II.6 The
Choice: Entropy or Negentropy?
In
the laws of thermodynamics and biology, entropy describes the state of being incapable
of change, or adaptation to ever-changing biological imperatives, and which
ultimately perishes. These terms from biology are sometimes used to describe
the spiritual state of a culture or a civilization as a living organism.
American
media critic Gene Youngblood employs this analogy in his visionary work “Expanded Cinema”, when he writes, ” We’ve learned from physics that the only
anti-entropic force in the universe, or what is called negentropy (negative
entropy) results from the process of feedback. Feedback exists between systems
that are not closed, but rather open and contingent upon other systems…for most
practical purposes, it is enough to say a system is “closed’ when entropy
dominates the feedback process.”[1]
Confronted
by the rapid onslaught of technological change, it is important to note that institutional
and corporate responses to the digital revolution around the world have frequently
been both reactionary and negative. Change
is seen as a threat to vested political and economic interests, and the
telecommunications revolution certainly threatens the status quo in a multitude
of ways.
For
example, in countries like France and Brazil, newspaper publishers have seen
what has happened to their colleagues in the United States, and they are refusing to participate in the Google
Search engine; they do not see why they should hasten their own demise by
giving Google data free of charge that Google will then use to augment its user
base, thereby becoming ever more attractive to advertisers.
These
publishers are absolutely correct, of course, but one suspects even they
realize they are only buying time, and that they cannot delay the inevitable.
Such,
at any rate, as shall be seen, has been the case with the music industry.
II.7 The
Transformation of the International Music Industry:
A
major international media industry that has been battling the onslaught of
digital technology over the past three decades has been the American music
industry. As musicologists such as Barry Kernfeld have noted, the American
music industry has fought every major technological innovation since the
beginning of the recording industry in the 1930’s, seeking to criminalize
practices that were filling a consumer need that corporate entities were
ignoring. These practices, like bootlegging, Kernfeld terms “disobedient” practices.[2]
Invariably,
the music industry would come around and find a way to incorporate some of
these practices, and even employ some of those individuals previously labeled
as criminals. Kernfeld makes the case that the same pattern applies to the
music industry’s reaction to digital technology.
For
the music industry, two of the most terrifying aspects of digital audio
technology is that it: a) makes it easy for virtually anyone to make a decent
quality recording using cheap equipment, like a DAT recorder; 2) it makes it
possible for anyone to make a “perfect “copy of any recording – or a copy that
is identical with the original. Thanks to digital technology, anyone of
reasonable intelligence and minimal means can become a music producer and
distributor.
One
of the immediate results was the sudden explosion of the hip-hop movement in
American urban centers in the 1980’s. Hip hop artists would sample bits of music created by more
established artists and transform them into new works.
The
technique had aesthetic precedents in such techniques as Cubist collages and
Bauhaus
“cut-ups”, and was tolerated until the late eighties, when some of the hip
hop artists became big stars and began to make a lot of money. Then the music industry dropped the hammer in
the form of a series of copyright prosecutions of
hip
hop artists, which were all victories for the industry.[3]
Today,
the American music industry vigorously enforces copyright laws by promoting
prosecution of digital artists accused of sampling even a few seconds of a composition, leading to substantial economic
penalties. Industry representatives often claim they are protecting their
artists’ copyrights, but the truth is they are more often than not just
protecting their own financial interests.
In the process, some musicians, such as the
legendary George Clinton, and many others, have been financially ruined by some
of these legal cases; meanwhile, the development of hip hop music, one of the most intriguing contemporary musical
genres has been crippled. [4]
The same music industry, noting that young
consumers were no longer buying CDs because they were sharing MP3 files with
friends, then attempted to intimidate the same consumers by pursuing extremely
harsh penalties against individuals who have shared music files with their
friends for personal use, and not for profit. As a result, some young consumers
have been financially ruined for indulging in what they thought was a harmless
social activity.
