I've
recently finished reading Paul Mason's Post-Capitalism: A Guide to our Future.
It's an extremely thought provoking book which I'd recommend to anybody
interested in either the current global crisis or the history of capitalism.
And although I don't support all his conclusions or find all his
recommendations convincing there is much that rings true to his analysis of the
current state of neo-liberalism. The basic point that underpins much of his
analysis of where he thinks the economy and society more generally is going is
that the proliferation of information based technology has the effect of
reducing marginal costs towards zero.
For example
CD sales have continued to fall in correlation with the rise of vinyl such that
several labels I know have ditched CDs entirely and now produce only vinyl
records with accompanying digital downloads. This was written at the end of my
somewhat "Lacano-Marxist" (via Zizek) fixation, so some of it reads
even more clunky and abstruse than usual. For example this:
"Now
we throw our sounds around like confetti at a wedding, all reduced to mere
Muzak soundtracking our individual lives. What these voices of reason miss is
the thoroughly liberating situation where the normative values and meanings in
music are thrown into chaos, where the subject of the musical enunciation and
the subject of the enunciated content are no longer screened from each other by
the wider symbolic-libidinal mechanism of Capital - whose logic has nothing
whatsoever to do with the experience of musical signification - and thus for
the first time the mass exchange of cultural products within a society shed
their alienating character, and we will finally be able to speak of an essence
of cultural exchange that was always already there".
I wrote
this and I'd love to know what it means. I enabled the comment section at the
end of last year so do let me know! Here is the essay from 2010.
The Music Industry: Dialectics in
Cultural Production
Last
month Radiohead guitarist Ed O'Brien spoke to the BBC about his views on the
current state of the music industry. Here is a quote:
“I sense,
and many artists sense, that it's become dominated by money, and the need to
make more money, and I think the problem with that is that the creativity's
gone out of the industry, the fun. That was the main thing. And I think the
problem is that in the last 10-15 years it's become about money and the money
men are now running the companies, whereas traditionally it's always been the
creatives. You realise there's something hugely missing now. “ (1)
What’s
telling about the comments of Ed O'Brien is that despite his belief that the
recording industry has become money dominated and his recognition of the
upheavals generated by the emerging download market he still views the industry
as a viable means of organising music production and distribution, one which
simply has something missing. It’s odd really as Radiohead have been pioneers
in mainstream music through their use of the download format to distribute
their work (see In Rainbows) and you would think this would lead them to the
conclusion that the future lay away from the big budgets and distorted
hyperbole of the record biz. Indeed as the figures tell us the CD format is
continuing to see falls in sales while downloading in the form of MP3s and FLAC
is growing year on year. The doomsayers point this out as an indication of the
death of music in general highlighting the increasing formulaic and market
driven agenda of major labels, not to mention those same labels (and some of
their artists) bemoaning loss of revenue and the growing hardship felt through
illegal downloads. But this analysis does seem flawed in that it glaringly
conflates music in general with the output of the music 'industry' in
particular.
So in all
of this what really is the likely future of music? I do subscribe to the belief
that CD sales are headed towards obsolescence, to the point at which the format
will go the same way as the mini-disk and tape. Don’t get me wrong there will
still be those pressing CDs but this will be likely be confined to smaller runs
for independent labels and perhaps some mass produced runs covering the most
commercial of music for sale in outlets such as supermarkets. However the large
high-street CD retailer will more or less cease to exist. The predominant form
of music purchase will be downloads, most likely FLAC or media comparable to
that format. Smaller labels and online distributors will move increasingly to
supplying music directly by download through online shop fronts rather than
using larger specialist distributors to get physical products into stores.
There may well be some exceptions to this as right now there seems to be quite
a lot of collaboration between smaller specialist shops and mega suppliers like
Amazon and Play.com who appear to be renting out space on their applications
and shop-fronts to the likes of Boomkat who in turn negotiate with smaller
labels to supply digital downloads of their releases. Hence you find music from
the tiny independent Miasmah label up for download from Amazon and Boomkat. As
for physical products the above mentioned decrepitude of the CD will be
accompanied by the long predicted return of vinyl in a big way. The format has
(as anyone interested in proper music knows) never really gone away. The
continual popularity of the format with DJs and its unique quality sound wise
has maintained a following both in the dance scene and among audiophile nerds.
