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This is a solved problem: you pay them for their work, which is how artists have made money since time immemorial. The degree to which artists can make a living

by fivre 5y ago

This is a solved problem: you pay them for their work, which is how artists have made money since time immemorial. The degree to which artists can make a living off their art is a function of demand and discoverability, not whether they have a payment system (they do need this, but they already have them). I'd be curious to know what fraction of NFT enthusiasts had previously commissioned a piece of art, and of those how many were truly aghast at the dire state of payment systems without NFTs or at their inability to assert ownership via a blockchain. I suspect both are quite small. The former is ludicrous, because Paypal/Kofi/Patreon/what have you offer a wide array of easy-to-use, feature-rich payment systems. The latter maybe less inconceivable, but IMO it's driven by a desire to use blockchain tech for _something_, find something that it can conceivably do, and then deciding that that thing is therefore important. Personally, proving ownership and providence hasn't ever been a concern for any of my art purchases because they, like the vast majority of art, isn't worth selling a forgery of--nobody is coming to steal the forum avatar I commissioned or selling unauthorized prints of the obscure photographer I like. This is just round three (or whatever) of blockchain being a solution in search of a problem: having failed to evangelize its wide use as a consumer payments system in general, its adherents moved on to hyping it as a solution to Enterprise IT problems (where selling bullshit is the name of the game anyway), failed to find traction (because everyone discovered it didn't actually solve any problems), and so we've circled back round to a consumer market, but now with more celebrity endorsements. It's still an effort to convince people that the blockchain version of something is much better and therefore worthwhile so that the worth of the tokens is tied to something other than transactions illegal goods and wild speculation. It's about supporting the livelihoods of people hoarding GPUs and wasting electricity to mine the tokens, not artists.

