What were the major historical shifts in how artists sold their work before the internet era?

For hundreds or even thousands of years, artists relied heavily on third parties like galleries and art dealers. They had extremely limited distribution—often only selling to local galleries rather than having national or global reach. These intermediaries held disproportionate power in the relationship and typically took the largest percentage of revenue, which was a major contributing factor to the ‘starving artist’ problem. Artists had very little control over their own business or customer relationships.

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Asked by a podcast host · Answered by Nick Friend · art-marketing-podcast · 2023-05-22