During his presentation, Jake Eberts spoke about business models in the film industry. It seems as though the film and television industry is beginning to embrace the idea of crowdsourced content and peer production. Someone in Los Angeles seems to have finally wised up to the fact that users experience media in a very different way than they used to. Modern technology has allowed users to transcend their (perceived) former role as passive consumers and become creators themselves.
There is a danger, however, in regard to large media entities like DC Comics and Oprah embracing crowdsourcing. Namely, one might jump too quickly to the conclusion that media has become de-centralized, democratized and that society has evolved in some culturally significant way. Allowing the public to graciously contribute to the next comic book studio picture may create the illusion that users have more of a voice than they actually do. It could make users think they’re participating and thus have the effect of rendering people more compliant than ever.
There is also something ironic about large media incorporating content from fans. In the context of the “copyright wars”, there is one argument that is regularly tossed around by the content industry: borrowing other people’s material does not constitute creation. In other words, someone should not be able “free-ride” off another person’s work when they can go out and create their own work. According to this logic it is unacceptable to take a two second sample of a snare drum from a Beatles track because one has the option of making their own recording. Of course copyright law itself is not this restrictive and only limits the use of copyrighted works where a substantial portion has been reproduced. From a legal perspective, the crowdsourcing context is different as it does not actually violate copyright law. Upon submission of content to the site, users are no doubt required to grant a licence of some sort. The reproduction of user generated content is therefore fully legal. It is more on moral or instinctual grounds that the adoption of other people’s work by the content industry seems problematic. After years of screaming about how using other people’s work is wrong and doesn’t constitute a new work, the content industry has suddenly adopted this process into their own business model? It seems a tad hypocritical.
Of course large studios can adopt any business model they like. After all, the “copyright wars” themselves are packed full of contradictory arguments on both sides and at this point are mostly just a lot of noisy rhetoric about ownership and free culture. Having fans submit media means that studios no longer have to produce their own content and also allows them to sit back and select the best idea. Peer production is a strong business model as it is beneficial both financially and creatively, yet it is important not to overemphasize its novelty or cultural significance.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Courtney on Eberts
Jake Eberts spoke last week, and while he covered a variety of interesting topics, what struck me most was how his lecture caused me to reflect upon my initial reactions to other speakers and overarching themes of this course. Eberts opened my mind to the potential benefit of some of the trends in society and associated technologies that I initially deemed problematic. The first is the move toward everyone as an artist culture. The second is the ‘what I want, when I want it, where I want it’ mentality. To me the two are entangled in the move from passive observation toward active participation.
The first theme, advancing technology that allows everyone to “create” or “compose” is one that most troubled me. My first negative reaction was sparked by Girltalk when he talked about “dumping a beer on Elton John’s head” as a way of moving music from something created by a few to something that is accessible to and “created” by anyone with an interest and a computer. Brian Whitman also raised examples of iphone applications that allow people to buy songs for $2 strictly to “mess around with them” and create a product they like.
In the words of Sandy Pearlman my reservations to this may sound like “elitist old-school carping”, however I do not see the value in allowing everyone to leave their mark on the music world. The craft of Bach or Mahler cannot be compared to that of Girltalk. I see value in having untouched masterpieces created by the musical geniuses of our time and (passively) enjoyed by the rest of the population.
The “what I want, when I want it, where I want it” trend, was focused on by David Neale and to me sums up the move toward active participation with existing art. Initially I found this trend troubling as well. I questioned the need for each consumer to personalize and tweak the product she is enjoying.
I was totally on board with Pearlman’s rejection of everyone as artist culture until Eberts spoke. Eberts also caused me to reflect on my initial rejection of personalization trends by demonstrating how giving consumers/listeners a voice and the power to contribute has great potential for social good. Now I am wondering if perhaps we all do have something to contribute.
Eberts illustrated how giving the consumer an active role can be really great. He touched on the fact that it is the combination of the two above-mentioned trends that allows consumers/viewers to contribute meaningfully to social progress and raise awareness of important global issues. Eberts and Disney have taken advantage of this trend toward active participation by creating an interactive site to raise awareness of global ocean destruction. Citizen Global and Oprah have created a site that uses crowd sourcing to create public service ads. Eberts also sees this as the way of the future for quality video news.
Eberts convinced me that there is great potential in encouraging active participation with art instead of passive observation. I absolutely see the value in the film and television industry, but am still on the fence as far as the creation of music.
The first theme, advancing technology that allows everyone to “create” or “compose” is one that most troubled me. My first negative reaction was sparked by Girltalk when he talked about “dumping a beer on Elton John’s head” as a way of moving music from something created by a few to something that is accessible to and “created” by anyone with an interest and a computer. Brian Whitman also raised examples of iphone applications that allow people to buy songs for $2 strictly to “mess around with them” and create a product they like.
In the words of Sandy Pearlman my reservations to this may sound like “elitist old-school carping”, however I do not see the value in allowing everyone to leave their mark on the music world. The craft of Bach or Mahler cannot be compared to that of Girltalk. I see value in having untouched masterpieces created by the musical geniuses of our time and (passively) enjoyed by the rest of the population.
The “what I want, when I want it, where I want it” trend, was focused on by David Neale and to me sums up the move toward active participation with existing art. Initially I found this trend troubling as well. I questioned the need for each consumer to personalize and tweak the product she is enjoying.
I was totally on board with Pearlman’s rejection of everyone as artist culture until Eberts spoke. Eberts also caused me to reflect on my initial rejection of personalization trends by demonstrating how giving consumers/listeners a voice and the power to contribute has great potential for social good. Now I am wondering if perhaps we all do have something to contribute.
Eberts illustrated how giving the consumer an active role can be really great. He touched on the fact that it is the combination of the two above-mentioned trends that allows consumers/viewers to contribute meaningfully to social progress and raise awareness of important global issues. Eberts and Disney have taken advantage of this trend toward active participation by creating an interactive site to raise awareness of global ocean destruction. Citizen Global and Oprah have created a site that uses crowd sourcing to create public service ads. Eberts also sees this as the way of the future for quality video news.
Eberts convinced me that there is great potential in encouraging active participation with art instead of passive observation. I absolutely see the value in the film and television industry, but am still on the fence as far as the creation of music.
Bryson on Eberts
In his Tuesday discussion, Jake Eberts spoke at length about the major movie studios' dichotomous handling of fiction and nonfiction film. Eberts noted that in many cases, the stratospheric budgets of so-called fictional productions (as opposed to the more modest budgets of nonfiction films) are designed to arouse the senses and immerse the viewer in a synesthetic and ethereal dreamscape. This is achieved with the help of computer-generated or aided images and elaborate special effects of all kinds. Hence, it comes as no surprise that these large-budget movies tend to lend themselves to highly stylized and fantastical narratives and settings1. The skyrocketing profitability and popularity of the use of 3-D technology promises to continue the trajectory. So distracted are viewers by the novel implements of this enhanced viewing experience that they haven't the leftover brainpower (let alone willpower) to appreciate any attempt at subtle narrative. To be sure, the canon of popular modern film has shown that it doesn't take 3-D technology or hundred million dollar special effects to inspire chronicles of inexorable vapidity,2 but they certainly aren't working against the trend. As James Cameron's sprawling opus Avatar evinces plainly, if they already know the story3, they can concentrate harder on grinning through the dizziness at the dazzling, fire-and-brimstone missile assault on Hometree. In Avatar, Cameron deliberately avoids creating unique characters and original plot elements, referring instead to the most familiar and obvious stereotypes and archetypes embedded in the Anglo literary canon. By creating the ultimate cultural allegory, Cameron has created a non-product, devoid of any actual content or commentary. After all, the average consumer of entertainment product has little patience for problem-solving.
Steeped in the foetid waters of the same culture pool, celebrities like Britney Spears and Fergie (to name only two) display a similar penchant for allegory. A structurally unoriginal (though highly stylized) sonic framework supports uttered references to various archetypal norms ie. going to the club, being noticed and perceived as 'cool' by others, obsession with materialism and sex, etc. This slideshow of snapshots of what has become normative pop culture weaves no new narrative nor interpretation. Thus Avatar and "Party in the USA4" are rendered postmodern simulacra. That is, they are wholly constituted by representations of and references to popular images, providing no intrinsic contribution, no seed of newness, themselves. It is narratives like these that will spell out the future of our collective cultural vocabulary. What will happen to our cultural narrative? Our stories? Will our stories be beautiful? Will they be subtle? Will our stories be banal and prosaic, informed by the ever-shrinking emotional lexicon of generation McDonalds? One thing is for sure: the market asphyxiation by the major movie studios and the Texas Board of Education alike are trying like hell to eliminate the tools that our society requires in order to make that choice for ourselves. This underscores the urgent need for localized creative cultural expression and production beyond the reach of conglomerated capital power. Vibrant localized markets can and must sustain themselves in the face of the virtual infinitude of conglomerated media's marketing might.
Steeped in the foetid waters of the same culture pool, celebrities like Britney Spears and Fergie (to name only two) display a similar penchant for allegory. A structurally unoriginal (though highly stylized) sonic framework supports uttered references to various archetypal norms ie. going to the club, being noticed and perceived as 'cool' by others, obsession with materialism and sex, etc. This slideshow of snapshots of what has become normative pop culture weaves no new narrative nor interpretation. Thus Avatar and "Party in the USA4" are rendered postmodern simulacra. That is, they are wholly constituted by representations of and references to popular images, providing no intrinsic contribution, no seed of newness, themselves. It is narratives like these that will spell out the future of our collective cultural vocabulary. What will happen to our cultural narrative? Our stories? Will our stories be beautiful? Will they be subtle? Will our stories be banal and prosaic, informed by the ever-shrinking emotional lexicon of generation McDonalds? One thing is for sure: the market asphyxiation by the major movie studios and the Texas Board of Education alike are trying like hell to eliminate the tools that our society requires in order to make that choice for ourselves. This underscores the urgent need for localized creative cultural expression and production beyond the reach of conglomerated capital power. Vibrant localized markets can and must sustain themselves in the face of the virtual infinitude of conglomerated media's marketing might.
Jen on Jake Eberts
BUSA 692 – Reflection #2- Jake Eberts – 23 March 2010
Jake Eberts’ guest spot in the class this past week really encouraged me to consider again the relationship between film and music. Although he discussed a number of different areas that affect films and film-making, some of his comments about the music for particular films such as Chariots of Fire (1981) being responsible for the success of the film were interesting and validating. Similar to some of the clips that Karen Collins showed us about the movie Jaws (1975) and music, music has a profound effect on the viewer of the film. Even the film Gandhi (1982), where the main draw of the film was a single actor, the music fleshes out the film, creating mood, atmosphere, excitement, etc.
Films that encompass epic/heroic stories require a sufficient score to support the story, provide emotional padding, and, I would argue, even create a sense of 3D. Mr. Eberts stated that 3D was the way of the future, and that more and more films are including 3D elements in them. I would argue that 3D is not just a visual element and that the way of the future also includes ‘3D sound’. As commercial technology costs become more accessible to the public, significantly better sound quality will matter again to the larger public, especially when concerned with movies and television in the home.
Music and film, however, is also a great way for contemporary composers and musicians to continue to be supported by their trade. Scoring film music is different from more free-composition techniques. The film-composer must be able to be a part of the film-director’s vision for the film, should know the script and emotional scope of the story, and should have a firm grasp of the characters’ development. I have personally worked on creating film music for a very small no-dialogue, 12-minute film. We probably ended up using only about 30% of what I had composed, but the final product worked quite well. I didn’t enjoy it enough to consider a career-change into composition, but it piqued my interest again in the relationship between film and music.
Even if the film is not going to be a so-called block-buster, putting careful thought into the film soundtrack will also encourage soundtrack-sales, as well as DVD sales. Directors who do not consider the effects of music on their film, will not be making good films, and will not be making an entertaining contribution to their genre.
Some of the most memorable films for me, when it comes to music, have a wide emotional range of music, key themes for key characters/situations, but also include music to heighten suspense, juxtapose silence, and add excitement to action. Large, epic films such as The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003) trilogy and the Star Wars films (various dates) are excellent examples of classical scores that live up to the epic movies they help create. As for more contemporary music based-films, Until the End of the World (1991), Natural Born Killers (1994), Forest Gump (1994), Pulp Fiction (1994), and O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) all have excellent soundtracks that incorporate a wide-variety of songs that sold well after release.
Film and music will forever be intertwined. As the technological quality of film and music grows and expands, the creative forces behind composition, compilation, and creation will grow too.
Jake Eberts’ guest spot in the class this past week really encouraged me to consider again the relationship between film and music. Although he discussed a number of different areas that affect films and film-making, some of his comments about the music for particular films such as Chariots of Fire (1981) being responsible for the success of the film were interesting and validating. Similar to some of the clips that Karen Collins showed us about the movie Jaws (1975) and music, music has a profound effect on the viewer of the film. Even the film Gandhi (1982), where the main draw of the film was a single actor, the music fleshes out the film, creating mood, atmosphere, excitement, etc.