As such after a large decline in the 1990s the format has been growing steadily
as a mainstay of independent music labels during the download revolution of the
2000s. Today even major high street retailers like HMV now have large vinyl
sections where ten years ago this was usually confined to a small selection of
current dance singles. Also major labels have been trying to get in on the act
by releasing (all-be-it mostly non pop records) on vinyl as well as the
standard CD format and digital download. These vinyl records can now usually be
found alongside the CD format in the new releases section of large high street
music retailers.
So what
of the economics of these changes? Clearly with the CD market all but dead and
the production of vinyl in large quantities never likely to take on the mass
appeal needed to fill the gap, the major record companies’ revenues are going
to be severely hit. What’s interesting about the trends from 2009 are the huge
increases in singles sales compared to album sales. The BPI recorded over 150
million singles sold (up 32% on last year) with 98% of these being downloads.
This is compared to the mere 16 million album download sales (although this is
an increase of 56.1% on last year). Clearly the market for downloads is still centred
around those one hit wonders rather than those wanting the whole experience,
and with the media focus on those one hit wonders produced by TV talent shows
like the X factor, it is not a stretch to see where the money is likely to be
headed. The sort of profitability over creativity attitude that Ed O'Brien
talks about is precisely the modus operandi of the likes of Simon Cowell when
he grooms and engineers the latest TV sing star for their 15 minutes of fame.
It is this emphasis on short term profit rather than artistic longevity that
hit’s the creative aspirations of artists hardest. Such an outlook produces an
inherent conservatism in both form and content so that the end product is often
a paltry variation of previous hits, inoffensive ballads or seasonal stocking
fillers all given a surface shine through the mandatory music video and
TV/Radio promotional campaign. If one of these hopefuls manages to break out of
the limits of type more often than not they metamorphose into another
stereotype of stage-managed industry conservatism, albeit one at a relatively
higher level of exposure. See Leona Lewis transformed from Hackney girl next
door to sexy US diva ala Mariah Carey. In short the likely trajectory of major
record labels will be towards the production and marketing of these kinds of
short terms investments which generate large returns quickly through download
sales rather than holding onto a large roster of bands or singers who only
sporadically release new material.
 |
|
HMV is one
of better known music retailers to have disappeared from the high street in
recent years
|
So is
there perhaps a dialectical structure to these trends? Certainly the rapid
emergence of downloading took the industry by surprise, so much so that really
they are still reorientating and are maintaining a punitive, reactionary
approach to illegal downloads through use of litigation, and, more worryingly,
putting pressure on internet service providers to monitor and take action
against their customers who persistently download illegally. Such actions can
take the form of letters being sent, or even having their IP permanently
blocked. Unfortunately by declaring war on their consumers the record business
has put themselves in a pretty difficult situation. It is however a situation
that the record business has had a major part in creating. Over the past twenty
five years the recording industry has witnessed a massive degree of
consolidation, small independent labels have found themselves bought up by
larger national names and they in turn have found themselves bought-up in
multi-million dollar deals by one of the multi-national corporations like Sony,
Warner, EMI, Universal. Artists who may have signed long term deals with small
labels with a relatively hands off approach to artistic expression found
themselves having to justify their continued profitability to multi-nationals
and under pressure to conform to a prescribed type or face having their
contracts cancelled.
This
model has been pretty much repeated across the industry as trends emerged, and
with them an imperative to invest in smaller labels with in vogue artists. The
downside was that as the fashions moved on so too did the money and major label
support, the result being that whole swathes of musicians and producers found
their promotional budgets cut or being abandoned by their labels. New
Romantics, Trip-hop, Drum and Base, Nu-Metal, all have had their periods of
short term profitability that the majors tried to actualise before interest
fell and the money moved elsewhere. It is important to realise however that
this cycle is not a natural process whereby capital colonises an area directed
by an autonomous popular will. Certainly cultural production does contain its
spontaneity, influenced by a diverse array of factors of which the technology
and affordability of music production is paramount (think of the impact of the
first generation of affordable drum machines and samplers). However as capital
accumulation increases and the cultural sphere is colonised to a greater and
greater extent, the ability of major labels to manufacture and influence the
trends that before it was more reactive to, also increase.
