This article was taken from The WIRED World in 2015. Be the first to read WIRED's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
We will soon enter a new creative economy. Creative talent is surging back to life as the cost of production and distribution falls to a level where artists can build direct relationships with their audience, change the balance of power with labels, studios and publishers, and find new ways to profit from their work.
By 2015, there will be more than two billion smartphones in the world. Almost all of those devices will pack a smart keyboard, speakers that support wideband audio, back- and front-facing cameras, beamforming microphones and HD video. These are power tools for creative producers, and, with a legion of post-production apps designed for them, these devices have empowered a new pool of talent.
The wide availability of these tools doesn't necessarily mean that in 2015 design, art, media and other creations will be any better than before. But when you marry this proliferation of content to online distribution platforms with unprecedented reach, it changes the way talent can emerge.
In 2015, the battle among the major creative platforms will no longer just be about reach -- it will be about tools. Early winners such as iTunes and Amazon will increasingly be at a disadvantage if they continue to allow platforms such as YouTube, SoundCloud, Twitter, Spotify and Wattpad take the lead in building better tools for creators. Artists are assembling huge followings on social platforms, and are able to manage those relationships with increasingly sophisticated technologies.
Talent such as British spoken-word artist Suli Breaks, whose YouTube videos have been seen 15 million times, are building dedicated online fanbases. Artists are emerging from social platforms in the same way that Justin Bieber sprang from YouTube and Lorde from SoundCloud, and are being folded into the mainstream media machine.
But these are artists who fit a conventional mode. In 2015, greater opportunities will accrue to talent such as violinist Lindsey Stirling, who might never have found a mainstream audience, yet who has translated her five-million-plus YouTube followers into a superb career with superior economics. The game has changed -- ask Notch from Minecraft creator Mojang, recently bought by Microsoft for $2.5 billion (£1.5bn), who has the whip hand when he negotiates with LEGO for toys and Warner Bros for movies.
This new generation of artists will not entirely turn their backs on smart publishers, studios and labels, but the conversations will change. They will come to the table with much more, which changes the dynamic. In some ways this is similar to the changes that app stores, accelerators and crowdfunding platforms have wrought between entrepreneurs and VCs.
Smart artists in 2015 will use crowdfunding as a matter of course to underwrite their productions. Any conversation with a label, studio or publisher can then start with: "What can you do for me?" Fans will be part of this movement -- helping the next Macklemores emerge in every genre and in every form of the arts. They will back film-makers on Kickstarter who will go straight to Netflix. They will be among the 20 million readers that writers such as Brittany Geragotelis attract on Wattpad. This is the year when artists and their fans lay the foundations for the new creative economy.
Saul Klein is a partner at Index Ventures, which has invested in startups including SoundCloud, Sofar Sounds and Patreon.
Read more from The WIRED World in 2015 here.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
