Tag Archives: Artist

Business, Technology

Concept to eBay Sale: Use a 3D Printer to Produce Your Imagination

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I was just looking at eBay, and what items I had on sale.  Then as any eBay enthusiast would do, I thought about what other things I could put up to the eBay market.  At the moment I don’t have access to my own personal effects. I was sullen for a moment, and at that moment the spark of inspiration struck, why can’t I use a 3D Printer, build, create something from my imagination and put it up for sale on eBay.  It could be literally anything from a piece of Jewelry, a Craft, a Reproduction of an Antique, in fact, any reproduction I am able to envision.  I see a period when massive amount of reproductions are put up for sale, legally, of course, where ‘reproduction’ is stated.  The art is being able to capture all perspectives of the object, and reproduce it.   As an example, if you’ve been to a museum, and take pictures at many multiple angles of anything from a painting, jewelry, statues, and so on, then use your imagination to push the image into 3 dimensional reality.

How much would you pay for an amazing 3 dimensional Diorama of Vincent van Gogh‘s painting of Cafe Terrace at Night?  At the Home Depot, a Mural 18 in. x 24 in. Wall Tiles sells for $260, and that’s for a 2 dimensional view.  How much would an art collector, or anyone appreciate someone pushing the image to a third dimension.  An excellent perspective, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, could sell very well.

Then I looked up the price of these 3 dimensional printers, and the prices were what you would expect for a new technology entering the market.  The prices range on eBay for these printers from a few hundred dollars, a thousand dollars, to several thousands, and this is, of course, due do the size of the machine, and how big the reproduced object would be manufactured.  There are costs of the materials to build these items, similar to an ink cartridge for a printer.  MakerBot seems to be a name brand in 3 Dimensional printers, and they tout the price of $2,199 as affordable model.

Apparently, this is a feasible business model today.

The price of a printer to steep?  Now imagine a big cloud company comes along, and allows you to use one of their 3D printers in their cloud, and then ships it off to you, or puts it in their “Amazon Locker”.

 

Entertainment, Music, Technology

The King’s Clothes: He’s Naked, and So is the Artist!

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In an article I read in the New York Times this morning, Streaming Shakes Up Music Industry’s Model for Royalties: As Music Streaming Grows, Royalties Slow to a Trickle, it’s not hard to see what needs to be done to help the starving artist into extinction, and the phat artist get a bit leaner.  Lawsuits?  No! Artists are biting into this hook line and sinker.  I think the really shocking bit that no one ever really wants to say because of the huge artists  which take in a lot more than other artists, is for similar reasons we don’t show the salaries of our fellow employees.  However, in some cases consumers do seem to gasp and rally around the starving employee’s or artists, in this case, when there is such a stark contrast in the earnings, such as in a developing nation, consumers seem to rally the troops.  Also, the Hollywood Industry seems to be OK with releasing the extravagant earnings of some of the top making actors and actresses.  If the Music Industry Association were to try to rally the troops to make an API (Application Interface) a requirement, and allow third parties to pull amounts of net royalties dynamically, or whenever those amounts are committed, as well as based upon each artist opting in or out, i.e. if artist, opts-out, they must be doing well might be the assumption, that transparency may shame the consumer into going in another direction with their music purchasing style.  If I can go to a Blog, and view a dashboard that shows the net royalties of any artist, and has a N/A for which artists have opted out, and you can see those tallies slowly rise, or static based on the committed time to book the royalties, music lovers may empathize with the artist.

A second, and parallel approach, is to just peel back Spotify, and look at the functionality, see what the consumer is getting beyond the streaming model, and offer it up similarity using a more artist,  consumer, distributor amenable cost model.  Don’t tell me it is all just the streaming aspect that attracts the customer, because it is certainly not.  Looking at the application, and how people interact with it I spot a few features off the back that are alluring.