A vexing thing about writing these blogs in the modern internet
age, is that a news story I might be seeing non-sop, could be
something you have never heard of. I heard some scary insight
from, of all people, UFC fighter Mayhem Miller..."We went
from having three TV channels to hundreds of TV channels...and
now only one TV channel, the "this is what Google wants you to
see" channel."
In any case, this last week there was the big news in stand-up
comedy world, via a business decision by Sirius Radio. Which has
caught the ire of damn near everyone in the stand up comedy
biz....
Uh...Can I assume everyone knows what Sirius is? Maybe if you're
gen Z you don't. It's a satellite radio platform. You pay a
subscription and it pumps into your car or computer. It has like
1000 nitch type statins. You like Dixieland Jazz from 1940s?
There's a Sirius station that only plays that. You like Celtic
Folk music? There's a station for that.. You get the idea.
They also have (had) a comedy station "Raw Dog Comedy". It would play
bits from stand up comedians all day. It has rebranded and gone
from playing 800 some different comedians, down to 300 or so
different comedians.
Those numbers ,specifically, may be deceiving. I'll explain them
shortly.
The gripe, as you can probably guess, is that those 500
comedians that are being cut, are losing a percentage of income.
Because they had been, up until the rebranding, been getting
royalties from each time their bits were played on the air.
This is bad for them and bad for comedy, in a way that's not
instantly apparent.
You've heard of the ten thousand hours principal? That's the
conventional wisdom that it takes that many hours of practice to
master something. I'd call that a little high for pragmatic
purposes. By 5000 hours maybe you're not a master, but you
should still be pretty good. Either way the overall notion, is
law. You need practice and repetition, even if you are naturally
talented, before you are legitimately good at something.
That notion applies to any skill, Filmmaking, arch welding,
juggling, carpentry...it's about logging the hours. It's a
little different in the world of the creative professional,
because there are two phases.
Finding your creative voice is a different thing to learn,
on top of learning the skill itself.
If you are a welder, you learn how
to weld and that's that. But if you are a guitar player, you learn
how to play the guitar...and you (theoretically) learn how to
play the guitar like YOU play the guitar. Or if you are a
comedian, learn how to tell jokes, then learn how to tell YOUR
jokes.
That might be unclear.
I'll use art as an example. You spend hours learning how to draw
anatomy, let's say. The human figure. Understanding the
proportions, how it moves, how it doesn't move, all of that is
one kind of learning.
Then, also, you learn how to draw the human body the way only
you draw it.
That part can come quickly or it can take awhile. And sometimes
there is more than one ideration of your voice...
That byciphrocated learning ( Did I use that word correct? I
hope so because that made me sound real smart...unless it
didn't) is across the board and necessary to be great as a
creative.
With comedians, for sure, one can
learn their craft before they've learned their voice. I'll use myself
as an example. I did stand up before I started doing comic
books. I studied everyone under the sun and very quickly learned
timing, rhythm and structure of a joke. My writing was very good
and very technically sound very quickly...I was writing solid
jokes, that got solid laughs, but I was just writing
jokes. It was quite some
time before I was telling jokes that were unique to me, that had
a specific voice. And to be honest, it wasn't even fully there
until I started Arsenic Lullaby. Maybe not even until issue
no.2.
Protect your art from AI with Glaze
or
Nightshade
There's some measure of overlap in learning your voice and
learning the craft, of course...but not complete overlap. Point
being... You wanna learn the first part (the craft/skill) as
fast as you can, so your creative voice can start taking that
skill and growing out of it.
Now, if you aspire to be an electrician, or a welder or such,
you can get well paid while logging those hours.
Apprenticeships, on the job training ect. If you are an
entertainer...much harder to make ends meet while you rake up
the practice time on the way to 10,000 hours.
The more money you can make doing comedy while you're still
working up to 10,000 hours. the faster you get to 10,000 hours.
Because that's less hours doing a day job to make money, and
more hours doing comedy. Follow me?
The more you are able to just do THAT. the faster you get good
at THAT and can make adult money doing THAT. And....AND....The
less likely you are to get discouraged, beaten down, lose the
hunger to do THAT and just go find some normal career.
