Where physical is the new scarcity

Artists who depend on selling recorded material in order to make a living are doomed.

That was the conclusion of Andrew Keen speaking at the end of the Art of Digital event in Liverpool last week.

Keen,the controversial author of the Cult of the Amateur,told an audience made up of mainly artistic people that the only ones that would survive were those that were funded by public money.

According to Keen,the old business model, which saw culture sold by record,book and film ie all recorded and founded on the model of mass production and distribution was finished.

The digitisation of culture had made it virtually unprotectable as in our post Napster world it is no longer practical to protect intellectual property on the web.

However two years on from writing his book,Keen is more optimistic about the future as our digital culture has created new scarcities which have an added value.

One is the physical in the live performance which will mean ironically that live music and cinema will continue to expand.The second is the scarcity of attention.Writers for example now earn more money from public speaking rather than publishing.

Heffer on Bragg's impending retirement

Simon Heffer reflects on ITV's decision to axe the South Bank show when Melvyn Bragg retires over at the Telegraph blog

ITV will be to high culture what Poundland is to Chateau d'Yquem.

The show he says

opened doors to the curious and allowed them to peek inside. It was the more remarkable for doing so because, being on ITV, it might reach people not already bitten by the culture bug, but who had that spark of open-mindedness to allow themselves to be bitten. From next year, that opportunity will be lost.

But as channels have proliferated in the digital era the mainstream have moved away from the culture prefering to leave it to the niche operators

We seem to have lost the Victorian understanding of the benefits of opening up culture. If television channels that attract mass audiences do not put in their schedules the occasional opera, or interviews with great novelists, artists or playwrights, or programmes about great buildings, then of course these things will be considered elitist.