Is it me or do you also get the impression that the music industry is in panic? Borders is selling vinyl; the Isle of Man is charging a music tax to all citizen’s in exchange for free access to any online music; ISPs are being pushed to pay blanket licenses like the ones that radio and TV stations pay to performing rights organizations; Europe now has a Pirate Party which is basically an anti-copyright/anti-intellectual property law platform; and everyone seems to be on the edge of their seats awaiting the result of the Pirate Bay trial in Sweeden.
And everywhere I look there are articles about how the business model is broken, how we need to figure out new ways of making money from music, or it will be the end of music! Oh no, not the end of music! Here’s Scott G in the Music Industry Newswire: “If you want to hear new music in the future, good luck. Musicians and songwriters are being pushed out of the marketplace.”
Scott G may be a bit of an alarmist, but it is clear that sales of music are down and down and keep going down, and use of free music services, whether legal (Pandora, last.fm, etc) or illegal (you know…), is growing every day. So naturally those who make money from music and depend on it for a livelihood are concerned, and rightly so as many of them will soon have to be looking for jobs doing something else. The rest of us who have never seen music as source of income, well, we have the time to write blogs about this and continue making music like we always have.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not against copyright laws, nor am I against making money from music. What I am against though is the presupposition, sometimes clearly expressed as did Scott G in the above article, but most often implied, that if the industry can’t make money from music, that there will be no more music. Of course this is absurd because music serves many purposes besides being a sellable commodity. But underneath that panicky idea is the standard capitalist belief that without money to pay for the efforts of creators the quality of the product will go down and down, until all we’ll have left for music is the equivalent of government housing in Cuba. In other words the capitalist belief in how the market improves the quality of the products is being incorrectly applied to music in a desperate attempt for music industry people to create a panic in consumers and get them to start paying for music.
What do you think? Do you think if the music industry goes down and music stops being a feasible way for anyone to make money, do you think we are going to end up with music that is worst than Britney Spears, American Idol, Nickel Creek, Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus and all the rest of the super high quality music we get today? Really? Can the music get any worse? I’m thinking that it takes thousands of music industry employees working around the clock and in competition with each other to be able to lower even further the quality of music we get today.
Personally I can’t wait until the music industry collapses and everyone loses interest in music as a viable form of income and only those interested in music for music’s sake are left. I’m sure it wont happen, but if it did, I’m thinking I could make money giving lectures on how to make music without money. I could show my resume of never having made any money from music and the lecture would be me showing up and saying, get a job.
But like I said, I am not against making money from music and so in the spirit of finding a new business model for selling music, I am going to propose the fine art model.
As an example, here’s Jeff Koons model train, estimated at 2 – 3 million dollars.
Now if only we could figure out how to make music into an object that would sell for half that much, then we’d be ok, or at least all the piracy and copyright issues would just go away, you would either own the piece of music or you wouldn’t.
So is it possible to make an art object that is music? And if so how do we make it?
First the question of possibility. Sound sculpture, sound art and sound installations have been for years exploring the idea of sound as art, but from the other side of the fence. Instead of asking how can we make music that can be commodified as art, they ask how can we make art that can’t be commodified? From Dada onwards, sound was seen, like performance art as impermanent art and therefore somewhat free from objectification and commodification. However, now that music is about to be free of being a commodity altogether, we can once again try to take the rich people’s money the old fashioned way: by making something for which they will pay tons of money.
So if this is going to be possible, the first step is to separate music from its temporal status. The recording industry has been all about this effort. However, once they remove the temporal status they also remove it’s uniqueness and music becomes a mechanically reproducible item. So the trick is going to be to remove the temporal status, but maintain it’s one of a kind status. This of course is what allows performers to charge as much as they do for a single concert, and many record labels have put a lot of effort into “buying” performers in order to maximize this revenue stream. But you can’t really buy a person and stick them in you living room to play anytime you want, not to mention the decay of the performer would give it only a few decades of quality performances. Compare that to a Van Gogh painting which continues to look pretty much the same as it did over a hundred years ago and will continue to do so for many more years to come, and you’ll see one reason why Van Gogh’s Portrait of Dr. Gachet sold for $82.5 millions. And yes, Whitney Houston got $100 million from Arista, but I bet they regret it. Plus you couldn’t pay me that much to have Whitney in my living room around the clock, with Bobby Brown coming over all the time and the fights and all that…
So how do we make music that is one of a kind and yet can take a physical form separate from the performer, and yet it is not reproducible.
The first thing that must happen is that the piece of music and the equipment that plays it must be one and the same. In other words the player must be the music, and the music must be the player. They should be as inseparable as the paint and the canvas where the Mona Lisa is painted. Even more so, they should be as inseparable as the paint itself and the image of the Mona Lisa that it creates.