Films that encompass epic/heroic stories require a sufficient score to support the story, provide emotional padding, and, I would argue, even create a sense of 3D. Mr. Eberts stated that 3D was the way of the future, and that more and more films are including 3D elements in them. I would argue that 3D is not just a visual element and that the way of the future also includes ‘3D sound’. As commercial technology costs become more accessible to the public, significantly better sound quality will matter again to the larger public, especially when concerned with movies and television in the home.
Music and film, however, is also a great way for contemporary composers and musicians to continue to be supported by their trade. Scoring film music is different from more free-composition techniques. The film-composer must be able to be a part of the film-director’s vision for the film, should know the script and emotional scope of the story, and should have a firm grasp of the characters’ development. I have personally worked on creating film music for a very small no-dialogue, 12-minute film. We probably ended up using only about 30% of what I had composed, but the final product worked quite well. I didn’t enjoy it enough to consider a career-change into composition, but it piqued my interest again in the relationship between film and music.
Even if the film is not going to be a so-called block-buster, putting careful thought into the film soundtrack will also encourage soundtrack-sales, as well as DVD sales. Directors who do not consider the effects of music on their film, will not be making good films, and will not be making an entertaining contribution to their genre.
Some of the most memorable films for me, when it comes to music, have a wide emotional range of music, key themes for key characters/situations, but also include music to heighten suspense, juxtapose silence, and add excitement to action. Large, epic films such as The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003) trilogy and the Star Wars films (various dates) are excellent examples of classical scores that live up to the epic movies they help create. As for more contemporary music based-films, Until the End of the World (1991), Natural Born Killers (1994), Forest Gump (1994), Pulp Fiction (1994), and O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) all have excellent soundtracks that incorporate a wide-variety of songs that sold well after release.
Film and music will forever be intertwined. As the technological quality of film and music grows and expands, the creative forces behind composition, compilation, and creation will grow too.
Ryan on Jake Eberts
Ryan Nelson
I'm curious about incentives for filmmaking. In his extremely interesting presentation, Jake Eberts described a film industry business model which appears fixated on short-term profitability. Production rights in the 99th year of a film’s copyright term don’t appear to factor into decisions about whether producing a particular film will be a promising and profitable enterprise. This makes sense because we ought to discount future profits based on an expectation of diminishing returns. When we take into account all the uncertainly about what will happen in the film industry over the course of a century, it seems unwise for a filmmaker to bank on profits in the later portion of their copyright term. I would propose, therefore, that the later portions of the 100 year US corporate copyright term do not serve as a significant incentive at the time a producer elects to create a movie – the future is discounted too much to factor into their economic equations. That said, I think there is a significant difference between the economic models of Good Films versus Bad Films which complicates what would otherwise be my simplistic conclusion about film incentives – to reduce the copyright term-length because it doesn’t adequately incentivize the useful arts.
Gandhi, with a budget of $22 Million took 89 Days to become profitable, which means it had approximately 36411 remaining days of exclusivity in which all revenue is profit. I'm being a little unfair because a large portion of that original revenue is captured by the distributor; for a film to become profitable from the producer's prospective it takes longer. The-Numbers.com (from where I pulled all my data) loosely approximates that 50% of the box office price returns to the studio, while the other half stays with the distributor, going to pay for marketing or for the kid to sweep up popcorn after the show.
Gandhi generated approximately $52 million at the box office, $22 Million in Rentals, and an unknown number in sales. In the 150 days it was in theatres, its producers would have broke even and made an additional $4 million (about $26m on $22m), a return on investment after its 6 month cinema life of only 8.5% (a treasury bond at the time was yielding over 10% !). As rentals and sales of the film are factored in over the years, the film would become pleasantly profitable from the producer’s perspective; but it would take time.
Transformers presents a different picture. It cost approximately $151 million to make, grossed $700 million worldwide in half a year in theatres, and has made about $290 million in DVD sales in the past two years. Once it surrenders half(ish) the box office total to distribution and marketing costs, the studio has made about $350 million profit, a 130% return. Transformers did very well with DVD sales and rentals in the two years since its production; but we can expect that, owing to its mediocrity, its long-term marketability will rapidly drop. Gandhi, on the other hand, remains as pertinent and important today as it has ever been, and will make sales every time it is released in a newfangled format over the next 70 years.
If you allow me to apply my shameless bias and let Gandhi repent Good Film while Transformers represents Bad Film, there are some troubling implications for copyright reductionists. Good Films require time to become profitable enough for their producers to justify the original risk. One of the largest reasons for this is, as Jake pointed observed, that it is hard to communicate sophisticated ideas in a thirty-second trailer. You have to wait until word-of-mouth gets around before good films start to receive a serious viewership. If the term of copyright is to be reduced, it will likely harm good films more than bad.
Reducing the length of copyright still seems to me a very good idea, but I don't want to do so in a way that undermines the financial incentives which produce Art-for-the-Ages, forcing any artists hoping to make a professional living to focus on Buck-a-Pop art.
The value of the copyright incentive decreases as it is discounted for the future. For someone considering producing a film, the first year of exclusive rights is very valuable, while the 99th is completely insignificant. If the monster blockbuster film was the only business model to consider, I would be quite content to drastically reduce the length of their monopoly – fourteen years seems a little long, five years might be a little short. But if we expect the business of making good films to prosper via copyright, they will probably need more time.
My preferred approach is to begin to abandon the idea that films should depend exclusively on copyright for their revenue. Developing a cinematic award system which provides significant financial rewards to the makers of good films might be one interesting way to start achieving this. I’m sure there will be many others.
I'm curious about incentives for filmmaking. In his extremely interesting presentation, Jake Eberts described a film industry business model which appears fixated on short-term profitability. Production rights in the 99th year of a film’s copyright term don’t appear to factor into decisions about whether producing a particular film will be a promising and profitable enterprise. This makes sense because we ought to discount future profits based on an expectation of diminishing returns. When we take into account all the uncertainly about what will happen in the film industry over the course of a century, it seems unwise for a filmmaker to bank on profits in the later portion of their copyright term. I would propose, therefore, that the later portions of the 100 year US corporate copyright term do not serve as a significant incentive at the time a producer elects to create a movie – the future is discounted too much to factor into their economic equations. That said, I think there is a significant difference between the economic models of Good Films versus Bad Films which complicates what would otherwise be my simplistic conclusion about film incentives – to reduce the copyright term-length because it doesn’t adequately incentivize the useful arts.
Gandhi, with a budget of $22 Million took 89 Days to become profitable, which means it had approximately 36411 remaining days of exclusivity in which all revenue is profit. I'm being a little unfair because a large portion of that original revenue is captured by the distributor; for a film to become profitable from the producer's prospective it takes longer. The-Numbers.com (from where I pulled all my data) loosely approximates that 50% of the box office price returns to the studio, while the other half stays with the distributor, going to pay for marketing or for the kid to sweep up popcorn after the show.
Gandhi generated approximately $52 million at the box office, $22 Million in Rentals, and an unknown number in sales. In the 150 days it was in theatres, its producers would have broke even and made an additional $4 million (about $26m on $22m), a return on investment after its 6 month cinema life of only 8.5% (a treasury bond at the time was yielding over 10% !). As rentals and sales of the film are factored in over the years, the film would become pleasantly profitable from the producer’s perspective; but it would take time.
Transformers presents a different picture. It cost approximately $151 million to make, grossed $700 million worldwide in half a year in theatres, and has made about $290 million in DVD sales in the past two years. Once it surrenders half(ish) the box office total to distribution and marketing costs, the studio has made about $350 million profit, a 130% return. Transformers did very well with DVD sales and rentals in the two years since its production; but we can expect that, owing to its mediocrity, its long-term marketability will rapidly drop. Gandhi, on the other hand, remains as pertinent and important today as it has ever been, and will make sales every time it is released in a newfangled format over the next 70 years.
If you allow me to apply my shameless bias and let Gandhi repent Good Film while Transformers represents Bad Film, there are some troubling implications for copyright reductionists. Good Films require time to become profitable enough for their producers to justify the original risk. One of the largest reasons for this is, as Jake pointed observed, that it is hard to communicate sophisticated ideas in a thirty-second trailer. You have to wait until word-of-mouth gets around before good films start to receive a serious viewership. If the term of copyright is to be reduced, it will likely harm good films more than bad.
Reducing the length of copyright still seems to me a very good idea, but I don't want to do so in a way that undermines the financial incentives which produce Art-for-the-Ages, forcing any artists hoping to make a professional living to focus on Buck-a-Pop art.
The value of the copyright incentive decreases as it is discounted for the future. For someone considering producing a film, the first year of exclusive rights is very valuable, while the 99th is completely insignificant. If the monster blockbuster film was the only business model to consider, I would be quite content to drastically reduce the length of their monopoly – fourteen years seems a little long, five years might be a little short. But if we expect the business of making good films to prosper via copyright, they will probably need more time.
My preferred approach is to begin to abandon the idea that films should depend exclusively on copyright for their revenue. Developing a cinematic award system which provides significant financial rewards to the makers of good films might be one interesting way to start achieving this. I’m sure there will be many others.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Guillaume on Neale
David Neale, Chief Futurist at Telus, made a very pertinent observation in his recent visit to class. Discussing the ubiquitousness of mobile devices today, Neale suggested that “people see no more value to mobility; it should just exist, for free, as a standard.” His observation is highly pertinent in how we conceive of the value of products and the consequences of those judgments.
The value of mobility is often forgotten. However, it is perhaps justifiably forgotten. Whenever I turn on my computer anywhere on McGill’s campus, I am automatically connected to a powerful WiFi network that services all of my communication needs. Anytime I need to access such a network when off-campus or away from home, any number of coffee shops and restaurants are ready to assist me in whichever city I might be, in exchange for the price of a cup of tea and cookie. In the latter case, I am not paying for the right to access mobility, but rather the snack; the WiFi access is an added “free” perk. In many ways, the current set-up for mobility teaches me, the consumer, that mobility ought be free, and that any costs associated with the service are best covered through other, indirect fees levied through the sale of other products or services (namely, tuition fees and cookies, in this case).
Yet, every now and then, there some environments which shock me back into a reality where WiFi and mobility are not free. Airports are a great example. Whenever I am sitting in Montreal-Trudeau, Toronto-Pearson, or Edmonton International, I know that Wi-Fi connectivity will cost me. However, because of the ubiquitousness of such networks everywhere else in my life, shelling out 10$ for an hour’s worth of connectivity strikes me as a bad deal, as somehow being vastly overpriced; consequently, I almost never purchase such a service. The fact that other airports do offer me free connectivity - Ottawa, Calgary, and Vancouver among others - reduces the “value” of Wi-Fi mobility for me in airports generally, such that I’m implicitly being trained to believe that Wi-Fi “should just exist, for free, as a standard” in every airport I visit. I am now disappointed when airports choose not to follow this obvious “standard.” It is ironic that something of such high utility has such a low financial value. “Free” access to a service trains the consumer to believe the service should always be free, regardless of the value of the service to the consumer. Therein lies the true benefit, but also the critical danger; free access makes a service widely desirable, but necessarily jeopardizes its profitability in some of its most expected spheres of application.
Neale’s observation also offers an interesting parallel to music downloading. Indeed, the ideology that music “should just exist, for free, as a standard” has been quoted often as a reason for the proliferation of downloading over the past decade. The parallel to Wi-Fi reveals again that a potential solution to the problem then seems to be not to charge for the music itself, but rather charge for services associated with gaining access to the music, or allowing one to enjoy the music within a better context - the proverbial “tea and cookies” of the music industry. Only time will tell whether such business models are viable, however.
The value of mobility is often forgotten. However, it is perhaps justifiably forgotten. Whenever I turn on my computer anywhere on McGill’s campus, I am automatically connected to a powerful WiFi network that services all of my communication needs. Anytime I need to access such a network when off-campus or away from home, any number of coffee shops and restaurants are ready to assist me in whichever city I might be, in exchange for the price of a cup of tea and cookie. In the latter case, I am not paying for the right to access mobility, but rather the snack; the WiFi access is an added “free” perk. In many ways, the current set-up for mobility teaches me, the consumer, that mobility ought be free, and that any costs associated with the service are best covered through other, indirect fees levied through the sale of other products or services (namely, tuition fees and cookies, in this case).
Yet, every now and then, there some environments which shock me back into a reality where WiFi and mobility are not free. Airports are a great example. Whenever I am sitting in Montreal-Trudeau, Toronto-Pearson, or Edmonton International, I know that Wi-Fi connectivity will cost me. However, because of the ubiquitousness of such networks everywhere else in my life, shelling out 10$ for an hour’s worth of connectivity strikes me as a bad deal, as somehow being vastly overpriced; consequently, I almost never purchase such a service. The fact that other airports do offer me free connectivity - Ottawa, Calgary, and Vancouver among others - reduces the “value” of Wi-Fi mobility for me in airports generally, such that I’m implicitly being trained to believe that Wi-Fi “should just exist, for free, as a standard” in every airport I visit. I am now disappointed when airports choose not to follow this obvious “standard.” It is ironic that something of such high utility has such a low financial value. “Free” access to a service trains the consumer to believe the service should always be free, regardless of the value of the service to the consumer. Therein lies the true benefit, but also the critical danger; free access makes a service widely desirable, but necessarily jeopardizes its profitability in some of its most expected spheres of application.
