ABSTRACT
This chapter, the first of four in a connected series, considers the conditions that have to be satisfied if artists are to take full advantage of opportunities available for exploitation when new markets for art open up—usually as a result of technological innovation making it possible to sell to larger audiences than could feasibly be reached before. The 1960s-1980s “early music boom” is used as a case study, to refute suggestions that new artistic movements with Capital-C Cultural ambition always require government funding or enlightened private patronage to get them going. Star early musicians signed to the same record labels as their rock and pop contemporaries, displayed analogous commercial flair, and in a few cases ended up seriously rich. Few sought government funding while the boom lasted, and few appeared to need it.
The chapter asks what funders could usefully have done to promote the cause of early music during its commercially expansive phase, identifying types of intervention for which a public interest case could have been constructed (and just occasionally was). In new economic contexts, public funding agencies do well not to get involved except on the commercial fringes and in very carefully targeted ways.