Back to Sirius now. Those 500 or so comedians are no longer getting
airplay, and losing that royalty income, and that slows
down their race to 10,000 hours. And in many cases might just
end their march completely (see above pitfalls of being
discouraged, beaten down, ect).
They are perhaps low and mid level working road comedians now,
and may they seem expendable to Sirius. ,But they are the ones
who could/would become the all time future greats. So, Sirius's
decision is going to be, in many cases, cutting the future off
at the roots.
Why would Sirius do this? Was my question when seeing the
stories. From a business perspective it made no sense to me. You
have the same amount of air time, thus the same royalties to
pay. So, what difference would it make to Sirius if that money
was cut 5 ways or 5000 ways. It's the same sum coming out of
their pocket, just divvied up differently.
My thoughts went along these lines- There are certain aspects to
distribution that are universal. Whether you distribute digital
content, comic books, or adult beverages. If you limit who you
distribute, to just a few top sellers, you spare yourself a lot
of time and even aggravation. In this case, if Sirius cuts down
to the top 300 comics. That level of talent would all have name
brand agents and/or record
labels that represent many others. Meaning Sirius would really
only be dealing with maybe 50 different entities at most.
The 500 lower level comics they cut
might all have different agents or no agent at all. And
that, to be fair to Sirius, can amount to herding cats.
That by itself might...maybe...have someone run the 300person
cap idea up the flag pole but...it seems like not enough to
provoke such a drastic change. If they were actually dealing
with physical logistics, receiving/shipping products, sure. But
this change is only saving them some time/money by maybe
eliminating one or several employees who were the submissions
department. In the grand scheme of things, how much dough is that
saving? Not a hell of a lot.
There was some wrinkle here I couldn't suss out, because I
simply didn't have enough knowledge of that business.
However...
I consulted an source, who will
remain unnamed. This person has been in comedy for a good long time and knows the in's and out's of the business end very
well. And I trust that if this person says to me "this is
how it is", than that is how it is.
So, here's the whole situation, in a nutshell. It's not unlike
royalties paid to musicians on FM radio. The DCMA ( Digital
Copyright Millennium Act), lays out all the why's and wherefores
on copyrights in the digital realm. And from that, SoundExchange
is federally charged with collecting and distributing the
revenue based on how much anything is played. X amount to the
platform, X amount to the artist, X amount to the copyright
owner ( that could also be the artist but often it is the record
label or whatever entity paid to have it produced).
I heard tell...from unnamed source the motivation may very well
be, that by Sirius trimming
their catalogue down it gives them more leverage over those 50
or so entities and they can attempt to cut deals with them that
don't...oh...say follow the DCMA to the letter. Plays a little
fast and loose maybe, with which X gets how much of what. Is that legal?
No...not really. BUT...many a thing has been done in business
that was not technically legal, and resulted in no punishment or
even notice from the feds.
If Sirius cuts 20, 30, 50 side contracts that circumvent
SoundExchange, and others follow that footprint... It is then up to
the courts. With the Sirius side showing that this DMCA
SoundExchange thing is unnecessary..."why, just look at all
the entities who happily signed our contract!" Or for that
matter, that's perhaps evidence to take to their congressman to
have the act modified.
Less hassle, bigger percentage, being the goal. Pretty
simple stoic business decision. Except...
It's a really stupid idea.
I'll explain for any Sirius higher ups, who may have happened to
get this.
300 comedians sounds like a lot of comedians. and it is. UNLESS,
you have a radio station that is on the air 24/7. Comedy bits,
(pay attention now Sirius) do not have the same replay value as
music. As a matter of fact, probably two replays of a specific 5
minute bit is more than enough for most people. The third time
they hear it, they're turning off your station.
In general, a stand up comedian is going to produce and hour of
new material a year. Of that hour...maybe 15-20 minutes of it is
able to be trimmed into five minute bits, that can stand on their
own/ ain't dependent on something else said earlier in the set,
AND that the record label/comedian is okay with burning up for
mass consumption (remember that limited replay value I spoke
of...if the bit is on Sirius, it ain't going to get a laugh
live, nor are people going to want to spend money to buy or
download an album full of bits they already heard.)
