Andrew Keen’s implicit, accidentlal praise for homogenous popular art

Andrew Keen suggests that web 2.0, by reducing the ability of individual artists to gain high success through royalties on the sale of copies of their work, is bringing the “medievalisation” of culture (explicitly discussed by him in the CBC podcast linked from my last post).

Any shift in the corporate-established income streams of “successful artists” that would make actual performances (versus record sales) a primary source of artists’ income seems preposterous to Keen. I think Keen fails to see that the earlier shift, where a very few musicians or actors suddenly could become superstars with incredible earning power, was something that did not emerge as a cultural phenomenon – but rather a business phenomenon. No-one achieved more success from that shift than the small number of media companies who promoted and, typically, exploited the artists they promoted.

The internet has not, in the short term, changed our hunger for shallow, repetitive, cookie-cutter pop artists. But it has changed the way that many of us seek to obtain their arts. And by challenging the sales and delivery mechanisms that corporate arts magnates rested upon for so many decades the internet has not delivered a blow to culture by marginalizing artists or the arts. Rather, it is beginning to democratize the arts business. That this might topple some of the big players hardly seems like a backward step! The internet has not challenged culture or the arts. It is the corporate stranglehold on promotions and sales of the arts that has been undermined. Any reduction of Britney Spears profitability, for example, might just be an opportunity for one among thousands of hard-working, brilliant (and legitimate) artists to attract one of the dollars that would otherwise have been sucked into an RIAA-member corporation which, in fact, actively opposes anything new in arts and culture. If this is medieval, bring on the dark ages!

The media powers Keen praises are actually the source of the very cultural dilution that he fears.