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Building an indie business in the center of venture capital. I am Alex Edmonds. I am known as supremerumham. On the Internet, and this is the building an indie business podcast. Okay. So today we're going to be discussing digital art. I'm going to talk about what digital art is how an artist can generate revenue, some revenue ideas I have some questions I have about one of my ideas. Revenue reducers Of course, expenses. My opinion. So yeah, let's get into it. So, the reason why I wanted to start this one is because I got into some like Ethereum blockchain stuff, and some art on the etherion blockchain. So, the reason why people put. Well, no. So the reason why people put their art on the Ethereum blockchain is for many reasons. The first one is historical prevalence think I said it right. And that means just there's a record of who owned. So you know everyone who owned it and how much they paid. Right. And then, being on the blockchain there can Highlander, that can only be one. And that creates value, knowing that this is the only copy of this piece of art, released. Right. Um, what I really like about these a theory on blockchain art places, websites, whatever. Is that. So, in a regular art society. On the artists sells auctions, have their art once and then someone buys it. And then they go and sell it like a year or more later. That artist doesn't get any part of that second transaction or the third one or the fourth one. Right. But on the Ethereum blockchain and ours will take 10% of every transaction. Because I guess historical prevalence and they know it's just a cool feature I guess I'm not gonna say anything else. Right. And so the way you buy on the Ethereum blockchain is the artists auctions it off. So they're the first one to sell it. And then people make their offers. And the artists will accept when their offers. You can still see the art. But you see who owns it. And the person who owns it can do whatever they want with it, they don't have to keep it just as a PNG file. They can make it their logo, they can put it on a T shirt, they can print it out and put it on like frame. So they can do whatever they want with that after it's like, like anything else right. You don't have to eat lemons, you can use them as bird food or something. Right. Um The next way, and artists can make money, generate revenue is drop shipping. So drop shipping is selling a bunch of items. Well you listed on your list your art on a website and then you choose which items that art can be sold so it can be a laptop cover it can be a T shirt, it can be sticker it can be a curtain. I've seen those types of things. And so the artists uploads their art, and then chooses which ones they want to sell or which products, they want to sell. And then the service that they're on handles the shipping, and the merchandise, like creating it. Great, theater, doesn't have to do much. The artist gets to choose the percentage that they want to make on each item. But that percentage gets added to the expenses, and the shipping and handling. So, let's say cost. $15 to ship one t shirt, and the artist wants to make $4 on that T shirt. The price for that person that consumer is $19, instead of the $15. Right. So yeah, that's one way. And then there's e commerce and artists can do an e commerce store, and that would be their own store. They need to handle everything themselves so they can create the T shirts, put their own design on them. ship it out themselves. Right. Or like hire a different service, a cheaper service to handle all that stuff themselves I know of some services that do that. They're just a third party for like creating products. So, they would have to handle their own store, use something like Shopify. Right. And then they're able to do digital and physical products. Instead of just digital. Right. So there's that. Then there's Commission's which is customer for a person or business. And like an artist can do a logo or they could paint the wall for a company, things like that. And then a musician would like write jingles for a company, that'd be a commission to arm tutorials. So, an artists can stream content on YouTube, or Twitch. To make some money, generate revenue. Right, they can create a course to they can like teach people how to do art of musician could teach guitar lessons, or something like that to make some money, generate revenue. And then I want to talk about musicians specifically. So they get paid per stream. Every year they put their music on like a streaming service. Let's just say YouTube, because that's what I already mentioned, and then YouTube will pay out these musicians per stream. But it's like one penny per stream. So, you have to get 1000 streams to make $1. Right, so that's uncool. Right. Um, and then there is the fact that some people don't stream, and they will purchase the album. So I I bought kid Cuddy's album I don't like to specifically for him because I know I'm gonna like his music I just buy the album, and that way I'm able to listen to the music whenever I want. Because I don't pay for a streaming service, because I refuse to. And that I can't like without paying for most streaming services you can't listen to it offline. And so I just buy the album. And I don't listen to a lot of music I mostly listen to podcasts right as a podcaster. So, I'm able to download those to. When I don't want to use internet. So, yeah. That's why I don't use a streaming service. Ah, if not I use I listened to it on YouTube. I don't know why I'm talking about my music habits. So yeah. Anyways, so a musician can make money through streams, or they can make money through someone purchased the album digitally. And then their merchandise. Some, they could do the same thing as an artist and have someone make them a T shirt. And then sell that T shirt but they're able to sell it for like $25, they could do a limited edition, only for that album. Right, things like that. I just thought of that. Um, so merchandise, and they could sell that merchandise at concerts, and they make money through concert in this concert. This is why artists are struggling now through COVID, because they can't have concerts, and that is their biggest moneymaker because they get one cent per stream. They have a song with 15 songs on the album, it's 15 cents a stream. Or they could pay $10 someone could pay $10 for the album. And that would equal, more money for the artist brain, but no one really buys albums anymore. And then they could sell merchandise which is $20, per, per person right so that's $30 at the most, or he can have a concert, and that concert would be $50 minimum. They choose the price right. And even after all the kickbacks that might be $20. Per person, so that they make $50 on the person that buys the album buys the merchandise and goes to the concert. And that's $50 including expenses right so that's more money than anything else. And then they tour around to venues that have at least 1000 seats so that's $20,000. And then they do that every night for six months. Right. Not every night, but three nights a week. So, that's $60,000 in a weekend, times 50 to 60 times. Dude, I can do this right now. Okay, Let's do it anyways. 