IP Legal Experts Say ACTA Is 'Inconsistent' With EU Law

Crowdfunding Makes Sense... But Does Crowd Creative Decision Making?

from the ick dept

Mon, Jan 24th 2011 7:03pm — Mike Masnick

I'm all for interesting experiments involving compelling ways to connect with fans and give them a reason to buy, and I love finding out about platforms that enable such things. However, I have to admit that I'm pretty skeptical about the basic concept behind Crowdbands, which not only lets you "fund" an artist, but also vote on the creative decisions they make. The platform does lots of similar (and useful things) that other platforms do: allowing you to support an artist via a "membership fee" of sorts, in exchange for which you get access to the musicians, the artist's music at no extra charge... and a chance to vote on the creative decisions the artist makes.

I understand why they did this, in terms of getting greater fan buy-in, and trying to differentiate from the competitors out there. However, as much as I like crowdfunding of things, that doesn't mean creative decisions should all be crowd decided. I can see it work in some cases, but making creative decision by committee is difficult enough. In this case, the creative decisions are being made based on the popular vote, with apparently little actual input from the artist.

Years ago, in discussing "crowdsourced" efforts, I noted that they were especially good at digging out factual information. When it comes to things that involve insight, analysis or opinion, crowdsourcing tends not to work that well. This isn't all that surprising. However, moving the fans directly into the decision making process seems like a disaster waiting to happen. I should be clear: I'm all for fans having ways to participate, and have their voices heard, but that doesn't mean that artists should have to follow their suggestions. It seems likely that the design-by-mass-internet-committee will serve mainly to make weaker, less inspired decisions.

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Filed Under: creativity, crowdsourcing, decision making, music
Companies: crowdbands

27 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 24 Jan 2011 @ 7:16pm

I agree...
You know, Mike, I am often amazed at the fact that people find ways to describe the future using language which sounds like utter nonsense today.
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Analmouse Coward, 24 Jan 2011 @ 7:28pm

Shit!
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btr1701 (profile), 24 Jan 2011 @ 7:29pm

Resistance is Futile
> ... But Does Crowd Creative Decision Making?

Oh, I don't know... depends on the size of your crowd, I suppose...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyenRCJ_4Ww&feature=related
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Jay (profile), 24 Jan 2011 @ 7:37pm

Making creative decisions by committee work ... For my next trick I will end world hunger, bring about everlasting world peace, turn water into wine and make this flock of pigs land gracefully on the tip of the empire state building; all with merely a wiggle of my rose coloured glasses.
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Nick Coghlan (profile), 24 Jan 2011 @ 8:06pm

Artists create the poll options
I think you misread this one Mike: the artist gets to choose the *options* that go into the polls.

Appropriately crafted polls, where the artists themselves don't have strong feelings either way and hence will be happy regardless of the crowd's choice, sound like an *excellent* way to make people feel involved.

To use the Donnas example: "classic cover or new song" is a good question to ask their fans. Asking their fans which *specific* song to cover (if the decision goes that way) would likely be a bad question - better for the Donnas to pick one they particularly like and can play well.
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Kaden (profile), 24 Jan 2011 @ 8:22pm

Kinda tame, actually...
The examples cited concern (from the a creativity context) fairly staid options like choice of producer and album song count. Were the band in the clutches of Big Music they'd have no real input into these decisions either. The key advantage to crowdsourcing is the fanbase decisions are based on what they want to hear, as opposed to what would move the most units.

Toss a coin on which is the best path to follow. Either one is a compromise away from creative purity, but at least they're not putting the chord progressions up to a web poll, or accreting the lyrics from their Tweet stream.

...which is stuff I've actually done. Crowbarring that kinda non-Euclidean hivemuse input into a coherent form is actually a good creative workout.
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The Mighty Buzzard (profile), 24 Jan 2011 @ 8:23pm

Yeah, um, LCD is never the way to go on anything you're going to put your name on. At least not if you have any pride whatsoever.
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Beta (profile), 24 Jan 2011 @ 8:27pm

"I hate it when they start to interfere..."
Creativity from a mob sounds impossible, but...

