Love the breadth, depth, and detail of "After the Creator Economy," and the production/distribution methods to create and share it. Thanks so much! I teach and study Arts Management, so it was sobering that the nonprofit arts and culture structure or ecosystem was almost entirely absent from the narrative.
I'm not complaining – perhaps nonprofit arts organizations aren't relevant to the next wave of creative practice (although that would be a shame). But nonprofit arts organizations have been a large part of the "plural sector" for more than 50 years. They're owned by nobody (in contrast to private and public sector efforts). They're (in theory) structured and governed in the public trust. And they're places of employment (full-time an contract) for lots of creative people.
Curious where you all see the utility or entangling of the nonprofit ecology with what you're describing here.
Got R. 06 in the mail a few weeks ago and love it. Beautiful and insightful. Thank y'all so much for making it <3
A question I had about the term "metalabel." How is it structurally different than say... a "corporation?" Is it just vocabulary distinction? (Obviously "corporation" has a certain baggage, while "label" project something entirely different.)
Metalabels are different from companies in their incentives and motivations.
Companies exist to provide a service to their customers and to be profitable in doing so. For the last fifty years, the conventional wisdom is that everything a company does must ultimately serve to grow value for shareholders (one of us wrote a book about this in fact, called This Could Be Our Future). There are exceptions like Public Benefit Corporations and co-ops, but these financially maximizing expectations are the overwhelming majority point of view.
Metalabels are different. They’re not trying to maximize financial impact, they’re trying to optimize for cultural influence and relevance based on their worldview. Metalabels exist to manifest an ideal or point of view in the wider world through their releases.
Think of a punk label — everything they’re doing is ultimately in service of manifesting more punkness in the world. Or how a literary journal might be a meaningful and influential cultural project, but also a bad business. The purpose of these projects is not to maximize capital returns, as it is in a company. Their purposes are cultural. These kinds of projects frequently struggle to survive in our existing system because they’re fundamentally alien to traditional corporate motivations. Those projects are misfits in a corporate system because they’re actually metalabels.
This is not to say that metalabels don’t need money — they do. But their financial goals are tied to existential needs like having the funds to drop new work and basic survival rather than maximizing returns. Being a metalabel doesn’t mean you can ignore the bottom-line, but it’s not its reason for existence. In contrast, a company’s financial goals are tied to their arguably legal requirement to please shareholders.
Love the breadth, depth, and detail of "After the Creator Economy," and the production/distribution methods to create and share it. Thanks so much! I teach and study Arts Management, so it was sobering that the nonprofit arts and culture structure or ecosystem was almost entirely absent from the narrative.
I'm not complaining – perhaps nonprofit arts organizations aren't relevant to the next wave of creative practice (although that would be a shame). But nonprofit arts organizations have been a large part of the "plural sector" for more than 50 years. They're owned by nobody (in contrast to private and public sector efforts). They're (in theory) structured and governed in the public trust. And they're places of employment (full-time an contract) for lots of creative people.
Curious where you all see the utility or entangling of the nonprofit ecology with what you're describing here.
Got R. 06 in the mail a few weeks ago and love it. Beautiful and insightful. Thank y'all so much for making it <3
A question I had about the term "metalabel." How is it structurally different than say... a "corporation?" Is it just vocabulary distinction? (Obviously "corporation" has a certain baggage, while "label" project something entirely different.)
Great question, Todd! Here's how we answer this in our FAQ (https://www.metalabel.xyz/faqs):
Metalabels are different from companies in their incentives and motivations.
Companies exist to provide a service to their customers and to be profitable in doing so. For the last fifty years, the conventional wisdom is that everything a company does must ultimately serve to grow value for shareholders (one of us wrote a book about this in fact, called This Could Be Our Future). There are exceptions like Public Benefit Corporations and co-ops, but these financially maximizing expectations are the overwhelming majority point of view.
Metalabels are different. They’re not trying to maximize financial impact, they’re trying to optimize for cultural influence and relevance based on their worldview. Metalabels exist to manifest an ideal or point of view in the wider world through their releases.
Think of a punk label — everything they’re doing is ultimately in service of manifesting more punkness in the world. Or how a literary journal might be a meaningful and influential cultural project, but also a bad business. The purpose of these projects is not to maximize capital returns, as it is in a company. Their purposes are cultural. These kinds of projects frequently struggle to survive in our existing system because they’re fundamentally alien to traditional corporate motivations. Those projects are misfits in a corporate system because they’re actually metalabels.
This is not to say that metalabels don’t need money — they do. But their financial goals are tied to existential needs like having the funds to drop new work and basic survival rather than maximizing returns. Being a metalabel doesn’t mean you can ignore the bottom-line, but it’s not its reason for existence. In contrast, a company’s financial goals are tied to their arguably legal requirement to please shareholders.
The two are not the same.
Excellent. Thanks for taking the time to copy/paste here!