Yancey Strickler

We call it the Artists Corporation, or A Corp.

Now, I realize that a new corporate structure sounds like the last thing creative people need.

And that these two words are the exact opposite of each other.

But the A Corp just might be the door that opens up a new path to prosperity for creative people.

You can think of an A Corp as like a company, but built for how creative people work.

And we can imagine a band starts, and right from the beginning, they have an A Corp.

So they're not just five individuals, they're people who collectively own an organization that has the power to own their intellectual property, their gear, their business.

As they start to get paid, that money can automatically flow to each of the members according to preset amounts, and they could even set aside money to be saved for future projects in a treasury, or pooling together with other artist corporations to get better health care or other benefits.

As an artist corporation, they would also be able to receive both commercial revenue as well as nonprofit sources of funding.

And if a label or a bigger commercial entity came along, rather than just selling the rights to their intellectual property, which has been customary until now, as an artist corporation, they can issue shares.

So instead, that entity would make an investment in the artist corporation, allowing it to be valued more highly and everyone to benefit if things went well.

Now, these are simple things for many businesses to do, but they're very hard for creative people to do.

but artist corporations will take these same capabilities and put them in the hands of the entire creative community.

And creative people are already leaders and entrepreneurs, we just don't think of them that way.

The painter Mike Kelly once said, I started out an anarchist and a hippie, and now I'm an entrepreneur with 15 employees.

Look at Tyler, the creator, teenage hip-hop phenom turned fashion impresario and now world builder.

or Dolly Parton, who turned her incredible talent and fame into a whole world of businesses and even a theme park that celebrates where she comes from in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee.

Now, these are people at the top of their game who use their agency to take these bigger risks.

But what if you didn't have to be in the 1 percent to get that chance?

What if these sort of tools and self-determination were part of every artist's kit?