Look at Wikipedia, StackOverflow and... I can't think of a third. I would never have thought that such systems could work, it's easy to argue that they couldn't work, and yet they do-- and thousands of others didn't. The "sweet spot" is small, but it does exist and the right combination of technology, culture, crafty design and iterative refinement found it. So maybe crowdsourced creativity is possible, if you do it just right. I realize that this is almost non-disprovable, but it's an intriguing thought.
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Tony Baldus (profile), 24 Jan 2011 @ 9:22pm

Re: Artists create the poll options
I kind of agree but I can see coming up with a list of cover songs the band likes and asking the fans to vote on which one they like best. Or putting out samples of several new songs and asking which one the fans like better to include on a new album.
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BBT, 24 Jan 2011 @ 9:27pm

Geez. I would have thought getting your fans involved in your creative decisions was about as much "connecting with fans" as a band could possibly do. I guess all things, even connecting with fans, in moderation.
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Chris in Utah (profile), 24 Jan 2011 @ 9:28pm

You are unique and an individual. Just like everyone else
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Hephaestus (profile), 24 Jan 2011 @ 9:32pm

Re:
"Shit!"

Agreed. Would someone e-mail me when christina aguilera does this. I have several acts I would like to see her perform ... and get your minds out of the gutter, she has a great set of pipes.
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scarr (profile), 24 Jan 2011 @ 9:56pm

50% disappointment
This seems like the worst of all ways to handle a record label. The band is ceding (a certain amount of) creative control to the "label"/fans still, which isn't good for creativity.

On top of that, the funding is provided by your fan base, so they're financially invested in the choices being made. The problem is, you're going to disappoint whoever is in the minority of the decisions made. In the past, the label had a say because it's their money. Now, it's you have a say, provided you have the popular opinion.

I foresee lots of fans who pay their share and then don't get anything for it. I see lots of them being upset with the band as a result.
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Anonymous Coward, 24 Jan 2011 @ 11:21pm

It works for TV and movies it just may work for music.

TV shows have armies of writers, the best shows today use more then one writer to write things and probably is because one man tends to be repetitive in his creations when he has no other inputs, look at old TV shows and see how episode after episode they all got the same feeling when it was only one writer responsible for them, today they have a group of writers seat down and brainstorm, with the responsible one taking from the others all the good ideas he sees and implementing them.

So I can see this working, you can crowdsource the ideas and elect one to make the final decisions he gets all the resources and choose witch ones will be put in place.

But I agree that putting a crowd to be responsible for the final decision of what the final product will be is a risk, crowds tend to have a uniform view of the world and that may not be the best way to innovate or get things done creatively which is the point Mike's post.

Still it can work and could be an enabler for the individual expression of that individual. He gives to the crowd what they want and they in turn give him support to produce things he wants.
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Richard (profile), 25 Jan 2011 @ 2:03am

"Trad" and "Anon"
Two of my favourite composers - and their work is mostly crowdsourced. It is evolved and passed down over the centuries via a kind of chinese whispers process. Some of the best tunes ever came about this way.
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Anonymous Coward, 25 Jan 2011 @ 2:20am

The peoples band...
I think with an artist controlled poll, you could easily get awesome results. If you handed over complete controll then I see this as being a conflict for an established artist, tho I wonder if a band could possibly form for the sole purpose of fulfilling whims of a decentralized management base...
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Anonymous Coward, 25 Jan 2011 @ 3:06am

When it comes to things that involve insight, analysis or opinion, crowdsourcing tends not to work that well.

