Lessons Digital Artists Can Learn from the Music Business

Things you can learn from the music business (as it falls apart)

The first rule is so important, it's rule 0:

0. The new thing is never as good as the old thing, at least right now.
Soon, the new thing will be better than the old thing will be. But if you wait until then, it's going to be too late. Feel free to wax nostalgic about the old thing, but don't fool yourself into believing it's going to be here forever. It won't.

Read more at Seth Godin's blog »

I think for digital artists, the new thing is here. You or I can make copies of the digital work and each copy is as good as the original. The reason artworks were sold in limited editions in the past is that the means of producing the work wore out from use as the artist made the final piece. Think of a printing stone (a lithograph, literally 'stone' + 'drawing'). With a lithograph, after a while the printed image got less and less precise, until it was no longer satisfying.

With my work there is no factual reason to limit the edition. Does not mean that I have not wanted to -- thinking that doing so would increase the value of the work. But I would have to place a severe limit on the work - 20 copies is considered to be about the right amount. That means only 20 people in the world could have the work. And the price I had to charge meant my friends could not afford the work.

But I wanted my friends to be able to have these works, and I wanted you to be able to have them too. Just viewing the full-resolution digital file on the screen is amazing. I have see these images that way hundreds of times, and I still go batty when I open up the original file and view it on the screen. And until now, maybe 5 people in the world have seen them that way.

So I decided to make the full-resolution digital files available to you. Do think this was the right decision for me as an artist? How do you feel about having these files available to you? How can I help you work with the files once you do download them?