Sometimes you write something and it gets taken the wrong way. Last week, for instance, a post about EMI criticized the prevailing online consensus about the free-ness of music. Now, since the post didn’t say anything about the many bad things major labels do, some thought that the post was taking the side of major labels and the RIAA. Not true, but fair enough. One of the problems with blogs as a platform is that they make it much easier to criticize things other people say than to offer a cohesive and nuanced position of your own. Here, then, is one take on the decline and fall of the music business and related issues (the RIAA, DMCA, downloading, layoffs, indie as a model, creative commons, etc.). The bottom line: everyone is going to have to accept that things are going to get a little worse.
And everyone means everyone, particularly the three main groups involved: the music industry, music listeners, and musicians. The music biz is going to have to accept, just as free-music advocates say, that their practices are driving away consumers. They are also going to have to accept–and this may be the real problem–that the glamorous good times of the music biz are at an end, maybe forever. No more parties in sex clubs. No more expensing cocaine. No more being a “cool” marketing executive. The industry is going to have to become a lot more financially efficient. This is, of course, already the case for the workers in the trenches, who are doubling up on duties and getting laid off and receiving no raises for years on end. The people that are going to have to accept this, unfortunately, are the executives. And they have no real reason to except the survival of their business. Compared to free cocaine, keeping your company profitable probably seems less important.
Bands, on the other hand, have made the adjustment already. Sure, they get rockstar perks if they can, but the fact that there are so many songs about acting like a rockstar means that most people aren’t living like rockstars anymore. Bands know what’s up, and while they don’t like it, they’ve largely learned to live with it. They’ve cut costs, become more efficient, and downgraded their expectations. They’ve had to in order to survive.
Listeners, though, need to make an adjustment too. They have to–have to–accept that they can’t not pay for music and expect it to still be around, at least not in the same form. We have to remember that the current situation has only arisen in the last few years. That means that there’s still funding out there, that bands and labels and investors are still hoping things will blow over. But if the music biz continues to be unprofitable, then companies simply won’t be able to get funding or credit anymore, which means they won’t be able to pay for the things necessary to distribute even free music, like mastering, server space, bandwidth, and so forth. And while bands never expect to make a living making music, if it becomes clear that making music is becoming a hobby–something you put lots of your own money into without any hope of return–then a lot fewer people are going to be able to make music at all. Just like with the music biz, it’s not in the self-interest of individual listeners to accept this. Indeed, it’s a fantastic example of the tragedy of the commons. Which means, duh, that government’s going to have to step in and do something about it.
The people in this debate need to recognize that the people in the middle, ultimately, are the bands. People in bands want to make money from music, but they also want to get music for free, because they like music and are broke. Musicians are the ones actively navigating this landscape every day. The other two sides are pulling from opposite ends of the spectrum, and that makes them extremists. Yes, record companies use over-the-top language, unfairly recruit the government for their side, and are clinging desperately to something that’s slipping away from their grasp. But copyfighters are also using over-the-top language, recruit the masses of self-interested listeners for their side, and are clinging desperately to something that they must know, in their heart of hearts, fundamentally isn’t sustainable.
The idea is constantly brought up that you don’t need money to make music anymore, that it’s not costing anyone anything, and so why shouldn’t it be free? This is bullshit. A lot of the people promoting this idea are writers, and this seems more reasonable to writers since they can make art without any up-front money. But almost every other artistic genre requires money, from a little to a lot, if ideas are going to be realized. Visual art is fundamentally impossible without money, since you have to buy materials. Movies are impossible without money, at least if you want to make a good movie and have lighting and sets and like that. Classical music and opera are certainly impossible without money, at least if you want to actually perform them. And dancers need costumes!
The key caveat here is “if you want to make a good” whatever. It is possible to make music totally for free, assuming you are middle-class and have a computer already. But it’s very limiting in terms of what you’re going to do. Maybe one of the key problems with music no longer coming to listeners as a physical object is that they tend to think the production of the music involved no physical objects either. But most music does, at least if it’s going to be good, and physical objects, regrettably, cost a lot. Sure, Girl Talk’s music can be made with nothing but a laptop. But do we really want all our music to sound like Girl Talk?
