Creative industries contracts between art and commerce

This text explores the organisation of creative industries, including the visual and performing arts, movies, theatre, sound recordings, and book publishing. In each, artistic inputs are combined with other, hundrum inputs. But the deals that bring these inputs together are inherently problematic artists have a strong views; the muse whispers erratically, and consumer approval remains highly uncertain until all costs have been incurred. To assemble, distribute, and store creative products, business firms are organised, some employing creative personnel on long-term contracts, others dealing with them as outside contractors; agents emerge as intermediaries, negotiating contracts and matching creative talents with employers. Firms in creative industries are either small-scale pickers that concentrate on the selection and development of new creative talents or large-scale promoters that undertake the packaging and widespread distribution of established creative goods. In some activities, such as the performing arts, creative ventures facing high fixed costs turn to non-profit firms.