Neale’s observation also offers an interesting parallel to music downloading. Indeed, the ideology that music “should just exist, for free, as a standard” has been quoted often as a reason for the proliferation of downloading over the past decade. The parallel to Wi-Fi reveals again that a potential solution to the problem then seems to be not to charge for the music itself, but rather charge for services associated with gaining access to the music, or allowing one to enjoy the music within a better context - the proverbial “tea and cookies” of the music industry. Only time will tell whether such business models are viable, however.
Federico reflections on Neale
I would like to focus here on the idea that the advent of IP has created the notion of “absolute connectivity,” which works as a platform on which the idea of personalization (so essential for the development of the IT market) develops. In particular, I was fascinated by the concept of entitlement, so well-described by David Neal in his talk.
As Neal pointed out, in the pre-GSM era, calling a phone number meant hoping to reach the person on the other end of the phone; however, with the advent of cell phones, the idea of getting in touch with the other person became a given, and our sense of entitlement in this respect has become part of our communication process.
Such entitlement is the result of the conversion of three key concepts: personalization (“whatever I want”), time-shifting (“whenever I want”), and place-shifting (“wherever I want”). While the last two are self-explanatory, personalization is more complicated. For example, back in the 80s, people came to enjoy innovations such as walkmen and diskmen where and when they wanted. However, only the mobile phone industry has caused people to become obsessed over the notion of personalization: the development of product quantity and quality eventually led to the idea, and reality, of a cell phone-related/dependent community.
The post-GSM approach to communication has fostered connectivity among individuals. This enhanced the necessity of the individual to diversify itself and become unique in its community, yet maintain its role as part of it.
That the principle behind building a community can be the self-satisfaction of each component individual and nothing else is, in my view, an interesting delimitation to the notion of community; a limitation that IT companies were able to successfully exploit.
As Neal pointed out, in the pre-GSM era, calling a phone number meant hoping to reach the person on the other end of the phone; however, with the advent of cell phones, the idea of getting in touch with the other person became a given, and our sense of entitlement in this respect has become part of our communication process.
Such entitlement is the result of the conversion of three key concepts: personalization (“whatever I want”), time-shifting (“whenever I want”), and place-shifting (“wherever I want”). While the last two are self-explanatory, personalization is more complicated. For example, back in the 80s, people came to enjoy innovations such as walkmen and diskmen where and when they wanted. However, only the mobile phone industry has caused people to become obsessed over the notion of personalization: the development of product quantity and quality eventually led to the idea, and reality, of a cell phone-related/dependent community.
The post-GSM approach to communication has fostered connectivity among individuals. This enhanced the necessity of the individual to diversify itself and become unique in its community, yet maintain its role as part of it.
That the principle behind building a community can be the self-satisfaction of each component individual and nothing else is, in my view, an interesting delimitation to the notion of community; a limitation that IT companies were able to successfully exploit.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Maxime Hebrard - Synthesis Essay
b. What innovation has the greatest potential for influencing musical culture and the music industry? Why? (note: innovation can be read broadly)
Les services de streaming musicaux sont selon moi les innovations qui ont le plus de chance de transformer la culture et l’industrie musicale. Plusieurs sites internet offrent présentement un tel service de streaming : Grooveshark, MusicMe, Spotify… Ces services sont toujours à la recherche d’un modèle économique rentable, mais une fois qu’ils l’auront trouvé, et qu’un de ces sites se sera imposé comme référence, la façon dont nous consommons la musique s’en verra profondément transformée, ce qui affectera inévitablement l’industrie musicale elle-même.
1. Les raisons expliquant l’avènement des sites de streaming
Plusieurs facteurs favorisent le déplacement de la consommation de musique vers les sites de streaming musicaux. Premièrement, la démocratisation d’internet, résultant de l’extension géographique du réseau et de la baisse des coûts de connexion, permet pratiquement à tous d’accéder à internet, ce qui élargit le bassin de clientèle des sites de streaming. Deuxièmement, la popularité grandissante des téléphones intelligents permet d’accéder à internet et aux sites de streaming lors de nos déplacements, rendant ainsi inutile la possession matérielle de fichiers musicaux, ce qui devrait entraîner à terme la disparition des lecteurs mp3. Troisièmement, la plupart des grandes maisons de disque appuient les sites de streaming en leur donnant accès à leur catalogue, ce qui élargit l’offre musicale de ces sites au bénéfice du consommateur. La combinaison de ces trois facteurs ouvre la voie au développement du streaming et devrait mener à sa consécration comme principale interface entre les consommateurs de musique et les musiciens.
De plus, les sites de streaming devraient s’imposer car ils constituent la seule offre légale susceptible de concurrencer le téléchargement illégal. Nous savons que les tentatives de coercition visant à mettre fin au téléchargement illégal ont échoué; la popularité du téléchargement illégal a créé une véritable culture de la gratuité, notamment chez les jeunes, qui est probablement irréversible. Même la proposition de Sandy Pearlman, le five cent download, est selon nous trop onéreuse pour concurrencer l’offre illégale gratuite. La seule façon de concurrencer le téléchargement illégal serait donc d’offrir gratuitement l’accès à la musique, ce que permettent actuellement plusieurs sites de streaming dont le modèle économique s’appuie uniquement sur les revenus publicitaires ou sur des abonnements premium.
2. Les répercussions des sites de streaming
La consécration des sites de streaming devraient transformer radicalement l’industrie de la musique.
L’avènement des sites de streaming devrait tout d’abord provoquer non seulement la marginalisation des supports matériels comme le disque compact, mais également la transformation de notre rapport à la musique. En effet, si la quasi-totalité de l’offre musicale est accessible sur internet, il ne sera plus nécessaire d’être propriétaire de pièces musicales pour pouvoir les écouter. Donc, du point de vue des consommateurs, la musique cessera d’être un bien privé pour devenir une sorte de bien public, accessible à tous sans que cet accès ne nuise à autrui. Ce changement de paradigme pour les consommateurs devrait également modifier l’attitude des musiciens par rapport à leurs œuvres. Nous croyons qu’à terme la musique n’aura plus de valeur économique en elle-même puisqu’elle deviendra accessible à tous; sa valeur résidera dans son pouvoir attractif, sa capacité à convaincre les consommateurs d’assister aux spectacles d’un artiste ou d’acheter des produits dérivés de son œuvre. La musique s’apparentera alors à une marque de commerce définissant la réputation de l’artiste et sa capacité à engranger des revenus par sa production matérielle, que ce soit sa présence ou des objets permettant aux publics de s’identifier à lui. Les systèmes collectifs de redevance aux musiciens devraient par contre survivre afin que les entreprises utilisant la musique d’autrui à des fins promotionnelles, dont feront partie les sites de streaming, versent des sommes aux artistes dont ils utilisent les œuvres.
Le succès des sites de streaming en ligne devrait par ailleurs s’accompagner d’une transformation du rôle des intermédiaires traditionnels entre le musicien et le consommateur, car ces intermédiaires ne seront rapidement plus nécessaires à la diffusion des pièces musicales. Leur rôle se concentrera alors sur la promotion et le financement de l’artiste plutôt que sur la vente de ses œuvres. Mais un autre intermédiaire prendra leur place, les sites de streaming, ce qui devrait mener à des confrontations entre les artistes et ces sites pour la répartition des revenus qu’ils engrangent.
La délocalisation de la musique dans le « cloud », comme le dirait Sandy Pearlman, pourrait également donner lieu à des problèmes liés au respect de la vie privée. Le site de streaming Spotify a déjà éprouvé des difficultés lorsque des hackers ont infiltré son site et se sont emparés de données personnelles sur les utilisateurs du site. Ces problèmes vont se multiplier au fur et à mesure que le nombre d’utilisateurs s’accroît et que ces sites requièrent de plus en plus d’informations des utilisateurs afin de faciliter le ciblage publicitaire. Il reviendra alors aux pouvoirs publics de réguler ces sites afin d’empêcher les abus à ce niveau.
3. Conclusion
Nous croyons donc que les sites de streaming, produits d’une multitude d’autres innovations, constituent la principale innovation susceptible de transformer radicalement l’industrie de la musique au cours des prochaines années. Il leur reste toutefois un obstacle de taille à franchir avant d’imposer leur domination sur le marché : ils devront trouver un modèle économique leur permettant d’assurer leur viabilité et leur perpétuation, ce qui n’est pas chose faite. Toutefois, nous croyons qu’ils parviendront à développer par tâtonnements un modèle viable, comme le démontre le succès européen de Spotify, qui devrait prochainement envahir le marché nord-américain.
Le changement de paradigme que nous avons évoqué, soit le passage d’une logique de propriété à une logique d’accès, devrait également modifier fondamentalement le régime juridique du droit d’auteur. Le droit d’auteur, tel que nous le connaissons, deviendra rapidement désuet lorsque les sites de streaming se seront approprié la majorité de l’offre musicale et l’auront rendu disponible gratuitement au public.
Les services de streaming musicaux sont selon moi les innovations qui ont le plus de chance de transformer la culture et l’industrie musicale. Plusieurs sites internet offrent présentement un tel service de streaming : Grooveshark, MusicMe, Spotify… Ces services sont toujours à la recherche d’un modèle économique rentable, mais une fois qu’ils l’auront trouvé, et qu’un de ces sites se sera imposé comme référence, la façon dont nous consommons la musique s’en verra profondément transformée, ce qui affectera inévitablement l’industrie musicale elle-même.
1. Les raisons expliquant l’avènement des sites de streaming
Plusieurs facteurs favorisent le déplacement de la consommation de musique vers les sites de streaming musicaux. Premièrement, la démocratisation d’internet, résultant de l’extension géographique du réseau et de la baisse des coûts de connexion, permet pratiquement à tous d’accéder à internet, ce qui élargit le bassin de clientèle des sites de streaming. Deuxièmement, la popularité grandissante des téléphones intelligents permet d’accéder à internet et aux sites de streaming lors de nos déplacements, rendant ainsi inutile la possession matérielle de fichiers musicaux, ce qui devrait entraîner à terme la disparition des lecteurs mp3. Troisièmement, la plupart des grandes maisons de disque appuient les sites de streaming en leur donnant accès à leur catalogue, ce qui élargit l’offre musicale de ces sites au bénéfice du consommateur. La combinaison de ces trois facteurs ouvre la voie au développement du streaming et devrait mener à sa consécration comme principale interface entre les consommateurs de musique et les musiciens.
De plus, les sites de streaming devraient s’imposer car ils constituent la seule offre légale susceptible de concurrencer le téléchargement illégal. Nous savons que les tentatives de coercition visant à mettre fin au téléchargement illégal ont échoué; la popularité du téléchargement illégal a créé une véritable culture de la gratuité, notamment chez les jeunes, qui est probablement irréversible. Même la proposition de Sandy Pearlman, le five cent download, est selon nous trop onéreuse pour concurrencer l’offre illégale gratuite. La seule façon de concurrencer le téléchargement illégal serait donc d’offrir gratuitement l’accès à la musique, ce que permettent actuellement plusieurs sites de streaming dont le modèle économique s’appuie uniquement sur les revenus publicitaires ou sur des abonnements premium.
2. Les répercussions des sites de streaming
La consécration des sites de streaming devraient transformer radicalement l’industrie de la musique.
L’avènement des sites de streaming devrait tout d’abord provoquer non seulement la marginalisation des supports matériels comme le disque compact, mais également la transformation de notre rapport à la musique. En effet, si la quasi-totalité de l’offre musicale est accessible sur internet, il ne sera plus nécessaire d’être propriétaire de pièces musicales pour pouvoir les écouter. Donc, du point de vue des consommateurs, la musique cessera d’être un bien privé pour devenir une sorte de bien public, accessible à tous sans que cet accès ne nuise à autrui. Ce changement de paradigme pour les consommateurs devrait également modifier l’attitude des musiciens par rapport à leurs œuvres. Nous croyons qu’à terme la musique n’aura plus de valeur économique en elle-même puisqu’elle deviendra accessible à tous; sa valeur résidera dans son pouvoir attractif, sa capacité à convaincre les consommateurs d’assister aux spectacles d’un artiste ou d’acheter des produits dérivés de son œuvre. La musique s’apparentera alors à une marque de commerce définissant la réputation de l’artiste et sa capacité à engranger des revenus par sa production matérielle, que ce soit sa présence ou des objets permettant aux publics de s’identifier à lui. Les systèmes collectifs de redevance aux musiciens devraient par contre survivre afin que les entreprises utilisant la musique d’autrui à des fins promotionnelles, dont feront partie les sites de streaming, versent des sommes aux artistes dont ils utilisent les œuvres.