Today our
exposure to music comes from a far wider array of sources than before, and the
degree of influence of big capital on that exposure is also unprecedented.
Correspondingly this degree of exposure and influence led by capitals incessant
need to continually find the newest and most profitable source of income has
fostered reification and commodification of music in general. The advent of
digital technology which allows for fast accumulation and mass storage of music
on MP3 players and hard drives has only added to the relativisation and
impermanence of the experience of music. This however is only half the story.
The fostering of a consumerist attitude to music and the emergence of digital
technology has produced an antagonism that the music industry is struggling
(and will ultimately fail) to deal with. To properly understand the
revolutionary status of digital music it is necessary to consider the unique
ontological shift that occurred when music began to be digitally stored and
shared over the internet.
Before
the advent of MP3s and other such digital formats the ontological status of a
music product had a certain stability. You bought a CD, vinyl record or maybe a
tape in a shop, and more or less this item was the thing in itself, it had a
certain market value and its purchase and subsequent life was pretty much
predictable. Obviously technology was readily available that could copy the
music, i.e. tape to tape, CD to tape, Vinyl to tape etc, but this process was subject
to the following limitations:
1 - The
purchase of another product, usually other blank tapes, later recordable CDs.
2 - The time needed to copy the original recording. Real-time in the case of tapes, variations on a few minutes for CD burning depending on type of burner.
3 - Another known individual to give the resulting copy to.
2 - The time needed to copy the original recording. Real-time in the case of tapes, variations on a few minutes for CD burning depending on type of burner.
3 - Another known individual to give the resulting copy to.
All three
of these factors are a restriction on the possibility of the musical product
escaping its status as a unit of value within the economic framework. Large
scale physical copying and distribution are restricted by time, access to technology
and the need to find large numbers of people to receive the copies. Obviously
organised pirating has existed for a long time but again the status of the
recordings sold (whether bootleg tapes/CDs/ DVDs) maintain a certain thingness
inescapable from the wider economy and current copyright legislation. Digital
copying and distribution over the internet has blown this all away. As a user
of the original Napster at the end of the 1990s I was amazed at the ability to
read a review of a particular record in a magazine and to simply type the name
into the Napster search engine to find any number of possible users to download
from. One individual could rip an MP3 from a CD and within a couple of days
hundreds of copies of the single file could have been downloaded to other users
and their copies subsequently downloaded to thousands of others. The concept of
a unit of product and its market value seemed obsolete. The industry’s knee
jerk reaction was to simply label this kind of activity stealing. But who was
the actual thief? The original uploader? The people who downloaded the original
file, or the people who downloaded copies of copies. Clearly the demarcations
afforded physical property are extremely ill suited to this kind of phenomena.
That however has not stopped the aforementioned punitive actions against
uploaders and downloaders. Along with the legal recourse and lobbying, the
industry has being attempting to build a moral consensus regarding downloading,
including highly speculative claims on the level of damage done to artist revenues,
industry jobs, the wider economy, the culture of the nation, etc. A recent
statement from the Recording Industry Association of America made the claim
that illegal downloads had cost the US 373,000 jobs! The statement fails to
list how such a figure was reached, and would no doubt be open to wide
interpretation (2). It is also difficult to sympathise with an industry
that sells music at prices only a small fraction of which actually goes to the
musicians while the vast majority of which go to pay for cultural manipulation
through blanket promotion and the inflated salaries of those who propagate it.
 |
| Chinese police destroying pirated DVDs and CDs |
So here
rests the critical antagonism; the insatiable demand for new music
entertainment that the market has encouraged among its consumers, and the emerging
technology which until now has been a benefit to capital accumulation has
reached a point that transcends its previous conditions. The internet and the
endless creativity of those private individuals working on the next generation
of file-sharing applications have in a very short period of time negated the
hegemony of the recording industry. And just as the production and distribution
of music is no longer wholly constrained by Capital, so too is the Ideology of
music consumption changing with it. Even though there are a large number of
legal methods of download which are considerably cheaper than buying the
physical product, the prevalence of unregulated downloading continues. More
than this, though, is that the necessity of large corporations to spoon feed
consumers with the next big thing is also becoming marginalized. Online blogs,
review sites and magazines like Pitchfork media, and the ability of individuals
to upload and promote their own recordings through social networking sites
means that exposure is no longer dependent on being given a promotional budget.
