Art Basel and Beyond – YouTube

This video short by Josh Kasper, the founder of “Art Basel and Beyond”  provides insight to the opportunities he provides visual artists to be seen and heard beyond the reach of their studio.

To learn more about Art Basel and Beyond, check out:

Art Basel and Beyond a New Tool for Visual Artist Self-promoting | The Artist Social Network Daily

https://news.artistsocial.network/story/art-basel-and-beyond-a-new-tool-for-visual-artist-self-promoting-BmiyZYtXeULgXJCKxNU6o

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Why Investing Time or Money on Social Media Platforms is Bad for Creators

No matter the type of Creator, investing time and money into social media platforms is fool’s gold, as they own the audience you built. 

By default, I no longer have access to my Facebook Pages, as I refuse to comply with Facebook’s 2-factor login requirements they have imposed on me.

Two-factor authentication (2FA), is a method of establishing access to an online account or computer system that requires the user to provide two different types of information. With two-factor authentication, you’ll need to provide both a password and prove your identity some other way to gain access.

What did I do to have Facebook tell me I must do two-factor authentication in order to post on my Business Pages? I am being penalized for having too much organic reach. I have over 300,000 followers on six Business Pages. My brand The Street Poetz is the largest US based publisher of independent Hip-hop news on Facebook.

In 2021, Facebook forced my brother, who is our Facebook Ads account manager to do two Factor login in order to have access to our Facebook Ads account, and he complied. But just in case some funny business happened with his mobile phone or mobile phone number, he opened a Skype account and gave that as his two-factor login phone number. The beautiful thing about a Skype account is that it is web-based, therefore can be accessed anywhere, whether you have your cellphone or not. 

A Web based phone number, also known as a VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) is the number assigned through a VoIP service. Either through an app or the Internet, you enter the number on a dial pad, and functions just like a landline or mobile phone. Google Voice is a VoIP service.

Later, my brother would discover Facebook doesn’t accept web-based phone numbers for two-factor authentication. By then it was too late, and has been locked out of Facebook since April of 2021.

When Facebook came up with this crap in 2022 for me to give two-factor authentication to login into Facebook, I refused. Facebook even suggested it was planning in the future to make me jump through more hoops after complying with their 2-factor login requirement.

My Facebook story is why any digital marketer would tell you, “You must have your own website and email list,” see “It’s the #1 Reason to Own a Website.”

My brother and I paid Facebook thousands of dollars through Facebook ads to build up our page followers only to have the social media platform to reduce reach to 1%. When a recent post reached nearly a half a million organic Facebook users, which was a 200% increase of page followers, I was suddenly being treated just like those who pay Facebook for reach. 

According to Benjamin Peterson, a Certified Facebook Marketer for Brainspin:

“Facebook has made algorithm changes that reduced organic reach drastically. The changes are implemented so that anything that doesn’t interact with your page on a frequent basis will very rarely see your posts, unless they go directly to your page. What this all sums up to is that Facebook wants you to pay for advertising on their platform, by crippling your organic reach.”

The other day, Contemporary artist Rafi Perez and Jewelry designer Chloe Anjali posted, “Why I Don’t Rely On Social Media For My Art Business,” on the YouTube channel Rafi Was Here Studios. It inspired me to write this Artist Social Network post, and to post their video below.

Conclusion 

It’s fool’s gold to build a customer or fan base on these social media platforms. The graveyard of social media platforms, or the zombie-ing of features on these social media platforms are too numerous to cite. It is why investing time or money on social media platforms is bad for any small business entrepreneur, whose product or service is in the field of creativity. 

If you have had any social media platform horror or success stories, Artist Social Network and our followers would love to hear them. Just drop us a comment below, thank you.

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It’s the #1 Reason to Own a Website

Social media’s Whimsical decommissioning of features on their platforms is the number one reason to start your own website.

On August 21st, 2021, Linkedin Marketing Solutions published on LinkedIn they are decommissioning Stories. A comment by user Anita Wong says it all:

Always difficult to play catch up when you’re copying someone else, creating a unique video experience that’s unique to LinkedIn sounds far better!

All Legacy social media platforms should be ashamed of themselves for becoming too cumbersome and bureaucratic.

The Origins of Stories

In 2012, Facebook bought a photo-sharing startup called Instagram. At the time there were only 13 employees, so a one billion buyout seemed like an act of irrational exuberance.

In 2013, a 2011 startup called Snapchat created Stories. In 2016 Instagram created a Snapchat version of Stories on its platform. In 2017, YouTube created Stories on their platform. Have you ever seen one or created one? In 2020, LinkedIn and Pinterest created Stories on their platforms.

For Pinterest, Stories make sense. They are a direct rival to Instagram. But it’s not about stealing, or in the water down version “borrow your competitors ideals.” These companies prevent fresh ideas from coming to the floor, and in the case of Facebook, NBC news has reported on a lawsuit involving app developers alleging an anticompetitive scheme.