seanp2k2 5y ago
Yeah; the distributed ledger thing was always a funny value prop to me because it was like…so, replace what we already do today and are responsible for the accuracy of due to many various laws with…something orders of magnitude slower, orders of magnitude more complex, that requires orders of magnitude more compute power so we can…expose all transaction records to everyone involved? Also, re: art, kinda agree: the current gallery system takes a huge cut of sale prices and a lot of galleries don’t do much to help artists. The real winners, though, are the landlords. We’ve purchased art with checks before, and even in the “mid-range” price segment, logistics are much more of a problem than counterfeit risk. The logistical part still needs a good solution. Putting a large piece on a palette and trying to get a shipping company to treat it like the delicate and irreplaceable piece it is is tough and/or very expensive. Putting a canvas in the mail is a huge risk. Discovery is another big problem, as many people who might buy art don’t even know how to do so. It’s not like you just scan a QR code and enter your credit card details. A lot of it today is a very personal high-touch sales process that doesn’t always add value (much like cars, but sometimes with zero sleaze if you’re dealing with the actual artist directly). Once you get to the broker model and “if you have to ask” pricing it’s even more opaque and in more need of a solution that isn’t just auctions, but NFTs aren’t the solution.
me_me_mu_mu 5y ago
Buddy, think about the poor starving VCs. They got into certain coins at prices at fraction of a dollar. They need 10000x returns so they can keep putting 100m into a saas company that sales force can buy.
atlantas 5y ago
In the current system when an artist creates something and sells it, they typically get paid once, often lowballed. The buyer may turn around and sell it for 100x. The buyer made far more than the artist, who gets nothing in this scenario. With NFTs the artist can get a cut of every transfer indefinitely.
- zoenolan 5y ago
  Not in every jurisdiction. I would look at Droit de suite [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droit_de_suite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droit_de_suite
- OGWhales 5y ago
  > With NFTs they can get a cut of every transfer indefinitely How does that work? Also, what is to stop people copying it anyway and what is to stop artist from getting underpaid? All serious questions that I'd like to see answers to but don't understand how NFTs would solve any of them.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - almostkorean 5y ago
    Royalties are built into marketplace smart contracts. Individuals can do P2P trades where the artist doesn't receive any royalty but this doesn't happen very often. Anecdotally, it typically only happens on large deals and people who do a P2P trade often send the artist their royalty anyway (but still benefit from not paying the OpenSea fees for example) Not sure what you mean by the second question
    - fivre 5y ago
      Wait, so the purported royalty benefit of wrapping this in a contract can be circumvented, but the NFT tech is still good because people who circumvent this kindly send the artist the royalty anyway? Would they not be able to send the same courtesy royalty if no NFTs were involved?
syntheweave 5y ago
It was never a solved problem, it was an addressed problem. And the method of address poorly allocated credit. Maintaining records for art transactions, and thus enacting a fee structure that would benefit the artist when art is traded, traditionally meant introducing a middleman - and the associated overheads are why "fine arts" are known as a gatekept world and commissions have become the default for digital art. A sneer like "yeah well did you commission art before NFTs" is tautological. Commissions are the business model because they're available with minimal financial technology, not because they're ideal for society. The result you want is "more art is produced and more artists can afford to produce at a high level". But not everyone is interested in commissioning a large quantity of art of their furry OC getting porked. And likewise, people have trouble commissioning an artist to work freely without adding some kind of externalized upside like "build my own personal brand". There's a saturation point to that business model in and of itself. It's only been relatively recently that artists also started to be able to access intellectual property law as a business model, but running an IP business involves a perpetual defense of property through legal enforcements, since we are in the age of mechanical reproduction. So it also has barriers to entry and ongoing overheads. I don't hear anyone saying that game developers should all work on commission, though. The proposition of NFT art is just a revision of the gallery system - make intellectual work an asset, but on a much broader scale. The fee structure is automated, and the art itself is open to viewing and therefore doesn't need the same degree of IP enforcement as a paywall model; the only provenance question is the initial one of whether you actually minted your own work. And naturally, among the first people to have jumped on this are charlatans who have tested that exact question of initial provenance. But I can say, having closely observed and participated a little, that NFT art on the whole is not uniquely bad or good, it's still "just" an art market, just one geared towards the artist who is interested in making their brand a speculative investment. And that is another way to get art made.
- fivre 5y ago
  Assuming blockchain (and OpenSea atop that) count as "no middleman, no overhead" and not a new middleman (but it's a good one, because Andreessen Horowitz will make bank if it succeeds) atop technology that requires more energy consumption than small countries, it still isn't some magical wand that creates more people that spend disposable income on art. Commissioning art is one of _many_ ways you can do this. Non-commissioned works are readily available too! I also purchase those! Some of these are one of a limited set (common for photo prints), some of these aren't (Bandcamp albums). Point being, if you were someone who wanted to buy art before NFTs, you could do so. I'm skeptical of there being some large market segment that desperately wanted to buy art but only realized they could with the advent of NFTs. The royalty business model also already existed, where it made sense. There's no contract governing me reselling the painting I bought from someone at the local farmer's market because there wasn't any expectation on either my or the artist's part that it'd be resold at all, much less for a sum vastly greater than its purchase price. It's going to hang on my wall until I die, at which point it'll likely get tossed in a bin. That's in contrast to say, a film score, where the expectation is that it will be resold (as part of your theater ticket price, but whatever) many times over: ASCAP exists, and handles paying the IP lawyers on behalf of its members, because that's a business model that works for them. They've been managing this just fine for over a century.
mkr-hn 5y ago
>> "I'd be curious to know what fraction of NFT enthusiasts had previously commissioned a piece of art, and of those how many were truly aghast at the dire state of payment systems without NFTs or at their inability to assert ownership via a blockchain. I suspect both are quite small." The main complaint I hear from actual commission-taking artists is that even something fun and innocuous but potentially readable as suggesting banned uses, like "fuck yeah," in the comment field on the paying side will make PayPal suspend your account. The artists I know are universally opposed to NFTs with more artists I know of coming out against every time a new NFT site launches with stolen art.

by fivre 5y ago

seanp2k2 5y ago

Yeah; the distributed ledger thing was always a funny value prop to me because it was like…so, replace what we already do today and are responsible for the accuracy of due to many various laws with…something orders of magnitude slower, orders of magnitude more complex, that requires orders of magnitude more compute power so we can…expose all transaction records to everyone involved? Also, re: art, kinda agree: the current gallery system takes a huge cut of sale prices and a lot of galleries don’t do much to help artists. The real winners, though, are the landlords. We’ve purchased art with checks before, and even in the “mid-range” price segment, logistics are much more of a problem than counterfeit risk. The logistical part still needs a good solution. Putting a large piece on a palette and trying to get a shipping company to treat it like the delicate and irreplaceable piece it is is tough and/or very expensive. Putting a canvas in the mail is a huge risk. Discovery is another big problem, as many people who might buy art don’t even know how to do so. It’s not like you just scan a QR code and enter your credit card details. A lot of it today is a very personal high-touch sales process that doesn’t always add value (much like cars, but sometimes with zero sleaze if you’re dealing with the actual artist directly). Once you get to the broker model and “if you have to ask” pricing it’s even more opaque and in more need of a solution that isn’t just auctions, but NFTs aren’t the solution.

me_me_mu_mu 5y ago

Buddy, think about the poor starving VCs. They got into certain coins at prices at fraction of a dollar. They need 10000x returns so they can keep putting 100m into a saas company that sales force can buy.

