True Fans

I have always been interested in the idea of the “starving artist” because I enjoy art produced by non-mainstream artists. I feel like these people are the true artists of our time. I feel this way because they don’t produce their art for the money they will gain, but because of the message that they are trying to give out. Like Robert Rich, these artists feel that if just one person is strongly affected by their art they have succeeded. Their goal isn’t to sell a million albums, but to move people. I really respect the artists “living in a micro-niche,” because I can relate. I am studying film, and although filming big screen movies would give me a good, solid income, I really want to focus my attention on filming the thing I love, skateboarding. Although this won’t get me the same amount of money that filming a big screen movie would, it will make me happier, and this is how these starving artists feel, I think. Like Rich says, they are the “sort of artist who would be happy doing nothing else.” In my opinion, they make their art, not for their own success and pleasure, but for the betterment of other people. Another aspect touched upon in this article is bootlegged art. It must be frustrating for Rich, in my opinion, when people get his music through bootlegging. I never actually put that into perspective because stealing popular artists’ music doesn’t really harm them. But, every purchase counts for those artists “living in a micro-niche,” and when their music is stolen, it makes a huge difference.
These artists dedicate their lives to sending out a message through their art that not all people hear. Because of this dedication, I feel like these artists deserve more credit than those artists who do it for the money. I feel like it’s really unfair that those artists who sing meaningless music, most of the time not even written by them, get many times more money than those musicians who sing from their heart. According to Robert Rich, the Internet has helped him gain more of an audience, and this makes me happy. I like that the Internet is making it easier for these artists to gain an audience. In my opinion, it will be better for everyone if people started listening to the music produced by someone who feels passionate about something, not some rapper who sings about things that he feels will get the most audience. Also, although these artists don’t have many followers, they have dedicated ones. It also interested me that these artists think so much into how they present their product. Rich describes the different consequences of promoting their albums in different ways. Starving artists who rely on their small pool of fans need to be careful how far they go with their art, or how similar they stay. Both of these things can turn off their audience, which would be terrible. This article showed me that being a starving artist is more complicated and frustrating than I thought. For this reason, these artists deserve to be respected even more than they are.