“Music 1.0 is dead.” (Cohen, in Anderson 2008)
Not surprised by this statement? You shouldn’t be – the past decade has seen almost every imaginable media transition from one- to two-point-zero. Even Vegemite.
But what does this strange numerical suffix actually mean? What was ‘Music 1.0’, and how did it ‘die’?
Harold Innis (1972, in Angus 1998) suggests that in any given society, the dominant forms of communication media establish the limits of what is ‘experienceable’, and the manner in which it is experienced.
“[C]ivilization has been dominated at different stages by various media of communication such as clay, papyrus, parchment, and paper produced first from rags and then from wood. Each medium has its significance for the type of monopoly of knowledge which will be built and which will destroy the conditions suited to creative thought and be displaced by a new medium with its peculiar type of monopoly of knowledge.” (Innis 2004, p74)
Developments in media technology reconfigure the social arrangements of power and control over ‘knowledge’, which in turn reconfigures the way we understand that knowledge. Internetisation is an obvious example of the way communication technology itself can cause a complete revision of social hierarchy and interaction. To understand the implications of this on the music industry, we must look at the development of music publishing technologies which have challenged and reconfigured the existing social order.
MUSIC PUBLISHING HOUSES: THE BEGINNINGS OF AN INDUSTRY
The music industry was born in the early 16th century with Gutenberg’s invention of movable type. The piano was the centrepiece of every middle-class European home, and sheet music was the primary vehicle for disseminating music (Garofalo 1999, p319). Control over publishing technology was suddenly freed from the exclusive hold of the church, and placed into the hands of the entrepreneur (Sanjek 1988, cited in Garofalo 1999, p320). Publishing houses formed the new power centre of the industry and publishers began to make substantial incomes, for which they sought legal protection. The first conception of ‘intellectual property’ was born in 1710 with the Statute of Anne. The Statute sought to protect consumers by giving copyright an expiration date and creating a ‘public domain’ or ‘commons’ which was exempt from privatisation. However, royal sanctions were given to stationers’ guilds, granting an effective monopoly on publishing to the wealthy elite who had access to printing technology (Garofalo 1999, p320).
European publishing houses maintained an elitist control over the type of music they printed, favouring classical ‘art’ music from well-respected composers. In the United States, however, a different kind of industry emerged. Publishers chose to print popular works that were considered the collective property of ‘the commons’ rather than individual artists. The industry became rapidly centralised, as publishers congregated in a small area in New York known as Tin Pan Alley. Popularity, rather than high taste, became the keystone to success. Aggressive marketing and a formulaic ‘pop’ mentality became the driving force behind Tin Pan Alley’s “song factories” – traits which would frame commercial music culture for centuries to come (Garofalo 1999, p322).
SOUND RECORDING
The development of sound recording technology brought a whole new dimension to music publishing, accompanied by a shift in the monopoly of musical ‘knowledge’. At the end of the 19th century, Emile Berliner’s gramophone demonstrated the potential to make unlimited copies of a single master, prophesising the development of a mass-scale home entertainment market for recorded music (Garofalo 1999, p324). Inherent in the nature of industrialisation is an imbalance of power: those who own new technology also own – and thus control – what is produced and distributed to the public. The first major record companies were established as the industrial power centre for music publishing in the early 20th century. These companies made exclusive deals with artists, in return for negotiated royalty payments.
Copyright needed to be redefined for the new recorded medium, which effectively divided ‘publishing’ into the separate functions of production and distribution. Legislation was needed to delegate who could claim royalty payments for each aspect of the music. Mechanical rights pertained to the different mechanical processes and physical parts involved in recording – owned by the studio. Performance rights gave record companies royalties for ‘public performance’ of the sound recording (rather than a live performance, as the name suggests) through jukeboxes and later, radio (Garofalo 1999, p327). The concept of moral rights was born with the 1928 Berne Convention, granting the author “the right to be properly identified and guarded against any editing or other alteration of a work that would compromise its integrity”(Garofalo 1999, p328).
