Hearing from Art Friends this year that their holiday art sales are pretty low -- maybe in part the economy, but I'm also guessing it's how AI has fucked some shit up. As such, if you can spend money on real art by humans this holiday, please do.
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I really wish there was a list of those not on etsy because it's hard to find those types of shops (for me at least) because im not sure where to search
That's a HUGE part of it. An artist friend of mine ( @jayispainting.earthskyart.ca ) started the #ArtAdventCalendar hashtag on twitter several yrs ago. He's also an IT guy, so has been keeping careful stats on the engagement his own art (& AAC) gets across platforms. Twitter's downfall has been GRIM
Yes, same. My video game sales plummeted around earlier this year, when twitter became X and people started fleeing, and then Musk broke the algorithm to favor nazis and bluechecks...
I never got much traction on Twitter, and my sales are waaay down. So I think at least some of it is the general economy. The collapse of social media sure doesn't help tho!
The economy has really eaten up people's pocket change. Inflation is eating all the COL increases that were already overdue, interest rates are through the roof, rents are too high and still going up, and economists have been beating the recession drum so anxiety. I think AI art is a niche crowd.
My suspicion is more the economy TBH. (AI art is bad but I can't imagine it's truly the thing that's taking so much money away.)
I'm still puzzling/stressing over why the live holiday show I'm producing has sold significantly fewer tickets than every other year & most of our normal monthly shows.
Social media reach has also been chopped off at the root. The only live shows I've heard anything about have been from artists' email newsletters and such, and Facebook just smugly tells me "reach is down 16% this week" when I'm not doing anything different. And of course the whole Twitter thing.
(and when I say "AI has fucked some shit up," I mean both that the people designing it have stolen literal art from artists and also how it has reduced the perceived value of art from "that's awesome and special" to "I'll tell the robot to draw me a nude Batman, so what if he has too many fingers")
1. Oversaturation of industry professionals
2. Commissions being a luxury with primary demographic struggling to pay rent
3. People who use AI for art never intended to pay for it. I think that is actually a relative non factor compared to the glaring economical issue of supply vs demand rn imo
I also suspect it's overall dilution - like, IG has shopping, TikTok unveiled their giant shop push, Etsy (which is on a steep downward spiral it seems), plus a bunch of other online shopping options that just spread everyone very thin.
(And the AI money-grab attempts on ALL of these platforms).
Etsy is pretty much just a more expensive AliExpress storefront at this point. Hard to trust buying merch there now with the insane amount of stolen art listed.
Entirely, yes. I guess they're starting to try to address it, but it's way too little and way way way too late. Applying a bunch of bots to the problem doesn't fix it, it just makes things WORSE for everyone else (seeing a lot of legit sellers get flagged because THEIR pics get stolen and reposted)
AI has caused a surge in overall art theft as well as flooded the market with millions of bootlegs, essentially plummeting the percieved value of art in general do to inflation/ overexposure.
not sure if there's available data on people who normally buy art as gifts, but there are plenty of online storefronts (etsy, redbubble, deviantart, etc) where you can find AI sellers with active customer bases, not to mention the tech companies selling vast amounts directly from their generators
now i can't say all of those customers would have been the kinds of people to buy prints for friends or themselves, or even commission artists directly, but the market for AI art has exploded into a billion dollar industry overnight, meanwhile the arts have remained largely unprofitable
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Which is why I'm focusing a bit more on books now
AI took out a bit but the pandemic economy took out a bit more.
Twitter collapsing accelerated the problem immensely but the discoverability problems began already when they started to push the For You tab.
(It's not been a fun year.)
I'm still puzzling/stressing over why the live holiday show I'm producing has sold significantly fewer tickets than every other year & most of our normal monthly shows.
2. Commissions being a luxury with primary demographic struggling to pay rent
3. People who use AI for art never intended to pay for it. I think that is actually a relative non factor compared to the glaring economical issue of supply vs demand rn imo
(And the AI money-grab attempts on ALL of these platforms).
(Got my biggest and last one of the year this weekend and I'm a ball of anxiety over whether I'll be able to get anywhere close to my goal)