Le succès des sites de streaming en ligne devrait par ailleurs s’accompagner d’une transformation du rôle des intermédiaires traditionnels entre le musicien et le consommateur, car ces intermédiaires ne seront rapidement plus nécessaires à la diffusion des pièces musicales. Leur rôle se concentrera alors sur la promotion et le financement de l’artiste plutôt que sur la vente de ses œuvres. Mais un autre intermédiaire prendra leur place, les sites de streaming, ce qui devrait mener à des confrontations entre les artistes et ces sites pour la répartition des revenus qu’ils engrangent.
La délocalisation de la musique dans le « cloud », comme le dirait Sandy Pearlman, pourrait également donner lieu à des problèmes liés au respect de la vie privée. Le site de streaming Spotify a déjà éprouvé des difficultés lorsque des hackers ont infiltré son site et se sont emparés de données personnelles sur les utilisateurs du site. Ces problèmes vont se multiplier au fur et à mesure que le nombre d’utilisateurs s’accroît et que ces sites requièrent de plus en plus d’informations des utilisateurs afin de faciliter le ciblage publicitaire. Il reviendra alors aux pouvoirs publics de réguler ces sites afin d’empêcher les abus à ce niveau.
3. Conclusion
Nous croyons donc que les sites de streaming, produits d’une multitude d’autres innovations, constituent la principale innovation susceptible de transformer radicalement l’industrie de la musique au cours des prochaines années. Il leur reste toutefois un obstacle de taille à franchir avant d’imposer leur domination sur le marché : ils devront trouver un modèle économique leur permettant d’assurer leur viabilité et leur perpétuation, ce qui n’est pas chose faite. Toutefois, nous croyons qu’ils parviendront à développer par tâtonnements un modèle viable, comme le démontre le succès européen de Spotify, qui devrait prochainement envahir le marché nord-américain.
Le changement de paradigme que nous avons évoqué, soit le passage d’une logique de propriété à une logique d’accès, devrait également modifier fondamentalement le régime juridique du droit d’auteur. Le droit d’auteur, tel que nous le connaissons, deviendra rapidement désuet lorsque les sites de streaming se seront approprié la majorité de l’offre musicale et l’auront rendu disponible gratuitement au public.
Ryan Nelson - Synthesis Essay
BUSA 692 Synthesis Paper – Peer to Peer
Ryan Nelson
I think that the innovation with most potential for influencing musical culture and industry in the near future is the same innovation which has most profoundly influenced music in the recent past: peer-to-peer architectures. Peer-to-peer technologies and ideologies are already recognized for having deeply affected music business models; I feel the full-implications of this innovation are still to be seen.
When I talk about Peer-to-Peer as an innovation I am not exclusively thinking about P2P downloading, such as Shawn Fanning's Napster, which so directly confounded business models based on record sales in the last decade. Nor am I exclusively thinking in terms of traditional networking jargon, where peer-to-peer architecture is simply a means of distributing packets in a computer network, where the only competing approach is a client-server architecture. Nor am I thinking of it exclusively as a sort of ideology, characterized by promising organizations like the P2PU (which is creating an online community based university using open education resources) or open source software teams which call their organizational models peer-to-peer, contrasting traditional hierarchical organizational structures. The Innovation of Peer-to-Peer that I discuss embodies all of these concepts. It is not restricted to describing data, but might apply to commercial transactions, democratic systems, organizational structures and more. Though the term is no older than computer networking and only came into common usage in the late nineties, the concepts it describes are as old as history.
We started the course with Lyn Heyward's presentation on the Spark. “Lyn and the Cirque,” concluded Professor Lank at the end of the talk, “had sparked a wildfire, which is now raging completely out of control.” I feel the fiery metaphor for creativity was an appropriate way to begin the course and captures some of the essence how ideas disseminate from peer to peer. As Lyn describes, in participating in a performance the viewer is made part of the performance and the performance part of the viewer. They become keen to share it because it is now a part of them. As if incendiary, a good idea catches, friends tell friends about it, people share it, other artists emulate it, and soon all the world is ablaze. Lyn and Prof Lank are not the only ones to think in these terms. To Thomas Jefferson:
“He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.”[1]
In peer-to-peer networks, creativity (such as that sparked by the magic of Cirque) spreads like Jefferson's fire, wildly and free, without central authorities mitigating and filtering the content. The result is typically lawless, occasionally brilliant, and often in conflict with copyright.
The two copyright experts who came to speak as guests in class, Laura Murray and John Gomery, seem to feel that the “moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition” component of peer-to-peer file sharing does not yet redeem it of the copyright complications it creates. I was surprised to hear the honourable justice use the terms peer-to-peer downloading and piracy as if they were interchangeable on two occasions in his talk. Considering the huge amount of legitimate file-sharing dependent on peer-to-peer protocols, particularly among open source software communities, I hope that our copyright policy makers are as familiar with the technological situation as the computer nerds writing about them on Boing Boing and Slashdot. Gomery's response to Geneviève's question did not encourage us that this was the case.
Laura Murray, whose voice on copyright reform I greatly admire, was also unwilling to defend those who most vocally defy copyright today, whether through peer to peer downloading or through remix art. While much of her criticism of RIP was fair – yes, challenging copyright remains a predominately male pastime, plagued by the unfortunate vulgarities associated with most male-dominated pastimes; yes, open source cinema is not the product of everyone but rather an extremely limited few, just like Wikipedia; yes, Gaylor fails to teach the differences between US and Canadian copyright traditions; and yes, Gaylor may well have flown to China with National Film Board money just to meet his hero lawyer – I don't think the criticisms were damning. They felt more like a professor's comments on how to improve an A+ piece of work than reasons to dismiss a whole project. Perhaps I defend RIP because it had such a keen affect on me, first introducing me to Girl Talk. Before Girl Talk my capacity to appreciate popular rap, hip hop, and dance music was always handicapped by my general cynicism about culture fed through a one-way plastic consumer machine, which Lessig would describe as read-only culture. By putting this previously read-only culture in a headlock and pouring beer on its head, Girl Talk made it accessible to me; I was allowed to hear the underlying music where before I would fixate only on the disgruntling message manifest in the medium. Though I wouldn't describe Girl Talk's remix as exceptional music – much in the same way that throwing tea from a sailboat, or making salt from the sea might not be exceptional spectacles – the symbol is one of terrific empowerment. The consumer culture imposed on us, the MTV generation, has become ours, to speak with as well as listen to.
Laurence Lessig frequently describes three periods of read-write culture which I would also describe as great periods peer to peer knowledge transfer.[2] The first was upon improvements in European printing which led to a flurry of self-published pamphleteers and a reading public hungry for new and unorthodox ideas. The technology turned all of Europe into one Agora, and the enlightenment which followed was very much the product of an escape from the traditional modes of thinking dictated by church and state, which I argue can be seen as a client-server style relationship. A second enabling technology, radio broadcasting, produced a similar explosion of unmitigated expression, with thousands of amateur radio stations spontaneously arising to broadcast about nearly anything. But this phenomenon was short-lived; regulation of the air waves followed quickly. We are currently in the midst of a third such period, where the internet has let bloggers arise in the spirit of the pamphleteers, let podcasts arise in the spirit of the ad hoc radio broadcasters, and let nearly anyone share their music with the world.
In music we have so far seen peer-to-peer downloading flourish on the internet; we have seen peer-to-peer musical instruction flourish on Youtube where you can find lessons on virtually any instrument known to man; and we have seen peer-to-peer collaboration in new music on sites like ccmixter.org; but, we have yet to see a rise of any significant peer-to-peer commerce to replace the remuneration schemes which peer-to-peer filesharing has partly disrupted. In the past century both the dissemination and payment mechanisms for accessing music involved a central authority – the producer. Today the authority has been significantly challenged in terms of distribution by peer-to-peer file sharing without any similar challenge to centralized basis of remuneration. There have been attempts: the student presentations throughout the course have brought our attention to ventures like Sell-a-Band and Kickstarter; students from previous years have discussed their version of a micro-payment systems; I have recently become enamoured with Flatr, a micro-patronage system designed by the creators of the Pirate Bay which is very close to the kind of project I hoped to design for our class; and Nithum has just launched an exciting advertising and digital currency project called Empire Avenue which has potential to reshape virtual economies, greatly simplifying electronic commerce. Yet we still have not seen the implementation of what Richard Stallman started calling for in the nineties: a simple button in the media player that would donate a dollar to an artist.[3]
I am convinced that enabling peer-to-peer commerce to occur with the same ease and safety of peer-to-peer downloading will have profound and constructive effects on the business and culture of music. I hope that it happens soon, because, as international regulatory legislation like ACTA come nearer to completion, and as cloud computing continues to grow into what Donald Talton thinks is the only thing that will save the traditional record company and what Sandy Pearlman and Bryson consider to be a threatening terror to freedom, the regulatory landscape of the internet is going to change. The explosion of popular sharing of ideas which has been the consequence of peer-to-peer innovations and which caused Time Magazine to name You the person of the year in 2006, may yet be vulnerable. To Lessig, the great public participation in the marketplace of ideas which burst forth in the early days of radio and print was eventually throttled by regulation from traditional and newly founded centres of power. Today, as censorship rages in Australia and families are barred from the internet in France, the forces of digital regulation may well bring about a similar throttling. One of the main arguments in favour of this regulation is the RIAA statistic we encountered on the first day of class, that piracy costs 12.5 billion in losses each year, leaving poor artists destitute and unappreciated. Great peer-to-peer innovations in sharing data sparked this phenomenon; I hope that great peer-to-peer innovations in sharing wealth will ensure that it is viewed as a constructive event, taking us closer to a new enlightenment rather than justifying an era of restrictive control.
[1] From Jefferson's letter to Isaac McPherson, quoted in Boyle, J. (2008). The public domain: Enclosing the commons of the mind. New Haven: Yale University Press.
[2] Lessig, L. (2008). Remix: Making art and commerce thrive in the hybrid economy. New York: Penguin Press.
[3] Stallman, R. (2001). Copyright vs Community in the age of computer networks. TECHNOLOGY AND HEALTH CARE. 9, 304.
Ryan Nelson
I think that the innovation with most potential for influencing musical culture and industry in the near future is the same innovation which has most profoundly influenced music in the recent past: peer-to-peer architectures. Peer-to-peer technologies and ideologies are already recognized for having deeply affected music business models; I feel the full-implications of this innovation are still to be seen.
When I talk about Peer-to-Peer as an innovation I am not exclusively thinking about P2P downloading, such as Shawn Fanning's Napster, which so directly confounded business models based on record sales in the last decade. Nor am I exclusively thinking in terms of traditional networking jargon, where peer-to-peer architecture is simply a means of distributing packets in a computer network, where the only competing approach is a client-server architecture. Nor am I thinking of it exclusively as a sort of ideology, characterized by promising organizations like the P2PU (which is creating an online community based university using open education resources) or open source software teams which call their organizational models peer-to-peer, contrasting traditional hierarchical organizational structures. The Innovation of Peer-to-Peer that I discuss embodies all of these concepts. It is not restricted to describing data, but might apply to commercial transactions, democratic systems, organizational structures and more. Though the term is no older than computer networking and only came into common usage in the late nineties, the concepts it describes are as old as history.
We started the course with Lyn Heyward's presentation on the Spark. “Lyn and the Cirque,” concluded Professor Lank at the end of the talk, “had sparked a wildfire, which is now raging completely out of control.” I feel the fiery metaphor for creativity was an appropriate way to begin the course and captures some of the essence how ideas disseminate from peer to peer. As Lyn describes, in participating in a performance the viewer is made part of the performance and the performance part of the viewer. They become keen to share it because it is now a part of them. As if incendiary, a good idea catches, friends tell friends about it, people share it, other artists emulate it, and soon all the world is ablaze. Lyn and Prof Lank are not the only ones to think in these terms. To Thomas Jefferson:
“He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.”[1]
In peer-to-peer networks, creativity (such as that sparked by the magic of Cirque) spreads like Jefferson's fire, wildly and free, without central authorities mitigating and filtering the content. The result is typically lawless, occasionally brilliant, and often in conflict with copyright.
The two copyright experts who came to speak as guests in class, Laura Murray and John Gomery, seem to feel that the “moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition” component of peer-to-peer file sharing does not yet redeem it of the copyright complications it creates. I was surprised to hear the honourable justice use the terms peer-to-peer downloading and piracy as if they were interchangeable on two occasions in his talk. Considering the huge amount of legitimate file-sharing dependent on peer-to-peer protocols, particularly among open source software communities, I hope that our copyright policy makers are as familiar with the technological situation as the computer nerds writing about them on Boing Boing and Slashdot. Gomery's response to Geneviève's question did not encourage us that this was the case.
