The business of art
Creative types are dividing their time between the recording studio and the gallery in a search for new revenue streams, writes Bonnie Flaws.
Mike Weston is a professional multidisciplinary multimedia artist with his own artist management business, The Area, now in its 20th year of operation. Having taken turns at being musician, designer, producer, art collector/dealer, music promoter and curator, sometimes all at once, he is that rare beast able to straddle the worlds of art and music.
Weston started out in the early 1980s Dunedin sound movement as a musician, and relocated to Auckland in 1985. He worked successfully from the late 80s to late 90s as a multimedia artist, operating a series of studio and retail spaces catering to the avant garde of local music and art.
‘‘I was running an art dealing business in parallel and doing some event work for hire; product launches, art commissions, video installations for nightclubs, ad work. Just whatever to pay the bills,’’ he said.
‘‘Being an independent producer I was very involved in the peripheral stuff around music. The photography, graphic design, print production, art direction, which operates theoretically in service to the music-as-product.
‘‘But it became increasingly clear that the other stuff was taking over as product and the music was more of an audience identifier, a vector. I could move between media, and the audience followed.’’
And it was this early realisation that has ultimately stood him in such good stead to survive the collapse of the music industry in the early 2000s.
Good thing, too. Art is more profitable than ever, with 2018 a year of record highs for art at auction, with works by David Hockney and Jenny Saville breaking price records for living artists.
In New Zealand’s primary art market a number of high-profile artists – including Shane Cotton, Michael Parekowhai, Simon Williams and Gretchen Albrecht – make very healthy sales.
‘‘At auction we had a record 2018 for [Karl] Maughan,’’ said Richard Thompson, director of the International Art Centre.
‘‘For example, we sold one for $98,000 and many thousands of dollars worth more and he had several sell-out shows in his primary market at Gow Langsford and Page Blackie galleries.’’
The money involved reflects the fact that investors now consider art to be an asset class, and there are a number of specialised funds catering to different investors and collectors.
Musicians, on the other hand, may have it worse than ever, and highly successful acts are making most of their money from touring, not sales or publishing.
There were decades when it was ostensibly possible to earn a living from music – but that was before the phenomenon of digital file sharing and later, music streaming.
‘‘With the end of the music products being money making, I could see the writing on the wall,’’ Weston said.
‘‘The amount of control you could have as an independent artist was going to go up, but the revenue generator was going to disappear – so in terms of financial stability, the business model had to shift to something non-virtual, i.e. material art.’’
From launch, The Area’s profile grew quickly and attracted the attention of local street artists and musicians as a space to show their work outside of the entertainment industry context.
Over the years it has featured artists such as Martin ‘‘F ...... ’’ Emond, Askew, Misery and many other well-known musicians and artists, including Otis Frizell, with whom he formed the collaborative identity known as Weston Frizzell from about 2000 onwards.
‘‘If I hadn’t moved into art I’d be completely screwed,’’ he said. ‘‘The big difference with me and Otis is that we’re accustomed to doing it for ourselves as promoters. We’re not beholden to a parent company dictating direction or deciding investment priorities, so we’re not vulnerable to being dropped or shelved.
‘‘I have continued to make music but have no expectation of making money out of it. We have established audiences that know the spectrum of what we do – the media channel is sort of the same.
‘‘We don’t really feature in the fine art media conversation, nor in the civic gallery and art grant paradigm. We fund and market ourselves predominantly through innovative use of social media instead.’’
A caveat: There are many artists working hard to make a living as painters, photographers, sculptors who are not able to make ends meet and must maintain a day job to pay the bills.
Napier artist Bernard Winkles is one, working 32 hours a week for a charity. He has also signed up again to work at the port as a watersider.
‘‘Even if you come home tired from work you’ve still got to make a meal, mow the lawns, do a bit of gardening and get into the studio and work ’til whatever time. If you get the flow, you don’t stop. You may be up very late into the night and still have to get to work in the morning. It’s a passion, a vocation I think.’’
Winkles has been exhibiting for years and does sell work. It’s just not a livelihood.
Weston said the impact of the streaming revolution on his music work was devastating.
‘‘Spotify has completely f ..... it for the niche artists. There’s a massive oversupply of music and it’s all uniformly available for nothing. It’s not just that [people] can get it for free, it’s that they stream all of the music, all of the time, for free.’’