The legend of Steve Jobs is that he returned to Apple with a disgruntled workforce complaining about Microsoft. He immediately shut that shyt down. In the return of Steve Jobs at the helm of Apple, Microsoft would no longer be seen as a rival. In fact, he had no rivals nor competitors and brought us fresh ideas. That culture still exists today as Tim Cook is constantly reminding lawmakers and the General Public that “eating off your data and you don’t get too, is not our business model.”

I don’t use many social media platforms, but the ones I do use are constantly commissioning and decommissioning features. For me, it was Facebook Business Pages. Having played by the rules and not bought bots, I was able to grow a couple of pages to over a hundred thousand followers. But how did that effort benefit me today? It doesn’t. Facebook drastically has reduced the amount of followers who are exposed to one’s Facebook Business Page post. It is from that experience, my heart bleeds for the content creators who created Stories on LinkedIn.

Artist Social Network is a digital publisher of the Arts; focusing on the marketing and promotional needs of the independent artist. We believe, in order for an artist to have a successful career in their craft, they must think like, and act like, a small business.

Don’t miss out on more tips and tricks to Artist Marketing, visit The Artist Social Network Daily by clicking the link below.
The Artist Social Network Daily
(The News Daily to Artist Self Promoting)
http://news.artistsocial.network/#/

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What Financially Minded Blacks Should Know About Art

On Saturday, December 7th, at the Queen Memorial Church of God in Christ, in Oakland, California, grassroot activists, and others, will join forces in a joint fundraiser for two premier newspapers who are reporting from behind the prison wall, the California Prison Focus, and San Francisco Bay View. Proceeds for the fundraiser will be raised through a silent Prisoner Art auction.

Why should this matter to the Black middle class, or anybody who is aspiring to be middle or upper middle class, or have young children, and are looking for plausible means to fund their college education? Because art is apart of a class of instruments known as assets. This class consist of real-estate, stocks, bonds, rare coins, stamps, and others. The whole theory of the case, is to buy low and sell high. The buy and flip phenomenon of the past 30 years in real estate and day-trading, which created such online firms as ETrade, is not classical investment strategy. Classic investment strategy is to buy and hold. Any professional stockbroker will argue during a stock downturn, it is far better then a savings account, or putting your money under a mattress; that in the long-term, stocks increase in value. While historical averages do bear this out, we have come now to learn that managed stock picking accounts by Wall Street firms do not out perform indexed accounts. This fact is especially a bright spot for middle class Americans. It means a more democratized cache of stocks, being an index, can be bought into without the fees associated with a managed account. And whether one wants to accept it or not, the cultural phenomenon known as Hip Hop, is on the cusp of providing phenomenal investment returns.

What Is Hip Hop?

For the uninitiated, Hip Hop has been determined to have five elements. These elements are, MCing (oral), turntablism or DJing (aural), b-boying (physical), graffiti (visual), and knowledge. The founder of the Graffiti movement in America was a Black youth by the name of Daryl “Cornbread” McCray. Cornbread learned about Graffiti, honed his Graffiti skills, and acquired his Graffiti name, while serving time in a Pennsylvania juvenile prison. The best selling artist in the Contemporary Art Market is an African American who comes from the Graffiti Art world, Jean-Michel Basquiat. A Basquiat’s painting bought in 1984 for $20,900, sold in 2017 for 110.5-million. It increased in value by a multiple of over 5,000%. In the past 20 years, his drawings have a return index of +2,000%. In 2017, 81-year-old Agnes Gund, an American philanthropist, and arts patron, sold her 1962 Roy Lichtenstein’s, Masterpiece, for $150 million. The sale placed it among the top 15 works ever sold. $100,000,000 of the proceeds went to start the Art for Justice Fund, a five-year initiative to reform the criminal justice system through art. The fund is being further funded by other wealthy art patrons inspired by Gund’s request to follow in her footsteps. I have watched this fund go from nothing, to having a full panoply of influential Black support, like Ava DuVernay, and Michelle Alexander, just to name a few. In 2019, NBA, Philadelphia 76ers owner, Michael Rubin; NFL, New England Patriots owner, Robert Kraft; Hip-Hop Royalty, Jay-Z; and South Philadelphia Rapper, Meek Mills, created the $50,000,000 fund, Reform Alliance, another private sector fund to influence criminal justice. In February of 2016, Scott Budnick, the Executive Producer of The Hangover film franchise, and founder of The Anti-Recidivism Coalition (ARC), which includes on its Board, film actor, and former prisoner, Robert Downey Jr., wrote in an ARC newsletter that was distributed to prisoners, the following:

Part II Raising Awareness Through ART

Additionally, our team at ARC has been looking for ways to bring new supporters into this movement, to help us find re-entry programs, housing, mentoring, job training and support for people coming home. Having seen the absolutely incredible artist Behind the Walls, we are proposing doing a huge and high-profile art auction this fall to raise funds and awareness for this movement. This will not be your traditional art auction, this would be at a major museum, with celebrity art auctioneers, and the ability to raise tremendous awareness, bring in massive press, and a considerable amount of funding, all to benefit a nonprofit organization and also the artist inside (50/50). We have many board members with powerful connections in the art world, and believe art from inside could sell for 5x or 10x what it traditionally would get.