Laura Murray, whose voice on copyright reform I greatly admire, was also unwilling to defend those who most vocally defy copyright today, whether through peer to peer downloading or through remix art. While much of her criticism of RIP was fair – yes, challenging copyright remains a predominately male pastime, plagued by the unfortunate vulgarities associated with most male-dominated pastimes; yes, open source cinema is not the product of everyone but rather an extremely limited few, just like Wikipedia; yes, Gaylor fails to teach the differences between US and Canadian copyright traditions; and yes, Gaylor may well have flown to China with National Film Board money just to meet his hero lawyer – I don't think the criticisms were damning. They felt more like a professor's comments on how to improve an A+ piece of work than reasons to dismiss a whole project. Perhaps I defend RIP because it had such a keen affect on me, first introducing me to Girl Talk. Before Girl Talk my capacity to appreciate popular rap, hip hop, and dance music was always handicapped by my general cynicism about culture fed through a one-way plastic consumer machine, which Lessig would describe as read-only culture. By putting this previously read-only culture in a headlock and pouring beer on its head, Girl Talk made it accessible to me; I was allowed to hear the underlying music where before I would fixate only on the disgruntling message manifest in the medium. Though I wouldn't describe Girl Talk's remix as exceptional music – much in the same way that throwing tea from a sailboat, or making salt from the sea might not be exceptional spectacles – the symbol is one of terrific empowerment. The consumer culture imposed on us, the MTV generation, has become ours, to speak with as well as listen to.
Laurence Lessig frequently describes three periods of read-write culture which I would also describe as great periods peer to peer knowledge transfer.[2] The first was upon improvements in European printing which led to a flurry of self-published pamphleteers and a reading public hungry for new and unorthodox ideas. The technology turned all of Europe into one Agora, and the enlightenment which followed was very much the product of an escape from the traditional modes of thinking dictated by church and state, which I argue can be seen as a client-server style relationship. A second enabling technology, radio broadcasting, produced a similar explosion of unmitigated expression, with thousands of amateur radio stations spontaneously arising to broadcast about nearly anything. But this phenomenon was short-lived; regulation of the air waves followed quickly. We are currently in the midst of a third such period, where the internet has let bloggers arise in the spirit of the pamphleteers, let podcasts arise in the spirit of the ad hoc radio broadcasters, and let nearly anyone share their music with the world.
In music we have so far seen peer-to-peer downloading flourish on the internet; we have seen peer-to-peer musical instruction flourish on Youtube where you can find lessons on virtually any instrument known to man; and we have seen peer-to-peer collaboration in new music on sites like ccmixter.org; but, we have yet to see a rise of any significant peer-to-peer commerce to replace the remuneration schemes which peer-to-peer filesharing has partly disrupted. In the past century both the dissemination and payment mechanisms for accessing music involved a central authority – the producer. Today the authority has been significantly challenged in terms of distribution by peer-to-peer file sharing without any similar challenge to centralized basis of remuneration. There have been attempts: the student presentations throughout the course have brought our attention to ventures like Sell-a-Band and Kickstarter; students from previous years have discussed their version of a micro-payment systems; I have recently become enamoured with Flatr, a micro-patronage system designed by the creators of the Pirate Bay which is very close to the kind of project I hoped to design for our class; and Nithum has just launched an exciting advertising and digital currency project called Empire Avenue which has potential to reshape virtual economies, greatly simplifying electronic commerce. Yet we still have not seen the implementation of what Richard Stallman started calling for in the nineties: a simple button in the media player that would donate a dollar to an artist.[3]
I am convinced that enabling peer-to-peer commerce to occur with the same ease and safety of peer-to-peer downloading will have profound and constructive effects on the business and culture of music. I hope that it happens soon, because, as international regulatory legislation like ACTA come nearer to completion, and as cloud computing continues to grow into what Donald Talton thinks is the only thing that will save the traditional record company and what Sandy Pearlman and Bryson consider to be a threatening terror to freedom, the regulatory landscape of the internet is going to change. The explosion of popular sharing of ideas which has been the consequence of peer-to-peer innovations and which caused Time Magazine to name You the person of the year in 2006, may yet be vulnerable. To Lessig, the great public participation in the marketplace of ideas which burst forth in the early days of radio and print was eventually throttled by regulation from traditional and newly founded centres of power. Today, as censorship rages in Australia and families are barred from the internet in France, the forces of digital regulation may well bring about a similar throttling. One of the main arguments in favour of this regulation is the RIAA statistic we encountered on the first day of class, that piracy costs 12.5 billion in losses each year, leaving poor artists destitute and unappreciated. Great peer-to-peer innovations in sharing data sparked this phenomenon; I hope that great peer-to-peer innovations in sharing wealth will ensure that it is viewed as a constructive event, taking us closer to a new enlightenment rather than justifying an era of restrictive control.
[1] From Jefferson's letter to Isaac McPherson, quoted in Boyle, J. (2008). The public domain: Enclosing the commons of the mind. New Haven: Yale University Press.
[2] Lessig, L. (2008). Remix: Making art and commerce thrive in the hybrid economy. New York: Penguin Press.
[3] Stallman, R. (2001). Copyright vs Community in the age of computer networks. TECHNOLOGY AND HEALTH CARE. 9, 304.
Alex Dyck - synthesis essay
A Phoenix from the ashes
How the music industry stifled creative expression,
How Web 1.0 destroyed the music industry, and
How the new internet is giving it a second chance
by Alex Dyck
Complex - Simple
Music is a tricky business. Often mired by the processes and procedures that surround its production, marketing, distribution and eventual consumption, music was controlled in the economy up until the recent past by its middle-functionary, the recording industry. The industry had the job of banking on (i.e. risking) and profiting from the work of music creators, a capital-intensive hinge for those creators, who could not regularly perform this task themselves. This hinge also became both the exponent and the limiting factor of innovation in the field of music. When technological innovations outside the industry’s control became the limiting factor for the recording industry itself, the industry failing to capture this, began to contract. Hence, the perhaps disadvantageous “anti-standard” of the music business – all its imprecise, uncertain creative elements – have become the primary advantages of music as a new free institution, accelerating it on a trajectory of survival instead of demise.
The Institution of Music?
Innovation has led to the simplification of musical creation and distribution, while how to profit from it has become more complicated. This is reflected by what happened to the field of science in Europe almost five hundred years ago, during its early yawnings as a societal institution created to be free from temporal, economic, or political control. Like music, science struggles between immediate applicability, and freedom thereof. Science and music easily function as meritocracies. Both deal in terms of uncertainty, creativity, carry risk as a requisite input, and contribute a net value to human culture. Science is almost universally recognized for its value and is supported by free global information (research) networks because it often transcends commercially definable needs – at the outset. Granted that elements of the scientific institution are also threatened by commercialization ethics, the increasingly unified institution of music is approaching a similar point of free dissemination. Music is being recognized increasingly as a rightful, social commodity rather than a privileged, economic one, and being treated increasingly as such by its creators and not just its consumers.
On technology
Technology and innovation go hand in hand. These have led to the creation of every musical instrument since the human voice, and presently devices and networks of all kinds enable the creation and distribution of music and its derivatives. Further, in the last several years, the major internet development has been an evolution from provider publishing to user participating. Hence with the evolution from Web 1.0 (low-bandwidth, static content, typically download-only) to Web 2.0 (high bandwidth, highly interactive, data flows both to and from the user), Web 2.0 has become the new “hinge” mediator of progress – for its capacity for two-way communication – in the creation, marketing and distribution of music.
In all eras other than the very recent past, a basic music life cycle (performance – recording – distribution – listening) has been open-ended, preventing organized, useful communication from consumers to artists except for the highly quantifiable sums of money spent on it and large-scale recognition such as in the media. The interactivity of Web 2.0 creates an invaluable rapprochement between artists and consumers which allows for the still easier transfer of recognition and even money between fans and artists. Not only this, but for the first time, regular people and not just audiophiles have immediate access to more music content than they will ever know what to do with. With Web 2.0, for the first time on a large scale, we kick down the cost barriers for access to music, while closing the feedback loop of artistic creation.
Why buy the cow, users say, when you can get the milk for free? The key innovation for the music industry going forward is to shift the focus from monetizing the milk to providing a better (no doubt free) product that people will choose on their own volition. The major opportunity is this:
* the quantity and variety of musical products now available to users is overwhelming
* everyone likes music
* not everyone likes all music
If “new” radio and subscription models have potential, it’s that at least in the short term, these modalities offer the easiest way for average people to access not only high quality audio, but high quality music they wouldn’t otherwise know about. Sandy Pearlman’s recommendation engine, or a network of them, could be the most viable avenue for commercialization because of the exposure opportunity it creates for advertising revenue. Enter “Google Music”?
On Entropy
Innovation is about simplifying, and it acts like a catalyst by breaking down barriers between separate points in a process. It should be no surprise that the processes of music production, marketing, distribution and consumption thrive in an unregulated, unenforceable environment. The internet allows a path of least resistance to things that were once complicated and are now simple to do. In this energetically favourable state, music distribution has either regressed or progressed toward a system of uncomplicated freedoms, simple cooperativity, and in some cases (e.g. thesixtyone.com) honour systems (deeply ingrained in human thinking) that allow users to compensate artists directly for their work. What Karen Collins calls “interaction,” the synthesis between composing/creating-performing-listening is becoming possible on a macro scale, further closing the feedback loop, and merging P2P sharing and broadcasting into the same distinct activity.
Final Thoughts
The innovation that “denatured” the music industry was Web 1.0 – the opportunity to easily receive but without easily giving. The innovation that is reconstructing the music “industry,” albeit in a very different form, is Web 2.0, for its capacity for individuals to communicate with each other and with creators. By retooling the music life cycle with a new simplicity, a Pheonix is emerging from the ruins of the old music industry. The industry, conversely, has failed to employ the adage if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em model for free distribution, and thus failed to accommodate the new simplicity of music distribution. Artists and consumers themselves have taken on the brunt of production, marketing, and distribution and this has widened the distribution pipeline where a bottleneck once existed. Lastly, innovations that continue to influence the music industry (and all other industries), like catalysts, reduce the energy needed to move between steps in the music life cycle. As long as people are engaged in the process of music production and consumption, the more innovations, the more direct and transparent music distribution becomes. The proliferation of free music and the emergence of Web 2.0 show that consumers will follow what they want – free music and interaction and community involvement – along the path of least resistance.
What appears to be a degradation of the commercial structures around music is often confused with the degadation of some elemental artistic quality of music. On the other hand, the recording industry and its associated structures have actually been a barrier to the dissemination of legitimate art. Furthermore, the economically necessary elimination of this barrier is allowing music to be distributed in a much freer form, as it first was and as it will continue to be in the future.
How the music industry stifled creative expression,
How Web 1.0 destroyed the music industry, and
How the new internet is giving it a second chance
by Alex Dyck
Complex - Simple
Music is a tricky business. Often mired by the processes and procedures that surround its production, marketing, distribution and eventual consumption, music was controlled in the economy up until the recent past by its middle-functionary, the recording industry. The industry had the job of banking on (i.e. risking) and profiting from the work of music creators, a capital-intensive hinge for those creators, who could not regularly perform this task themselves. This hinge also became both the exponent and the limiting factor of innovation in the field of music. When technological innovations outside the industry’s control became the limiting factor for the recording industry itself, the industry failing to capture this, began to contract. Hence, the perhaps disadvantageous “anti-standard” of the music business – all its imprecise, uncertain creative elements – have become the primary advantages of music as a new free institution, accelerating it on a trajectory of survival instead of demise.
The Institution of Music?
Innovation has led to the simplification of musical creation and distribution, while how to profit from it has become more complicated. This is reflected by what happened to the field of science in Europe almost five hundred years ago, during its early yawnings as a societal institution created to be free from temporal, economic, or political control. Like music, science struggles between immediate applicability, and freedom thereof. Science and music easily function as meritocracies. Both deal in terms of uncertainty, creativity, carry risk as a requisite input, and contribute a net value to human culture. Science is almost universally recognized for its value and is supported by free global information (research) networks because it often transcends commercially definable needs – at the outset. Granted that elements of the scientific institution are also threatened by commercialization ethics, the increasingly unified institution of music is approaching a similar point of free dissemination. Music is being recognized increasingly as a rightful, social commodity rather than a privileged, economic one, and being treated increasingly as such by its creators and not just its consumers.
On technology
Technology and innovation go hand in hand. These have led to the creation of every musical instrument since the human voice, and presently devices and networks of all kinds enable the creation and distribution of music and its derivatives. Further, in the last several years, the major internet development has been an evolution from provider publishing to user participating. Hence with the evolution from Web 1.0 (low-bandwidth, static content, typically download-only) to Web 2.0 (high bandwidth, highly interactive, data flows both to and from the user), Web 2.0 has become the new “hinge” mediator of progress – for its capacity for two-way communication – in the creation, marketing and distribution of music.
In all eras other than the very recent past, a basic music life cycle (performance – recording – distribution – listening) has been open-ended, preventing organized, useful communication from consumers to artists except for the highly quantifiable sums of money spent on it and large-scale recognition such as in the media. The interactivity of Web 2.0 creates an invaluable rapprochement between artists and consumers which allows for the still easier transfer of recognition and even money between fans and artists. Not only this, but for the first time, regular people and not just audiophiles have immediate access to more music content than they will ever know what to do with. With Web 2.0, for the first time on a large scale, we kick down the cost barriers for access to music, while closing the feedback loop of artistic creation.
