Can Data Capture the True Health of the Creative Economy?

Man, this whole discussion has just made me queasy. Having spent the last decade or so watching the beautiful, fertile session and club scene I once knew in NYC fall apart...this data and speculation are meaningless. So many talented people have been cheated as royalties have gone missing and union gigs have disappeared. Maybe some kind of indie scene will flourish that someone will one day say was progress, but I think not. I've witnessed it, and I see talented people struggling today way more than ever. So it is just a damned insult to read this reporting in the NYT, and all the apologist follow-up. Like Louis Armstrong once said about the meaning of jazz: "...if you have to ask, you'll never know."
Steve S.
NY, NY

When 70% all of the free-lance gigs have dried up since 2001 and clubs don't pay bands to play - they require the bands to PAY THEM to play - well, I just think these authors need to stop relying on easily mined data and go do some research for themselves, original research.

They might find that their writing doesn't pay enough for them to do original research - then they'll better understand the problems facing the creative community.

And now, the Future of Music Coalition has rebutted this apology.

http://futureofmusic.org/blog/2015/08/28/musicians-are-not-dentists-what...

Mr Johnson, you owe the music community an apology. If you think you are being helpful to musicians, you are mistaken. You are, I'm sad to say, doing the opposite. You are hurting us.

We at Future of Music Coalition appreciate Johnson’s detailed response and his very kind words for our organization. Moreover, we appreciate his demeanor and good faith in responding to our critiques. It’s not fun to endure these kinds of criticisms (indeed, we’re not the only ones who had problems with that article), and he has done so with civility and good humor.

That said, we stand by our criticism of Johnson’s reporting.

Johnson’s response to our critique is titled “Can Data Capture the True Health of the Creative Economy?” But that’s not what our disagreement is about. It’s about the simplified story Johnson tells, and whether the particular datasets he uses to tell it are an appropriate proxy for the musician population. It’s about whether he’s given his readers the necessary tools to meaningfully understand the data he presents, including the limitations of that data.

Here's our full response to his response to our response.
http://futureofmusic.org/blog/2015/08/28/musicians-are-not-dentists-what...

Read "Big Data" by Victor Mayer-Schonberger and Kenneth Cukler about how powerful algorithms are teasing out the hidden connections between seemingly unrelated things to ultimately create meaningless data, that we rely on for daily decisions resulting in misinterpretations costing us millions.

This came in the mail today:

Scientists and engineers and inventors and programmers all engage in creative thought, but there’s a real difference between creative thought in the scientific sense and creative thought in the artistic sense. That is, basically, achievements in science are, at bottom, acts of discovery, not acts of creation. Before Newton, the natural fact of gravitation was already there, waiting to be understood; after Newton, there was no need for anyone to have that same insight over again. But if Newton *hadn’t* formulated the laws of motion and gravitation, somebody else would have eventually, and then we’d speak today of, say, Schmedlappian physics rather than Newtonian physics. BUT…if Coleridge hadn’t smoked the right bowl at the right time, neither he nor anybody else would have ever written Kubla Khan.

Another thought. Interesting picture accompanying this apology- Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs (whose stuff is very good but difficult to find) in the “studio”, which appears to be the corner a small bedroom, working with a computer and a couple of keyboards, a live type (LoFi) microphone, and a guitar. Working in head phones. Isolated. Alone.

This is not the way an art scene happens. This is not the way forward.

I'm a 58-year-old writer and musician who makes a living doing neither. The real issue here, of course, is this: America is founder and CEO of rabid global capitalism. Rabid, ruthless, unfettered, and rapacious. It's what we do, and we've taught everyone else who wants to get in the game how to play it. As a result, nothing - and by that I mean NO THING - except that which makes money has any value whatsoever. This isn't new, of course; artists and intellectuals have always had a tough row to hoe until such time as they either secure a generous patron or live long enough to cash in on the patina of desirability the passage of time inevitably bestows (cf. the Impressionists). But this ages-old problem has never been more pronounced for artists and intellectuals than it is today. The gaping, ravenous maw of capitalism has no use for anything if it isn't making big profits for somebody, like, right freaking now. As a result, artists go begging for money and respect. The same problem plagues American education. You can't expect youngsters to view the pursuit of education for its intrinsic value as necessary when the culture they are growing up in blares a different message night and day: Forget dumb junk like history; it's making money that counts! Expecting hapless teachers to do battle with the sea of problems a cultural impetus like that one foments is absurd, yet who gets the blame for the nation's appalling illiteracy? But hey - we're capitalists! USA! USA!

I'd love to have a quality of life conversation, specifically focused on hours worked, and number of gigs required, not to mention consistency and dependability of income. Our conservatory graduated, hard working not to mention extremely talented guitar teacher works at local schools part time, at day camp in the summer, plays musicals for the better scale, teaches privately in students' homes (committing and wasting more time) all to fund the music he actually wants to make. It is better than not having music in your life, but it is likely not sustainable into middle age. So my question -- is this peripatetic life new or as it's always been? Should we blame a digital economy or simply the vagaries of a creative industry?

