III.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.[1]
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.[2]
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. [3]
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. [4]
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.[5]
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
[1]
Barry Kernfeld ( Pop Song Piracy –
Disobedient Music Distribution Since 1929) University of Chicago Press,
2011.p 6
[2]
Kembrew McLeod and Peter DiCola (Creative
License – The Law and Culture of Digital Sampling)Duke University Press,
2011
[3]
McLeod and DiCola ( ibid)p.
[4]
Walter Isaacson (Steve Jobs) Simon
and Schuster, 2011
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotify
[6]
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)
No comments:
Post a Comment