How can artists make money from the free art they create? Some people are making a killing off of free software. But it seems like *most* of the people who are doing that aren't the actual programmers who create the software, but they're people who are selling additional products or services. Many free software programmers have unrelated day jobs, but assuming you want to create some kind of free art, and do it full time with no unrelated work or income, how can you support yourself at it? Russ Nelson observed on the Free Software Business list a while back that people make money on free software by keeping something proprietary, be it value-added software, physical manuals, support, or whatever. Jo Totland listed some of the ways people are doing it: > (a:) Sell support (obviously not useful for music, but probably live > performances could fit in the same category) > (b:) Sell distribution CD's (could work reasonably well, but most > likely people would buy compilation CD's from companies doing just > that, not directly from the artists) > (c:) Sell T-shirts, coffemugs, whatever... (which would probably work > just as bad as for the software guys, unless your music is > *really* popular). > (d:) Donations from happy users (ehh... listeners) > (e:) Contract-work that both parties agree to GPL when finished > (comparable to special compositions for some (big) event). > And of course nothing prevents anyone else from doing (a:), (b:), (c:) > or (d:) above without asking for permission from the artist. If you > don't approve of that, then the GPL is not for you. Selling support would be analogous to live performances, speaking engagements, workshops, etc. But people only pay for support/performance if they depend on the product. So in relation to artists, your work has to be popular. You have to have an audience of some significant size that would pay cash for it. In this scenario, the GPL is a good license to use because you want people to copy your work as much as possible. (Is this the Eric S. Raymond approach, who makes money from guest appearances and other product contribtutions?) I think that selling distributions is going to be more of a third-party type deal. Maybe there will be some decent money in it, but I don't think it will be for the artists. I can't think of many programmers who are making money selling distributions of their software -- the FSF does this but their sales aren't exactly astronomical and for the most part the authors of the software they sell don't get the money. Red Hat and VA Research make money selling physical artifacts which _use_ free software, but again this is not a way for _authors_ to make money -- unless they can front their own production and distribution company and hire the people to help do it. Ram Samudrala [1] has made money selling CDs of his free music [2]; he sold a lot of them and it more than recouped his investment but I'm sure it isn't what acutally supports him. You could sell physical versions of the work -- books, audio CDs, prints, etc. -- but if it were copylefted, nothing would stop a corporation from undercutting your price. Customers would have to make a conscious decision to buy from you instead of some other entity -- provided they knew it was available from you. Here, maybe something like the Aladdin Free Public License would be a better alternative [3]. Artifacts such as t-shirts, mugs, bumper stickers provide necessary publicity regardless of the model you choose but I don't think they'd enable you to support yourself. Part of the Larry Wall approach is to make money writing non-free books on the subject of your free work. Donations are nice, but you need a willing benefactor. This is the Richard Stallman approach -- being recognized for his work, he receives grants and entities frequently donate to his FSF organization. It would probably only work for an artist who becomes recognized for some great achievement in the arts as Stallman was recognized in computing for Emacs (over a decade after he began writing it). It is not a solution for the short term. I'd liken contract work that remains free after release to something like a sponsorship -- Harvard Law School thinks that you are a promising artist and they like your copyleft approach, so they decide to pay you a stipend to create some free work that is first exhibited at the openening reception of their new building. The Linus Torvalds approach is like a hybrid, and seems to work for him: develop and release the work at no cost and ensure that your work is redistributed and used as widely as possible, to increase dependence on your work and increase your reputation. Then, you make money from performance (speaking engagements etc), donations (grants) and consulting based on that reputation. [1] http://www.ram.org/ [2] http://www.twisted-helices.com/ [3] ftp://ftp.cs.wisc.edu/ghost/papers/
