.

Bottom half flooded with choice

[Tablizer]

The change in art & music is not just about unauthorized file copying, but also about more choice. Content from amateurs and tinkerers is much easier to access than before, giving people cheaper and free choices.

I myself have put my own amateur music online for people to (hopefully) enjoy without charge. And cat videos etc. compete with professionally produced content. (I don't make cat vids.) This cats into, I mean cuts into revenue options for those struggling to make a living on art, entertainment, and music. If so many entertain for free, why pay?

The most popular acts are still doing well, in part because the fad mechanism makes those "in-style" a scarce resource. Yet another reason the rich get richer while the rest stagnate.

Also, "physical" artists are still doing fairly well, but the Internet also makes it easier to find and get physical art from all over the world, creating a problem similar to business labor outsourcing in higher-wage countries.

If you want to make a living in music, become a bar band. So far they haven't been able to mass outsource those. However, there's a lot of ageism in that biz, especially for females. You don't see many 50 year olds playing in bar bands, with the possible exception of very rural country bars.

the new age

[puddingebola]

"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." It is Shiva, both creator and destroyer. Indie music is getting flattened, and the mass consumption of streaming insures only the most banal music makes money. But the internet creates new possibilities for artists also. Some artists have adapted better than others, and new communities of musicians have been created.