Well, that’s all I’m gonna share for now. Now if you want to make big money from music, get to work on this, otherwise you might want to sign up for my lecture on how to make music without money….
I am working on a suppository that will allow the patient to feel the music that is being injected as it was when it was created. For example, I would be at home on Friday night sitting on my water bed and shredding on my Les Paul custom. Then I would send it to you Roberto by first class mail and then on the following Tuesday you could insert the tab, then you then would feel what I felt when I was shredding on my water bed Friday night. This will take a lot of research, so guinea piggies get in line.
Well, done, R. From what I can tell, the music industry has responded to its scarcity problem by producing more limited edition widgets for dedicated fans to salivate over and by signing 360 deals with artists in order to make money from all aspects of their careers, including ticket sales and clothing lines. And because of that last bit, I would guess that we’re about to see an explosion of music-related lifestyle marketing.
I agree these 360 deals are a way for the industry to soften the landing as they get used to a world in which music is free. But it’s not clear to me that it’s a permanent or substantial solution for the majors. The major labels have always sold access to promotional channels as their primary value-add to artists, but technology is democratizing access in the same way it democratized production.
That’s not to say it won’t take a well-organized and well-funded effort to shoehorn artists into TV shows and video games, but it’s not so expensive anymore that you’ve have to be Sony or Warner Brothers. I think you’ll see a lot more indie rock labels prospering through a mixture of premium merch, vinyl sales, TV licensing, and tours. And to compete, the Majors will probably have to slim down quite a bit.
If all you’re selling is access to marketing channels, I’m not sure you have to be a label at all. The first TV show that figures out how to market music outside of the contest/reality ghetto will make a mint. It’s coming, and it won’t be too long.
“The first TV show that figures out how to market music outside of the contest/reality ghetto will make a mint.”
Do you mean, giving tv show music a life outside of tv? Like American Idol, but a narrative fiction? like say Hannah Montana?
Those 360 deals always remind me of Piero Manzoni’s canned Artist’s Shit. Seems like just a matter of time now until the major labels start demanding artist excrement to sell. And i bet whoever does it first, will make some good money and redefine the meaning of “dirty” money along the way.
Love it. I’m on it.
While we’re at it can we start a new pop sensation that has no reference to Rock and Roll whatsoever? I’m thinking Justin in maternity blouse with a Snake musical suppository for starters.
You think Flo Rida, T.I. and Lady Gaga (top 3 pop sensations this week, per billboard), have references to rock and roll? I’ve only heard Lady Gaga and if there is rock and roll in there, its very well hidden.
This one from Lady Gaga has the rock. I had to do research but I checked out one song each for Flo Rida, T.I. and Lady Gaga and they all had a lot of rock influence. U don’t know (new reference).
I think you’re confusing rock with disco… but thats understandable after playing all those Big Country and Split Endz songs… Next you’re going to tell me that Madonna and Abba have the rock too, right?
Okay no disco either – nothing that uses the roots of rock or any of its dominant instruments. I think it would be especially hard to pull off for someone like me (and you) steeped in a multi-generational brew of the stuff.
So no drums, no guitar, no bass, no keyboards, no 4/4, no 2/4, no elaborate productions, no blues, no soul, no funk, no country, nothing American or British for that matter… what else?
That sounds good except for the American British thing. I’m not saying it’s a conscious thing but it does have to have some cultural reference or it can’t hope to be pop, right?
Well, cultural references are one thing, musical format is another. I don’t think there are any British or American genres that haven’t being mined heavily by pop’s unstoppable drill – (gospel, jazz, bluegrass, noise, celtic, irish, welsh, etc). I think we may need to talk to a ethnomusicologist to find that last bit of buried music that hasn’t been whored by the pop pimps yet. Maybe we can be the last American Music Pimps.
I think I just nailed the name of our project no? The Last American Music Pimps. Has a nice apocalyptic ring to it.
don’t you think it would be in games online?
Do you mean, the “big money”? In games, as in most TV shows and movies the music is not used as a feature, but more as background or incidental material. Only in concert movies, talk/variety shows does music receive a “feature” status. Even though some music sometimes breaks out of the background mold in these media to become a feature into itself (some movie/tv theme songs come to mind), but this is rare. More common is to use music that already has a featured life in radio or elsewhere and use it in a movie or tv show.
Without being a feature performance it’s unlikely that the music will make a lot of money. Performing right societies (ASCAP, BMI, etc) pay the big bucks for feature perfs. Computer music gets even less money than TV or movies. My guess is that most of hte money in that is going to be geared towards the technology to create your own type programs, in other words, programs where you can put any music you like into the game (play Guitar Hero to your cousins’ high school punk band, or Grand Theft Auto to your personal collection of live Grateful Dead tapes).