The Creative Independent

In a world full of click bait media and fake news, it is harder than ever to find authentic and meaningful content on the Internet. The utopian early days of blogging in the early 2000s, when this blog was started, seem long gone.

But the Internet is a vast place and there is quality content on it. Podcasts are a particularly bright spot right now and remain largely unpolluted.

The most exciting new entrant into my daily reads this year is The Creative Independent which quietly started publishing in late September.

The Creative Independent is a publication by artists for artists and is funded entirely by Kickstarter PBC and is advertising free. 

Their mission is to “is to educate, inspire, and grow the community of people who create or dream of creating.”

Each day a new post appears that is about a particular artist and it’s dives into something specific about them and their work. I follow The Creative Independent on Twitter and am taken into the world of art and artists every day. 

If you are looking for something a bit more meaningful to read every day or if you are an artist or have an appreciation for artists and their work, you may enjoy The Creative Independent as much as I do.

#art

Comments (Archived):

  1. William Mougayar

    Originality, integrity and authenticity are three virtues that I value the most, in content and in people. One thing I despise is intellectual dishonesty via plagiarism. The Creative Independent looks like a good project that reminds me a bit of an early TED of sorts, when they used to dig up the most original thought leaders diligently.

    1. jason wright

      William, how did SteemFest go?Do you think Steem’s model helps to eradicate blog bait?

      1. William Mougayar

        Here’s my report on Steemfest:http://www.coindesk.com/vot…They are also changing their incentives mechanics for the better.

  2. awaldstein

    More and more I pine for dives into thought and creativity.Yesterday in the gym i listened to a long form podcast from BBC on William Blake. Made my day.Your recommendation is cued up. Thanks Fred.

    1. fredwilson

      Podcasts are awesome

      1. awaldstein

        so awesome.was almost a year ago that i rediscovered them and never looked back.http://arnoldwaldstein.com/…have a great holiday Fred.

        1. pointsnfigures

          love the one from Econ Lib. Really great unbiased hard core economics.

          1. awaldstein

            have to look up what ‘unbiased’ means. i do need some digestible economics education so i’ll check it out.have a great one my friend.doing a natural mead pet nat for the bubbly tomorrow. amazing stuff and cool winemaker/apiarist from quebec that was on my panel a few weeks ago.

          2. Pointsandfigures

            For example, in their discussion on minimum wage they talk about how hard it is the measure the real macro effect and how hard it is to find strong correlation between statistics. It’s a very honest portrayal of how hard it is. Instead of pushing salt water, or freshwater economics, they have really frank discussions about “positive economics” Here is a great one with Prof Erik Hurst on Labor markets: https://soundcloud.com/econ

          3. awaldstein

            cued up for a listen–thanks!

          4. Pointsandfigures

            Nice. We are doing a 1995 Cuvaison Merlot I picked up at the NVWA. Then some A. Rafanelli. As Fred will attest to, when you get daughters that are over the age of 21, there never seems to be enough wine.

          5. awaldstein

            never is enough.will post in the morning on my choices. smaller group, we all have to drive but 6 bottles–all natural–Cal, Oregon, Spain, Italy, France Quebec.

          6. Girish Mehta

            Its great (I presume you are referring to EconTalk).

          7. Pointsandfigures

            You are correct sir. Happy Thanksgiving to you.

          8. Girish Mehta

            Russ Roberts grows on you.I have listened to most of his podcasts going back the last 7-8 years….he had Milton Friedman on in 2006, shortly before his death the same year.I don’t live in the US or celebrate Thanksgiving, but Happy Thanksgiving to You !

          9. Pointsandfigures

            Thank you. Be with us in spirit! Thanksgiving is a universal holiday. Blessings to you and your family.

          10. ShanaC

            Why do you like it

          11. Girish Mehta

            I appreciate somebody who has a point of view, but is not pushing it hard/ideologically. He is quite good in getting various perspectives on the table. And good breadth of subjects and speakers over time.As you’d expect, some episodes better than others. Overall quality maintained over a (very) long time.

      2. Jess Bachman

        I wish I had more time to listen to them.

        1. awaldstein

          In the gym, on the subway, on a flight….

          1. Jess Bachman

            I don’t partake in any of those with any regularity. I just walk the dog twice a day.

          2. awaldstein

            we find time for what matters. lots of 20 minute ones as well.

          3. Jess Bachman

            True. Thats why I play with my kids so much.

          4. awaldstein

            Good choice!

    2. William Mougayar

      Is there a way for you tag the podcasts you like and share that with others? Kind of a Fav/Like list. I’m having a tough time finding good ones.

      1. awaldstein

        no easy way so good question.

