This'll be the last time I talk about this here (blimey, sorry for being so boring!) However, with mp3 file-sharing it seems that the initial act (as in offering it up on an mp3 blog) counts for 0.1% in the eventual dissemination of that bit of data, because the file's availability across the p2p networks will always grow exponentially. Consequently this "initial act" ought to be viewed (in my opinion) as one trebly fraught with consequence, and thus trebly considered. I'm hoping my loathsome RealAudio feed will go some way to allaying this.
I followed the link through to Down Hill Battle, and was really alarmed at what they're up to, which seems to be a "rolling together" of an antipathy to the big five labels with a tactic of encouraging file-sharing. The idea being that in file-sharing one is engaged in a resonant political act which will undermine an unwelcome staus quo. I think this is preposterous. The two processes (attempting to undermine the major labels AND sharing files) should be entirely separate. I think if you don't believe in the major labels you should get off your arse and demonstrate, or set up your own independent record label, or like dance music in Britain has done (which sadly seems to be withering on the vine) set up your own circuit of distribution. To think that sharing files, a profoundly muddy gesture, is going to herald a new era of more healthy consumer relations is horseshit. It's the lazy man's politics, and presumably the slightly euphoric tone of some of the mp3 file-sharers in part stems from this.
Actually,*even* in the light of Down Hill Struggle's faintly absurd championing of "families affected by RIAA suits" (I mean, what a cynically emotive bit of phrasing, "familes"), I'm quite sympathetic to the major labels. I've heard plenty about record companies "evil" tactics (go and read the Albini article at DHS, though hang on a minute, Albini is hardly a struggling pauper!), and for sure they've shafted some very brillliant and worthy musicians, but they're not the manifestation of single evil geniuses. Without wanting to seem too politically impotent, and too accepting of them, people ought to consider that they're the product of the risks and travails of selling music. Selling music is somewhat like drilling for oil, a label will sign 50 artists and only one will make them any money. Often as not that one successful artist will fund the others.
If the current set-up of exhibition and distribution of music collapses (it wont ENTIRELY), and y'all have the "joy" of package-less dematerialised music, then it might be worth pondering the future. If lived experience and the specifics of geography make up 75% of music's power, what would music bereft of these things sound like? It would represent a music which doesn't have recourse to people's understanding of life, but which works solely in signification to other music without signification. Like Techno innit!
Posted by Woebot at March 12, 2004 01:54 PMNo comments available on current response thread so I'm back down here with another diatribe.
A few words and then I'll shut up too. Hopefully.
Disclosure: Prolly posting this over at me blog again. Yr. response welcome.
Your points regarding the issue of being the fount of distribution for a potentially unlimited stream of copies are valid and certainly something I've considered quite a bit. In some ways I find this inevitable; music as a form of communication is open to Burrough's Law, but I'm aware that kind of an argument is a tetch intellectually lazy. What's the alternative tho'? How can I share the music that I find underappreciated and unencouraged by major labels who don't find it profit-worthy to hype?
FWIW, I think a compromise could be struck. How difficult would it be to create a strain of MP3's with a finite listening life? Deteriorating DVD's are already in existence for rental with just such intention; that technology seems wrongheaded in that it creates useless junk by the truckload. File deterioration would not.
As long as I'm talking out my ass, why not spec a thee or four song repeat life for a file spawned from some sort of a "motherfile" owned by the copyright holder? These "babyfiles" (bp3?) would be, by design, uncopyable. At the end of the file life, a link or vocal track would appear telling you where to go to buy said song or album. A truly dedicated pirate could always circumvent the system by making a shitload of babyfile copies, but that strikes me as fairly easily combattable (registration for use of motherfile, etc.). Big studios and small companies alike could spread out earmemes with the awareness that they've not unleashed an infinite number of monkeys to recopy the track foreverandeveramen.
I dunno. I know nothing about tech, but it seems like a milliondollaridea that could probably be developed in a few months. Anybody wanna help a brother out with this one?
The capital "M" Music industry has been slow to recognize the facts of the matter, that for better or for worse and regardless of the considerable weight of legal or ethal clarity, the p2p public has them over a barrel. You pretty much lost us when recordable CD's surfaced at less than a quarter a shot. Where's the other twenty bucks on my "American Life" going? Madonna's botox? Unlikely. The profit margin has been too thick for too long and peoples is rightfully pissed.
Hearing Sony complain about how "one big artist supports the other hundred that don't make it" never fails to amaze. First and foremost, they have a MASSIVE catalog to fall back on for production costs. Unearth that catalog, especially the out of print stuff, and net distribute. Next up, MAKE BETTER DECISIONS. Nabisco doesn't complain that an experimental Peanut Butter Oreo is a loss leader for Chips Ahoy! and use that as an excuse to maintain an unreasonable price for said chocchips. It's just bad business. If the big labels sign fewer artists, this is HARDLY the death of music. Instead, I think it could lead to a new golden age for independent labels and home studios and the exclusion of lots of crap music in a leaner marketplace.
File sharing, as a community, has proven itself extermination proof. Had big industry not taken an attackdog scare position, outrageously alienating its customer base, a middle ground could almost certainly have been found. Instead we have both sides screaming over the fence. Conversations overheard by/had with record execs on my part over the course of the last two years generally deteriorate into "Well, I'll just have my lawyers see about that!" Conversations with/overheard from filesharers generally boils down to "Fuck em". This is a pair of kids trying to take their ball and go home... only it's not really anyone's ball. We're moving into Israel/Palestine confrontation and it's time to call truce.