Again,
music historians such as Kernfeld see these measures as desperate attempts to
delay the inevitable, and that eventually the music industry will be forced to
accept the realities of digital technology, just as they were forced to accept
the invention of analog tape decks and digital recorders. While the industry may succeed in making a few
examples of some unfortunate individuals, Kernfeld and others feel that the
practice of file sharing is so prevalent around the world that it cannot be
stopped by legal means. Kernfeld notes that that the younger generation which
grew up with digital media sees nothing wrong with file sharing, just as
previous generations saw nothing wrong with purchasing bootlegged song lyrics
which were otherwise unavailable.
Indeed,
the governments of many non-Western countries see nothing wrong with file
sharing, since the practice provides cheap entertainment to impoverished
masses. And since the internet knows few borders, Kernfeld believes the American
music industry will be forced to find a compromise that enables the consumer to
obtain music by downloading at home, while providing some revenue for the
industry. The bottom line is that there is no market for CDs anymore, and the
music store is obsolete.
The
late Steve Jobs of Apple managed to create such a compromise with the I-Tunes
application, which allowed consumers to download songs for a small fee – 99
cents per song – and then miraculously managed to convince most of the
notoriously suspicious owners of the music companies to buy into participating.
After all, if Apple were involved, Apple would take a cut of the revenue, so
for many media observers, winning over the hard-bitten music business moguls
was a truly remarkable accomplishment by an audacious young Mr. Jobs, and one
which helped make Apple the most successful company in the world. [5]
Another
successful compromise has been the Swedish-based Spotify, an internet-based
music distribution system that has met with considerable success. Originally
created by a group of Swedes in Stockholm in 2006 as a system by which paying
subscribers could have access to Spotify playlists in Sweden, Spotify soon
expanded services to the United Kingdom in 2009. The terms of service evolved as Spotify ironed
out technical glitches and sought new possibilities for expansion. Then, after
years of negotiation, Spotify was able to enter the American market in July,
2011. The company promptly grew, and raised over $100 million in funding
through the American investment bank Goldman Sachs.[6]
However,
the growth of digital technology has created another challenge to the
established music industry that is perhaps even more threatening; in recent
years, a new generation of artists, like Radiohead, have realized they can now
produce music and distribute music directly to their audience on their internet
websites internet for free, bypassing the established music industry
altogether.
The
artists would then make money either from concerts or from the sales of special
products promoted on their websites. This would indeed be a radical
transformation of the traditional music industry economic model, since it would
eliminate the middle men altogether. Similar new business models have been
proposed by internet visionaries such as Jeff Jarvis. Jarvis, for example, cites the possibility of
internet financing by such websites as
II.8 The Television
Industry:
Since
visual images require much more bandwidth than print or music, the digital
revolution has only recently begun to affect the motion picture and television
industries in the past decade. However, once the changes began, they moved with
astonishing speed, and digital technology is now the standard for most film and
television production around the world.
Since television already was an electronic
medium, the television industries of the world have adapted relatively smoothly
to digital technology; once the initial speed bump of the cost of upgrading
infrastructure from analog to digital was passed, business was able to go on as
usual with greatly improved audio and picture quality.
However,
in the very near future, internet television, will completely demolish the
traditional business model for commercial television, which is dependent upon
control of consumer. As a result, as is the case with print media, many
television stations are creating internet channels which can be seen on YouTube
and other websites. Sponsors for commercial television are already dwindling,
and, as they disappear, so will commercial television as we know it; in 2012,
Tim Cook, Chief Executive Officer of Apple, Inc, has been making hints about
the creation of
some
form of i-TV in the very near future, so it is likely that consumers will be
getting television over the internet.[8]
[1] Gene Youngblood ( Expanded Cinema)E.P. Dutton, 1970. P.63
[2]
Barry Kernfeld ( Pop Song Piracy –
Disobedient Music Distribution Since 1929) University of Chicago Press,
2011.p 6
[3]
Kembrew McLeod and Peter DiCola (Creative
License – The Law and Culture of Digital Sampling)Duke University Press,
2011
[4]
McLeod and DiCola ( ibid)p.
[5]
Walter Isaacson (Steve Jobs) Simon
and Schuster, 2011
[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotify
[7]
Jeff Jarvis, (Public Parts – How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the
Way We Work and Live) Simon and Schuster, 2011 ( more on this in Chapter VII)
[8] http://www.idownloadblog.com/2012/06/01/munster-itv-in-the-works/
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