Eventually, this would only turn out to be aspirational; however, he did plan for it to be big. Including, representing a skewing of the Prisoner Art Market as a result of him and his friends bidding on these works. This was before Kim Kardashian-West’s public involvement in criminal justice reform. What most middle class Black Americans are clueless about, are the influential Blacks who made their fortune in Hip Hop, or grew up on Hip Hop, are right there in some capacity, with the Titans of the Tech industry, and other influential, wealthy Whites, who want to be involved in the reformation of the criminal justice system. It is not a far stretch to say, we are witnessing the abolition of the slavery movement, 2.0. Especially, when you consider, more African Americans are in prison or jails than ever were in slavery.

I wrote this piece, because I am one of those incarcerated African Americans who happens to be both an activist and artist, and who has been demanding from those who believe in the power of art to effect both internal and cultural change to pay us. Prison art is a primary method of raising funds for legislative reform, prison reentry programs, and to support families with a loved one behind bars. Yet the prisoner is on their own when it comes to acquiring supplies for these endeavors. They receive no monies and very little recognition for their yeoman’s work. Rewarding this type of behavior incentivize other prisoners to model this behavior. From my experience, when asking prisoners to participate in art, or to contribute works for fundraisers, they aren’t interested. With the recent release of Min. King William, aka Pyeface, The George Jackson of Rap, this story is going to get told. Since his release, from doing six years in the Feds, and 18 years in California, Pyeface has been quite active in dealing with the issues for those he just left behind in prison, and the issues facing the world he has been welcomed back into. He has been the brainchild of several fundraisers since his release that include gentrification and the prisoner press. For years, he watched the “Prisoner’s Voice” be exploited. Incarcerated men and women who lend their drawings and writings for the cause to end mass incarceration, or some other cause, without compensation. The fundraiser, Artivists In Action & Solidarity, will be raising money through a silent Prisoner Art auction, whereby 40% of sales will return back to the prisoner. Pyeface’s return to society, brings a very powerful voice to the table, not paralleled in years. When President Obama ran for presidency in 2008, he was not initially the candidate of the Black democratic establishment or Black democratic rank and file. It wasn’t until he won the Iowa Caucus that Blacks felt they had the luxury to vote for him. It was seen as a signal from White America that they could pin their hopes on him. I write this article because I want Black America to understand, I am pulling your coattails to an opportunity to invest in you and yours. It is without a doubt, that mass incarceration affects Blacks more than any other racial classification. Blacks may have been totally clueless, as a people, that their people started one of the largest art movements in the history of the world, and that one of their own, dominates the current Contemporary Art Market. I’ve laid out a strong foundation, or rather made a case, that wealthy white Americans will soon transfer their money away from institutionalizing Prison Art, to making direct contribution to the artist themselves. If my fellow, financially minded African Americans were to purchase art from one of these Prisoner Artists, prior to celebrities getting into the Prisoner Art market, you will see a return on your money. It is only a matter of time, before celebrities and other influential non-people of color get involved in the Prison Art Market. African Americans, and all Americans, who come from where I come from, lower, middle, and upper-class, this is an opportunity for you to do what the big boys do, having artwork as a part of an investment portfolio.

For more reads:
Agnes Gund, Prison Art’s $100,000,000 Patron | darealprisonart https://darealprisonart.wordpress.com/2019/11/11/a…
Jay-Z, Meek Mill Launch Prison Reform Alliance, Pledge $50M https://www.vulture.com/amp/2019/01/jay-z-meek-mill-launch-prison-reform-alliance-pledge-usd50m.html

ARTIVISTS IN ACTION & SOLIDARITY
(Prison Art Auction for the National Prisoner Press)

Saturday, December 9th, 4-7 p.m.
Queen Memorial Church of God in Christ
1324 E. 24th St.
Oakland, CA 94606
(510) 532-2752
Or donate online:
California Prison Focus http://newest.prisons.org/donate
San Francisco Bay View https://sfbayview.com/donate/

[Donald “C-Note” Hooker is a native angeleno. He is a poet, playwright, performing artist, award winning visual artist, and the King of Prison Hip Hop. His works have either been exhibited, recited, performed, or sold, from Alcatraz to Berlin. In 2017, Google Search listed him first in their search results, as both America’s, and the world’s most prolific Prisoner-Artist.]