TCN Newsletter Issue 4: July 2014

Arts Guild

HitRecord: Paying Artists Through the Share Economy

Collaborating, co-creating, and sharing are making competitive enterprise outdated. No matter your profession, the path to success relies less on acquiring a competitor’s audience or buying power, and more on working with the “competition” to collectively satisfy each others needs. In the worlds of graphic art, advertising, music production, creative writing, and broadcast media has arisen a new platform for collaborative creation in which sharing one’s own work can be remixable and even profitable, without having to sell the work.

Introducing HitRecord, the brainchild of Joseph Gordon-Levitt, whose online social platform for sharing and collaborating on works of art is changing the way artists make money for their work. When you join this network as a user, you are prompted to watch a video that explains what the organization is really about before you sign up. The medium for publication which generates income ranges from music albums to t-shirts, to books of poetry and art, as well as collaborative live performances and a tv show. If any of your work (whether it has been remixed or not) gets used in any of these publications, the total profits of the sales are split 50-50 with hitrecord and are distributed evenly among the artists.

In 2013, HitRecord paid the artists featured in their productions a total of $737,175.09. Each TV episode’s budget uses $50,000 alone to pay artists for the use of their work. This conscious for-profit company is growing, and my prediction is that we will see a lot of collaborative production startups in the next couple years. The pressure of an individual artist to market his or her work is perhaps the greatest challenge in the industry. By collaborating, not only is an artist optimizing the potential of his or her work to be published, but if published, the original work remains their own and active on the site.

When you post work to hitrecord, it gets attention by a measure of “favorites” or “upvotes” as on other social media networks. However, when a work gets to the popular page, the chances of Joseph Gordon-Levitt seeing it are almost certain. If he likes it, he features it. If he features it, the artist gets paid in cash and free advertising. There is no membership fee to join or post your work. You simply hit record, upload, and watch as your artwork gets rated, shared, and hopefully published. Once published, an artist is granted the opportunity to expand their audience which never might have happened on tumblr, soundcloud, or even a sponsored facebook post. If you are an artist, I recommend putting this awesome free service to work and learn how your co-creations come into fruition. Hitrecord is taking the Share economy to the next level: Share your gifts with the community, and the profits are shared with you.
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Arts Guild Offering