What Is The Value Of Your Music?

The more I think about this, the more the strands of the argument grow and overlap and evolve.

I get more questions than answers and I want to know what you think.

So… what is the value of your music?

Or the value of any art you create? 

Aesthetic Value

The value given to any piece of music or art, in general, is defined purely by opinion. If one person ascribes worth to it, it is valuable, if only to them. In ‘Is Film Music Art or Just Low-Brow Commercial Fluff’, I went into detail about the aesthetic value of art.

Monetary Value

But I want to talk about how that translates into money. Cold hard cash. For all intents and purposes, money is the physical representation of value in society. There are ways to be ‘paid’ other than money, but for the sake of simplicity let’s stick to this line of reasoning for the moment. This topic is all the more relevant in today’s economic climate.

I’ve bypassed the notion that, as an artist, you shouldn’t be paid for your art since the pursuit of the art itself has intrinsic value and that should be the be-all and end-all. I absolutely do believe that great artists should be paid for their art if it is valued by society, in order that this artist can put a roof over their head and food on the table and that they may spend their time continuing to make great art for the benefit of both the artist and everybody in society. I’m thinking about this from a practical, business point of view.

Some questions to consider…

So these are the questions that I’ve been pondering:

  • Is the value society ascribes to your music defined by the amount of money you are paid for it?
  • Are the rates you set for yourself, your time spent creating, your creative product, what society thinks is its value? Or is it what you believe society thinks it is worth?
  • How do your own value judgements about the art you make, and thus the prices you set, define society’s opinion of your art?
  • And thus how in control are you of the perceived value of your time, your creative efforts, your end-product by the monetary value you set in the first place?
  • Is a value judgement is a 50:50 split between the artist and society, with a constant feedback loop informing that perceived value – so what is the maximum amount of control that you can exert on that equation?

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