Examples off the top of my head include A Tail In The Desert (2-3000 happy players paying $15 a month), Mount and Blade by a Turkish couple whom I gladly gave $20 for the coolest indie game ever, and of course RuneScape, which looks like crap but in 2007 hit over one MILLION paying players ($5 a month) yet started out with those happy 1000 fans.

Two good article that cover this kind of game development are…

http://lostgarden.com/2005/10/game-business-model-learning-from.html

and

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_75/431-Boutique-MMOGs

So all you smarmy people posting – laugh and snark away, some of us will be out harvesting those that could have been your loyal fans if you hadn’t been so “boingboing clever” :^)

The model is for 5000*$10, but mostly those who fund the recording pay much more than $10.

Meta comment – I’d pay a subscription fee to BoingBoing if it allowed me to ignore posts by some people. Seriously. Cory. Really. I’d be one of your 1000 if I could ignore the vacuous and inane.

You do realize that he’s talking about us.

The model is for 5000*$10, but mostly those who fund the recording pay much more than $10.

My friend Stew Lee, who originally brought up the question in my head, answered it himself in this article about growing to hate your audience. He says it’s around 7000 — that sounds about right to me. And it has advantages over being “just” generically famous:

If each of them gave me about £5 a year after tax, agent’s commission and travel expenses, I would be making a fine living, and probably never having to deal with sports fans coming to my shows. There is no need for that 7000 strong audience to include English rugby fans. If I can find some way of operating at such a level whereby they never find me, I could have the most wonderful life

Why did you start leaving threatening messages? Was the sex no good?
==============
No, the sex was great, as it often is with insane people.

I typed that too quickly and left our important clarification. I meant:

>>I stopped sleeping with her and SHE started leaving ME threatening phone messages. Of course, I probably wouldn’t have had to do that (CALL THE COPS ON HER) if I’d stayed outta her pants.>>
=====

I’ve never left anyone a threatening message in my life. My MO is to avoid people I don’t like – get them outta my head, not pull them into my mind more, which is what engaging in threats does.
–
The fan girl was mentally unstable, and after I got engaged to be married, and told the fan girl, and stopped wanting to talk to her, she went ballistic.

———–
A tip: I’m not a lawyer, but this has been my experience: If you ever have to call the cops on someone for threatening you by phone or e-mail, you don’t call the cops in the town where the stalker lives, you call the cops in YOUR town, where you’re RECEIVING the threats. And if the cops in your town want to deal with it, they’ll call the person in their town and talk with them.

I lived in LA when this happened, the girl lived in San Fran (she’d been coming down by bus to see me). I called San Fran PD, they sent me to LAPD. I called LAPD, explained it, the LAPD detective called the girl, and the calls stopped.

I also documented everything, dates, times, saved e-mails and phone messages etc, on disc, in case it escalated. But it never did, after the cops got involved.

Artists should not try to survive off a single source of income. So whether you have 500, 1000 or 10,000 True Fans its still important to tour, exhibit, sell merchandise is shops, sell limited edition items, special order items etc so that the income arrives from a number of sources. For so many artists I know this is how it already works (except they’re called side-jobs) Being creative means being flexible and adaptable.

Also, we need statistics and varied models for different fields. The True Fan numbers and ways of collecting the money will look quite different for writers, musicians, painters, dancers, photographers etc.

Recorded music. I can listen to any music made hundreds of years back – music from all over the world, by geniuses, virtuosos and other truly passionate people. So, if I listen to an hour of music every day, what do I choose? Miles Davis? Handel? Joao Gilberto? The Treacherous Three? Or some band with Wolf in the name, consisting of three dudes with glasses who can’t really play their instruments and sing out of their mouths?

Okay, so there’s no reason for me to be a fan of any music (not the case – I would gladly pay to see Anoushka Shankar or Rufus Wainright or something). How about literature. We have these things called the classics – works that have enduring value. 9 times out of 10, if something is regarded as a classic, and fits my taste, I will enjoy it and feel enriched after reading it. So why get the new novel off Amazon? It might be excellent. But there’s a very good chance it will be garbage.

