The Business of Creativity, Teamwork Makes the Dream Work

“Revolution begins with changes in the individual.” — Jenny Holzer

On the last episode, my comrades and I set off on a journey… The music industry was finally beginning to rebound from the disruption and subsequent crash brought on by the Napster!

While the newly established tech titans were setting up for the next gold rush and emerging technologies were popping up all over to solve the music industry’s data problems, WE were wondering how to properly measure the value of art or of an artist’s creativity.

Essentially, how to value music.

I philosophized about the idea of music as a type of currency. This prompted the assumption that, IF we build a platform that could aggregate all of the metadata detailing the ingredients that created the music, we would be able to provide accurate valuations of music — or of any art — to help artists negotiate fair wages, increase their profits, and foster creativity.

In search of answers and deeply immersed in the development of viable solutions, we found it extremely challenging to isolate the core elements of creative output in order to properly measure and communicate the resulting value creation.

We eventually discovered that labor plus the proper attribution of intellectual property — a.k.a. metadata — is the foundation and connective tissue for the valuation of an artist’s creative output. When it comes to creativity, and especially when it comes to art, there is a critical relationship between the people who create ideas and the people who perform the labor to produce those ideas. So what, exactly, is the value of labor?

This is not, as it turns out, a trivial question. The value of labor is a combination of:

1. What we want to create.
2. How we are able to explain what we want to create.
3. What is possible given the budget and resources needed.
4. What the collaborating creatives are willing to do in order to create, when presented with terms of exchange.
5. The value of the terms that the laboring parties agree to.
6. The recording and tracking of what was created once the labor commenced and concluded.
7. An assessment of the quality of the creative output.

All of the information that is generated from this labor becomes the metadata for the idea and the creation of ideas requires labor.

Labor is the foundation of collaboration and is absolutely necessary for widely impactful artistic creation to exist. A critical byproduct of collaboration is communication. Provided that labor involves coordinated, human activity to achieve an end, channels of communication are bound to emerge.

This communication is the bedrock of all great creative collaborations. According to Google Dictionary, communication is “The successful conveying or sharing of ideas and feelings.” When communication is present, success is present. When success is present, value is created. When we value the labor involved in creation, we take into account the information that led to the communication that, in turn, led to the creative collaboration. By valuing the labor we are able to generate accurate information about who did what, how and when, leading to accurate metadata and valuation of creative output.

Often, it is when the need for collaboration arises that we find individual artists feeling stuck and unable to move past their creative “blocks”. At this stage, the need for support in the form of labor becomes crystal clear. The question then becomes: How do we as creative beings ask for, employ, manage, and value the requisite labor to bring our ideas to life?

We call this the creative labor problem, and It looks like this:

• People are unable to envision the project in general terms
• People are unable to communicate or delegate to others
• People are unwilling to cede artistic freedom or public approbation (credit) to others

In other words, siloed and ineffectual communications lead to poor data management and, ultimately, unscalable infrastructure for everyone. A fair and equitable creative economy calls for the articulation of replicable processes that reliably facilitate conscious, creative collaboration. Easier said than done. What we really want to know is, how do we, as creative beings, get unstuck?

The collaboration triality.

In the 2016 Fast Company article “The Three Types Of Relationship Every Creative Person Needs”, Jeff Goins, author of the national bestseller The Art of Work: A Proven Path to Discovering What You Were Meant to Do, says:

“Creativity is always the result of collaboration, whether it’s intentional or not. In my study of successful creatives today, I’ve identified three kinds of collaboration that every creative person needs in order for their work to succeed and influence others:”

• A scene: Location
• A network: Advocacy
• A community: Connectivity

We call this our collaboration triality. At the core of this triality is the interconnectivity of relationships. It is important to point out the significance of context in the making of an artistic world; when you create a context, career, and audience, you give meaning to the original work. A connection is created.

Jeff Goins’ hypothesis speaks to the undeniable need for connection when it comes to developing the relationships that underlie each aspect of the collaboration triality. The word “connection” refers to our fundamental human need to be seen and heard.

My entire career has been dedicated to ensuring that artists are seen and heard. My advocacy of artists has always centered around (I) using location to search for a sound, a vibe, a pulse of what is genuinely different and unique (II) creating and searching for networks of amplification and (III) instantiating dialogues with platforms who recognize and support the need for artists to be seen and heard.

The creative empowerment trinity.

The need to be seen and heard is echoed throughout the music industry. In its most elemental form, the industry is an interconnected web of relationships, and relationships are the core technology employed by the people who are successful at making art. The interconnectivity of the scene, network, and community surrounding an artist forms the heart of conscious collaboration, and thereby are absolutely necessary for value creation.

Jeff Goins goes on to say, “Who you know matters, and without the right connections, even the best work won’t get noticed.” However, the evolution of the internet and subsequent innovations in technology, software and data have shown that “what you know” now matters more than “who you know.” Knowing what your needs are relative to your audience creates long-term value. This is what we are all looking for, both in the data we collect and the data collected from us.

“This is ultimately good news,” Goins says, “if you have a powerful idea, you aren’t solely on the hook for pulling it off all by yourself. If you’re feeling stuck, it may be that your creativity simply needs fuel and support from your relationships.” In the new music industry, fuel and support for creative relationships is a union of:

• Artist Development: Developing a brand, writing songs, producing & mixing records, building a creative team, and identifying an artists’ magic powers.
• Artist Marketing: Listening, learning, research, ideation strategy, analytics, media management, and distribution.
• Artist Management: Management of deals, collections, administration, and logistics.

To be clear, the artistic process is not separate from the development, marketing, and management processes. In today’s creator economy, these processes are happening cyclically. Through the creative empowerment trinity we are in a position to broaden the notion of management and address the historical disconnect between the music creation, distribution, marketing and management supply chains.

This disconnect scales up as a series of hurdles for the entire industry, and can be encapsulated in the sentiment: “The musician is responsible for the art, the manager is responsible for the rest.” In reality, the contribution of one person or the contribution of many people to art, actually is the art. As Jeff Goins said, “This is how great creative work gets made–not in isolation, but through everyday collaboration. It was true for Vincent van Gogh, and it’s true for us today.”

In 2017, I announced the development of CREATESAFE. A platform that enables artists, songwriters, producers and their various partners to capture the value of their music, generate knowledgeable insights, and create leverage for long-term success. In the coming weeks we will begin to roll out our initial product offering, focused on supporting creatives through team communication and collaboration tools and services. If you’d like to get a sneak peak of what we’re building, connect with us at createsafe.io