Short article capturing many points on a topic that could easily span a book.

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The first is a world where artists abandon their craft because they are no longer able to make a living. This future definitely hurts the quality of human life and the fulfillment and enlightenment that we gain from the arts.

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This has always been the case though. Most of the masterpieces from the renaissance come from artists who, from almost the start, were exceedingly well financed.

The best artists of the day, as with today, were intertwined with big money. You had some artists who from the start were taken in by De Medici and groomed to be great, others who went to work at art shops doing reproductions or small commissions and then those trying to make a living by themselves, many of whom I imagine could not create the art they wanted to because they couldn't support themselves on it.

Not to mention many of the masters were compromised in what they could and couldn't do with a commissioned piece. This would similarly apply to musicians through the ages, as big composers received big commissions and budgets while others, who wanted to play music, had to go do something else to bring in their support funds.

Beneath the above quoted passage seems to be a belief that all artists who want to create art should be able to earn a living from it, which isn't true and never has been.

The commissioning of art in some ways has changed and in others has not. Hugely talented painters, sculptors and even photographers still receive commissioned work and can now diversify their income by gaining a name for themselves and offering their works to the public. On the flip side, there are many talented artists who will not get work, or recognition, and will have to find another way to fund their lives.

Music as an art form has changed. It's not royalty or nobility or similar commissioning grand pieces to commemorate wars or other historical moments to be played for their friends in private performances for orchestras.

Now it's large record labels doing the commissioning. What we are seeing in the world of music, however, is huge sums of money going toward manufactured, formulaic "popular" music that is created solely to derive a profit. Many musicians who want to create music as art are struggling and will continue to do so. Music, as an art form, is a profit deriving product industry now.

That is why music as such a form has been devalued. The vast majority of successful music now is not opening people's minds, or creating a message, or drawing a picture through sound waves, it is catchy, repetitive beats that are consumed rather passively with little thought involved. It sells well, therefore it is what is published.

At the same time, orchestras across the world are closing up shop as they can no longer keep themselves running financially. The future of music as an art form, I would conclude, is certainly in jeopardy.

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The second is a world where every piece of art is an advertisement. Every video, every picture, every song is no longer the expression of the artist, but rather a vessel used to promote a product. Artists will lose their free expression in exchange for advertising space.

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Again, this has been similar going back through history. Many of the great classical masterpieces of painting and sculpture are a combination of church propaganda and a status symbol for those who commissioned it. The statute of David, for example, was a propaganda piece created to embellish the values of the Florentine republic.

Many of these pieces are also not an expression of the artist but what the artist produced under the direction of those who commissioned it. Michelangelo's Bacchus, for example, did not adhere to the expectations of the commissioner and ended up being sold off and put in someone's courtyard.

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We hope that a third world is what will emerge. We hope to reinstill the value that is being lost in digital art. We hope to combat the hijacking of art by advertising.

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First of all, I believe you have to separate entertainment and art. Most of the music and videos produced and put on the internet are entertainment, not art. A piece of EDM is there to entertain, not to engage. The vast majority of popular videos on the internet are cats, people doing stupid things, etc. they're not art.

If you separate entertainment and art, both of which are now being done in the digital realm, then the outlook appears different. Entertainment will continue along the same path it has already trod - producing more and more of that which markets well and receives good feedback from test audiences. "Viral" videos and images, laced with advertisement, will continue to seize the day in the entertainment realm.

Art, real art done for art's sake, is not under such threat though. Digital art is currently going through what photography as an art form previously went through - it's not being valued highly and largely ridiculed as an art form due to the apparent ease of it when compared with the traditional arts of painting and sculpture.

That will likely change though. Art created to capture people's imagination, to get people to think, to create a message, etc. will continue unabated so long as some people still want to commission it, or to visit art markets and buy a unique painting for themselves, and so on.

It will continue unabated because the market for these things is small and has remained so. The vast, overwhelming majority of people do not care whatsoever about art in any of its forms. The vast, overwhelming majority of people going to the Louvre, or the MMA in NYC, or wherever are not going to appreciate the art, they are going there to get a picture with a popular piece so they can show people they've been there. Go to the Louvre and you'll see - a crowd flocked around the Mona Lisa taking pictures and selfies who then, after they have the snap they want, tread through the rest of the museum for the sake of doing so and then leave.

Art for the sake of art is a small niche, it has largely been so and will remain so. Transforming digital art from its current status into that of the kind appreciated in small galleries or shows by that small niche who actually appreciate art is the challenge. Making such a such an easily reproduced art form financially valuable will be difficult. How does an art buyer appreciate a piece of digital art they've bought? As a background on their computer? As a picture in a folder they sometimes look at?

The answer will almost certainly lie, if it's to be financially feasible to derive a living from, in its creation being in the digital realm but the purchased product being in the physical realm.

The crud of the entertainment industry should largely be disregarded when discussing the two.