What does an agency, an agent, a manager do? They own you. They give you a set of permissions you must follow to keep the flow of money and fame that they fabricate flowing.
If a tree falls and there isn’t a publicist and/or an advertising network to create and amplify a sound through their various networks of useless middlemen and cronies does it make a sound? No.
They can literally make anyone famous using their super crony media system. I don’t have to name any names as there’s an endless string of talentless, soulless people that are famous “creatives” that you know of.
Why are “famous” creative people constantly backtracking and apologizing for seemingly innocuous things? Because their owners or handlers yanked their choke chain and forced them too. They are owned. They are handled by other people.
Whoever controls the flow of money to the artist controls the artist, and their work.
Ever see those cheesy and creepy political ad’s with a bunch of famous telling you to vote for this person or do this or do that. It’s a mix of actors, musicians, filmmakers, painters and others. When they make those things all those people are owned by the same talent agency so political and corporate powers can get those puppets to dance to any tune they want by yanking on their strings through their owners- the talent agency.
How many stories have you heard about famous directors being forced to cut scenes out of their films because a studio executive or a politician forced them to? I’ve heard a lot of them.
If someone is a “youtuber” and makes their money on that platform they are owned by youtube. If youtube threatens to limit their income on the platform through various means they can manipulate the person to do and not do certain things.
The same thing goes with sites like Patreon. If you make your living through Patreon and you do/say/create something they don’t like they can suspend or remove you from the platform. Patreon users are owned by Patreon.
If you’ve paid attention to the plight of certain “free speech” dissidents around the world you can see them having their bank accounts revoked, you can see their paypal accounts closed, you can see them cutoff from the entire legacy finance system.
The same goes for “artists” these days. If a creative were to make a work so controversial that makes the powers that be angry or annoyed they can un-person and un-bank that artist. So what happens? A lot of them censor themselves out of the fear of being un-personed and un-banked. A lot of them ask for permission to make or do certain things out of fear that their money will be cutoff/withheld from them.
Even if you are independent and not owned by a talent agency etc- we are still all owned by the legacy financial system.
Even if you are not owned by an agency or company, your family could own you in the same way. Most of the arts are playgrounds for rich kids. Rich kids depend on money from their families. If the rich kid is doing things the family doesn’t like, in most cases they can yank their chain by limiting/freezing access to their funds. They are owned, they are permissioned.
There is a new financial system being built that uses words like “permission-less” and some of the moving parts actually are permission-less.
I’m just talking about Bitcoin or Ethereum here and if you’ve used it in a permission-less fashion- your own wallet on your own device- holding the keys yourself- you know what it feels like to be a permission-less artist as no agency or government(practically speaking) can seize or block your funds no matter what you say or what art you create.
I imagine as young creatives make it big in Defi or the NFT space or whatever comes after that they are going to make some interesting things because they will be the worlds first generation of permission-less artists.
I say to this upcoming generation of creatives… a lyric I’ve used in a bunch of my songs…
Get rich with crypto and give no fucks, take no shit and burn it all if it sucks.