I noticed that your software does/will support dominant assurance contracts and have it on my long list of things to evaluate.

I’m not enamoured with dominant assurance contracts (as opposed to assurance contracts in general), but I am currently working on the Contingency Market that it just so happens would be able to support them.

Oh dear. It seems we’ve been trying to preach to the converted.

And here I was thinking you believed that the long tail demonstrated that artists could never be paid for their art.

The market for copies (duplicating binary digits), I think we both agree, is over.

The demand for, and supply of, art remains unaffected.

So yes, I was talking about i>copies of creative works being priced at zero. I didn’t mean to imply that artists will never get paid for creating original works. But I do think it’s the case that the norm, for music and for punditry, will be for creators to give away copies of their work for free once they’ve been created.

I really don’t know how you can sustain that statement.

What supply and what demand?

If you look at the wealth of creative works and say to yourself “There’s tons of good stuff out there that I might have once paid for, but now it’s free, and moreover the supply of it exceeds my demand for it” you may well believe that supply exceeds your demand.

However, this was the case when anyone walked into a library. Millions of books - free to read. And yet most of the books in the library were produced commercially - for a financial return. And don’t forget it takes money or effort to figure out which books are the most worthwhile reads.

For any given artistic work, the bulk of people will consider that they’d happily wait for it to appear in their library than buy it - ergo 99% of everything is valued by most people at $0.

A tiny fraction of any audience is so interested in the artwork that they would glady consider paying money for it.

Publishers have generally chosen highly popular works in order that they maximise revenue to cover their large overheads.

The long tail means the audience size may be small, but there are still a fraction who would consider payment. Just like poor oil fields, publishers simply cannot recover revenue here. And yet, there are very few overheads (for digital distribution). In fact, after ‘discovery’, one of the largest obstacles is the decision cost on the part of any audience member (as to whether to participate in commissioning the artist).

So, from the perspective of someone who sees a library of free books, supply exceeds demand. However, from the perspective of the author and the purchasers, supply does not exceed demand, hence for each book in the library the author supplied a product to meet an excess of demand.

That is not to say that a lot of self-promotional works are jolly good, but then these were paid for by the artist to meet the artist’s demand for promotional material.

And yes, in all this, I’m still only talking about the minority of artists hopeful for, or simply amenable to, a monetary reward at some point.

You should not look at a library and decide that supply exceeds demand and that books henceforth cannot be priced higher than $0.

Compare the situation with free software (as in GPL). Much of it was originally commissioned, and yet much of it can be obtained free of charge. The fact that you can get it for nothing does not mean that no-one valued it sufficiently to commission it.

Similarly, the fact that something you may be interested in commissioning can become free of charge does not reduce its value to you.

A future of free culture, does not render artists penniless (only traditional publishers).

And you are correct here: “Paying someone to produce a particular work is different than paying for a copy of a work. I didn’t say that artists won’t be able to make a living–quite the contrary. I just think that they’ll do it by means other than selling copies of their work.”

Absolutely. Artists will make a living by selling their work - not copies of it.

But, you can’t sell if supply exceeds demand can you?

I’d double-check your statement. Go back to the library and question whether it really represents a situation of supply exceeding demand.

Clearly, the same will be true for others in creative fields. Many musicians already make a large fraction of their income from endorsement deals, and that’s likely to become an even more common revenue source as revenues from selling your product decline.

However, I don’t see how that contradicts my statement that supply exceeds demand for most creative works. Paying someone to produce a particular work is different than paying for a copy of a work. I didn’t say that artists won’t be able to make a living–quite the contrary. I just think that they’ll do it by means other than selling copies of their work.

We are seeing the decline of artists requiring payment for their work. We will see the increase of the audience profferring payment for the artist’s work. Same exchange. Different perspective.

Moreover, much of the filtering process can be automated, as sites like digg and Google do. People like to share their recommendations just as much as they like to share their own creations.

Look, I’m not saying that no one will ever pay for content again. Clearly there are some categories of content for which people will continue to pay for the foreseeable future. But I think that in the future, the vast majority of punditry and music will be offered for free, because there will be far more high-quality material offered for free than the average user can possibly consume.

People cannot pay their mortgages based on mere adulation.

You may believe there is ample free/promotional content that no reader need ever pay another cent for good writing.

However, as you know, you have a very limited (valuable) amount of time and attention in which to select, discover and enjoy your artists.

Consider that the free ‘content’ is actually payment for your attention or consideration.

You have a demand for content that is worth your attention. This creates a market for those who would propose their services as a broker of such content, i.e. someone who is a reliable source for content worth your attention.

Are you currently satisfied that all of the content you read is the best possible content you could have read in the time you have available?

You may be able to afford to perform the selection work yourself. Alternatively you can pay someone else.

There may well be more reading material you’d find agreeable than you could read in a lifetime, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have a demand for a good selection - that someone could supply you with.

Some people think that we have a future of mediocrity, because no-one will pay for anything better if the mediocre is free. And yet people still go to the movies despite freely available soap operas. Demand for fine wines wouldn’t stop if table wine became free.

The blind spot is that people don’t know how digital art can be sold if the copies are free.

The art is not the copy.

I can conceive of becoming a patron or investor. I’m extremely interested but skeptical about particular schemes, see my public goods category and this one in particular. This one explains why I like Tim’s framing so much.