Having been on the road a good 14 months now, I haven’t had as many opportunities to support my favorite artists this year.  But that’s why I came up with this whole True Fan Boost idea in the first place, isn’t it?  To use Labor Day as a reminder to do just that!

So even though I’m unemployed and living off savings, I’m going to make sure to give at least a little something to the people’s whose work I enjoy.

Jonathan Coulton

Jonathan Coulton, who made headlines this year with his interview on NPR, has just released a new album — perfectly timed to coincide with my Labor Day purchase!  I just picked up the $10 digital download version of Artifical Heart, but I’ve yet to listen to it (I’ll wait until I have the time to give the first listen my full attention.)  JoCo’s put a lot of his music out there already, but this album is different.  It’s his first studio-produced outing and also his first major album with a theme.  I also see he’s got Suzanne Vega on there!  I’m looking forward to this.

But I’ll confess one thing.  I haven’t played Portal 2 yet, so I removed one song from my playlist until I first listen to it at the end of the game.  Spoilers!

Roam The Planet

If you’ve been following along on our travel site, Postcard Valet, you’ve probably heard me mention a couple new friends.  We met Wendy and Dusty in Ecuador, hooked up with them again in Peru, Bolivia, and Argentina, and even lived in the same building for a time in Buenos Aires.  We expect to see them again in Thailand in a couple months, too.

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If you scroll back through my blog, you can read all you want about my thoughts on the True Fan Boost – an idea I had after reading Kevin Kelly’s 1000 True Fans article.  In a nutshell, every Labor Day I make sure to give some of my money to the independent artists, programmers,  and content creators whose work I enjoy and, further, to highlight their work on my blog so that others may find them, too.

Back when I was a starving college student, I thought nothing of pirating the occasional song, but over the last few years, I’ve watched the business model for digital content change.  You can get anything for free now… if you’re willing to set your morals aside.  Music, books, movies, TV shows, comics, software… the list goes on and on.  Content creators coming onto the scene today recognize this reality and build their business models around free content.

For example:

Jonathan Coulton lets you listen to all his music for free.
Penny Arcade and PVP Online post their web comics online for free.
Lee Goldberg is converting his out-of-print books to Kindle versions.
And many, many programmers are offering free versions of their software online.

In each of these cases, the creators have alternative revenue sources.  Coulton sells merchandise at his concerts as well as full albums on iTunes; PA and PVP sell posters and T-shirts online; Goldberg receives royalties direct from Amazon for his eBook sales; and programmers often sell more capable versions of their software or have PayPal “donate” buttons on their web pages.

Here’s the thing:  Their content is free for the taking. We can enjoy their work without paying a cent.  But if that’s the way we want go about it (and we can — unlike out-and-out piracy, there’s no moral obligation to buy anything when artists give it away for free!), without any financial support, our favorite artists will eventually stop making things for us.

If I can help keep them going by spending some money and creating some links, I’m happy to do it. If you’ve been enjoying someone’s “free” content, even if it’s just a blog, Youtube series, or some small piece of shareware, I hope you’ll consider doing the same.

This year, as I embark on a year-long backpacking trip, I won’t have any extra room for material possessions.  Most of the support you see below will necessarily be for digital items.

After the jump, the artists and creators I’m supporting in 2010…

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Six months or so ago, Kevin Kelly wrote about a concept he called “1000 True Fans.” The idea was fairly simple: Nowadays, an artist may be able to leverage the long tail of the Internet to earn a living wage with as little as 1000 fans. I recently read over the top twenty or thirty Google results for “1000 True Fans,” catching up on the discussion. Most were enthusiastic, some tempered, others critical.

I saw a lot of top-down approaches to the idea, where the burden was on the artist to leverage his or her own fans. I got to thinking: What about a bottom-up approach? How can we, the fans, lend a helping hand to the artists whose work we enjoy?

Maybe you’re like me; maybe you’re not a capital-T, capital-F, True Fan of any particular artist, but rather a regular fan of many. Maybe, also like me, you often feel guilty that you’re not supporting these artists as much as you could be. They provide all the stuff we really want for free: the web comics, the mp3s, the podcast videos. We know they’re trying to make ends meet with their T-shirt sales, CDs, and PayPal donation buttons, but we keep telling ourselves, “I really should buy that someday,” without ever spending the 3 minutes necessary to enter our credit card information.

I believe we could harness the power of web 2.0, trust linking, or whatever else you want to call it, to give a big financial boost to our favorite artists. At least one day a year, we set aside the time to make those well-intentioned, but forgotten purchases. I would call it Fan Appreciation Day, but that’s already in use (and has exactly the opposite meaning, at least in the sports world.) Therefore, I propose we call this the True Fan Boost.

Here’s how I envision it:

We designate a day where every fan is encouraged to buy at least one item from an artist (or artists) they appreciate.  Local, indie, or mainstream – doesn’t matter – any artist that’s appreciated. 

Each blogger that participates will write an entry on the designated date with the title “True Fan Boost 2008” outlining which artists they’ve financially contributed to. Disclosure of dollar amounts is unnecessary, but links to the artists’ sites are encouraged.

The following day, searches for “True Fan Boost 2008” will yield a wealth of new artists that the fans themselves have designated worthy of our hard-earned money. Trust linking takes over, and hopefully, many new artists will be given wider exposure.

And here’s the best part: Artists whose work we enjoy will hopefully notice a large uptick in sales on or around that date. Ideally it could become something they count on, year after year.

So, the question is… WHEN?

How about Labor Day? Yes, I know that that most people aren’t in front of their computers during work holidays, but that just means we’ll have a greater signal-to-noise ratio. (You need an excuse to flex your blog’s “post on date” muscles, anyway, right?) Furthermore, sales should stand out on a holiday and even the name “Labor Day” sort of fits.

So, what do you say? Think the idea has merit? Will you join me on Monday (or Tuesday, or Friday – the timing isn’t as critical as the payment) in distributing some of our hard earned wealth to people whose work we enjoy?  (Personally, I’m looking forward to dropping a couple hundred dollars on all the DVDs, CDs, T-Shirts, comics, and books I’ve been meaning to buy for months now. It’ll be like Christmas!)

If you’ve got a suggestion for improving the concept, I’d love to hear it. It goes without saying that this won’t be a success for any artist if I’m the only one that commits.  If you’re on board, consider helping spread the word.  Also, if you’re planning to make your own True Fan Boost 2008 blog entry, by all means, use the comments below to link to your blog – I’m happy to find more artists who deserve my money!  In the meantime, I’m going to write up and pre-post my own TFB’08 entry…