60 off 1000 times. 50. Let's just say 50. That's $3 million for concerts. Right, so that's where your money is as an artist, or as a musician. Okay. revenue, ideas, actually, let me do expenses. So expenses for digital artists, their shipping costs. When you have to take your art and make it physical. You have to ship it, and that costs money. and that eats up your, whatever your expenses, your revenue profit, and then their software. So, for digital artists, you kinda have to use software. And you have to pay for that software, and it's monthly, they don't do one time payments anymore, and that that's a that's a little price to pay, but it's an expense that you're going to have as an artist, and then free musicians they have to buy the equipment, the guitars. The synthesizers, anything else. And then some musicians don't have the ability to like have a studio in their house or whatever. Most musicians. So they have to pay for the recording time at a studio. So that's another expense. And then there's revenue reducers, which is like the setup costs, getting set up in the studio or. Yeah. As an artist. And as a musician. You have to, like, pay for all these fees. Like, setting up your own e commerce store, you have to pay for that there's no free option. That's one. And then on the Ethereum blockchain. You have to buy aetherium, and pay for the gas transaction. And then for e commerce. There's transaction fees on the internet you can avoid that 3% credit card charge. No matter how much I try. Yeah. Okay. Um, so, revenue ideas. Um, I think that artists make money from virtual or not virtual art galleries, just like musicians. And, like, like an art gallery is the equivalent of a concert for a musician. And now you can't do that. So, you need to do a virtual Art Gallery. Right. And that way you can have an art gallery and people can see your art and buy it. Right. So that's one idea VR gallery. And then I had an idea to create a platform that allows two artists. No, multiple like like an artist, like a dating app for artists. Right, so they could see their art, and then collaborate with each other. And that way, the artists together can grow their audience. Because, like podcasting. When you interview someone or you go on someone else's podcast, you're growing your audience and making it more likely that they'll listen to your stuff. So that would be the artists equivalent. Yes. And then I thought of another idea. Right. And this is a platform that allows people to fund an artist, or pre buy their art. So, an artist, talks about an idea they have on this platform, and then they have like they auction off the idea. And that way, they could. People can pre fund their, their idea. And then they go out and do the idea. And then they have a buyer immediately. And then I thought about a VR concert, because I thought about a VR calorie. And that's basically the same thing. Right. So that's another idea. And then I had all these ideas about blockchain not ideas but I thought. So what if artists were to put their music on the blockchain. I already saw some, some streaming services on the blockchain. But I thought what if they just put the album on the blockchain. And then whoever buys the album can listen to it, or do whatever they want with it. So, um, I thought what labels pay more for an album on the blockchain because it's exclusive to them, and they could take it off. Or they can download it and then sell it. And that might fetch a higher price per album, or from the streaming services they can make a deal with them. Like, maybe three cents a download and that would be triple the price. Yeah. And then I thought, What the concerts, would they able to charge more per ticket, because this is music that they haven't heard, like the masses, right. So, would these people, be willing to pay more for an album they haven't heard, or would they pay less. That's an idea. Right. Um, so revenue reducers, no i did that. Oh yeah, I didn't talk about musicians musicians in terms of revenue producers, they have to pay their management, and their label. So, for musicians they have a bunch of middlemen. They have their management, which is people that like booked their, their concerts, then the label, which is the people that distribute their music. Then they have the concert venue. They have to pay them. And they have the streaming service. It's a lot of middlemen. So yeah, that's our revenue producer. So, my opinion. Um. First of all, what I think is that what makes digital art, unique, is you can do more than just paintings, or one dimensional art, you're able to use gifs, and motion pictures. You can even do. Yeah, like short videos, mixed media, you can paint something then have it uploaded, and then do some digital stuff a bit, which I found very interesting. And then digital art, and it opens up your market, to the world instead of local people. So, usually an artist in the, you know, past, they if they weren't famous they would only have like the ability to sell their art locally or do concerts locally and that was it. But with digital art. People can stumble onto your art, or you can promote yourself online, and then find people that would be interested in your art and they would buy it. Another thing that digital art provides is independence from third parties. It gives you ownership. So for an artist. They can record their own stuff. And they don't need a manager. They don't need a label. They can just upload it to YouTube themselves and people might find it. Right. So, then they take home more than they usually would. In the traditional media music industry. And then for digital artists on the blockchain. They can make money from the same art multiple times, because they make 10% every time it's sold. And that's different from the past. As I said before, so I think that's cool. Right. Then, I think the concept of owning art digital art is very new. And that might take a while for people to get used to that. And this is the new way to buy art. Right. Yeah. I'm also. The advantage of an artist is the vision and the process, and where they want to take their art. Someone can always steal an idea, but they have no idea where to take that idea to the next level or how to do that. And that's, that's an, that's why. Artists are not worried about their art, people stealing their stuff, because that person doesn't know where to take it. Right. And then, artists need to take ownership of their fans and not rely on social media. So, I see a lot of artists on social media, and that's how they promote it. And they don't have any way to communicate with their fans besides that, I think that's a mistake. Right. and then middlemen. So, middlemen, they have their value. They help the artists grow. Because without a middlemen middleman. They have to grow their audience themselves and that's another thing that they have to do that doesn't involve creating their stuff. So yeah, that's all I have for this episode. I'm definitely gonna do another one on digital art. Thank you for listening. Have a nice day. Bye.