Hey, it's the new tagline for the "insight community."
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Anonymous Coward, 25 Jan 2011 @ 3:35am

Re: "I hate it when they start to interfere..."
I can think of a third: TVTropes (warning: very addictive). And of a fourth: Open Source software (programming can be very creative sometimes, but it can be hard to see for non-programmers).
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Marcus Carab (profile), 25 Jan 2011 @ 6:35am

Re: I agree...
what?
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Michael (profile), 25 Jan 2011 @ 8:51am

They're also making the fans compete against each other. That isnt' a good feeling. To have paid into something, and then be reminded that there's this other group of people who already paid into the same thing, but they disagree with you... and there's MORE of them...
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Stephen, 25 Jan 2011 @ 10:46am

crowdsourced creativity
There is a precedent in sports for crowdsourced creativity. In 1951 Bill Veeck once let the crowd vote on what his St. Louis Browns should do in a game, a ploy that's been repeated since:

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2486187

And recently there was a chess match pitting Magnus Carlson versus the world, the world being repped by three grand masters who offered options for the world to vote on. The world lost, but only because the world, playing black, voted on the sixth move to block in our c-pawn with our queen's knight; the knight should have been moved to defend our already deployed king's knight. Here's a commentary on the match:

http://susanpolgar.blogspot.com/2010/09/magnus-carlsen-vs-world-live-commentary.html
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Ben, 25 Jan 2011 @ 12:03pm

Not everything requires a vote
Sure this could work, it just requires the bands to make decisions on exactly what parts of the creative process needs voting on. For instance, a rock band shouldn't let people vote if they should now be a rap band. Likely their creative skills wouldn't mesh well and the band would go under, but they could vote on a concept for a song. This would leave the band with the creative space to write a song, yet the song would target the audience. Also the band could turn down ideas if they offered reasoning as too why the felt the decision wouldn't work.
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Jesse Townley (profile), 25 Jan 2011 @ 2:45pm

Interesting...
As a band member & label manager, I agree that it's all in the details. I'm a Donnas fan too, as it happens, but I'm still kind of puzzled about what decisions fans would be voting on.

Very curious about how this will turn out... Jesse
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Nina Kessner, 25 Jan 2011 @ 3:10pm

Creativity is an elemental process which involves idea-making and sorting, development, and evolution. It has nothing at all to do with committee input unless it is a think-tank where a like-minded group of individuals follows the primal process to achieve and end-result. Let's not confuse the creative process with cliche and lame attempts to make people think they are actually participating in the creative endeavor. Better idea: create an actual thinktank to pull off something wonderful and significant.
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Nina Kessner, 25 Jan 2011 @ 3:11pm

Creativity is an elemental process which involves idea-making and sorting, development, and evolution. It has nothing at all to do with committee input unless it is a think-tank where a like-minded group of individuals follows the primal process to achieve and end-result. Let's not confuse the creative process with cliche and lame attempts to make people think they are actually participating in the creative endeavor. Better idea: create an actual thinktank to pull off something wonderful and significant.
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Richard (profile), 25 Jan 2011 @ 3:25pm

Re:
I don't think a vote would work too well - but passing an idea around a community so that each can add to or refine it is a different matter - it has worked well in the past - but takes time - maybe the internet could speed things up?
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Tom Sarig, 7 Feb 2011 @ 10:06am

I appreciate all of your insightful comments since Techdirt ran this original post. Many of you seem to have completely missed the point. Go to our website www.crowdbands.com and join for a year or at least do the free trial. Look at the incredible comminity we have begun to build around The Donnas. We are going to impact their careers and lives for the better according to all of us (including the Donnas) who are involved.

That doesn't mean creative decisions should all be crowd-decided, and they are NOT with Crowdbands. All decisions which are Members eventually vote on, creative or not, are vetted with the artist first. We are first and foremost an organization with the goal of promoting artists and achieving success. We simply believe that their is power in bringing artists and their fans closer together, and in fans helping their favorite bands in crucial decisions relating to their respective careers and their record label operations. We do not interfere with any creative endeavor which our artist does not want our Members involved in.

And we don't think that moving fans into the roll of decision-making is a disaster waiting to hapen. After all the fans intimately know their favortie bands every nuance and have their best interests at heart, which is a hell of a lot more than we can say about the lion's share of current record labels!

Tom Sarig
Crowdbands Co-Founder
ts@crowdbands.com
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