Sirius can expect to max out at 15-20 minutes of new material,
on average, from each comedian, per year. 20 x 300 divided by 60
minutes is....100 hours of new material a year.
100 hours...Your radio station is on the air 24/7.
"But no one listens 24/7" you might reply. Correct. Let's
analyzie those who have this down to a science, then.
A terrestrial radio station generally has a 4 hour
playlist, with a few more hours of songs that get thrown in on
less repetition. Lets be kind to Sirius and say radio stations
only have 6 total hours of no repeat blocks/songs in the quiver.
They need 6 hours of material EVERY DAY,
because comedy has no replay value. 6 x 365
is 2190.
100 is less than 2190 by quite a considerable margin, unless my
calculator is broken.
What uhm...what's the play there, boys? Because you've got at
best, 6 months before people stop listening to the Sirius comedy
channel because 90% of your airtime is old stuff they already
heard. Yes, you likely have quite large backlog of older
material you haven't been playing, except that Rodney
Dangerfield making fun of his wife, and Jerry Seinfeld doing a
bit about airline travel that pre-dates 9-11 ain't really going
to go over. Hell, most anything that pre-dates 2020 might only be funny ironically or maybe be quaint and charming.
Another wrinkle is that the 300 comedians you are keeping, are brand name
comedians...many of whom will move onto movies or other projects
and not have time to create a new 60 minute set every year. What
are you gonna replace those hours with next year?
Those 500 comedians you cut, many of them won't be able to
support themselves and will leave comedy. And those that stay at
it, i many cases won't be as good as they could have been. This
decreases the talent pool and
ensures the new material you get from the new artists that you let in
ain't going to be at the level you had in the past. That's
uhm...the value of your product going down...to use business
vernacular.
This is a decision that seems cunning and shrewd, but from
a pure numbers, business, what is your product, who are your
customers, stand point...this is
cutting your nose off to spite your face. If you don't
modify this policy and boost back up into the range of 800
different comedians, your station is doomed, to wither and die
on the vine.
Any comedy pros out there, looking to plead the case to Sirius
via what's fare and what's not fare, and/or how will comedians
support themselves??...They ain't gonna listen, friend. Which is
why I laid out the programing numbers problem that's gonna f*ck
them right in the a**. Feel free you add that to your plea. They
need you as much as you need them. More, actually.
But that's not the only specter on the horizon for our stand up
comedy friends, because they too are now learning that having
your work ripped off by AI ain't much fun. More than a few
have begun seeing their bits, ripped off lock stock and barrel,
with AI programs...
Julia Jasunas
Olivia Carter
Their reactions have been anger, annoyance, and loss of
faith in humanity, mostly because these rips offs aren't shunned
lock stock and barrel by everyone. All the same reactions
and emotions that
have been expressed by artists, and some
mirror things I myself said in the very last blog.
Julia went on to say "If you are watching these videos and
you are not realizing that these are computers regurgitating our
jokes...that we have crafted over time, onstage, then you need
to go outside and take a walk...and see a live show."
Smart woman, remembering direct people to see her at a club.
Keeping her eye and ball there. Well done. Carter, also made
sure the final word was to get people to a club.
Both of them...smarter than I am...I just rant angrily and
insult people, haha.
You comics need to pay attention TO THIS PART NOW. These current rip
offs are obvious. But worse is coming. It can and will be used
to copy YOUR specific delivery and cadence, and even the way you
structure a joke. It's zeros and ones and it can be analyzed. Go
do a search on people who used AI to "draw in the style of
studio gibly". That's a very specific style of cartoon, and AI can
copy that and spit out any person or scenario in that style. and
they can do it with YOUR voice and YOUR delivery.
Someone rips off your joke, you can write another joke. If
AI copies off your persona...then what?
You'd better start GD fighting back, and I mean viciously and
yesterday.
My first thoughts, when seeing these comedians posting of being
ripped off by AI, was... because I have defects of character...