        1. William Mougayar

          On 2nd thoughts, maybe Pocket? I use it to save what I like and want to consume later. They have a chrome extension & it works natively on the iPhone from the Share up arrow.

    3. Susan Rubinsky

      Would you post a link to the Blake podcast? I’m a huge Blake fan.

      1. awaldstein

        Will search it out.Have a good holiday.

        1. Susan Rubinsky

          Happy Thanksgiving!

  3. Vendita Auto

    Twitter is the perfect megaphone 4 TCI

  4. Mario Cantin

    Tried the Creative, but sadly the UI/UX bounced me back like a baseball doing a home run.The bar is so very high these days for anything to break through as we all have too much to read.Beyond capital is attention scarcity, right?

  5. Tom Labus

    Thanks for the info. Sounds great!!

  6. jason wright

    “Podcasts…remain largely unpolluted.”The linearity of audio and video content consumption is difficult to interrupt without risking hacking off the audience and losing ears and eyes permanently.When there are crude (like telly) commercial interruptions i skip over them.Would one pay for high quality content free of pollution? I might.

    1. Joe Cardillo

      That’s the question journalism and content creators are grappling with overall. The answer on the web / mobile so far has been, not very much.But I think it’s also because people who are in the bundling business (publishers) don’t necessarily understand the switch to decentralized, distributed information. There are people paying $3-5 a month for many creative, ad free things. The scale-able publishing game these days is in being the platform they depend on.

    2. fredwilson

      long form is much harder to pollute. and harder to create.

      1. jason wright

        so web 3.0 as a fork of 2.0, with purity and pollution going their separate ways, with long form being economically created and sustained (the hard) by subscription/ funding models innovating on decentralised networks?

      2. ShanaC

        And more expensive

        1. jason wright

          is that an immutable rule of long form?

          1. ShanaC

            Possibly. You have time and (nonfiction) research or (fiction) planning costs.

    3. Girish Mehta

      Am a reasonably heavy consumer of podcasts, and can’t think of a single one where I am distracted by ads.I would gladly pay for quality content free of pollution, and presently get quality podcast content without pollution for free.

      1. jason wright

        Jason Calacanis interrupts his interviews with sponsor messages, which bug me, but they help to pay the production costs i assume.How do people cover their costs?

        1. Vasudev Ram

          I listen to some tech podcasts, some of which are ad-sponsored – as long as the ad does not go on for too long and is tasteful and not jarring / blaring, I don’t mind them.

  7. VincentWright

    Fred:Your continual introducing us to gems like The Creative Independent makes it hard to “quit you”! :-)Not only is their business mission beautifully argued but, also their social media. (As attested to by their usage of their Twitter account … which I just started reading and following…)In addition, your allusion to Kickstarter PBC forced me to have to open up a whole buncha Chrome tabs to quickly read up on the “PBC” part … (which was new to me … with respect to Kickstarter.)And that lead me to reading Kickstarter’s fantastic feeling charter! (At: https://www.kickstarter.com… )Thanks for yet another gem, Fred!#keepSTRONG … and Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours!

  8. heather

    Thanks for the tip Fred. Great brainfood. The recent ‘cast reminded me of the joy of observation and capturing moments using a Polaroid during Thanksgivings past. Will keep tuning in for more creative inspiration.

  9. kirklove

    Been digging this site since it launched.

  10. pointsnfigures

    I subscribe to the One Weekly. It’s a weekly newsletter from OneDesignCompany.com. http://weekly.onedesigncomp… Opens my eyes to that world in a different way. I also follow a couple of Tumblr blogs that are design, and art. I am pleasantly surprised how much that world can bleed into hard core startup world.

  11. Richard

    Ha! Want to wake yourself up from the slumber of media? It will never be in an app. After all these years, there remains no substitute for the strolling the stacks of a college library (ps don’t forget to give generously to this great resource!!).

  12. LE

    In a world full of click bait media and fake newsMade me think of “In a world” about voiceover artists [1]:https://www.youtube.com/wat…[1] On Netflix.

  13. jason wright

    fake and authentic.is fake the creation of a thing with the primary intention to deceive?is authentic creation without thought beyond the thing created?

    1. Lawrence Brass

      The authentic, the one you see in the mirror every morning.Who is the groomed one stepping out the door every day?

  14. Lawrence Brass

    I am experimenting trying to convert some articles in The Creative Independent to speech, to hear them as podcasts. Tried in Linux and macOS but I have not achieved an acceptable or convincing (lively) quality. Some voices in the mac breathe before reading a sentence, which somewhat helps, but it still not convincing. Any ideas?Considering all the AI hype, text to speech still has long way to go.

  15. ShanaC

    Something I realized a long time agoContent will always go through cycles of getting better and better, because it’s low risk to create and higher risk to optimizeSo, there will always be people willing to break new ground