Let’s be clear: record companies are odious, odious things, and your author has worked for them, and had enough friends summarily fired by major labels to not have a particularly bright view of them, either. But one of the harsh realities of art is that bad people and things can create great art as well as good people and things. This applies to major labels as surely as it does to assholes and spousal abusers. Major labels, for all their flaws, are very good at giving artists money to make art (even if they’re bad at giving artists money they are owed after they make the art). The vast majority of great pop music was made under the auspices of major labels, and that’s not an accident. Money is necessary for music to sound good. Artistic visions should not have to be cheap to be realized. We would be much poorer off as a culture if that were the case.
So what are we going to do about all this? Nothing, I suspect. Everything will implode in a few years, and everyone will freak out and finally come to a solution. It would be better for everyone if that didn’t happen, because it’s going to make pop music a much different beast than it is now. It might make things a little more pleasant in the meantime, however, if we all recognized that the other side has a point, too.
The one thing you didn’t mention about artists and money is time. No matter what you’re doing, every moment spent on non-paying art is a moment you’re not making the money you need to live and make your art in the first place. That’s what advances are all about, giving musicians the time to concentrate on their music and not worry about paying their rent. And no matter how many financial shenanigans the majors engage in, and how many strings are attached, they’ve been pretty generous (often over-generous) about advances, and a lot of great music has been made with the time those advances bought for artists. Not that the labels don’t use that as leverage to get their hooks into people, but they’re able to do that because time isn’t just a luxury, it’s a neccesity, and you always have to pay for it.
@The Illiterate: This is something that I think is lost in a lot of the discussion about free music–the notion of opportunity cost. Maybe it’s the wannabe economist in me (nb: I got a D in Macroeconomics as a freshman so I’m definitely more “wanna” than “be”) but I always get frustrated when people talk in such a way that they think music just, poof, happens.
@The Illiterate: Excellently put. It takes time to make new art, and time to hone your craft to a point where you can make quality art.
Sure, Girl Talk’s music can be made with nothing but a laptop. But do we really want all our music to sound like Girl Talk?
Granted, I’ve never been able to listen to more than a minute of so of Girl Talk, but considering it seems to be all based on sampling previously created music–some of which probably required those old-fashioned things called “instruments” (which, incidentally, also cost money to own and maintain)–isn’t that ultimately a dead end for new music anyway?
@Poubelle: Pah, give me a hobo’s toenail clippings and an old Starbucks cup, & I’ll make you some free maracas right now. Also, guitarists can go back to catgut strings, provided they’ve got adequate hunting skills.
Great argument. Lots of good sense in there.
Above points about advances are well-taken. However, if what an artist can express is defined by spectacle and expense, they probably didn’t have a whole lot to say in the first place. I still consider paying for the things I like a moral obligation. However, I’m also kind of psyched about the forthcoming atomization of the notion of popular music. I want good work to be rewarded, but I think that the fact that most of the people whose concern is getting paid will have been driven out will ultimateley serve to make things more genuine. I want to hear a hundred people trying to make their answer to “Born to Run” with jagged midi, bedroom acoustic guitar anti-heroics, and Girl-talk style collage explosions. I want people spilling their souls because they have souls to spill, not because it’s a career path. The Wall Of Sound, the advances, and all that other shit was fun. However, that paradigm ultimateley defines less than a century of the human enterprise of music making. Making a tabula-rasa style arguement that presupposes some transcendant, monolithic notion of Pop music as a platonically ideal industrial product ignores how many metrics there really are and how many ways those metrics can be played with and against different limitations. Once things have imploded, there will still be people making a living off of music. It may only happen for fifteen minutes at a time, imagine blog turnaround exponentiated to career turnaround, but it will happen for some artists. I’m not saying it will be completeley just, but then it never was. What I’m saying is that it will be fascinating, infuriating, and worthy of our attention; just like it is now.
#7 The comfort and ease that comes with downloading
As someone currently involved with an indie label on the online marketing aspect, it’s difficult to stop downloading or browsing sites which feature ‘consequence’ free mp3s. The sites all advocate for the purchasing of music (on my own radio program and podcast do the same) but the simple and unfortunate truth is that the industry is limping along because people just like downloading. It’s a hard habit to fix when every day there is a new mp3 to have, another pre-release or preview album or even retail copy advance of a cd available days and weeks before it’s slated to hit the streets.
