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Q&A with "Starving the Artist" Author William Aicher
Wednesday, June 30th, 2010 by Patrick Ross

Recently I read a very compelling book titled "Starving the Artist." (I enjoyed the Kindle version and now have a hard copy given to me by a colleague of the author I met recently at the Music Publishers Association meeting in New York). The thesis of the book — that technology has advanced in ways that could be of real benefit to artists and creators, but the harms that they are suffering are not sufficiently understood or appreciated — resonated well with me, and I suspect would with readers of this blog as well.

Below is the first of a two-part Q&A I conducted with the author, William Aicher, by email. Here we discuss his motivation to write the book, his own work with rightsholders, and motivations to create. Tomorrow he'll share why he insists free isn't "bad," how true artists have a gift, the semantic debate over "stealing" vs. "infringement," and his thoughts on the Web 2.0 world.

Q: What motivated you to write the book "Starving the Artist"?

Starving the Artist came about from a combination of ideas I'd had for some articles exploring the value of intellectual property, the free culture movement, piracy, etc. I had considered writing for my official web site. Since I've been working for in the music publishing industry online for ten years now, I've seen a lot of changes happen in the way people value the creative work of others – and frankly, it's both depressing and frightening.

At Musicnotes.com (where I work), one of our core values is to respect the work of songwriters and compensate them fairly for the work they do. But besides my professional career, I'm also a bit of a media junkie – I love music, movies, video games and books – and am grateful for the hard work others put in to create these things. As the perceived value of these works is reduced, motivation risks being damaged, and the creation of future quality works is at risk.

As to why it ended up as a book, after much thought it became clear the different aspects of the topic were too intertwined to work effectively in the shorter form of a blog, and I decided to combine them into the longer-form book format.

Q: You work for an online company that licenses copyrighted works. Can you talk a bit about what it's like to compete against sites that do the same thing through infringement?

It's obviously difficult to compete when you have the extra burden of following the rules. If you're an infringer, offering content is as simple as getting a hold of it in some way and putting a link up for people to download it. A lot of people do respect copyright and artists' rights, and are happy to pay for sheet music. Others just want their stuff for free. There's no way we're going to be able to compete against free for those who only are concerned with price. For those who fall in-between, however, we try our best to offer a high-quality product for a reasonable price, through a satisfying web experience.

Of course, I am not directly involved in any of the licensing agreements at Musicnotes.com, so I am only speaking from a marketing and web design perspective.

Q: In "Starving the Artist," you write that we must accept three assumptions: 1) That any created work involves some cost to produce and distribute. 2) There must be a motivation to create. 3) Any desired creative work must have some inherent value. Those seeking copyright dilution would argue that 1) the price of a creative work should be equal to the marginal cost of distribution and reproduction, i.e., zero; 2) artists are motivated to create out of love for their art; and 3) consumers determine the monetary value of creative works, and they have determined it is zero. What do you say to those arguments?

Even if the cost of distribution is zero, there is still the cost of creation – and as I discuss in the book those costs are more than just time and raw materials. There's the cost of the portion of one's self that is embedded into a work, as well as the cost of losing that portion of one's self by not keeping it internalized.

As for time, there's much more time involved in creating a work than the hours spent actually typing the words or strumming the chords. There's the life experience behind that as well, which is valuable in itself due to the rarity of it only existing in a single instance, specific to the creator.

First off, not all artists are motivated to create out of love for their art. Some do it just to make money. But even if all artists only created out of love for their art it doesn't mean their art isn't worth anything – it just means they aren't doing it to be paid.

In Starving the Artist my argument really isn't that everyone needs monetary compensation for their work, but rather that they deserve some sort of payment or trade for it – even if that trade is as simple as receiving the respect from someone else of not taking your work without permission. People are completely free to offer their works void of monetary payment, but for the rest of us to just take something because we don't want to pay for it just shows a complete lack of respect.

I do not agree that consumers determine the monetary value of creative works. They just determine whether or not it will sell for the asking price. An artist can charge as much as they want for their work, and if someone decides that it is worth it to them to pay that amount, then it is worth it. There's a big issue right now of an overflow of content, and the way the fight is being fought by a lot of people is by lowering their price to free. But when everything is available for free, then you've lost that competitive advantage as well. The more free stuff is out there, the less perceived value other items have – but price really is only perception. If creative works were not available for free, they wouldn't be expected to be free.

reprinted with permission of the author