How artists can (finally) get paid in the digital age | Jack Conte

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4.1 • 11.9K Ratings

🗓️ 16 August 2017

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It's been a weird 100 years for artists and creators, says musician and entrepreneur Jack Conte. The traditional ways we've turned art into money (like record sales) have been broken by the internet, leaving musicians, writers and artists wondering how to make a living. With Patreon, Conte has created a way for artists on the internet to get paid by their fans. Could payment platforms like this change what it means to be an artist in the digital age?

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This TED Talk features musician and entrepreneur Jack Conti, recorded live at TED 2017.
0:07.0	Hi everyone. So I'm going to take us back to 2007. I had just spent about six months working on an album that I'd poured my heart and my soul into,
0:18.0	and it was getting about free plays per day on MySpace at the time.
0:21.9	And I was getting more and more depressed when I started noticing these other people
0:25.1	who were playing guitar and singing and putting videos on this new site called YouTube,
0:29.6	and they were getting 300,000 views.
0:31.9	So I decided, I'm going to start making some YouTube videos.
0:35.2	And one day they featured a video of my band on the homepage, which was
0:38.8	amazing. We got a bunch of new fans. We also got a bunch of people who, I guess, just didn't
0:43.2	really like the music or something. But it's okay because people started coming to our shows,
0:48.7	and we started touring, and we came out with a record. And when I checked our bank account
0:52.5	balance after our first monthly iTunes payout,
0:54.8	we had 22,000 bucks in it,
0:57.0	which was amazing because at the time I was living at my dad's house,
1:00.0	trying to make a living as a musician by uploading videos to the internet,
1:03.0	which literally zero people respected in 2009,
1:06.3	even the people who were uploading videos to the internet.
1:08.8	And so for the next four years, I uploaded more and more videos to the internet, and they got
1:14.4	better and better.
1:16.4	And we made enough money through brand deals and commercials and iTunes sales to buy a house.
1:24.0	And we built a recording studio.
1:26.2	But there was one big problem.
	...

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