While on a blog hunt last night, I found a copy of Butch Walker’s upcoming cd Sycamore Meadows (a great worthwhile cd to buy by the way) on a website that I didn’t recognize. Earlier in the week, myself a group of online reps spent the day packing, posting and carrying these advance cds for delivery and here it was in all it’s downloadable glory. While we have our own copies (I’m not pointing fingers) it’s easy to see how getting a free copy of a CD is more fun than buying it. You might even say that big box retailers helped because they’re offering exclusive content or bonus discs (CD/DVD sometimes both) and these has subsequently resulted in people flocking to get more for their 10 dollars than going to a ‘record store’. Or just waiting until a kindhearted torrent user uploads their purchase for your downloading pleasure.
The music industry, like the radio industry, hasn’t adapted to the change in technology nor has it made an effort to woo the creators of such technology to make a means for both parties to make some cash.
That longwinded response aside,
Butch Walker’s Sycamore Meadows is available November 11th.
@RaptorAvatar: Ay yi yi, dude.
“…bedroom acoustic guitar anti-heroics, and Girl-talk style collage explosions…”
Question, are you some sort of demon planning my version of hell? If so, then spot on!
“I think that the fact that most of the people whose concern is getting paid will have been driven out will ultimateley serve to make things more genuine.”
So, let’s say you went to a conservatory for music (a waste of time, seeing as apparently all you need is to have gotten through Hal Leonard Book 2 and “soul”), why shouldn’t you be rewarded for your time and study the way I was for attending college? Why is my corporate sell-out work more worthy of reward than music? …and don’t even get me started on a Girl Talk fan’s idea of “genuine.”
“The Wall Of Sound, the advances, and all that other shit was fun.” Where’s your sense of adventure? Stuff on the cheap can always be made on the cheap, but encouraging the obsolescence of music that can’t be made in a bedroom with a Mac means that we’ll have a glut of cheap amateur music that we’d have foisted upon us anyway…and little else. By my math, that is a net loss.
@RaptorAvatar: The Wall Of Sound, the advances, and all that other shit was fun. However, that paradigm ultimately defines less than a century of the human enterprise of music making.
Less than a century? Have you ever listened to Mahler? Beethoven? Gregorian chants (the real thing, that is, not that modern new-age endorsed horseshit)? Talk about your fucking Wall of Sound. And they all had advances (i.e., patrons) of one form or another, who guaranteed they had time to work.
And the “forthcoming atomization of the notion of popular music”? Already happened. Happens every thirty years or so, in fact, like clockwork. What we’re experiencing now is the regular leveling of the playing field. And then, up we (or somebody, anyhow) rise.
@janine:
*I wouldn’t say “encouraging” so much as assuming the writing is on the wall for music as the industrial product we currently know it as. I guess I’m trying to reframe things in DIY futurist terms instead of presuming that cheap=innateley shitty. Everything is contextual.
*I just pulled those 3 things off the top of my head. I like that idea now that I think about it, though.
*In most artforms you do a shit ton of work for free just in order to get good. You’d better be an amateur, at least in the Latin sense, or you’ll probably quit.
*I wasn’t making a moral arguement about the future of things, note my last line, “I’m not saying it will be completeley just, but then it never was. What I’m saying is that it will be fascinating, infuriating, and worthy of our attention; just like it is now.” However, I did frame paying for good music as a moral imperative, which means that every consumer is ideally voting for who does “go pro.”
*If someone is forking over for conservatory training, that’s their perogative. What you need to know depends on what you want to make.
*Girl Talk is where Quentin Tarentino was 10-15 years ago, sublimeley excellent and successful enough that he can afford to wait out the people who don’t get it yet.
Do the people that think genius comes free ever talk to actual working musicans? I currently need an electric piano to realize my artistic visions; and working 60 hour weeks to get it has severly cut into my rehearsal time. Why do I bother when I have a Casio at home? Because I’m a fucking artist and I’m tired and hungry and don’t need silly interneters telling me how to go about my business.
Secondly, laptops and “antiheroics” may sound good in blogland, but they translate very poorly into a live setting.
This is really one of the best things I’ve read in a long time about all the aspects of the industry. Props!
@K-Rex: Do the people that think genius comes free ever talk to actual working musicians? Of course not. Then we wouldn’t be having this discussion.