RADIO & RECORDS
“As is often the case in the music business, technological advances have a way of changing existing power relationships and influencing cultural choices” (Garofalo 1999, p329). The introduction of radio challenged the monopoly held by publishers over the dissemination of music. The medium had unprecedented power and reach over mass populations, and it quickly became clear that those with control over radio technology would have a unique influence over public taste. Commercial radio shows began to base their programming on audience responses, establishing a ‘listener-preference’ rating system. For the very first time, the power to determine public taste was conferred upon the consumer. The rapid commercialisation of music parallels Innis’ (2004, p78) reflection on the tabloidization of the newspaper:
“The newspaper was made responsive to the market. The business office occupied a dominant position. News became a commodity…”
Post-WW2 industrialisation saw rapid advances in technology: the most significant being the microgroove long-play (LP) record. These records provided excellent sound quality in a form that was light and durable, and therefore could be shipped faster and more cheaply than ever before. “Records became not only the staple of all radio programming but also the dominant product of the music industry as a whole, eclipsing sheet music as the dominant medium for music.” (Garofalo 1999, p336)
Radio stations developed a reciprocal arrangement with record companies: cheap programming in return for cheap promotion (Garofalo 1999, p336). Multinational media conglomerates began to buy out both radio stations and record labels, creating a corporate monopoly over music production and distribution. The industry became dictated by a formula mentality which attempted to mimic what was popular and commercially successful. This signalled the end of ‘David and Goliath’ stories in which small independent labels challenged the majors for market share (Garofalo 1999, p338). The sheer power and size of the major labels meant that they could simply step in and “acquire a controlling interest” in any promising independents, who were doomed to become “part of the same corporate web”(Garofalo 1999, p338-339). The ‘elitist’ values of musicianship and artfulness which had dominated the original European publishing houses now existed only on the outermost fringes of popular circulation.
CASSETTE TAPES and SUPERSTARS
The mid-1980s saw the introduction of cassette-tape technology: a new medium which was not only portable and affordable, but recordable. Access to production, duplication and dissemination was suddenly opened up to the amateur, ripped from the hands of the corporate monopoly (Azenha 2006, par.17). Unsurprisingly, copyright was once again called upon to redefine the ownership of music. This was no longer simply a professional battle between the creators, recorders and distributors of music. Copyright legislation now had to deal with duplicators who could circumvent royalties and the acknowledgment of creative property. The Athens Agreement 1989 was the start of a continuous battle against piracy, which in itself is a symbol of the monopoly of knowledge slipping out of corporate control.
For music, this could have the positive effect of “new voices and new musics [which] will find new avenues for expression” (Azenha 2006, par.118). However, instead of embracing this opportunity, record companies continued to restrict access to professional production, slipping into a “superstar” formula. Advertising became institutionalised as a revenue source, so much that artists were no longer selected on musical talents but rather their commercial possibilities as a ‘revenue stream’ – a modern marketing tactic which utilises cross-media campaigns to flog a small number of ‘blockbuster’ artists. This exclusivist strategy helped corporations to maintain their monopoly on music publishing, but technology was pushing boundaries that would soon go beyond their reach.
TEH INTERNET, LOLZ
Advances in publishing technologies have increased consumer access to music “production, duplication and dissemination” and threatened to decentralise the industry (Garofalo 1999, p342). Up until the last two decades, major record companies have managed to maintain their control over the music industry by forming multi-national conglomerates. They effectively owned every step in the music publishing process, creating a seemingly unbreakable ‘monopoly of knowledge’.
“The specialised, professional world of mainstream media production places a premium on technical finish and excludes the unskilled and the underconfident.” (Hesmondhalgh 1997, p256).
The internet provides an alternative: a production and distribution system that operates entirely independently, and links artists – signed or unsigned – directly with listeners. Sophisticated music-creation software is now available on inexpensive home computers, and a vast number of websites allow musicians to upload and promote their recordings to a global audience (Holzman 2009). In a purely digital market, the cost of production is minimal, and there are no warehousing or shipping costs because there is no physical product (Richardson & Hayslett, 2007). Macquarie University researchers (Young & Collins 2010) have defined this new phenomenon as Music 2.0, which: “points to a flattening of hierarchies, a disintermediation of traditional arrangements and promising a direct connection between musician and audience.”
COPYRIGHT VS THE COMMONS
Copyright has been turned on its head for a number of reasons. The concept of ‘intellectual property’ is inherently at odds with the basic concept of the internet: a free and accessible public domain of shared creativity and knowledge. As Lawrence Lessig has put it, the internet is itself a “commons”: a space where content is “open for anyone to see… and to steal, and to use as one wants” (Lessig 1999, p3). This system has the power to drastically undercut the monopoly of major record companies over creative property and the royalties associated with it.
