How Artist Corporations became law
The Artist Corporation (A-Corp) is a new legal business form designed specifically for artists and creators. It simplifies shared ownership, protects creative missions and intellectual property, and creates infrastructure for collaboration and future benefits like group healthcare. This piece explains how the A-Corp came to be.<br>For an audio version of this post, listen on Apple, Spotify, or below.
How Artist Corporations Became Law — NCE 02.15<br>0:00/1743.5755<br>1×
The hearing<br>It's an unseasonably snowy Spring morning in Denver, and the legislative advisor I'm working with is stressed. We're in the basement of Colorado's ornate Capitol Building in a hearing room. Thirteen representatives from the House Business Affairs & Labor Committee of the Colorado House of Representatives sit on a riser in front of us. Our bill — the Colorado Artist Companies Act — is being considered by this group for the first time.<br>The Committee Chair calls the meeting to order, and invites the bill's House co-sponsors — Democrat Matthew Martinez and Republican Rick Taggart — to introduce it. Each speaks to the bill from their perspective. Martinez, a musician who represents a majority Latino district, speaks about the challenges of making a living as a creative person. Taggart, a rancher, shares the positive economic impact the arts have in rural areas like his.<br>The legislators begin asking questions. Several skeptical. What does this do for an artist? How was this different than what was here? Explain to me how this works.<br>Martinez and Taggart handle the questions well. But watching from the audience without being able to speak is agonizing. We've learned through many iterations how to tell this story. This is the moment to share it. For now, we have to wait.<br>Coming into the meeting, our advisor had been confident. But now, faced with one of the last consequential hurdles in our multi-year effort, they seem less certain.<br>"This is closer than I thought," he says.<br>"How close?" I ask.<br>He tallies two columns on his notepad.<br>"7-6."<br>He leans in.<br>"And I'm not sure which way."<br>The spark<br>It's two years earlier. Summer of 2024. The Artist Corporation idea is nowhere in our imagination. Instead we're overwhelmed by printing and shipping The Dark Forest Anthology of the Internet, a book we'd published featuring a dozen authors that was selling well — earning six figures in book sales in less than a year.<br>One day an old friend who works with a large philanthropy reaches out. She's supporting a cohort of notable artists and asks if I can speak with them about creative entrepreneurship. I agree, and soon am immersed in a series of conversations about how artists approach their work. One tidbit especially stands out: many had made custom, complicated legal structures that were strikingly similar to access funding. Our friend remarked that people were hiring lawyers to repeatedly make these similar but bespoke structures for artists, many of whom ultimately regretted the administrative burdens they created.<br>Two weeks later, I'm struggling with the process of creating an LLC for the Dark Forest group. My intention is to make a basic structure that reflects how we operate: shared IP, distributed ownership, and a collective treasury to fund future work. Legally describing that proves to be more frustrating and expensive than expected.<br>Why was it so hard to make something that reflected a creative practice without spending a bunch of time and money to do it?<br>Peace, love, and corporations<br>Why do we need legal containers at all?<br>Many of us come up with idealized concepts of creative environments where money is neither an obstacle nor explicitly a goal. In this world, everyone magically has enough and staying "pure" means keeping the business side of things as far away from art-making as possible.<br>This is the mindset I grew up with, especially as a fan of Dischord punk and hardcore, with its strong egalitarian streak that believes money always corrupts. There's truth to this, but generally the longer you last in your career, the less political money becomes and the more it becomes practical financial sustainability.<br>Taking good care of the business side of art-making is the foundation for true independence, as evidenced by the punk band the Minutemen's credo of "jam econo." The less you spend on luxuries, the more time you can spend on art. The better you understand the infrastructure of your practice, the more you're able to influence it.<br>I didn’t fully appreciate this until Kickstarter, when we began to explore the idea of converting our company to become a Public Benefit Corporation, a new legal container that let companies have legally protected non-financial goals. We'd originally made Kickstarter a Delaware C-Corporation on the advice of our then-lawyers. We knew this form was meant for traditional businesses, but we vowed to be ourselves anyway. We didn't want to sell or go public. We wanted to stay independent...