I didn't read Johnson's first article. Reading an analysis based on available data and surveys and etc. about a creative field like music just... well, it's too much like reading about a Van Gogh painting instead of looking at the real thing. Now, after reading both his articles (the claim, and the defense) I see why my aversion was correct. Johnson uses a hammer (available data) as a tool because that's all he has, even though the hammer doesn't fit the job. In the real world, musicians know what's what. Johnson doesn't. Neither do his readers, if they take him seriously. (I am not a musician but I work in a related creative field, and the "digital revolution" has not improved it. Rather, it has proven a negative economic disruption. It has made earning a living more difficult and has not improved the creative products.)

This follow-up is 100 percent accurate, just like the original article.

Just like most people lose touch with current tastes in music, nearly all of Johnson's naysayers are out of touch with the current music business. It has obviously never been better, and Johnson proved it.

I thought Steven Johnson’s article Creative Accounting was timely and encouraging. He also made one point that could have borne deeper discussion. He writes that making it as an artist these days, “Require[s] a kind of entrepreneurial energy that some creators lack.” I don’t think it’s so much a lack of energy as much as a lack of appreciation for the kind of life running your own business can provide. In my experience, most creative people are to the left of the political center (no doubt due to those strange feelings of empathy) and often have a disdain for anything smacking of business. I’ve been without a day job for 23 years largely because I decided to become self-employed. I make a very good living from nine creative outlets: writing, photography, stone masonry, design, gardening, carpentry, politics, sculpture and foraging. As Andy Warhol said, “After art comes business, and the art of doing business is the best art of all.” Artists with a disdain for business would be wise to get over it. Owning your own business makes you the captain of your own life. As you comfort yet another friend who’s been laid off, you’ll be launching yet another remunerative and artistic adventure. Let the creative accounting begin.

I guess journalism isn't art, perhaps not in its present form, but I find it interesting that this discussion is happening in a newspaper that, like all newspapers, can't figure out how to stop losing money. Music is personal expression. I can see how it can continue in some form. Journalism takes some infrastructure to do it properly. The funding model has been destroyed.

Come on, stop complaining... if you love music and making music... then making money should be something of an afterthought. Listen, I create music too, and I want to be able to make music for a living. But I can't. That's just the fact of life. Get over it. I have a day job which pays the bill. And I get home and do my music creation. I love it, though I'd love to get paid for it every now and then, it doesn't. I perform with my buddies on the weekends, and that's how we express ourselves through music.

To the author's point, I think the current music scene is better for musicians who's just starting out, with all the technologies that are available to them to make music and be available to the world, with iTunes and Youtube. Yes, it may not make every musician happy, nor should it. But from the stand point of music lovers, it's a time of blessing since music can be created and shared with anyone around the world for the first time in human history. So, why not get excited?

Mr. Johnson

Thank you for responding to the Future of Music rebuttal of your article.

Would you respond to this?

http://illusionofmore.com/steven-johnson-thesis-isnt/

Thank you.

T Bone Burnett

I think the NY Times owes the FMC or someone like Anil Prasad of Innerviews.org equal space to respond to Johnson. Despite his backpedalling and softening of his thesis -- basically he's told the public not to worry about musicians--they're doing just fine. The notion that artists can just "adjust" their contracts with the Streaming platform is incredibly naive.

As far as the question about whether "data" can capture the creative economy, I think the answer is no. Johnson basically says this and then goes on anyway. Poorly researched, poorly thought out, damaging to artists-- that sums it up.

Steven Johnson is debating a straw man.
No one is claiming "apocalypse": but record budgets have been slashed, and this blocks talented artists without the means to self finance/promote from participation.
Details like "who" can participate aren't visible from Johnson's 'birds eye' perch. But maybe he should swoop a bit closer to earth every now and then, because some really good music used to come from places -- Detroit, Liverpool, the Bronx -- where people couldn't afford to self produce/promote.
The fact is this: rates of pay from streaming services are so low that, for most working artists, they don't cover production costs. As streaming displaces monetizable CD and download sales, artists are suffering losses in income.
Creating paper gains by listing elementary school teachers as musicians won't change that fact.
Mr Johnson also fails to note that much of the music economy in 1999 was gray market/cash, significant portions from overseas touring. The loss of this income simply isn't measurable by his sources, while the paper gains when this same income is pushed onto the books by ever increasing post 9-11 security, or when the same musicians are forced into teaching positions are counted as 'growth'.
Equally misleading is data from 'gig economy' part-timers who 'identify" as musicians, rather than dog walkers or pot dealers. This choice doesn't change the income's source or reflect true music industry growth.
We wish Johnson was right. He's not.

In Palo Alto, California there are five venues at which I had produced small concert events, for working-class musicians, on tour in 1999 or thereabouts-- coffee houses, bars, art galleries and a night club per se -- that by 2014 had been converted to office space, mostly for tech workers chasing the next big IPO outcome. Meanwhile, rents have increased at least 40 percent in that period (or since 2008 rather) forcing out emerging artists en masse.