Information about new music is available to any individual with an internet
connection and the ability to search, review, and subsequently obtain music is
rapidly freeing independent music from the grip of established media outlets.
The increasing prevalence of TV talent shows to produce profitable short term
investments for the music industry is a direct response to the loss of control
over the regulation and emergence of new music that the internet and digital
music has created.
In the
long term I can see this phenomena developing into a genuinely stark duality in
music culture. On the one side an increasingly conservative and repetitive
mainstream focusing on a smaller number of predictable short term gains from
increasingly manufactured artists. This will coincide with a continued
withdrawal of influence over marginal and less profitable forms, including all
but the most commercial rock music. On the other side, away from the concision
of commercial music, it will be increasingly characterised by large numbers of
small independent labels directly distributing their artists work through
download or by smaller runs of physical products, increasingly vinyl on parity
with CDs. With far lower costs for distribution and promotion the cost of music
will fall dramatically. We are already seeing traces of this in the price wars
of various outlets for MP3s and online CD purchase.
In the
long term I can see the possibility that the vast majority of music will be
obtained outside of the sphere of influence of big capital, with corporations
unable to justify the cost of national or international promotion for artists
whose music will be sold cheaply, is readily available by illegal download, and
the popularity for which will fade due to disenchantment with its chronic
formalism. It is in this long term sense that we may talk about the death of
music as a mass cultural phenomenon. No longer blanket exposure for the flavour
of week. No grand new trends with their multi million pound corporate backing.
No talk of investment in hip-hop or diversification into nu-folk (obviously
no-one actually talks about that). Information as the basis of hegemony of
exposure and consumption will be decentralised and as such the old model of the
media manipulated consumer buying up the latest fad will be negated. What those
who attack the rhisomatic nature of the digital revolution miss is that while
it throws the subject into a state where all narratives vie for attention, it also
frees that subject from the interpassivity inherent in late capitalist culture.
Too often the thinking is done for you, by the talk show host, the talent show
judge, the major label executive or the magazine editor. The alienation of
enjoyment into the mass activity of music consumption is negated by the
plurality and subjective freedom afforded by the new digital revolution.
The swarm
of new music, of endless lists of MP3s and digital media downloaded, cast aside
or shared, unmediated by the big Other directing the purchase of choice; this
is held up by conservative forces as the result of music and other media being
so ready at hand, unconstrained by larger forces structuring hierarchies of
value. Now we throw our sounds around like confetti at a wedding, all reduced
to mere Muzak soundtracking our individual lives. What these voices of reason
miss is the thoroughly liberating situation where the normative values and
meanings in music are thrown into chaos, where the subject of the musical
enunciation and the subject of the enunciated content are no longer screened
from each other by the wider symbolic-libidinal mechanism of Capital - whose
logic has nothing whatsoever to do with the experience of musical signification
- and thus for the first time the mass exchange of cultural products within a
society shed their alienating character, and we will finally be able to speak
of an essence of cultural exchange that was always already there.
Almost
one hundred years ago in Italy, Luigi Russolo premiered his mighty Intonarumori
noise makers. One of the divisions in the concert program was titled “The
Awakening of Capital”. While I might suggest that the unevenness in development
that music has suffered from in the intervening time has left Capital in a
self-satisfied slumber, the rapidly accelerating changes of the last ten years
are to ensure that this awakening will be a very rude one indeed.
February 2010
References:
(1) - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8477675.stm
(2)http://www.riaa.com/newsitem.php?news_month_filter&news_year_filter&resultpage&id=8722BE0A-AD2A-FFAE-E4A1-BFD273C025EB
(1) - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8477675.stm
(2)http://www.riaa.com/newsitem.php?news_month_filter&news_year_filter&resultpage&id=8722BE0A-AD2A-FFAE-E4A1-BFD273C025EB
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