The only advantage of contemporary creative works is their newness. What is wonderful in creative works is universal and timeless.

Appreciation is more sustainable than creation.

This is specious math. $100,000 in retail sales doesn’t yield anywhere near this amount in profit if you’re manufacturing anything.

It might work if you’re only selling downloads direct from your own website, and handling the credit card payments yourself, but I don’t know anyone who’s doing this.

If you sell CDs, DVDs, books, T-shirts, etc, you’re lucky to make $20,000 profit on $100,000 in sales, whether you’re administered by a corporation or standing in line at the post office every day yourself. I do both.

I make a living writing, making films, and making music. I have at least 3000 true fans, and I make well less than $100,000 a year, and I’m doing everything pretty damn efficiently.

Michael W. Dean
http://www.stinkfight.com

Sure. But you have to get your food and shelter somehow. You can either make a living from your art, or make a living from something else, or acquire a patron who will support you.

Personally, I think that there’s nothing wrong with having a day job and “divorcing beauty from commerce” – a lucrative-enough day job can make it possible for you to not worry about whether or not your art can feed you. However, such a day job requires a significant time investment, which leaves you with less time to pursue your art.

Also, I think there’s value in considering something other than your personal artistic vision when creating your art. Art is about communication – it’s about what the audience will like, not just about what you like. The popular taste is often derided, but the public is not stupid. The art that survives the test of time is often the “popular” stuff of its day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HNPFYns-gM

Because we don’t take any %, we don’t exploit the long tail, we let the artist exploit it. Isn’t that the only fair way?

–Peter
peter@tunecore.com

That’s not exactly a ringing endorsement for your side, is it? Pretty much bolsters my argument, no?

Not really. Why? One must start somewhere. I’m not saying that you have to stay in the farm town in the middle of nowhere – just that you start there. It’s a much better environment in which you can perfect your skills, learn your instrument, and (if you’re good) really shine.

As I was saying, it worked for me. I started out in a small town, playing with a bunch of very kind and very enthusiastic amateurs. I was a much better musician than the amateurs; they noticed my talent, and helped me in every way they could. After a year, I played at the biggest festival in this particular musical genre. The year after that, I was invited to come back as a performer, and to play at other festivals as well. I play my first 2-hour solo concert in July.

Before moving to that small town, I lived in San Francisco, which – as I later discovered – had a thriving music scene in that particular genre. But I couldn’t break into it then. I can now.

“In a sensational auction of contemporary art held at Sotheby’s on Wednesday evening, 54 works realized an aggregate £95 million, or $189.42 million, the highest total in the category ever achieved in Europe.”
link:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/02/28/arts/melik29.php

There is a certainly amount of truth to the concept, but it is really more of an ideal than a workable solution for most musicians. I know musicians who probably have about 1000 true fans worldwide, but they still only just eke out a living from their music, and most of it is from touring/performing. As it’s presented here the ideal is also simplified; touring costs eat up so very much of what is earned on touring: overseas flights, equipment and auto repairs, lodging and food, bribes in some countries, equipment theft, etc. Plus, HOW does one gain 1000 true fans? You make the best music you can, you promote it, and . . . ? maybe it moves people, maybe not. The suggestion “get 1000 true fans” is not much different than “just win the lottery.”

Here’s another ideal: Why not just make ONE copy of an album, the most limited edition possible, one signed/numbered edition of one, and have those 1000 true fans bid on it. Hopefully two of them are millionaires and will bid against each other into 100,000-dollar range.

Th vcs nd nn…sn’t tht bt rdndnt?

Th snrk hr s gd s t gts. Lrn t lv th bngbng clvr! Dn’t gt yr pnts ll bnchd p.

thnks n dvnc,
Znhmmnd

Ain’t that the truth. It seems to be getting worse, too. $20 used to buy what $50 seems to now.