According to Innis (2004, p92), legislation is inherently unable to keep pace with human discovery, invention and the quest for wealth. Copyright laws based on 18th century conceptions of media and society do not translate to the internet age. Major labels have attempted to protect their monopoly by placing heavy restrictions on online streaming and file-sharing. Despite claiming to ‘protect’ music and musicians from piracy, these measures have been labelled inoperable and out of place in the new mediascape (Higgins et. al. 2008). Rather than creating “an environment in which a vast number of creative individuals earn an income thanks to financial incentives”, it provides “substantial flows of income to administrative organisations with no creative function” (Dolfsma 2005).
Legislation has thus become “a mere surface-stratum, having under it an ever-changing assemblage of contractual rules with which it rarely interferes except to compel compliance with a few fundamental principles, or unless it be called in to punish the violation of good faith” (Innis 2004, p93). The effect has been widespread consumer indifference to copyright. Music 2.0 has exposed major flaws in the core philosophy of our present copyright system – the ‘fundamental principles’ and ‘good faith’ upon which it is based. Internet technology has reconfigured society’s relationship with music, and the concepts of power and authorial rights must be reconfigured accordingly.
IN CONCLUSION
Media, whilst related to technology, are much more than technology: they are “the social relations within which a technology develops and which are re-arranged around it. A medium is thus a mode of social organization, defined not by its output or production but by the relations obtaining within it” (Angus 1998). The changing media through which music has been published and disseminated have shaped society’s understanding of the ‘knowledge’ that is music.
The term ‘Music 1.0’ only exists because of ‘Music 2.0’ – a revision of an industry so complete that it requires an entirely separate title. The internet has revolutionised modern media, and it remains to be seen whether Innis’ (2004) concept of ‘monopolies of knowledge’ will continue to play out in this new mediascape. The concepts of intellectual property and commercial ‘ownership’ are deeply ingrained in modern psyche; we are still a long way from music becoming a ’commons’ which is shared freely and unexclusively within the public domain. What Music 2.0 will entail remains to be seen – the only certainty is that won’t look much like the music business of the last several decades (Anderson 2008).
REFERENCES
Anderson, N. 2008, ‘Music exec: “Music 1.0 is dead”’, Ars Technica, 26 February 2008. Retrieved June 1, 2010 from http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2008/02/music-exec-music-1-0-is-dead.ars
Angus, I. 1998, ‘The materiality of expression: Harold Innis’ communication theory and the discursive turn in the human sciences’, Canadian Journal of Communication, Vol. 23, No. 1. Retrieved June 4, 2010, from http://www.cjc-online.ca/index.php/journal/article/view/1020/926
Azenha, G. 2006, ‘The Internet and the decentralisation of the popular music industry: critical reflections on technology, concentration and diversification’, Radical Musicology, Vol. 1, 125 pars. Retrieved June 4, 2010, from http://www.radical-musicology.org.uk
Dolfsma, W. 2005, ‘How will the music industry weather the globalization storm?’, First Monday, Special Issue #1: Music and the internet, 4 July2005. Retrieved June 3, 2010 from http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/1461/1376
Garofolo, R. 1999, ‘From music publishing to MP3: music and industry in the twentieth century’, American Music, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Autumn), pp. 318-354
Hesmondalgh D. 1997, ‘Post-punk’s attempt to democratise the music industry: the success and failure of Rough Trade’, Popular Music, Vol. 16, No. 3, (October), pp.255-274.
Higgins, G., Wolfe, S., & Marcum, C. 2008, ‘Music piracy and neutralization: a preliminary trajectory analysis from short-term longitudinal data’, International Journal of Cyber Criminology, Vol. 2, Issue 2 (July-December), pp.324–336
Holzman, K. 2009, ‘Changes in the music industry’, MusicBizAcademy.com, June 2009. Retrieved June 1, 2010 from http://www.musicbizacademy.com/articles/kh_changes.htm
Innis, H. 2004, ‘The Press: A neglected factor in the economic history of the twentieth century’, in Changing Concepts of Time, Rowman & Littlefield, USA, pp. 73-104
Lessig, L. 1999, ‘Code and the commons’, Media Convergence conference at Fordham Law School, New York, February 9, 1999. Retrieved on June 5, 2010 from http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/works/lessig/Fordham.pdf
Richardson, N. & Hayslett, C. 2007, ‘The rise of independent music: indie labels maximize control’, Black Enterprise, December 2007. Retrieved on June 1, 2010 from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1365/is_5_38/ai_n24219213/
Young, S. & Collins, S. 2008, ‘What is Music 2.0?’, Music 2.0. Retrieved on June 5, 2010, from http://musictwopointzero.net.au/index.php
Image from iStockphoto via musolife.com
