Virtual Delivery Webinar deck for Create NSW, 15/5/20

Below is a slide deck for the Create NSW panel discussion webinar on Virtual Delivery - Does putting your work online pay?

https://www.brandwatch.com/blog/facebook-statistics/

*https://fortune.com/2018/02/27/youtube-success-poverty-wages/ ; https://www.thestreet.com/personal-finance/what-is-the-federal-poverty-level-14690998

BYP Group blog version: https://www.bypgroup.com/blog/2020/3/26/nerd-immunity-what-the-arts-community-can-learn-from-pioneering-digital-content-nerds-a-strategic-view

Screenhub version: https://www.screenhub.com.au/news-article/features/covid-19/yen-yang/nerd-immunity-can-geeks-save-the-arts-from-covid-19-260112

Aggregation Theory – A theory on the forces at play in the digital arena: https://stratechery.com/concept/aggregation-theory/

Aggregators are at different stages in different industries e.g. music/audio (Spotify vs iTunes), search (Google), online shopping (Amazon), accommodation (AirBnB), rides (Uber vs Lyft)

Go big – Generate a small amount of revenue from a large audience/customer base e.g. Facebook, YouTube

Go niche – Identify a niche in the market at which you are uniquely compelling (Unique Selling Point – USP).

The glut in digital content means non-digitizable and ‘experiential’ e.g. live performances, tangible goods becomes more valuable – but only to some i.e. ‘super fans’.

Nerd business models:

To cut through the noise they have gone niche and they are leveraging the Internet and aggregators to distribute their content and allow audiences to discover them.

Top of their niche: https://critrole.com/

Second in their niche, focusing upon podcasts: https://glasscannonpodcast.com/

A newcomer using more interactivity to drive monetisation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SE88lTM2Dfs

Content differentiation and the subscription model: https://www.patreon.com/mathasgames

Nerd business models:

-Very niche: Nerds playing Dungeons & Dragons: https://critrole.com/

-Low production costs: Borrowed set, skeleton crew. Eventually get more elaborate sets, intro trailer, miniature figurines, etc.

-Leverage their online fanbase through … online donations: Critical Role would break the Kickstarter record for a film or TV series, raising US$11 million from around 88,889 donors.

-Monetise the ‘experiential’ (non-digitizable: During normal times they regularly sold out 4000-seat theatres with the cheapest tickets averaging over US$100. They also have a flourishing merchandise shop, affiliate marketing and sponsored ad-content that they either create for their sponsors or the sponsors have pre-made and slot into their show. This is in addition to any Google AdSense advertising revenue they get from ‘ad-roll’ insertions. Note that in addition to being professional voice actors, they all had considerable theatre and live performance training.

Deeper discussion at https://www.bypgroup.com/blog/uncategorized/the-david-versus-goliath-battle-faced-by-australian-creative-industries-and-what-they-might-do-to-win-part-3-new-media-business-models

Nerd business models:

Second in their niche, focusing upon podcasts: https://glasscannonpodcast.com/

They also do live shows (but they are presently smaller) and sell merchandise, but are also selling subscriptions to more content, similar to what their fans already know and love.

Nerd business models:

A newcomer using more interactivity to drive monetisation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SE88lTM2Dfs

The candles in the background of the left image has candles that get lit when viewers donate money. Viewers can also influence the outcome of the game by providing their heroes with bonuses (a bit like in the Hunger Games), or they can bid against the heroes. Bidding wars often ensue between those in favour and those against. They also use more CGI and started off using elaborate models, props and figurines.

Nerd business models:

Content differentiation and the subscription model: https://www.patreon.com/mathasgames

Clearly there are low barriers to entry to playing games and sticking the videos online. To differentiate, some of these ‘Let’s Players’ provide a more labour-intensive role-playing style, that allows emergent storylines to evolve. Here, the YouTuber, Mathas Games is playing a game called Project Zomboid, in which he roleplays the experiences of his avatar surviving a zombie apocalypse. He successfully raised enough from a Patreon subscription campaign to fund his time and an editor’s time to make a couple of series of this.

The exception that proves the rule: The National Theatre https://onefurther.com/blog/visualised-3-national-theatre-at-home

National Theatre was built with pre-Internet assumptions.

Note: They have significant brand awareness as the premier contemporary English-language theatre company. So one question to ask yourself is: “What area am I the National Theatre in?”.

Note 2: They also achieved this at the peak of the pandemic and early on in the UK lockdown. The material – a light farce to cheer us in our darkest hour – may also have played a role in its relative success.

Note 3: One-off?: Subsequent performances not so strong: Twelfth Night had 839,320 views as at 30/4/20 having premiered on 24/4/20. Timeliness of the first event as the pandemic picked up in the national consciousness was probably critical.

The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (OAE) show off their niche expertise in Baroque instruments.

