I like patreon but at the same time I'm a bit uncomfortable with how the interaction aspect of it sometimes works. Lots of artists are essentially charging for interaction with them rather than a product. From the article: "In this system, it’s almost impossible to separate a work of art from its creator — or, at least, its creator’s public persona. Is there a future for someone who wants to be a musician, but not a personality? “No. I don’t think so,” Hollens says. “I don’t think the reclusive thing is going to happen anymore. That’s not the world we live in."
While that works for plenty of artists I'm sure there are others that can't handle it. In addition it seems really exhausting.
I get $3-800 per month from Patreon, depending on how productive I am on drawing pages of comics.
I have next to no interaction with my patrons. It's pretty awesome. If I ask a question in a post I'll get a few replies, that's about it.
I mean they know something of who I am from following my Twitter or whatever, I'm no Pynchon, but every now and then Patreon sends out emails suggesting ways to make more patrons by livestreaming or whatever and I'm all "oh fuck that".
I'm not charging for time with me. Im not selling the illusion of companionship. I'm just charging for my comics.
> Is there a future for someone who wants to be a musician, but not a personality?
There are tons of edm producers who don't cultivate much of a public personality, but even then, there is a lot of behind-the-scenes networking that goes on.
Being a professional artist has always been about cultivating relationships with people who have money. Whether it's wealthy patrons, or people who own record labels or galleries, or event promoters, etc.
One might even argue that being a professional anything (at least, a successful one at it) is about cultivating relationships with people who either have money (investors), have network, or have power (to hire you, etc.). This applies even for software engineers. Even the greatest software engineers in the world won't get very far by just sending job applications on a job listing site.
> Lots of artists are essentially charging for interaction with them
It's just marketing. Not all artists on Patreon provide this kind of interaction, and a number of artists on YouTube do. Peter Hollens' opinions are amplified because of his popularity, but his is not the only model of operation.
And ultimately, if a personal interaction is what the audience wants, aren't those artists simply playing to those desires? If I'm paying for a ticket to a rock festival, I'd like to hear rock, not country.
This depends a lot on the creator. I support 22 creators and there are 3 that I really interact with at all and that's only because my rewards require it (they're artists and I get commissioned works). Some of them promise a monthly Skype call or something like that but artists you're talking about are definitely a minority.
> “I don’t think the reclusive thing is going to happen anymore. That’s not the world we live in."
I think that's true for most creators but I also don't think it's impossible for an artist to just throw up music tracks, videos or artworks with no title, no description and no interaction and still have people support them.
Personas are more popular but it's not the only way to go about it.
I support 5 people on Patreon. A blog, two comics, and two web serials. The blog (Wait By Why) and one of the comics (SMBC) do any kind of creator-marketing; the other comic (Kill Six Billion Demons) has rewards, but they're all KSBD content. Neither of the web serialists (Wildbow and Erraticerrata) have no rewards, and I've never seen anything from them.
It's probably depended on content type; a lot of the value of some art - say, paintings - comes from the artist; whereas the value of the genre fiction is entirely contained within the fiction.
So one group pretty much does need to market themselves as an artist, whereas the other just needs to market their art.
There is a tradeoff artists can make. If they make more or better material with their time rather than socializing online, they can attract more patronage that way. If they interact with their supporters, they can also see more participation that way.
Copying scales infinitely. Personality doesn't. Only through unscalable things can people get margins above zero in creative things. See e.g. streaming rates being a fraction of a cent but people will pay lots for live performances.
I pay some people on Patreon who have never posted a single thing. I do that because I read some of their fanfiction and liked it, and I wanted to reward them for it. I even do it with Wildbow, whose epic Worm I never read (!) but I read hundreds of fanfic based on it instead.
