Quote:
Originally Posted by Cowboy89
It's not like those institutions that are getting funded get blank cheques to spend as they see fit. I'm sure there are "Canadian/Local" content rules and other strings attached to ensure funds trickle down to otherwise subcommercial artists. Just because artists are not getting cheques directly from the government does not mean they aren't still getting paid out indirectly.
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A publisher gets money to publish books, but they pay the author based only on the books that sell. An art gallery gets money to put on art exhibitions, but the artist gets revenue only from the actual pieces that sell. If a organization records the work of a composer, the composer gets funding for printings of the CD as well as for radio play. Yes, they do get a trickle-down benefits in that the arts organization will cover event hosting costs or production costs, but in terms of financial revenue, in most cases the artist still works on a model where revenue is entirely a product of demand.
Bringing in a 'subcommercial' artist does a gallery, publisher, or production company absolutely no good, because if their revenues go down, this reflects poorly in their reporting and they'll get less government funding next time. There's a strong incentive to bring in artists who have the potential to make money, while allowing organizations the security to be able to take a risk on unknown but potentially successful artists.
Now, there are exceptions, where artists are able to apply directly to the government for the creation of artistic work, but this is by far the minority of cases, and counts for an extremely minimal percentage of government arts funding.