“Selling Out” as an Artist

We’ve all seen it before. You come across this great band that’s largely unknown. You think you’ve dis­cov­ered a gold-mine, and in your excite­ment of this “dis­cov­ery”, you’ve turned around and told all of your friends about the band. In turn, they start telling their friends and so on and so forth. The next minute, you’re watch­ing a com­mer­cial on tele­vi­sion and that “obscure” band which you so highly-prized is bang­ing out a generic jin­gle for a car insur­ance com­mer­cial. In laymen’s terms, they’ve “sold out.”

The “sell-out” gen­er­ally means that there was a sac­ri­fi­cial offer­ing. It’s viewed that the band com­pro­mised their own artis­tic integrity by “water­ing down” their music in order to sell albums to the masses. Amongst the “indie” or “alter­na­tive” crowd, this is gen­er­ally highly frowned-upon — except maybe in the rare instance that you hap­pen to be The Cure. But as a whole, the psy­cho­log­i­cal effect of “sell­ing out” relates to tak­ing some­thing that feels per­sonal, and spread­ing the love across the board rather thinly.

So as an artist or a cre­ative per­son — where do you stand with your own val­ues in this world — do you “sell out” (assum­ing that you can) or do you con­tinue along your cur­rent path with no finan­cial dis­trac­tions? I’ve col­lab­o­rated with plenty of phe­nom­e­nal artists — some of which whose styles admit­tedly beat my own work hands-down (it’s quite a hum­bling expe­ri­ence.) More often than not, most of these artists have the finan­cial back­ing (usu­ally mom and dad) to sup­port their efforts in tak­ing one piece of art — and spend­ing weeks if not months to pol­ish that piece to per­fec­tion. Most ordi­nary peo­ple can’t afford to spend that amount of time to cre­ate a sin­gle piece, with­out the rest of the world falling down in and around them. Those “types” are almost def­i­nitely not going be able to per­form the same qual­ity of work on a live project from a client, unless that client has really deep pock­ets as well as some seri­ous patience, or they hap­pen to be the one in a bil­lion ‘savants” liv­ing amongst this world. And from that expe­ri­ence, I’m reluc­tant to hire an artist whose port­fo­lio looks “too good” — because usu­ally some­thing is amiss.

Unfor­tu­nately, unless you’re priv­i­leged to have land to grow your own crops on, you almost always have to rely on money. The whole finan­cial issue is a catch-22 — it’s expected that an artist does what they do because they love their work for what it is, yet they’re also often expected from soci­ety to not want any finan­cial gain, or in some cases, finan­cial secu­rity. In my mind, this whole “integrity” ver­sus “money” dichotomy is hyp­o­crit­i­cal and  unre­al­is­tic. It shouldn’t be an “and” or “or” issue. The fact is, an artist needs to sur­vive. They may hide their resources well, but almost invari­ably rely on some source to put a 23-cent pack­age of Ramen Noo­dles on the table and a roof over their head. If they didn’t man­age to scrape on by, they’d prob­a­bly end up with a bot­tle of Colt 45 sit­ting under some bridge with a shop­ping cart. I can’t speak for you, but I don’t want to see this hap­pen to any­one. There’s a cer­tain level of pride, and a cer­tain level of fool­ish­ness involved in weigh­ing out those “pros” and “cons” in work­ing for the prover­bial “man.”

Some­one that doesn’t know my own sit­u­a­tion would prob­a­bly assume — “he has a com­pany” or “he’s doing well.” Well, that’s the first mis­take. Don’t assume. I do well with all things con­sid­ered, but even I need to pick up more busi­ness and clients or else I might find myself man­ning a fast-food counter. I’ve heard this assump­tion time and time again — and some­times peo­ple with that per­cep­tion think that I would be will­ing to give them a dis­count because “he must be rolling in the dough.” The fact is, that there always needs to be a com­pro­mise unless you’re truly will­ing to com­mit Sep­puku. I know that I’m not will­ing to sac­ri­fice my own life. There must always be a bal­ance between being able to sur­vive, yet be pro­duc­tive enough to “not make a mess.”

The whole flock of strug­gling artists seem to fol­low a pat­tern. It starts off with want­ing to cre­ate because you enjoy the act of cre­ation. It’s often fol­lowed by a sense of pride and integrity. Next gen­er­ally comes “star­va­tion phase” unless you’ve hit the lot­tery jack­pot. Scram­bling for self-preservation through fear of death often fol­lows that. If they man­aged to get past those phases, the artist becomes a “com­mer­cial artist” because they know what it’s like to barely make ends meet — more often than not, this is the level an expe­ri­enced artist tends to shoot for and if they are “lucky”, they will stay in this state of eter­nal bliss. If these lev­els do not com­pletely dis­solve and integrity doesn’t take you back to the start­ing line, you may in that very rare instance “get lucky” and hit that next level of finan­cial secu­rity. From my own per­sonal expe­ri­ences with these other, “lucky” artists — there really is no such thing as “luck.” They’ve almost always busted their asses to get to where they’re at. I have yet to really encounter any artist that has been struck by “artis­tic light­ning.” That has to be a 1 in a 100 mil­lion chance of happening.