# Why bad art keeps getting made When I walk out of a disappointing movie, the theater does not charge me less. If I walk out moved by something I will remember for years, it does not charge me more. The purchase happened before either experience was available. Both tickets recorded the same thing: someone wanted to see the movie enough to pay for it. That helps explain why disappointing art can be commercially successful, while work that people deeply appreciate can struggle to support the people who make it. We are often paying at the wrong moment to reward the thing we say we value. ## What the ticket measures I distinguish between wanting and liking. Wanting pulls me toward an experience I have not yet had. Liking is what happens when I encounter it. I can want something intensely and discover that I do not enjoy it. I can also enjoy something I had almost no desire to try. A trailer works primarily on the first side of that distinction. It creates anticipation. The movie has to do something with the attention the trailer earned. Legally and practically, a ticket buys access to the film. But from the seller's perspective, the immediate commercial task is to get me to buy that access. The revenue arrives when I act on my expectation, before the movie has delivered its experience. This means a production company has two different problems to solve. It can make a film people will be glad they watched. It can also make people believe they will be glad they watched it. Those goals overlap. They are not identical. An advertisement can make a mediocre movie look excellent. A difficult, original film may provide an extraordinary experience that is almost impossible to explain in a trailer. One can be easier to sell even when the other is more rewarding to receive. ## Engineering the desire From this perspective, marketing is not merely an announcement that the product exists. It manufactures something commercially valuable: the desire to buy a ticket. That work can begin before filming. A recognizable character, a familiar title, a star, or a premise that fits neatly on a poster gives the campaign something it can sell. These choices can serve a wonderful film. They also have value independent of how well the film turns out. The expense is substantial. Deadline estimated that *It Ends With Us* cost $25 million to produce and had a $60 million prints-and-advertising spend.[1] That is an example of the scale of selling a release, not a judgment about that particular movie's quality, and not a universal budget ratio. There is nothing inherently wrong with helping people discover art. An unknown masterpiece cannot affect someone who never encounters it. Distribution and honest communication have real value. But there is a difference between helping an audience find an experience it will appreciate and creating enough anticipation to collect its money before it can judge the experience. At the box office, both can work. Once I have bought my ticket, my disappointment does not reverse that sale. My appreciation does not automatically add another payment. For that particular purchase, the main financial signal has already been sent. A disappointing film can therefore succeed at the task that gets rewarded, even if it fails at the task I wanted it to perform. ## This does not require a villain I do not think this needs to be explained by unusually greedy executives, morally defective audiences, or the idea that capitalism makes good art impossible. A company has expenses. Artists need income. Investors want some reason to believe a production can recover its costs. People working under those conditions pay attention to what produces revenue. If generating anticipation produces a more reliable return than improving the eventual experience, anticipation will attract resources. We do not need to assume that everyone involved has stopped caring about art. Many people inside the system care intensely. Their work can be excellent despite commercial pressure, or can make commercial success possible in the first place. The problem is that caring about the finished experience does not always receive the strongest financial support. This is a problem with the incentives in a particular arrangement, not an argument against exchange itself. A different arrangement can still pay artists and sustain businesses while rewarding something closer to what audiences actually value. ## Liking still matters The transaction does not end the film's entire economic life. People recommend movies they love. They return with friends, buy a copy, and become interested in the filmmaker's next project. Disappointment can damage a reputation or discourage someone else from buying a ticket. Word of mouth turns one person's experience into another person's expectation. That is a real connection between liking and revenue. It is also indirect. My enjoyment often becomes financially useful when it makes somebody else want to buy something. The system rewards the experience partly through its ability to generate another purchase made in anticipation. This is why I would not claim that all profitable films are bad or that good films never make money. There is no universal quality ranking that box-office revenue ought to reproduce. A movie I dislike may give millions of people an experience they genuinely love. By good art, I mean work that gives its audience an experience worth having. That includes pleasure, but also grief, discomfort, recognition, and a changed understanding. Good art does not have to feel pleasant throughout. My concern is that revenue from advance expectations is an incomplete measure of any of those things. It can reward work that disappoints its own audience, and overlook work that means a great deal to a smaller one. ## Pay for what the experience gave you There is another way to direct money toward art: encounter the work, discover that it matters to you, and then support the person who made it. The payment can say, “I liked what you gave me. I want you to have the resources to make more.” That is the form of patronage I want to encourage. Patronage is not a new invention, although paying after an experience is not a description of every historical patronage arrangement. Commissions and advance support answer a different need: someone must have the resources to make the work before anyone can receive it. The useful connection is between those moments. Appreciation for completed work can fund the conditions for future work. I do not have to believe the next piece is guaranteed to please me. I can support an artist because what they have already made has earned my interest in their continuing practice. That leaves room for experiments and occasional failures without making every new work sell a fresh promise before it can exist. This approach has limits. People can enjoy freely available art without contributing. New artists do not yet have a body of work or an audience to support them. Expensive productions need financing before release. Wealthy patrons can impose their preferences just as commercial distributors can. Patronage does not automatically solve those problems or produce better art. But it gives appreciation a more direct route into the artist's ability to continue. ## What music helps us see Music streaming offers a partial example of a different relationship between experience and payment. On Spotify, subscription and advertising revenue funds a royalty pool allocated by streamshare. Spotify pays rights holders, who pay artists and songwriters according to their agreements.[2] That arrangement allows listening after the first encounter to keep contributing to the revenue calculation. A song I return to because I enjoy it continues to count. The first successful act of persuasion is not the only opportunity for it to earn money. This does not establish that the best music makes the most money. Plays measure listening, not artistic worth. Promotion, playlist placement, habit, and passive listening can all matter. Nor does revenue reaching a rights holder establish that the artist receives a satisfactory income. Still, the distinction is useful. Repeated experience has a continuing role in the reward. There is something worth learning from that without pretending music has solved the economics of art. ## Reward what you want to survive A campaign's immediate task is complete when anticipation becomes a purchase. The work itself may continue giving something long afterward. I can remember a scene years later. I can return to a song through different periods of my life. An essay can change how I understand a problem long after I have forgotten why I first clicked on it. Not every good experience lasts forever, and wanting can return. But enduring appreciation gives us something more substantial to support than a promise that expires when we discover whether it was true. When money follows that appreciation, artists have more reason and more capacity to create experiences people want to keep. They may need less effort spent repeatedly persuading us to take another chance, though they will still need ways to be discovered. My suggestion is to shift more of our art spending toward what we already know we like. Use the samples, libraries, free releases, and other authorized opportunities available to discover work. When something gives you an experience you value, make supporting its creator part of your response. Buy the album you already listen to. Contribute to the writer whose essays stay with you. Support the filmmaker whose work you want to see continue. This is not permission to take paid work without consent. Where access requires payment, we still have to choose whether the uncertain experience is worth buying. But wherever the option exists, we can stop treating the desire to consume as the only moment when money changes hands. We already know how to reward someone for making us want their art. We can become more deliberate about rewarding them for making art we are glad to have received. ## Sources [1] https://deadline.com/2025/04/it-ends-with-us-movie-profit-1236377074 — Deadline: It Ends With Us production and marketing costs [2] https://loudandclear.byspotify.com/faqs/how-do-artists-and-songwriters-get-paid — Spotify: How artists and songwriters get paid