Why buy the cow, users say, when you can get the milk for free? The key innovation for the music industry going forward is to shift the focus from monetizing the milk to providing a better (no doubt free) product that people will choose on their own volition. The major opportunity is this:
* the quantity and variety of musical products now available to users is overwhelming
* everyone likes music
* not everyone likes all music
If “new” radio and subscription models have potential, it’s that at least in the short term, these modalities offer the easiest way for average people to access not only high quality audio, but high quality music they wouldn’t otherwise know about. Sandy Pearlman’s recommendation engine, or a network of them, could be the most viable avenue for commercialization because of the exposure opportunity it creates for advertising revenue. Enter “Google Music”?
On Entropy
Innovation is about simplifying, and it acts like a catalyst by breaking down barriers between separate points in a process. It should be no surprise that the processes of music production, marketing, distribution and consumption thrive in an unregulated, unenforceable environment. The internet allows a path of least resistance to things that were once complicated and are now simple to do. In this energetically favourable state, music distribution has either regressed or progressed toward a system of uncomplicated freedoms, simple cooperativity, and in some cases (e.g. thesixtyone.com) honour systems (deeply ingrained in human thinking) that allow users to compensate artists directly for their work. What Karen Collins calls “interaction,” the synthesis between composing/creating-performing-listening is becoming possible on a macro scale, further closing the feedback loop, and merging P2P sharing and broadcasting into the same distinct activity.
Final Thoughts
The innovation that “denatured” the music industry was Web 1.0 – the opportunity to easily receive but without easily giving. The innovation that is reconstructing the music “industry,” albeit in a very different form, is Web 2.0, for its capacity for individuals to communicate with each other and with creators. By retooling the music life cycle with a new simplicity, a Pheonix is emerging from the ruins of the old music industry. The industry, conversely, has failed to employ the adage if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em model for free distribution, and thus failed to accommodate the new simplicity of music distribution. Artists and consumers themselves have taken on the brunt of production, marketing, and distribution and this has widened the distribution pipeline where a bottleneck once existed. Lastly, innovations that continue to influence the music industry (and all other industries), like catalysts, reduce the energy needed to move between steps in the music life cycle. As long as people are engaged in the process of music production and consumption, the more innovations, the more direct and transparent music distribution becomes. The proliferation of free music and the emergence of Web 2.0 show that consumers will follow what they want – free music and interaction and community involvement – along the path of least resistance.
What appears to be a degradation of the commercial structures around music is often confused with the degadation of some elemental artistic quality of music. On the other hand, the recording industry and its associated structures have actually been a barrier to the dissemination of legitimate art. Furthermore, the economically necessary elimination of this barrier is allowing music to be distributed in a much freer form, as it first was and as it will continue to be in the future.
Courtney Wile - Synthesis Essay
Music will continue its transformation into something that accompanies a visual element. Do you agree or disagree?
Music is rarely a strictly auditory experience. No matter what the genre, or context in which we experience music, a common feature is that what we experience as ‘listener’ typically contains more than one form of sensory stimulus. While I agree that in the future music will accompany a visual element, I disagree that this is in any way a true transformation.
Throughout history, music has more often than not accompanied a visual element. This trend prevails today, and will continue into the future. At times, a distinction may be made between music accompanying a visual element, versus, a visual element accompanying music, depending on which is perceived as the dominant sensory experience. However, I interpret the question posed as focusing less on the subtleties of this distinction and more on the distinction between music standing alone, versus, music accompanied by other forms of sensory stimuli.
Dating back as far as the late 15th century (Renaissance Italy), both opera and ballet demonstrate this fusion. In both art forms we find music accompanying a visual element. In opera, the costumes, make-up, set design, theatrics, and dancing, work together with the music to tell the story. Ballet, as well, is a mixed art form, incorporating music and dance as the central components, with the added visual elements of set design and costumes. In both cases, the music may stand alone, however the result is more powerful when paired with the visual stimuli.
Music combined with a visual element is prevalent in the past, present, and future of music; nonetheless, there are some instances in which music was strictly audio. For example, during the late 19th century the origins of this trend are seen with the invention of the gramophone. Then came record players, CDs, and numerous radio programs, all of which are devices through which listeners can experience music devoid of a visual element. These devices, however, outline the brief window where music existed without a visual element.
Until the invention of the above technologies, live performances were the norm. In a live performance, though it is not he focus, the visual element is significant. Performers dress a certain way (often in uniforms); soloists stand (perhaps to facilitate better posture and breathing, though it is also seen as the proper way to address an audience). In chamber music the music is often visually satisfying, as the observer can watch (as they hear) a moving musical line travel from one player to the next. Though the visual aspect is subtle, it is present more often than not. Music without a visual element is the rarity.
The more modern version of the music accompanying a visual element is seen in music videos, movies, and other forms of live performance, such as Cirque de Soleil. Guest lecturer, Lyn Heward, discussed the importance of “collective creativity” and “keeping sensory stimulation alive” as artists. This rings true with music. Music is powerful, and can evoke extreme emotion on its own, however combining music with a visual element, be it dance, gymnastics, theatrics, or costume, can go one step further toward keeping the audience engaged.
Moving even further into the future, hints of which we see presently, music is at times almost overshadowed by the visual stimuli. This is experienced in video games, or movies, where music is intended to serve an accompanying function. However, even here, music plays a featured role. As Karen Collins demonstrated with her video game sound clips, even with the flashiest graphics and computing technology music is still able to do something that the visual element cannot. Collins gave a striking demonstration of this power of music when she played a video clip from the movie “Jaws” with a modified soundtrack. The emotion of the scene was completely transformed. Also, in computer games, safe zones are represented with one type of music, and enemies are represented with a much darker, lower pitched sounds.
Though I interpret music as something accompanying a visual element as the dominant trend for hundreds of years, I do see some ‘mini-transformations’ occurring. Firstly, there is a shift in medium of the accompaniment, as well as increased accessibility to visual elements without even leaving your home. The declining popularity of records and CDs shows a decline in listeners embracing the strictly audio forms of music. Their replacements, computers, ipods, iphones and the like, ensure that whenever there is audio there can be visual as well. It is not always the carefully crafted visual found in ballet, or opera scores, however the sensory stimulation is present.
As was pointed out by both DKD and Sandy Pearlman, another mini-transformation exists in the record industry. Since CDs have fallen out of favour the big labels are turning to non-audio rooted revenue streams, with the ‘360 record contracts’.
The classical music world is also experiencing mini-transformations. Leading orchestras are embracing advances in technology by putting on multimedia productions. The Montreal Symphony Orchestra recently performed Holst’s The Planets with video imagery projecting behind the orchestra, and Los Angeles Philharmonic presented Final Fantasy videogame music by combining orchestra, elaborate lighting, and video feed displayed on large screens. Also, the New World Symphony is currently building a concert hall designed to accommodate theatrical lighting, videos, and other visual imagery, to complement the musical performance.
Music in the future will take many forms unimaginable to musicians of the past, but I view these changes as simple shifts in medium, not principle. Music as something that accompanies a visual element is historically more common than not, and this is the form music will continue to take well into the future. The forms of visual accompaniment have shifted – from live performance, dance, and costumes, to music videos, advanced computer graphics, and digital media – but the role of music remains intact. Advances in technology allow ‘listeners’ to experience the visual aspects of music from the comfort of home, but if this is disconcerting and you want to return to the brief window of time where music stood alone, the possibility remains to turn on the radio, pop in a CD, or dust off that old record.
Music is rarely a strictly auditory experience. No matter what the genre, or context in which we experience music, a common feature is that what we experience as ‘listener’ typically contains more than one form of sensory stimulus. While I agree that in the future music will accompany a visual element, I disagree that this is in any way a true transformation.
Throughout history, music has more often than not accompanied a visual element. This trend prevails today, and will continue into the future. At times, a distinction may be made between music accompanying a visual element, versus, a visual element accompanying music, depending on which is perceived as the dominant sensory experience. However, I interpret the question posed as focusing less on the subtleties of this distinction and more on the distinction between music standing alone, versus, music accompanied by other forms of sensory stimuli.
Dating back as far as the late 15th century (Renaissance Italy), both opera and ballet demonstrate this fusion. In both art forms we find music accompanying a visual element. In opera, the costumes, make-up, set design, theatrics, and dancing, work together with the music to tell the story. Ballet, as well, is a mixed art form, incorporating music and dance as the central components, with the added visual elements of set design and costumes. In both cases, the music may stand alone, however the result is more powerful when paired with the visual stimuli.
Music combined with a visual element is prevalent in the past, present, and future of music; nonetheless, there are some instances in which music was strictly audio. For example, during the late 19th century the origins of this trend are seen with the invention of the gramophone. Then came record players, CDs, and numerous radio programs, all of which are devices through which listeners can experience music devoid of a visual element. These devices, however, outline the brief window where music existed without a visual element.
Until the invention of the above technologies, live performances were the norm. In a live performance, though it is not he focus, the visual element is significant. Performers dress a certain way (often in uniforms); soloists stand (perhaps to facilitate better posture and breathing, though it is also seen as the proper way to address an audience). In chamber music the music is often visually satisfying, as the observer can watch (as they hear) a moving musical line travel from one player to the next. Though the visual aspect is subtle, it is present more often than not. Music without a visual element is the rarity.
The more modern version of the music accompanying a visual element is seen in music videos, movies, and other forms of live performance, such as Cirque de Soleil. Guest lecturer, Lyn Heward, discussed the importance of “collective creativity” and “keeping sensory stimulation alive” as artists. This rings true with music. Music is powerful, and can evoke extreme emotion on its own, however combining music with a visual element, be it dance, gymnastics, theatrics, or costume, can go one step further toward keeping the audience engaged.
Moving even further into the future, hints of which we see presently, music is at times almost overshadowed by the visual stimuli. This is experienced in video games, or movies, where music is intended to serve an accompanying function. However, even here, music plays a featured role. As Karen Collins demonstrated with her video game sound clips, even with the flashiest graphics and computing technology music is still able to do something that the visual element cannot. Collins gave a striking demonstration of this power of music when she played a video clip from the movie “Jaws” with a modified soundtrack. The emotion of the scene was completely transformed. Also, in computer games, safe zones are represented with one type of music, and enemies are represented with a much darker, lower pitched sounds.
Though I interpret music as something accompanying a visual element as the dominant trend for hundreds of years, I do see some ‘mini-transformations’ occurring. Firstly, there is a shift in medium of the accompaniment, as well as increased accessibility to visual elements without even leaving your home. The declining popularity of records and CDs shows a decline in listeners embracing the strictly audio forms of music. Their replacements, computers, ipods, iphones and the like, ensure that whenever there is audio there can be visual as well. It is not always the carefully crafted visual found in ballet, or opera scores, however the sensory stimulation is present.
As was pointed out by both DKD and Sandy Pearlman, another mini-transformation exists in the record industry. Since CDs have fallen out of favour the big labels are turning to non-audio rooted revenue streams, with the ‘360 record contracts’.
The classical music world is also experiencing mini-transformations. Leading orchestras are embracing advances in technology by putting on multimedia productions. The Montreal Symphony Orchestra recently performed Holst’s The Planets with video imagery projecting behind the orchestra, and Los Angeles Philharmonic presented Final Fantasy videogame music by combining orchestra, elaborate lighting, and video feed displayed on large screens. Also, the New World Symphony is currently building a concert hall designed to accommodate theatrical lighting, videos, and other visual imagery, to complement the musical performance.
Music in the future will take many forms unimaginable to musicians of the past, but I view these changes as simple shifts in medium, not principle. Music as something that accompanies a visual element is historically more common than not, and this is the form music will continue to take well into the future. The forms of visual accompaniment have shifted – from live performance, dance, and costumes, to music videos, advanced computer graphics, and digital media – but the role of music remains intact. Advances in technology allow ‘listeners’ to experience the visual aspects of music from the comfort of home, but if this is disconcerting and you want to return to the brief window of time where music stood alone, the possibility remains to turn on the radio, pop in a CD, or dust off that old record.
Allen Mendelsohn - Synthesis Essay
The innovation that has the greatest potential for influencing musical culture and the music industry is not a technological innovation per se, though it has been facilitated by technology. The innovation has actually been in development since the beginning of human society, but has been accelerated in the 21st century to huge new heights. That innovation is the emergence of community.
From everything we have seen and heard so far in the course, a significant lesson that can be gleaned is that the music industry has become fragmented. The number of “independent artists” has increased exponentially. Yet perhaps paradoxically, these independent artists are able to survive thanks to the community. There are so many artists out there that it has become difficult for individuals to sort through the clutter. The emergence of communities, notably virtual communities, has allowed individuals to discover artists that they would not have discovered otherwise. One of our speakers, Brian Whitman, has built a career around the development of communities. His company, The Echo Nest, has created a successful business model around proper recommendations for music. Recommendations are inherently linked to communities – like-minded individuals who have similar tastes in music create a virtual community. By facilitating the need for these individuals to gather around similar music, the power of community becomes monetized.
