If You're Selling it

It's a product.

If you're marketing it, it's a product.

There's a huge contradiction inherent in most of what we do.  I know we don't like to think of art as a product. Lots of folks get downright angry if you call art a product. "It's ART!"

I know a lot of folks scoffed at the Driehaus's money back guarantee experiment, thinking it cheapened the art. (Note the use of the word "cheapened." As in less valuable.) But if art is not a product, why do we so easily attach prices to it? If we're selling it (or selling tickets to it) why are we so uncomfortable with the notion of creating a product?

If art is above being sold, isn't it beneath the art to ask people for money to see it?

We might not like to think of art as a product or commodity to be sold, but a lot of people who pay for it do. They are buying a work, or an experience.

Can you make art that is not also a product? Yes. Just don't attach a price to it. As soon as we start attaching prices, we need to realize that it has now become not just a work of art, but also a commodity. We must realize that capitalism didn't do that, we did--the second we attached a price to it.

If your art is above becoming a product, then there's no price you could attach to it. It would be priceless (or free). However, if we are creating something that we plan on charging people for, we need to realize that people will view it as a product.

Any group that fails to acknowledge an audience member's view is in trouble. (Whether or not you agree with their perspective.)