New Year's Resolutions, Part 2

My last post was devoted to corporate identity, and the ramifications of misidentifiying the responsibilities of corporations as "individual entities." It was also a bit of a rant. I want to take some time now to look at the positive side of that issue. This post also brings the discussion back to the world of art-makers, to their interactions with society and it's agents.

We must remember that all those who engage in creative enterprises face the question of how to determine a metric for valuation that honors both our individual skills and measurable potential impact on society. In fact, the question of valuation is one of the most challenging topics for any industry, and particularly with regard to how we can quantify the non-quantitative. How can we count into the equation the intangible measurements of success, those that lie beyond the bottom-lines of profit maximation and cost reduction?

This is an issue which touches all artists. I recently attended a piano teachers' conference where one panel was addressing the question of valuation, and one member advocated the dramatic raising of teacher fees for those who undervalue their potential earning power. "Stop charging $10 per hour," the speaker admonished, "because it is you who prevent the rest us from maintaining an adequate living. You are devaluing our field."

In many ways this panelist was correct: all-too-often piano teachers seeking to make casual, supplementary income don't bother to address how their earning power could increase. They also often fail to address the aggregate effect of setting the fee ceiling so low. In an ideal world, we could all collectively set our fees up to, say $100 per hour, if we included all the qualititative implications of our teaching. The increase in academic performance that corollates with music study, the predilection towards mathematical success, and the other positive behavioral patterns associated with students who pursue long-term piano study could, hypothetically, be used to support such a tuition hike. And we would all have to do so in tandem, AS a collective.

But what of the places where the current pricing norm is $20 per hour? Who could waltz into that town with the request that patrons pay five times the normal rate for the same service? Obviously, one would have to promise that he or she could offer many times the value to justify that kind of increase. How? For 3 hour-long lessons instead of the typical 30 minute offerings? I don't think so. We'd have to find ways of calculating all those non-quantifiable attributes our teaching offers. We'd have to show how our teaching does more than teach - how it empowers, how it engages, how it stimulates, how it frees. This is the true obstacle for most of us, as it requires a whole new perspective on our achievements. It also calls us to look forward to see the potential future accomplishments of our students.

Of course, there are some corporate models in other industries where "unquantifiable" assets have not only been accounted for, they have been leveraged to create more value for those who cultivate them. Apple, for example, is not (technically) an innovator. It didn't create the first MP3 player, the first SmartPhone, or the first desktop computer. But it DID find ways of making these technologies more accessible, more attractive, and trendy. In the process the engineers at Apple - like other companies, such as Google and Virgin Entertainment - have found ways of revealing the potentially "qualifiable" assets that these technologies possess. You want the iPod because it's fun to use, because using the iPod isn't just functional, it's entertaining, and because it brightens your day. That is why Apple's grip on that market is so powerful, and why it is continually the trend-setting brand in mobile technology. The just-enveiled Mac Tablet (or iPad) is the latest example of their impact.

Now we must find ways of 1) measuring our impact on society through our art-making, and then 2) developing a metric for valuation that fairly compensates us for our work. I don't know many pianists who would rather sell shoes than play or teach, it's just that most don't imagine that a new horizon exists for sustainable earning power AS professional musicians. This must be done on an individual basis, of course, due both to the varied micro-economic settings of artists and their personal levels of training and social attributes.

So here's resolution number two: this year, I promise to task myself on the question of how we can achieve a better benchmark for artistic work, and help others recognize a new and improved vision for their future as professional artists.