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I think the article is about the difficulties in capturing said Value, especially given cheap digital copying, and it contains a vague promise that the author's

by _yosefk 12y ago

I think the article is about the difficulties in capturing said Value, especially given cheap digital copying, and it contains a vague promise that the author's company might help, without telling how. Did I miss something?

justinpaulson 12y ago
Hey thanks for reading! Check us out at rebil.co for a bit more information on how we plan to instill value in digital art. We are just getting started, but keep watching and I think you'll like what you see!
- TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
  Looks like ad-free subscription-view, mostly - I guess - for video "shows", taking a cut and distributing some percentage to creators. The blog page doesn't make this obvious. Clicking around helps, but maybe not quite enough. Not sure where the digital art element comes in. To most people that means still image fine art or maybe animation. (Or possibly all those brightly coloured half-naked pixie and fantasy character artworks that are all over Deviant Art, depending.) The model might work, but taking on YouTube and Vimeo is brave and ambitious, especially considering they're moving to a subscription model themselves. (Never mind Netflix...)
- _yosefk 12y ago
  Good luck with your venture. One thing that I really hope is more refined than the rough description on the site is the "revenue per minute watched" model for paying creators. YouTube has switched to this model at some point (previously it counted views) and this hurts harder-to-produce content tremendously (like film or animation) while encouraging cheap-to-produce content (like slow-paced tutorials or video blogs.) Obviously just counting views has its issues (encourages click baiting), but this can be countered by looking at bounce-backs or what-not, and mainly YouTube did what it did because its ad business requires viewers to spend time on the site. With paying customers, hopefully it's possible to do better. (The drive for "minutes of content" reminds of the switch from cinema to TV - quality certainly took a hit because of the new demand for endless quantities...)
- rotw 12y ago
  A lot of your post touches on concepts touched upon in Walter Benjamin's classic essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. If you've not read it, it's well worth it: https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/... Here's some more contextual information on it: http://modernism.research.yale.edu/wiki/index.php/The_Work_of_Art_in_the_Age_of_Mechanical_Reproduction http://modernism.research.yale.edu/wiki/index.php/The_Work_o... (Although Benjamin might object to the notion that art has value, in the sense of metaphorical value implying financial value and vice versa.)
mc32 12y ago
Yeah all it does is bemoan the loss of the value in art due to both "democratization" and the miniscule marginal cost of reproduction of digital goods. This hits artists in the gut. So they are trying to entice a captive audience with something that promises to return artists to the golden age of reverence and importantly commensurate remuneration. I'm not sure that's coming back. There was always someone you were indebted to as an artist, the patron, or the client. Curiously there are artists who have disdain for the Adobes of the world yet also complain about people not wanting to pay fair value for art. There is some irony in that somewhere.
- _yosefk 12y ago
  Software companies have it easy compared to artists - their products often have teeth (being hosted at a server is an obvious example, as are many more or less effective anti-piracy measures and ability to relatively easily go after infringing businesses if not individuals.) Artists who ship "nothing but data" to be consumed by individuals have very few effective means to battle piracy.

by _yosefk 12y ago

justinpaulson 12y ago

Hey thanks for reading! Check us out at rebil.co for a bit more information on how we plan to instill value in digital art. We are just getting started, but keep watching and I think you'll like what you see!

TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
Looks like ad-free subscription-view, mostly - I guess - for video "shows", taking a cut and distributing some percentage to creators. The blog page doesn't make this obvious. Clicking around helps, but maybe not quite enough. Not sure where the digital art element comes in. To most people that means still image fine art or maybe animation. (Or possibly all those brightly coloured half-naked pixie and fantasy character artworks that are all over Deviant Art, depending.) The model might work, but taking on YouTube and Vimeo is brave and ambitious, especially considering they're moving to a subscription model themselves. (Never mind Netflix...)
_yosefk 12y ago
Good luck with your venture. One thing that I really hope is more refined than the rough description on the site is the "revenue per minute watched" model for paying creators. YouTube has switched to this model at some point (previously it counted views) and this hurts harder-to-produce content tremendously (like film or animation) while encouraging cheap-to-produce content (like slow-paced tutorials or video blogs.) Obviously just counting views has its issues (encourages click baiting), but this can be countered by looking at bounce-backs or what-not, and mainly YouTube did what it did because its ad business requires viewers to spend time on the site. With paying customers, hopefully it's possible to do better. (The drive for "minutes of content" reminds of the switch from cinema to TV - quality certainly took a hit because of the new demand for endless quantities...)
rotw 12y ago
A lot of your post touches on concepts touched upon in Walter Benjamin's classic essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. If you've not read it, it's well worth it: https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/... Here's some more contextual information on it: http://modernism.research.yale.edu/wiki/index.php/The_Work_of_Art_in_the_Age_of_Mechanical_Reproduction http://modernism.research.yale.edu/wiki/index.php/The_Work_o... (Although Benjamin might object to the notion that art has value, in the sense of metaphorical value implying financial value and vice versa.)

mc32 12y ago

Yeah all it does is bemoan the loss of the value in art due to both "democratization" and the miniscule marginal cost of reproduction of digital goods. This hits artists in the gut. So they are trying to entice a captive audience with something that promises to return artists to the golden age of reverence and importantly commensurate remuneration. I'm not sure that's coming back. There was always someone you were indebted to as an artist, the patron, or the client. Curiously there are artists who have disdain for the Adobes of the world yet also complain about people not wanting to pay fair value for art. There is some irony in that somewhere.

_yosefk 12y ago
Software companies have it easy compared to artists - their products often have teeth (being hosted at a server is an obvious example, as are many more or less effective anti-piracy measures and ability to relatively easily go after infringing businesses if not individuals.) Artists who ship "nothing but data" to be consumed by individuals have very few effective means to battle piracy.