Note, despite their relative success, they may need a leaner musicians’ roster to ensure costs are kept in line.

The British Museum have multiple items on their playlist. This item is from their ‘Curator’s Corner’ playlist, in which they demonstrate their specialist knowledge in how to make a Celtic torc. Note the potential for higher-value, boutique tours and classes with these curators.

Ben Thompson, the tech analyst that developed Aggregation Theory, is a firm believer in subscription models for digital content, so much so, he runs his own business along precisely these lines, going so far as to keep his content off aggregators of any form: https://stratechery.com/2020/dithering-and-the-open-web/

Thompson’s business model is to sell a technology newsletter subscription. People go to his website to subscribe (monthly or annually) and pay. He then emails them his newsletter. It’s extremely ‘scalable’ (can become very large easily) because the additional cost of sending out another copy of his newsletter is nearly zero.

Definition of a Subscription: https://stratechery.com/2017/the-local-news-business-model/

Why it is a good idea to talk about 'ecologies' rather than 'economies' when we talk about the arts

I was just reading some of Dr Ann Markusen's work (Dr Markusen is the Director of the Arts Economy Initiative at the University of Minnesota), as you do. A few things cropped up which I wanted to flag here as interesting which I would love to hear others' thoughts about.

Arts and cultural ecology

In her recent work on the Californian creative economy, Markusen uses the same terminology that arts policy types in Australia have also been using for the last few years - 'ecology' rather than 'economy.' Since at least 2009 (and probably before), people working in arts policy and strategy in Australia have called the arts an 'ecology' or 'ecosystem', as a way to try to capture the the nature of the arts as a system of fluctuating relationships, and the primacy of authentic connection - between artists, organisations, audiences - the list goes on.

This is kind of like my Artistic Vibrancy Onion, so named because I think of the arts as a web of relationships across different layers of society and culture (perhaps Artistic Vibrancy Spiderweb might be more apposite?)

Here is how I tried to conceptualise the arts ecosystem for the Australia Council for the Arts when they asked me to, last year.

I drew it like this because a) I am a pretty crap drawer and b) it seemed a better way to describe the slightly miasmic soup in which artists operate, as opposed to the more traditional supply or value chain diagram of arts production.

The ecology concept allows us to think of arts happening in non-linear ways - as innovation does too. Arts happens in relationships and conversations, as does most human interaction and the fruits of human creativity. Rather than talking about it as an economy, or an industry, the arts is this space, a field (if we are going to get Bourdieuian, and why not?) in which people commune with each other and what's going on inside and outside their heads, hearts and bodies.

Naturally artists also operate as economic actors. And some parts of the arts are industrial and could be described as an industry, which implies the making of stuff and selling it and creating economic value and employment. These terms are used interchangeably, but really depend on the political goal of the conversation. For example, we talk about creative economies when we want to make the point that arts make money and contribute to GDP. We talk about the arts industry for a similar reason - to be able to talk about it in the same breath as the car manufacturing industry, or the pharmaceutical industry.

When to talk about ecologies

And so we talk about creative and cultural ecologies and ecosystems when we want to make a different point. When I use the term arts ecology, I am trying to convey quite a lot in that one word:

1. There are a myriad of inter-related factors that are prerequisites for the making of art. I make this point when advocating to funders to not get rid of one part of the ecology and expect the rest to continue to survive.
2. Artists are not at their core, doing it for the money. Yes, they get paid, and they sell things. But intrinsic motivation is critical to the making of good art. Prioritising process over outcome. Journey vs destination. This is documented in the 'flow' and creativity research (Czsikmihalyi). This could apply to a number of other jobs too. I use the 'ecology' terminology to remind funders and policy makers that they cannot solely rely on industrial or economic rationalist modes of thinking when they make policies about the arts.
3. Audiences are not just 'consumers,' but part of the ecosystem. In the arts, the experience of art is something that happens in a relationship between the art and the audience member. This is partly why products like the iPhone do so well - the makers of that object understood that people are not just consumers, but experiencers, and the 'product' becomes theirs - it changes and is modified by the person experiencing it. It's the same with art - art cannot exist in a vacuum - it is experienced and therefore 'created' by everyone who experiences it.
4. I know this sounds a bit fluffy, but it is essential to understand that the relationship between an artist and their work, the work and the audience, the artist and the audience, is a gift relationship as well as a consumer transaction. This means that audiences open themselves up and give something of themselves, more than just the money for the show. You see this understanding spreading to other sectors, like artisan foods and wines, or handmade gift products - people understanding that people don't want to be mere consumers, - they want the things they eat and buy to be extensions of their identities, a gift to themselves or a gift of themselves to others. (OK, I might be writing my dissertation on art and writing as a gift. But you get my point!)

Jackie Bailey - Principal, BYP Group