Dear Community,
In recent times I've become more and more troubled by the level of consumerism in magic today. How many magician's do you know for being performers as opposed to creator's of magic "products". How many products do you think go on the market each year as opposed to how many live magic shows are produced? And most importantly, how much money do you think is made with the performance of magic as opposed to money made by selling secrets?
If I'm wrong, please let me know, but I believe that the answer to all of those questions indicates that there is much more emphasis placed on selling and buying tricks than there is on creating art and performing magic for lay audiences.
It disturbs me that if you have something original and good, one of the first things a magic acquaintance says is something like "Wow, you should market that."
It saddens me that there is so much time spent on creating a product that will sell well because magicians can't figure it out, or that it improve on some aspect of a method, and it looks cool, than on crafting an act that will fill lay people with wonder.
So, I'm disturbed and saddened by there being more creator's than performers. Who cares? Well, I believe you should care, because these issues have the potential to hurt the hard working performers and even the casual performer.
I don't care about magic dvds getting pirated an eighth as much as I care about the fact that they were for sale in the first place.
I know we've all got to learn somehow, but I think the HUGE market is making the information too easily available.
We've all heard the scenario of a magician performing an effect superbly, only to have a spectator Google search a description of the trick and they've found an exposure video and thus the magic is lost.
I think that the magic dies way before they see how its done. I think it dies when they see a link to an online magic store, and a product demo. They look and they find "www.penguinmagic.com" "theory11.com" "ellusionist.com" or "Geekmagic.com"
At this point its not an issue of "Oh, now I know how he does it!" It becomes an issue of "Oh... Its just something you buy."
Even, just stumbling upon one of these websites and looking for five minutes can change someone's perspective of magic being something mysterious and exotic to being "Something you buy."
What are your thoughts on this? And do you agree that the market is devaluing the performance sector of magic?
In recent times I've become more and more troubled by the level of consumerism in magic today. How many magician's do you know for being performers as opposed to creator's of magic "products". How many products do you think go on the market each year as opposed to how many live magic shows are produced? And most importantly, how much money do you think is made with the performance of magic as opposed to money made by selling secrets?
If I'm wrong, please let me know, but I believe that the answer to all of those questions indicates that there is much more emphasis placed on selling and buying tricks than there is on creating art and performing magic for lay audiences.
It disturbs me that if you have something original and good, one of the first things a magic acquaintance says is something like "Wow, you should market that."
It saddens me that there is so much time spent on creating a product that will sell well because magicians can't figure it out, or that it improve on some aspect of a method, and it looks cool, than on crafting an act that will fill lay people with wonder.
So, I'm disturbed and saddened by there being more creator's than performers. Who cares? Well, I believe you should care, because these issues have the potential to hurt the hard working performers and even the casual performer.
I don't care about magic dvds getting pirated an eighth as much as I care about the fact that they were for sale in the first place.
I know we've all got to learn somehow, but I think the HUGE market is making the information too easily available.
We've all heard the scenario of a magician performing an effect superbly, only to have a spectator Google search a description of the trick and they've found an exposure video and thus the magic is lost.
I think that the magic dies way before they see how its done. I think it dies when they see a link to an online magic store, and a product demo. They look and they find "www.penguinmagic.com" "theory11.com" "ellusionist.com" or "Geekmagic.com"
At this point its not an issue of "Oh, now I know how he does it!" It becomes an issue of "Oh... Its just something you buy."
Even, just stumbling upon one of these websites and looking for five minutes can change someone's perspective of magic being something mysterious and exotic to being "Something you buy."
What are your thoughts on this? And do you agree that the market is devaluing the performance sector of magic?
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