My second thought, because I have defects of character, was "I
f*cking told you so". I told comedians via this blog, social
media, and in person, TWO YEARS AGO...that you should start
fighting AI, because they would be next.
But...as I am continually trying to be a better person...I have
other more prudent thoughts for you comedians. There's a bit more than a handful off you reading these, in case you
thought you were the only one. The reason I called out to
you to fight against AI years ago, was not only because you were
next on the chopping block. It
was because you have communication skills that artists do not.
Artists, musician, even writers, do not have the lethal tool set
that you do. They do not have the skills to deliver a exciting,
funny, humiliating take on something to the degree you can. And
that is what is needed here. Because that it what can stop this.
What THIS is, is important for you to understand. AI did not rip
you off. Someone USING AI ripped you off. A person did that. And
a person can be mocked, and humiliated in such a fashion that
others see the error in his/her ways. Knowwhatimean?
Second important thing to understand is these "viral" rips off
are NOT
just going viral. They're all being astro turfed. I'm not
surprised artists didn't figure this out, but you comedians are
supposed to have a natural cynicism build into you. These social
media platforms have AI programs. It is in their, and the other
companies that make AI's, best interest that people use them.
Thus, it is in their best interest that said AI videos get a
million hits. So...how many of those viral videos do you
actually believe are naturally viral? None, is the correct
answer. It's manipulation of the algorithm and/or click via
bots. The world did not decide they like an AI bot better than
you telling the joke. The bots decided which one was going to be
more popular.
Last thing to be clear on. We are talking about "generative AI".
There's a difference. AI that preforms a task...driving a car,
finding the shortest distance from point A to point B, that is
not the issue. "Generative AI" is it being used to "create"
something. A video, an image, music, ect. That is the
issue. Because, that can only be done via content theft.
If you want a better grasp of the AI issue and how
it does what it does, my Blog
HERE has
a breakdown on the whole theft thing, this one HERE has a bit in
the middle going more into what AI actually is (spoiler alert,
it's a math program). And there's a collective
crying room on FB
HERE with artists venting and maybe a meme or two you can
make use of. Why they are collectively meeting on the very
platform that steals their sh*t...I do not know. Artists ain't
always pragmatic thinkers. You see now why your cunning is
needed?
AS FOR THE REST OF YOU...most creatives are not going to give
you attitude or call you out, because...they are smarter than
me. I however, am going to tell you right now, you people need
to start sticking up for creatives. I know it seems like they are
superficial, and unimportant in the grand scheme of things, that
they don't change the world or save any lives. Except that they ARE
and they DO. Think back...you ingrates, to a time in your life
that had you are your breaking point, and there was some song,
some movie, some book, some comedy routine, that got you through
it, or gave you just the shot you needed to gather your wits.
Start standing up for us when we're under fire, so we can make
that thing for the next person. The double edged sword for many
of us, that often prevents your intervention on our behalf, is
that when we are fighting back and ranting...it is often fun and
entertaining for spectators. The problem there is...we are few and you are
legion. And, again, that's time we could be using to make
things. Kapeesh?
...I'll move on.
Here's some comics. A couple short ones. and the the first Tex
Buckaroo story. Tex is a character I really like to draw, but
haven't done much with.
He's a cool character, but one that needs stories that are
longer, my time and the number of pages I can do per issue are
limited, and with those limitations in mind...he's no Voodoo Joe.
Alos,
To do a bunch of longer stories with him, he'd need a supporting
cast. I'd need to define the world he exists in a lot more.
You'd want angels and devil's involved and that'd require me
building up what those worlds are (heaven and hell). Which is
something I don't want to do. Because, for one thing that's been
done many times before and done very well. It's a mine that's
been "pinched out", in my opinion. I won't pretend I couldn't figure out some
different take on heaven and hell and the hierarchy of their
inhabitants, but that'd require me to find a bunch of other
content that has delved into those subjects, to make sure I'm
not doing the same thing. All that time and effort could be
better spend on Voodoo Joe.
The shame of it, for me is, he's really fun to draw, and even
fun to write. He's similar to Baron Von Donut's boss, in a way.
In that they both live off trying to get circular logic over.
Anyhoo...
