How GenAI is taking true fans activity – and creativity – to the next level
Walled Culture has written a number of times about the true fans approach – the idea that creators can be supported directly and effectively by the people who love…
True fans, super fans, core fans: an alternative way to fund creators gains wide industry support
Walled Culture the book (free digital versions available) concluded with a look at “true fans”, an alternative way of funding creators that avoids the main problems of the…
Of true fans and superfans: the rise of an alternative business model to copyright
One of the commonest arguments from supporters of copyright is that creators need to be rewarded and that copyright is the only realistic way of doing that. The…
Generative AI in Google search is great news for the true fans model, but what about publishers?
Most of the analysis of generative AI – things like Stable Diffusion and ChatGPT – has focused on how it will affect creators. But another important aspect is…
Writers and publishers face an existential threat from AI: time to embrace the true fans model
Walled Culture has written several times about the major impact that generative AI will have on the copyright landscape. More specifically, these systems, which can create quickly and…
SoundCloud’s “Fan Powered Royalties”: a halfway house towards the true fans approach
Regular readers of this blog will know that Walled Culture is a fan of the true fans concept – the idea that creators can be supported directly and…
Why the “true fans” model is great not only for creators, but for entrepreneurs too
The “true fans” idea has appeared in many posts on this blog, and also makes an appearance in the last chapter of Walled Culture the book, as a…
How music platform Corite is turning true fans into digital street teams
The last chapter of Walled Culture – the book looks at how the many problems of copyright might be mitigated. It concludes with Kevin Kelly’s idea of “1000…
Ireland shows how to take the true fans idea to the next level, with a bold new arts funding programme
One of the recurring themes on this blog is the idea of true fans: hard-core supporters of an artist who are willing to send money directly to creators…
Why the true fans model is coming into its own now, and how to ensure its sustainability
Regular readers of this blog will know that we are big supporters of the true fans idea – that artists can thrive by building stronger connections with a…
Concordance: how Discord has become the latest hot platform for creators to engage with true fans
Walled Culture has just written about the new Scriber platform, which is designed to make it easier for artists to keep their fans close and happy. But the…
The true fans idea is not just about wishy-washy, feel-good charity: it’s a business too
Walled Culture has written several times about the “true fans” idea as an alternative approach to the traditional remuneration models employed by the copyright industry players, such as…
Moving beyond dysfunctional copyright: true fans, and a new middle class for the creator economy
It’s easy pointing out that copyright is deeply dysfunctional: there are new examples of the profound mismatch between this 18th-century law and 21st-century creativity coming to light every…
Cinema as a community experience opens the door for low-cost films funded by fans
Walled Culture the book (digital versions available free) is about the incompatibility of the traditional copyright system with the digital world, and its failure to reward creators fairly.…
Fans of open access, unite: you have nothing to lose but your chained libraries
When books were rare and extremely expensive, they were often chained to the bookcase to prevent people walking off with them, in what were known as “chained libraries”.…
European Publishers Council stays true to the tired old trope about “copyright theft”
A few weeks ago Walled Culture explored how the leaders in the generative AI world are trying to influence the future legal norms for this field. In the…