That brings us to the theme that has prevailed throughout the course so far – the future of monetization of music. The music students in the course provided an excellent summary of these issues in their presentation “Music, Money, and You.” In that presentation, Bryson presented some examples of “vertically integrated musicians.” These musicians handle all aspects of their careers themselves in the form of recording, promotion, and distribution. But how will these musicians make money? Their community.
These musicians organize communities around themselves. Using technologies that are specifically designed to develop communities – MySpace, Facebook, blogs, etc. – they create a group of individuals who share a common interest in their work. They then use these tools to communicate directly with their community, creating a two-way dialogue between artist and fan that never existed in the old record label model. The artist’s community develops a loyalty to the artist that is unprecedented. The artist is able to monetize the community be having a targeted group to sell their music (in various forms), their merchandise, their concert tickets. Without the ability to create a community using these tools, the artist would be lost amongst the noise.
One of the most interesting models of music distribution discussed in the course so far was Sandy Pearlman’s ”five-cent download” solution, where downloads would literally cost five cents. In one of the readings assigned for his lecture (“McGill academic has a plan to end file swapping and save the music industry,” Guy Dixon, The Toronto Globe & Mail, March 9, 2005), the author wrote that “the assumption is that if songs cost only 5 cents, people would download exponentially more music.” But how would musicians be able to make money if the price of downloads drops from the iTunes standard 99 cents? That would require a twenty-fold increase in downloads to make up the difference. The answer is of course community. Being easily able to target a community will be the key for artists to increase the number of downloads to a point where this may be a successful solution.
Throughout the course, from the legal perspective on the music industry, we have heard about the importance of copyright in protecting musicians’ economic rights. We heard this from the law students’ presentation, from Justice Gomery, and from Laura Murray (though only tangentially in her case). As one of the law students, I can certainly appreciate the importance of copyright in protecting rights. But the copyright model may be broken; or it may even be completely irrelevant considering the widespread proliferation of music online. This latter point was a theme running throughout Sandy Pearlman’s lecture. What force could possibly replace copyright to protect musicians’ economic rights? Of course (again) the answer is community. By building up their community the musicians can monetize their music in other ways, as we’ve already seen. In fact, by abandoning copyright (allowing their music to proliferate freely, allowing remixes), musicians build up the goodwill of their community, and thus can be more successful financially in the long run.
So far, I have reflected on the way that technology has made virtual communities emerge around artists and how this can influence the future of the music industry. But what about actual, physical communities? Course speaker Dan Seligman and POP Montreal provided an example about how this can work. Concerts, by definition, bring a community of like-minded people together. But Mr. Seligman’s festival takes this one step further; the entire event, not just one show, is based around a community – the community of independent music lovers in Montreal. What is interesting about POP Montreal is that this community is actually quite broad – the “independent” music that finds a home at POP Montreal can include everything from folk singers to thrash metal and everything in between. So the community itself can be large and diverse, but it is still a community that influences the music industry in a successful way (well, for the artists).
In order for the modern artist to be able to succeed from a commercial standpoint, the artist needs to develop a community of fans around him. Technology has helped facilitate the development of these communities. The future of the music industry and artists’ financial health depends on it. That’s why I feel this innovation has the greatest potential to influence the future of the music industry.
From everything we have seen and heard so far in the course, a significant lesson that can be gleaned is that the music industry has become fragmented. The number of “independent artists” has increased exponentially. Yet perhaps paradoxically, these independent artists are able to survive thanks to the community. There are so many artists out there that it has become difficult for individuals to sort through the clutter. The emergence of communities, notably virtual communities, has allowed individuals to discover artists that they would not have discovered otherwise. One of our speakers, Brian Whitman, has built a career around the development of communities. His company, The Echo Nest, has created a successful business model around proper recommendations for music. Recommendations are inherently linked to communities – like-minded individuals who have similar tastes in music create a virtual community. By facilitating the need for these individuals to gather around similar music, the power of community becomes monetized.
That brings us to the theme that has prevailed throughout the course so far – the future of monetization of music. The music students in the course provided an excellent summary of these issues in their presentation “Music, Money, and You.” In that presentation, Bryson presented some examples of “vertically integrated musicians.” These musicians handle all aspects of their careers themselves in the form of recording, promotion, and distribution. But how will these musicians make money? Their community.
These musicians organize communities around themselves. Using technologies that are specifically designed to develop communities – MySpace, Facebook, blogs, etc. – they create a group of individuals who share a common interest in their work. They then use these tools to communicate directly with their community, creating a two-way dialogue between artist and fan that never existed in the old record label model. The artist’s community develops a loyalty to the artist that is unprecedented. The artist is able to monetize the community be having a targeted group to sell their music (in various forms), their merchandise, their concert tickets. Without the ability to create a community using these tools, the artist would be lost amongst the noise.
One of the most interesting models of music distribution discussed in the course so far was Sandy Pearlman’s ”five-cent download” solution, where downloads would literally cost five cents. In one of the readings assigned for his lecture (“McGill academic has a plan to end file swapping and save the music industry,” Guy Dixon, The Toronto Globe & Mail, March 9, 2005), the author wrote that “the assumption is that if songs cost only 5 cents, people would download exponentially more music.” But how would musicians be able to make money if the price of downloads drops from the iTunes standard 99 cents? That would require a twenty-fold increase in downloads to make up the difference. The answer is of course community. Being easily able to target a community will be the key for artists to increase the number of downloads to a point where this may be a successful solution.
Throughout the course, from the legal perspective on the music industry, we have heard about the importance of copyright in protecting musicians’ economic rights. We heard this from the law students’ presentation, from Justice Gomery, and from Laura Murray (though only tangentially in her case). As one of the law students, I can certainly appreciate the importance of copyright in protecting rights. But the copyright model may be broken; or it may even be completely irrelevant considering the widespread proliferation of music online. This latter point was a theme running throughout Sandy Pearlman’s lecture. What force could possibly replace copyright to protect musicians’ economic rights? Of course (again) the answer is community. By building up their community the musicians can monetize their music in other ways, as we’ve already seen. In fact, by abandoning copyright (allowing their music to proliferate freely, allowing remixes), musicians build up the goodwill of their community, and thus can be more successful financially in the long run.
So far, I have reflected on the way that technology has made virtual communities emerge around artists and how this can influence the future of the music industry. But what about actual, physical communities? Course speaker Dan Seligman and POP Montreal provided an example about how this can work. Concerts, by definition, bring a community of like-minded people together. But Mr. Seligman’s festival takes this one step further; the entire event, not just one show, is based around a community – the community of independent music lovers in Montreal. What is interesting about POP Montreal is that this community is actually quite broad – the “independent” music that finds a home at POP Montreal can include everything from folk singers to thrash metal and everything in between. So the community itself can be large and diverse, but it is still a community that influences the music industry in a successful way (well, for the artists).
In order for the modern artist to be able to succeed from a commercial standpoint, the artist needs to develop a community of fans around him. Technology has helped facilitate the development of these communities. The future of the music industry and artists’ financial health depends on it. That’s why I feel this innovation has the greatest potential to influence the future of the music industry.
Federico Andreoni - Synthesis Essay
Will Music Continue its Transformation
into Something that Accompanies a Visual Element?
This question in the title suggests that music today is becoming—in its totality or in part—an element of support to visual objects. But is it true that music is dependent on images? If so, in what sense? Moreover, is it music that is in a phase of transformation or is it our perception of music as an art form that is undergoing some sort of transformation?
Looking back in time, the fusion of music with visual elements has always been part of human history. Opera and Greek tragedy are perfect examples of how music and visual/performing arts have been bound together for centuries. I don’t think that anyone among us can dispute that, today, music and images are also very often bound together in complex artistic forms such as TV, cinema, and videogames. Music and images work together to create products of great social interest and intellectual stimulation; the role of music in these products is to enhance specific aspects of the visual element and to help guide audiences through the plots, atmospheres, and/or emotional qualities of these products. Today, however, music and images are also bound together in many other ways in our everyday lives, not only in purely artistic forms. Commercially, genres of music are used to identify specific types of products; inside and outside of cafes, music invites people to connect with product styles and images (especially by stimulating the imagination of potential customers walking down the street). In other words, music has been—and to a significant degree—sucked into the sphere of business and commerce, and has become one of the strongest and most reliable advertisement tools directed towards selling products and making money.
The styles and habits of people have changed over the centuries, and along with it so has the use that peoples make of music; in other words, the capacity to listen to and understand music has changed. Each day, we witness and participate in the progressive transformation of the general perception of music and, more interestingly, of the purposes and functions of music. As Karen Collins has explained, programming slot machines in casinos to play specific jingles allows managers to make gamblers feel like winners even when they are losing money. In a similar way, music has become a fundamental aspect of videogame creation; Collins described the highly complex studies conducted to determine the positioning of speakers and the creation of the optimal soundscapes in table videogames.
Moreover, Donald K. Donald explained how, before the “big shift” of the 90s, live music events were an “excuse” to attract people and gather them together in order for organizers to have a platform of thousands customers to whom they could sell products that may even have been completely unrelated to the artistic production unfolding on the stage at the time; for instance, just how related are The Doors and hot-dogs?
If the fusion of music and images was a rare and complex thing to realize in the past (think of what the staging of Wagner’s operas meant in terms of costs and technical/artistic/workmanship preparation in the 19th century!), today such fusion is created with relatively few problems, if any. YouTube videos are a perfect example of how people can easily achieve this: users can easily download for free a number of music programs that allow them to create, modify, and arrange all sorts of music (the software Audacity is a great example of this) and adapt them to images and videos that can then be posted and made available to the world.
The tendencies summarized so far have produced two main outcomes. On the one hand, music—thanks to the help of better technology—has become so popular, widespread and easy to make and manipulate that people are becoming progressively better acquainted with near-professional standards, while professionals in the music field have to constantly improve the quality of their products in order to remain at the top of their field (for instance, Guillaume was telling the class how nowadays film scoring orchestration is no longer obtained through digital creation but rather through the use of real orchestras).
On the other hand, almost all music-related businesses incline towards the mass production of music of (mostly) very low quality content and sound (an aspect that George Massenburg, Richard King, and Martha de Francisco have pointed out during their presentation), a phenomenon related to the need to attract and feed the constant and never-ending desire of millions of potential customers for perpetually new and easy-to-consume products. The music business plays with the delirium of omnipotence that strikes our society today, and with its desire for freedom at any cost, and helps to transform that desire into reality; thanks to all the music making programs available for free through the web, people can dream of becoming producers and businessmen in the music field from the comfort of their own home.
I strongly believe that, for most people, and for a long time, music will be considered in connection to images, yet not as a factor dependent on images. The quality of digital technology applied to music has progressed very rapidly in recent years, and will continue to do so in an exponential way in the future, thereby making music an exceedingly efficient (probably the most efficient) support for what is still imperfect image technology (think of cinema: we need something more than the flat screen...the next challenge for the movie business will be the 3D and I just heard on the radio that Avatar is being screened in “4D” in South Korea…with smell/tangible effects: maybe a joke, but a significant signal of the desire of the audiences...). In this context, the notion of individual pieces of music will tend to disappear, as our objective seems to be more to participate in “the cloud” of information that surrounds us. What kind of stimulation that will produce, I have yet to find out.
into Something that Accompanies a Visual Element?
This question in the title suggests that music today is becoming—in its totality or in part—an element of support to visual objects. But is it true that music is dependent on images? If so, in what sense? Moreover, is it music that is in a phase of transformation or is it our perception of music as an art form that is undergoing some sort of transformation?
Looking back in time, the fusion of music with visual elements has always been part of human history. Opera and Greek tragedy are perfect examples of how music and visual/performing arts have been bound together for centuries. I don’t think that anyone among us can dispute that, today, music and images are also very often bound together in complex artistic forms such as TV, cinema, and videogames. Music and images work together to create products of great social interest and intellectual stimulation; the role of music in these products is to enhance specific aspects of the visual element and to help guide audiences through the plots, atmospheres, and/or emotional qualities of these products. Today, however, music and images are also bound together in many other ways in our everyday lives, not only in purely artistic forms. Commercially, genres of music are used to identify specific types of products; inside and outside of cafes, music invites people to connect with product styles and images (especially by stimulating the imagination of potential customers walking down the street). In other words, music has been—and to a significant degree—sucked into the sphere of business and commerce, and has become one of the strongest and most reliable advertisement tools directed towards selling products and making money.
The styles and habits of people have changed over the centuries, and along with it so has the use that peoples make of music; in other words, the capacity to listen to and understand music has changed. Each day, we witness and participate in the progressive transformation of the general perception of music and, more interestingly, of the purposes and functions of music. As Karen Collins has explained, programming slot machines in casinos to play specific jingles allows managers to make gamblers feel like winners even when they are losing money. In a similar way, music has become a fundamental aspect of videogame creation; Collins described the highly complex studies conducted to determine the positioning of speakers and the creation of the optimal soundscapes in table videogames.
