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The Artist's Perspective

It has recently been estimated that in the music industry today a band would only receive about 32 cents per copy from sales of 500,000 CDs @ $17 each.

The musicians Steve Albini, Courtney Love, and Janis Ian have also written about this inequitable situation, respectively: The Problem with Music, Courtney Love Does the Math, and The Internet Debacle.

If dealt with directly via the Digital Art Auction, even a small section of such a band's audience could offer much less than $17 per copy, and still provide a comparable return to the artist.

Incidentally, unlike the long term contracts that the publishing industry likes binding artists with, even if the artist offers up their digital art here for auction, they are not obliged to sell - they can walk away at no cost.

The bonus is though, that after the sale of the art into the public domain, widespread copying is postively encouraged! It can only help to increase the artist's exposure.

In effect this process of selling the digital art separates it from the boxed product. The artist rightfully sells their art first, leaving the product to the publisher. From this point on it's obviously a free market for any publisher to package the art in any form they see fit, whether deluxe boxed collector's edition, or hastily burnt CD in a car boot sale. If the music industry seriously regards the artistic component of a $17 CD at 32 cents, then there must be plenty of business left in retailing the packaging.

The Auctioneer's End

The auctioneer (this site) should be a very light-weight, non-interfering, low friction middleman, making the auction process as smooth as possible for the artist. Naturally, a small commission will be necessary to bring in sufficient revenue to pay for the development costs and web site hosting.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.