Creative Business in the Digital Era

Dealing with creative property in the digital era is going to be one of the key issues facing artists in the coming decade. A new seminar (happening in London… *sniff*) is aiming to address the subject head-on.

Are you a writer, musician, film maker or visual artist? Or maybe you work as a manager, promoter, or executive in the music, publishing, film/TV or visual arts industries? Whether you are creative, a creative entrepreneur, or working at any level in the creative industries, you’ll undoubtedly have seen, or experienced, how the internet is ‘changing everything’. You’ll probably have heard that the web is killing culture and your industry along with it. But the internet creates exciting new ways to distribute and promote creative works and should be seen by the creative industries as an opportunity rather than a threat.

Free culture - giving versions of creative works away, and even allowing others to copy, distribute, sample or create derivative works from them - is at the heart of these new opportunities. This approach seems alien to many in the creative world who assume that free culture cannot generate income, but a freer attitude to cultural distribution will help you connect with a new audience, to develop a more engaged audience and even to make new business connections.

Full details about the seminar can be found here.

As independent artists, we often find ourselves giving away our work for free, but its usually treated as a stepping stone towards paying work. But as the digital revolution makes sharing, remixing, and mashing up easier and easier we’re going to have to deal with the issue of ownership and whether any of the work that we share with the world belongs to us.

What do you think about giving your art away for free? Does it make the world a better place or is it just the same old story of society placing little to no value on art.