atlantas 5y ago

In the current system when an artist creates something and sells it, they typically get paid once, often lowballed. The buyer may turn around and sell it for 100x. The buyer made far more than the artist, who gets nothing in this scenario. With NFTs the artist can get a cut of every transfer indefinitely.

zoenolan 5y ago
Not in every jurisdiction. I would look at Droit de suite [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droit_de_suite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droit_de_suite
OGWhales 5y ago
> With NFTs they can get a cut of every transfer indefinitely How does that work? Also, what is to stop people copying it anyway and what is to stop artist from getting underpaid? All serious questions that I'd like to see answers to but don't understand how NFTs would solve any of them.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- almostkorean 5y ago
  Royalties are built into marketplace smart contracts. Individuals can do P2P trades where the artist doesn't receive any royalty but this doesn't happen very often. Anecdotally, it typically only happens on large deals and people who do a P2P trade often send the artist their royalty anyway (but still benefit from not paying the OpenSea fees for example) Not sure what you mean by the second question
  - fivre 5y ago
    Wait, so the purported royalty benefit of wrapping this in a contract can be circumvented, but the NFT tech is still good because people who circumvent this kindly send the artist the royalty anyway? Would they not be able to send the same courtesy royalty if no NFTs were involved?

syntheweave 5y ago

It was never a solved problem, it was an addressed problem. And the method of address poorly allocated credit. Maintaining records for art transactions, and thus enacting a fee structure that would benefit the artist when art is traded, traditionally meant introducing a middleman - and the associated overheads are why "fine arts" are known as a gatekept world and commissions have become the default for digital art. A sneer like "yeah well did you commission art before NFTs" is tautological. Commissions are the business model because they're available with minimal financial technology, not because they're ideal for society. The result you want is "more art is produced and more artists can afford to produce at a high level". But not everyone is interested in commissioning a large quantity of art of their furry OC getting porked. And likewise, people have trouble commissioning an artist to work freely without adding some kind of externalized upside like "build my own personal brand". There's a saturation point to that business model in and of itself. It's only been relatively recently that artists also started to be able to access intellectual property law as a business model, but running an IP business involves a perpetual defense of property through legal enforcements, since we are in the age of mechanical reproduction. So it also has barriers to entry and ongoing overheads. I don't hear anyone saying that game developers should all work on commission, though. The proposition of NFT art is just a revision of the gallery system - make intellectual work an asset, but on a much broader scale. The fee structure is automated, and the art itself is open to viewing and therefore doesn't need the same degree of IP enforcement as a paywall model; the only provenance question is the initial one of whether you actually minted your own work. And naturally, among the first people to have jumped on this are charlatans who have tested that exact question of initial provenance. But I can say, having closely observed and participated a little, that NFT art on the whole is not uniquely bad or good, it's still "just" an art market, just one geared towards the artist who is interested in making their brand a speculative investment. And that is another way to get art made.

fivre 5y ago
Assuming blockchain (and OpenSea atop that) count as "no middleman, no overhead" and not a new middleman (but it's a good one, because Andreessen Horowitz will make bank if it succeeds) atop technology that requires more energy consumption than small countries, it still isn't some magical wand that creates more people that spend disposable income on art. Commissioning art is one of _many_ ways you can do this. Non-commissioned works are readily available too! I also purchase those! Some of these are one of a limited set (common for photo prints), some of these aren't (Bandcamp albums). Point being, if you were someone who wanted to buy art before NFTs, you could do so. I'm skeptical of there being some large market segment that desperately wanted to buy art but only realized they could with the advent of NFTs. The royalty business model also already existed, where it made sense. There's no contract governing me reselling the painting I bought from someone at the local farmer's market because there wasn't any expectation on either my or the artist's part that it'd be resold at all, much less for a sum vastly greater than its purchase price. It's going to hang on my wall until I die, at which point it'll likely get tossed in a bin. That's in contrast to say, a film score, where the expectation is that it will be resold (as part of your theater ticket price, but whatever) many times over: ASCAP exists, and handles paying the IP lawyers on behalf of its members, because that's a business model that works for them. They've been managing this just fine for over a century.

mkr-hn 5y ago

>> "I'd be curious to know what fraction of NFT enthusiasts had previously commissioned a piece of art, and of those how many were truly aghast at the dire state of payment systems without NFTs or at their inability to assert ownership via a blockchain. I suspect both are quite small." The main complaint I hear from actual commission-taking artists is that even something fun and innocuous but potentially readable as suggesting banned uses, like "fuck yeah," in the comment field on the paying side will make PayPal suspend your account. The artists I know are universally opposed to NFTs with more artists I know of coming out against every time a new NFT site launches with stolen art.