A Golden Age for the Arts?

I recently wrote about how I believe that we are living in a "Golden Age" for information access.  I think that we are also in a golden age for the arts.  If you are good, maybe not even great, and you have hustle, you can find an audience using tools that our age of low information friction has enabled to come into force.

I just started today learning about an artist, Ana Free.  The specifics of her are not terribly important, but I spent some time trying to figure out how she makes her way in the world.  While I'm sure that it doesn't hurt that she is beautiful, what she sings is square into the realm of my personal preferences.  I've always found singer-songwriters intriguing and dream that some day maybe I'll have completed a song (written, played, recorded and "released").

She does the following:

1. Concerts & Touring: the typical core money-maker for musicians.  Which is why they complain about being on the road all of the time.  That said, she has no upcoming tour dates on her website.  So this can't be too important for her?   Maybe there just isn't anything set up right now.
2. YouTube videos: The grand-daddy of individuals monetizing their presence on the internet.  Generate a large enough following, and you can support yourself via a cut of the ad revenue generated from YouTube views.  But you need a lot of views to make that happen.  My guess is that her video posts are in support of her enhancing her other streams of income.  She has two types of videos:
1. Normal Music Videos (Covers): Ana appears to post roughly two videos a month of covers of popular music.  She is often collaborating with "friends".  The videos are professionally shot (I'm a fan of the aesthetics) often in simple locations.  Friends is only in quotes because I don't know if those folks are really friends or if its a convenient professional relationship and they want the public to think that they are just two friends having a good time when in fact they are professional musicians trying to make a living.
2. Elaborate Parody Videos: Ana sings in some fun parody videos that are quite elaborate (Spice Girls and Taylor Switch for a couple).  She may have creative input, but she appears to be there mostly for her pipes.
3. Original Music Videos: Much of her work is available for enjoyment in video form.  Killing Kind is a great example of an original video.  (My favorite song, so far, of hers.)
4. Web TV Series: Ana has been featured in the pilot episode of Coffee House.  Would be a great series if they could get the idea rolling along.
3. iTunes & Spotify: her music is posted and people who want to own or listen to, can download or stream.  Standard stuff, just note that she is doing it as (largely) an independent.  I say largely, because it does appear that at least in Asia, she has gotten support from Warner Singapore.  Wikipedia lists her as unsigned.  She released her self-produced album To.Get.Her on iTunes.
4. PledgeMusic: Ana had the equivalent of a Kickstarter or Indegogo campaign on this site.  She raised 171% of what she needed for the project with just 301 sponsors.  There isn't enough information on the site to know what the funding goal was, but it was met.  And the album was produced.  She recorded in London and at least did some song-writing elsewhere.  I love this funding model for new albums.  It throws the need for a label out of the window.  Over the Rhine did this recently with their last couple of albums and I know many other bands are doing it, as well.  Lowers risk for the artists (substantial upfront costs to produce an album) and let's fan show their support in a tangible way.  Cheesy to say, but total win-win.
5. Royalties:  She has had some chart-topping songs in other countries.  No doubt, she sees some meaningful income from video TV channels and radio stations playing her music.
6. Patreon: a relatively new site (at least to me) that allows artists to seek out support from "patrons".  I think generally that it works that an artist gets paid by their patrons for each piece of work that they do (or time period over which they do it).  For Ana, the piece of work is a video.  There are categories all of the way from Music to Writing to Comedy to Games to Science.  Much like a Kickstarted project, Ana has Goals at which her work gets more elaborate with the more money she raises per video.  And there are different levels of support.  At the top level, if you support her for $100 per video (roughly $200/month), you get to spend 30 minutes on Google Hangouts or Skype with her.  I guess that means her time is worth $400 per hour?  She currently has 69 patrons at various levels offsetting $469 of her cost to produce a video.  Super cool that any of us can directly support artists with nothing getting in the way.  That said, I like the singer-songwriter combination.  I'd be willing to support the creation of new material, but don't feel super compelled to support the production of covers of other people's music (though they are quite good covers).
7. Stage-It: Want to do a concert without going on tour?  Play local or play some music and stream it to your audience on the internet.  A very interesting (and still quite early stage) idea, but one being pushed by Stage-It and Livestream (and maybe others).  Ana has a concert scheduled on Stage-It for November 30th.  And there is a limit to the audience size.  And Stage-It doesn't archive any of the performances.  So you have scarcity and expiry to bring value to event.  I guess.  I've signed up for an upcoming concert that will cost me $3.50 or annoyingly 35 "notes".  I've signed up mostly out of curiosity.  I've seen a concert given by another woman that was posted to YouTube which looked reasonably well done.  I'm guessing Ana's won't be as elaborate, but it's a worthwhile experimentation.  Perhaps we will move from the local coffeehouse to global coffeehouse.  We will be snapping our virtual fingers in no time.  But they really need an AppleTV/Roku channel to enjoy it properly.
8. Social Media: yep.  She's all over Facebook, Twitter, Instagram & Tumblr.  She's probably too young to have a MySpace page?  (sort of - there is one, but clearly with no investment on her part)
9. Music Website: A very visually slick site devoted to all things Ana Free.  In the current (and annoying) scroll through web design.  A must have, but not a money generator in and of itself.  I'm sure that this is actually a meaningful cost center for her but one that helps support all of the other revenue streams that she's developed.
10. "Lifestyle" Website: Appears to be a poorly maintained site (last real posts were early August all on the same day) and the one post via a YouTube video two days ago.  She must consider this a further brand enhancement tool.  But seems like it should be nothing more than a tab on her music website.
11. Merchandise: Yes, can't forget the merch.  Some mildly interesting designs and some very cool ones.  Very simple brand extension and one that doesn't really require much work on Ana's part.  Pay a talented graphics designer to pull together a few logos and upload to a site that will do all of the fulfillment work.  Further brand advertisement and a fraction of each sale.

From an outsider's perspective, it still feels like the traditional revenue streams will dominate her monthly income and most of what she is adding to her revenue as a musician is at the margin.  It also feels like she's out there working hard to get her brand out there.  And pays for a lot of professional photography and design work to enhance her brand.  Her international booking agency is ITB, which has a roster of 100+ well-known bands (though amusingly, doesn't list Ana Free as one of their clients).  She may also have a staff of a reasonable size dedicated to making it work for her.

It appears that much of her recording is done in her own space (I could be wrong about this, but the gear in the background suggests I'm correct).  This is only possible given the advancement of low-cost / high quality audio processing.  A macbook and $5k of software and hardware and you have a pretty powerful setup for desktop music publishing.

She has a degree in economics and perhaps finds the business side of the industry as challenging and important as the artistic side?  I don't know, but I think that we are in an age where hard work, talent get you into a positions where you can support yourself as a middle class artist.  And that is a good thing for the vibrancy of our culture.

And all of this information was easily accessible from my easy chair.  Truly a golden age.