Spotify paid on average US$0.0038 per stream to unsigned artists in 2015, according to data visualisation experts Information is Beautiful, which calculated that an unsigned musician would need 180,000 streams to earn the US minimum monthly wage of US$1260.
The streaming behemoth is now reportedly paying $0.00437 per play.
Case in point. Mariah Carey’s hugely popular All I want for Christmas is you broke records on December 24 for the most Spotify streams ever in a single day, at 10.8 million. The track would have purportedly made her label around just US$66,000,
to be split with various stakeholders, including Carey.
Carey is certainly not relying on the streaming revenue from the hit – she has made the festive love song a huge part of her brand and income by capitalising on its success with a concert residency at the Beacon Theatre in New York since 2014, and touring the same in the UK and Europe for the last two years. Regardless, if streaming revenues are this dismal for an enormously successful international artist who operates in the mainstream, what about the rest? Weston cites the plight of his friend and collaborator, David Harrow, a British electronic dub producer based in LA, as an example of how it all went wrong. ‘‘He’s a major talent with a long-term career and a huge published back catalogue of recordings. He’s widely revered as an innovator. The difficulties he has had dealing with the current musical climate is overwhelming.’’ Harrow, who has worked with the Headless Chickens and Salmonella Dub, says that it all changed around 2005.
‘‘Writing, touring, re-mixing and production was my livelihood from the 80s on to about 2000-plus. And I would say I made a very comfortable living, in the middle ground of being reasonably successful. I wrote a lot of music for other artists so publishing was always a good payday for me.
‘‘I was signed to previously successful record labels under different artists’ names and projects. And although my releases were well received, the sales just seemed to plummet.
‘‘I began to see labels closing, publishers closing, studios, distributors etcetera, and without the product to promote, touring went the same way. I remember sitting in the offices of EMI being told that they were too big to fail and then a week later everyone was laid off and the catalogues sold on. ‘‘When people began just giving their music away I kind of believed it was all over and to a certain extent it is.’’
He now collaborates with Weston.
‘‘I asked him, do you have something else that can be the money maker? And at the moment, he doesn’t, so I’m working with him to restructure his personal operation, to interface him more directly with his personal audience, and to foster revenue streams that will allow him to keep creating.’’
The latest iteration of The Area is pioneering a new business model and opening a new gallery and studio in West Auckland with a stated focus on artists who cross over the music/art divide.
‘‘I am interested in maverick artists that have broad multimedia capability. They crossover, they are involved in making their own image, their approach is art rather than pop songs.’’
One of his cohort is Brisa Roche´ , an American musician and artist based in Paris.
‘‘The conversation started around remixing, some help with promotion and gig booking, but it’s evolving in the direction of collaboration. Her social media presence is really viable,’’ said Weston.
Roche´ has worked as a musician under many different types of arrangements.
‘‘I’ve pretty much tried the entire spectrum,’’ she said.
Most recently, she went the independent route to fund and release her latest album, Father, produced by UK musician producer John Parish.
‘‘For years I was able to more than survive off music. I was working and making records and getting royalties or master rights for this and that.
‘‘I bought a piece of property and then as my skill set grew and as I became more and more efficient, the streaming took over and different things changed, and my age changed and it’s gotten harder and harder.’’
And the multimedia approach?
‘‘In terms of objects and selling things that I create, this is the beginning. I’m not really convinced about combining them in terms of having the items that I’m trying to sell directly relate to the record. I think my goal would be for my fans to be interested in whatever thing I am making.
‘‘But if you took away the object and try and consider yourself just a person or an artist creating multiple things that your fans can grab onto and order, I do think there’s a future in that. But it’s hard to collect those people.
‘‘My ray of hope is that through my perseverance and by continuing to struggle and battle it out [my work] will become rare and interesting enough to gain value.’’
The art market works in exactly this way, so maybe she’s onto something. Weston seems to think so.
‘‘I’m confident that her audience will be really interested and accepting of work in different media and at different scales, one-off paintings, limitededition works, books, merchandise.
‘‘My interest is in exploring the areas where creative inspiration, capability, and audience interest meet, and pursuing that direction.’’
In a kind of ironic way, Weston has managed to leverage his sophisticated knowledge of the art world to circle back around to music.
‘‘The art led us back to music, seeding video and art collaborations . . . and increased media activity through Facebook created a need to be adding music and video content to the promotion of art.
‘‘I do heavy on the management side. It’s management art.’’
‘‘I have continued to make music but have no expectation of making money out of it.’’
Mike Weston