If any progress is going to be made, the industry needs to:
1) Call an IMMEDIATE detente on all lawsuits. NB: YOU ARE PISSING OFF YOUR MOST LOYAL CUSTOMERS. Gestapo tactics have had the desired effect in the press, now back off. Do it on the down low if necessary, but DO IT.
2) Acknowledge that your buyers are not hoods. We WILL pay for music at a reasonable price point (that "20 pence" comment in the previous thread makes more sense) provided that you can make a reasonable. The undisputable success of iTunes proves this; now give us a few reasonable alternatives (without all the necessary accompanying software, if you please) and start the price wars.
3) Deep breath here: the days of wine and roses are over. Scale back the glitz and glamour. Million dollar video budgets could be better served with ten grand in internet distribution. Smaller advances, more royalty sharing with the artists. Traditional A&R is officially obsolete; god bless these people, a few of them are friends BUT they're selling buggy whips. Time to phase them out.
FILESHARERS also need to change. We gotta bite the bullet and find a way to put our money where our mouth is. This isn't a revolution about not paying for music, it's about music, period.
We need to recognize that the current situation is untenable and need to remain open to new ideas regarding the nature of change. A subscription service for P2P quality and diversity download use, a more reasonable "pay for play" system, buying cd's exclusively direct from the artist or (more likely) some as yet undreamed alternative HAS to supplant the current situation. We rioted. Now it's time to figure out how SOME sort of distribution system can coexist with the consumer, one that enriches the artist more and screws the public less than the current setup.
Obviously our opinions regarding Downhill Battle differ. One quibble with your argument: I don't think "families" is a "cynical bit of emotive" wording at all. Those lawsuits against bewildered eighty year olds were attacks on the owner of the ISP subscriber, not necessarily the music sharer. An intelligent response to recognition of this fact by the part of the RIAA would've been a "These aren't the droids we're looking for" and then move on. Instead they played the scare tactic ("we don't care if you actually downloaded the music or not; if your eight year old's doing it, YOU are responsible for this crime, bad parent") to try and cow the parents of the presumably younger and more rampant p2p audience into disciplining them into stopping. This is bad thinking; kids told not to do a thing that they see as without moral issue are going to INTENTIONALLY rebel and are likely to stick with that line of thinking the rest of their lives. They just created an army. Regardless, I think "family" is sadly all too appropriate.
Lastly, I'm afraid your quote as follows simply doesn't make sense to me: "If lived experience and the specifics of geography make up 75% of music's power, what would music bereft of these things sound like? It would represent a music which doesn't have recourse to people's understanding of life, but which works solely in signification to other music without signification."
What does "the current set-up of exhibition and distribution of music" have to do with lived experience and geographic location? Most of us are living full, interesting lives with experiences inherently unique to our location and life and certainly worth sharing, regardless of whether or not we're on a major label or not.
The only immediate consequence I could see of the death of that system would be an end to the spoiled rockstar/"blingbling" thuglife/jetsetting progrocka mentality thats produced endless derivative and bad albums over the past forty years or so.
Sign me on.
Posted by: Jon Tofu Hut at March 12, 2004 07:51 PMYo Jon. Thanks for getting back, I've opened a box especially for your comment and transferred it over.
>deteriorating files
Yeah the Weed Tunes thing do this. You can only play them three times.
>music with reference to music without signification
I ought to explain what I mean in more detail. The key to musics like Grime, or Dancehall Reggae (though applicable to almost every music originating from a "scene") is that the channel of transmission (the pirate radio station) or the locale they're made (a certain part of a country) or the format they're presented on (white label, mixtape, etc) or the parties the tunes are played at (shebeens, raves, blowouts) is indivisable from the music (certainly its lyrical content, certainly in the sound) And before Tom "Bad Bwoy" Ewing calls me a snob (lol), I'm not saying that this is exclusive to certain forms of urban dance music. It applies right across the spectrum.
You go to the shops, you talk about it with your mates, you go to parties where people are playing it, you go to gigs. If you're a geek you travel the whole world following it. It's not like you CAN'T appreciate it divorced from it's context, or indeed create your own fascinating context for it, just that exposure to its source can be mighty illuminating.
The geographical paths people are obliged to follow to participate in these musics, and the life experiences which accrue from being involved in them imbue the music itself with meaning and force they wouldn't have as a bitstream. If making music is removed from the messy arena of social and cultural mechanics and becomes about data transfer between Person One on a PC and Person Two on a PC, then the music might suffer appallingly in its richness and resonance.
You mentioned Cobain and Coltrane earlier on. What kind of music would they have made if they'd been isolated techno geeks? For both of them music was an incredibly intense reaction to the world as it was. Would they have produced anything of interest if they'd been locked up in a room, simply reacting to sound issuing from a computer? What kind of music are people who've only experienced music via the context of mp3s going to make?
Posted by: Matt Woebot at March 12, 2004 07:53 PMCouldn't help but notice this recently posted thread at ilm (cough). What say we all hop over there and carry on this fascinating discussion with the greater public? See you down the pub afterwards.
Posted by: Matt Woebot at March 12, 2004 09:07 PM