It’s hard to make a good living as an artist. It always has been, but it has gotten even harder. Streaming services changed the music industry and how musicians got paid. Canva made everyone think they were graphic artists. People think they can take the perfect picture with their phone and photographers are watching their industry go through yet another reinvention.
And don’t even get me started on what will happen because of AI…
I found this TED talk by one of the cofounders of Kickstarter and thought I should share it here because artists are entrepreneurs.
Or, artists should start thinking of themselves as entrepreneurs if they want to make a living making art and not just doing it as a hobby.
In his TED talk, “Forget Hustle Culture. Behold the Artist Corporation,” Yancey Strickler suggests that a new corporate structure could help artists who collaborate to make real money. Strickler explains why LLCs, C Corps, and nonprofits aren’t the optimal choice in many cases.
From the description on YouTube:
Kickstarter cofounder Yancey Strickler unveils a radical new economic model that could transform how creative people build sustainable careers, amass collective wealth and escape the burnout of hustle culture. Hear his vision for how artists can pool resources, share profits and own their work in a new kind of economy, as he poses a tantalizing view of the future: What if the next Disney wasn’t a corporate giant but an artist-owned collective? (Recorded at TED2025 on April 8, 2025)
Yancey describes a successful project he did with other writers using this structure, why it worked, and how it created a reserve that could be used for future projects.
Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash
