Guidelines for Strategic Cultural Investing
By John Seel, PHD
Paste Magazine is a monthly music and entertainment magazine for people who enjoy discovering new music and prize substance and songcraft over fads and pop consumerism. Their aim is to find “signs of life in music, film, and culture.” Josh Jackson, Nick Purdy, and Tim Regan-Porter began the magazine in 2002. After five short years, Paste was nominated for a National Magazine Award for General Excellence. Today, Paste publishes the fourth biggest general music magazine in the world, a CD and a DVD series and a leading website (pastemagazine.com) and owns an online advertising network (Paste Nation), a music-distribution network in 58 independent music stores (Paste Recommends), and the Paste Rock N Reel Festival.
It was an unlikely concept at its inception. Few gave it much of a chance. Paste entered a market dominated by Rolling Stone, Blender, and Spin, a market already fragmented with over 130 music magazines. Few would have thought that Decatur, Georgia, would be a logical place to begin such a culture-shaping venture. New York, Nashville, Los Angeles, or Austin seemed more likely. Moreover, its founders were not industry insiders with deep pockets and extensive networks. For years Paste went without investors, just limping along on passion and sacrifice.
It wasn’t until 2005 that angel investors caught the vision. The rest is history. Since then Paste has become a major voice in the music industry during a time of enormous change through its innovative multi-dimensional delivery platform. Their investment has paid enormous cultural dividends. Paste is an example of why the Wedgwood Circle exists.
Wedgwood Circle has a mission to foster “a network of strategically positioned believers/artists/gatekeepers/investors working to renew the culture in upstream institutions.” It is the only organization of its kind creating intentional conversations around culture formation and urging strategic investment in culture production. The digital revolution has spawned a proliferation of diverse entertainment and information channels (PDAs, cell phones, computers, Internet, gaming, independent film, and the like).
There has rarely been a more opportune time for cultural influence, particularly in art and entertainment. The mission of the Wedgwood Circle assumes an understanding of what is culture, why it is important, how culture is influenced, and what constitutes strategic cultural investing. The purpose of this essay is to provide a brief primer on these questions and to suggest guidelines for cultural investing. This does not intend to be the final word on the matter, but a provocative conversation starter.