Moreover, Donald K. Donald explained how, before the “big shift” of the 90s, live music events were an “excuse” to attract people and gather them together in order for organizers to have a platform of thousands customers to whom they could sell products that may even have been completely unrelated to the artistic production unfolding on the stage at the time; for instance, just how related are The Doors and hot-dogs?
If the fusion of music and images was a rare and complex thing to realize in the past (think of what the staging of Wagner’s operas meant in terms of costs and technical/artistic/workmanship preparation in the 19th century!), today such fusion is created with relatively few problems, if any. YouTube videos are a perfect example of how people can easily achieve this: users can easily download for free a number of music programs that allow them to create, modify, and arrange all sorts of music (the software Audacity is a great example of this) and adapt them to images and videos that can then be posted and made available to the world.
The tendencies summarized so far have produced two main outcomes. On the one hand, music—thanks to the help of better technology—has become so popular, widespread and easy to make and manipulate that people are becoming progressively better acquainted with near-professional standards, while professionals in the music field have to constantly improve the quality of their products in order to remain at the top of their field (for instance, Guillaume was telling the class how nowadays film scoring orchestration is no longer obtained through digital creation but rather through the use of real orchestras).
On the other hand, almost all music-related businesses incline towards the mass production of music of (mostly) very low quality content and sound (an aspect that George Massenburg, Richard King, and Martha de Francisco have pointed out during their presentation), a phenomenon related to the need to attract and feed the constant and never-ending desire of millions of potential customers for perpetually new and easy-to-consume products. The music business plays with the delirium of omnipotence that strikes our society today, and with its desire for freedom at any cost, and helps to transform that desire into reality; thanks to all the music making programs available for free through the web, people can dream of becoming producers and businessmen in the music field from the comfort of their own home.
I strongly believe that, for most people, and for a long time, music will be considered in connection to images, yet not as a factor dependent on images. The quality of digital technology applied to music has progressed very rapidly in recent years, and will continue to do so in an exponential way in the future, thereby making music an exceedingly efficient (probably the most efficient) support for what is still imperfect image technology (think of cinema: we need something more than the flat screen...the next challenge for the movie business will be the 3D and I just heard on the radio that Avatar is being screened in “4D” in South Korea…with smell/tangible effects: maybe a joke, but a significant signal of the desire of the audiences...). In this context, the notion of individual pieces of music will tend to disappear, as our objective seems to be more to participate in “the cloud” of information that surrounds us. What kind of stimulation that will produce, I have yet to find out.
Jenna Schwartz - Synthesis Essay
Music’s Accompaniment of Sensory Rather than Visual Elements
The presentations of Justice Gomery and the law students have made it clear that the deficiencies of copyright law have forced the music industry to change. The statement that “music will continue its transformation into something that accompanies a visual element” only partially reflects how music has been evolving and will continue to evolve in the future. To me, music has always derived its value from its ability to engage individuals’ emotions and it will continue its metamorphosis alongside changes in mediums that enable individuals to feel increasingly connected to music.
In my mind, two major changes in society has made the auditory sense alone, insufficient to link individuals’ emotions and music. First, advancements in technology has created sensory input overload. This means that there is now a multitude of ways to interact with music. Second, the Internet’s ability to make music available freely has driven down its monetary value to listeners. The combination of these two factors implies that in order for music to be valuable, we must find new ways to connect listeners’ emotions to it. Visual elements are certainly helpful to this end but it is only one piece of a larger puzzle.
I postulate “music will continue its transformation into something that accompanies sensory elements.” Specifically, it seems that some members of the music industry have recognized that the more senses that are engaged alongside music, the more likely we are to feel a sustainable emotional connection to it. The combination of our visual experiences and our ability to interact with music both tangibly and intellectually better reflects the progression that music has been making.
It is undeniable that many of the recent successes that we have seen in the music industry have resulted from music’s accompaniment to visual elements. I am not convinced however that visual elements alone will amount to a sustainable model. One needs look no further than consumers’ increased appetite for live music over the past decade. As Donald Tarleton explained, despite stadium shows having reached their golden age in the 1980s, more people are going to see concerts than ever before. The creation of the 360-degree deal reflects the fact that record companies have been trying to take advantage of this. The 360-degree deal replaces traditional recording contracts between artists and record companies with agreements whereby the artist signs over a percentage of record sales, concert revenues and merchandise to a given record company.
While these deals signal that record companies may view the accompaniment of music to visuals as the future of music, to me they suggest the potential to repeat past mistakes. Tarleton noted that thus far, consumers have been willing to pay to see shows despite dramatic increases in ticket prices. I expect that this will only continue until the sooner of 1) price increases that are too high or 2) the advent of a cost-effective means to achieve the concert experience. For example, with 3D technology soon to be making its way into homes, how long will it be before someone finds a way to use the Internet to stream the equivalent of a stadium concert into our living rooms? In the future as I see it, musicians will have to go beyond merely performing to create value for listeners. It is for this reason why I believe that more than visuals will dictate music’s transformation.
Many examples from the presenters that have come to speak to our class serve to illustrate my point. For one, I view Pop Montreal’s ability to maintain its success as distinct from stadium concerts precisely because it does not only rely upon the visual element of performance. Pop Montreal provides its ticket-holders opportunities to get involved with music which include but are not limited to: hands-on workshops in its Symposium, giving ticket-holders the ability to become a vendor/collector in its Puce Pop and getting children to play music in its Kids Pop. Importantly, while these sorts of events do take advantage of some visual element, they also allow individuals to engage with music in a tangible and intellectual sense. It is this multi-sensory participation that will sustain the connection between the ticket-holders and the festival in a way that will never be replicated by technological advancement.
That said I do not purport that technological advancement detracts from individuals’ ability to engage with music in a meaningful way. On the contrary, other speakers have demonstrated that technological advancement can be leveraged to create value by enhancing listeners’ sensory connection to music. Brian Whitman’s discussion of software that allows users to manipulate music is a case in point. These programs not only allow users to hear and see what they are doing but also to physically effect changes to the composition that they are working with. I hypothesize that the combined effect of auditory, visual and participatory cues cause users to feel a sense of ownership over and attachment to the piece that they are working with. Whitman provided support for this hypothesis when he pointed out that known artists have started licensing their songs for manipulation purposes and that such artists are now generating more profit from the manipulated versions than from sales of the original versions of the same songs.
Karen Collins’ various projects looking at the links between interactive music and gaming also corroborates my hypothesis. She noted that the gaming industry has realized how important it is to tie auditory music cues to visual on-screen cues in order to maximize gamers’ sense of control over the game. It is thought that so doing will keep them playing in the long run. This is reflected in the legal challenges that Whitman raised concerning the licensing of non-linear and interactive music. These legal challenges exist because programmers have recognized that the interaction between control, sound and visuals must constantly evolve to keep players emotionally tied to the game. These and other examples confirm that music will continue its transformation into something sensory rather than something merely visual.
The presentations of Justice Gomery and the law students have made it clear that the deficiencies of copyright law have forced the music industry to change. The statement that “music will continue its transformation into something that accompanies a visual element” only partially reflects how music has been evolving and will continue to evolve in the future. To me, music has always derived its value from its ability to engage individuals’ emotions and it will continue its metamorphosis alongside changes in mediums that enable individuals to feel increasingly connected to music.
In my mind, two major changes in society has made the auditory sense alone, insufficient to link individuals’ emotions and music. First, advancements in technology has created sensory input overload. This means that there is now a multitude of ways to interact with music. Second, the Internet’s ability to make music available freely has driven down its monetary value to listeners. The combination of these two factors implies that in order for music to be valuable, we must find new ways to connect listeners’ emotions to it. Visual elements are certainly helpful to this end but it is only one piece of a larger puzzle.
I postulate “music will continue its transformation into something that accompanies sensory elements.” Specifically, it seems that some members of the music industry have recognized that the more senses that are engaged alongside music, the more likely we are to feel a sustainable emotional connection to it. The combination of our visual experiences and our ability to interact with music both tangibly and intellectually better reflects the progression that music has been making.
It is undeniable that many of the recent successes that we have seen in the music industry have resulted from music’s accompaniment to visual elements. I am not convinced however that visual elements alone will amount to a sustainable model. One needs look no further than consumers’ increased appetite for live music over the past decade. As Donald Tarleton explained, despite stadium shows having reached their golden age in the 1980s, more people are going to see concerts than ever before. The creation of the 360-degree deal reflects the fact that record companies have been trying to take advantage of this. The 360-degree deal replaces traditional recording contracts between artists and record companies with agreements whereby the artist signs over a percentage of record sales, concert revenues and merchandise to a given record company.
While these deals signal that record companies may view the accompaniment of music to visuals as the future of music, to me they suggest the potential to repeat past mistakes. Tarleton noted that thus far, consumers have been willing to pay to see shows despite dramatic increases in ticket prices. I expect that this will only continue until the sooner of 1) price increases that are too high or 2) the advent of a cost-effective means to achieve the concert experience. For example, with 3D technology soon to be making its way into homes, how long will it be before someone finds a way to use the Internet to stream the equivalent of a stadium concert into our living rooms? In the future as I see it, musicians will have to go beyond merely performing to create value for listeners. It is for this reason why I believe that more than visuals will dictate music’s transformation.
Many examples from the presenters that have come to speak to our class serve to illustrate my point. For one, I view Pop Montreal’s ability to maintain its success as distinct from stadium concerts precisely because it does not only rely upon the visual element of performance. Pop Montreal provides its ticket-holders opportunities to get involved with music which include but are not limited to: hands-on workshops in its Symposium, giving ticket-holders the ability to become a vendor/collector in its Puce Pop and getting children to play music in its Kids Pop. Importantly, while these sorts of events do take advantage of some visual element, they also allow individuals to engage with music in a tangible and intellectual sense. It is this multi-sensory participation that will sustain the connection between the ticket-holders and the festival in a way that will never be replicated by technological advancement.
That said I do not purport that technological advancement detracts from individuals’ ability to engage with music in a meaningful way. On the contrary, other speakers have demonstrated that technological advancement can be leveraged to create value by enhancing listeners’ sensory connection to music. Brian Whitman’s discussion of software that allows users to manipulate music is a case in point. These programs not only allow users to hear and see what they are doing but also to physically effect changes to the composition that they are working with. I hypothesize that the combined effect of auditory, visual and participatory cues cause users to feel a sense of ownership over and attachment to the piece that they are working with. Whitman provided support for this hypothesis when he pointed out that known artists have started licensing their songs for manipulation purposes and that such artists are now generating more profit from the manipulated versions than from sales of the original versions of the same songs.
Karen Collins’ various projects looking at the links between interactive music and gaming also corroborates my hypothesis. She noted that the gaming industry has realized how important it is to tie auditory music cues to visual on-screen cues in order to maximize gamers’ sense of control over the game. It is thought that so doing will keep them playing in the long run. This is reflected in the legal challenges that Whitman raised concerning the licensing of non-linear and interactive music. These legal challenges exist because programmers have recognized that the interaction between control, sound and visuals must constantly evolve to keep players emotionally tied to the game. These and other examples confirm that music will continue its transformation into something sensory rather than something merely visual.
Jennifer Lang - Synthesis Essay
In 1979, when the first SONY Walkman was presented and manufactured for public consumption, it forever changed the way the public would interact with music (“Sony History”).
Since then, music has been the focus of ever-changing, more technologically advanced, portable media. Of all areas of humans’ artistic and recreational lives, music has been the most affected by the availability and innovative advancement of portable media. This advancement shows no signs of slowing down, and, arguably, will be the single most important tool for the music industry and for musicians to maintain connections with the consuming public (aka: fans) for the future.
In 1984, the portable CD-Player made it possible to have even better quality recordings available on the road, anytime, virtually anywhere. Now, with the ever-decreasing cost of digital storage, the increased sophistication of listening devices (headphones, portable speakers, etc.), and wireless networks; music can be accessed, purchased, created, and messed-with/mashed-up, instantly, anytime, anywhere.
As a musician, I have mostly good feelings about this. I love being able to carry the music I’m learning around with me for instant access. I also love being able to record my lessons/coachings to my portable digital device, and re-call them and listen to them whenever I wish, archive them to my computer, and/or play them for friends. I have several applications on my iPod Touch that allow me to play with music, namely the Theraminator, Ocarina, and Tonepad; while applications such as Metronome, iTick, and FingerLite (piano), allow me to accurately practice detailed aspects of the music I am learning.
The main aspect of portable media that I find less appealing is the current cost vs. quality ratio, (although that is changing). When the Massenberg panel spoke to our class about quality and sound engineering, and played examples showing how quality (and the perception of it) has changed over the last 20-30 years, it was very apparent to me that the industry, particularly where portable media is concerned, has a long way to go with matching quality to portability. Musicians are not the only ones to care about quality, especially sound quality. If the general public has not been given a choice about sound quality (as in the case of mp3’s), they don’t know what they’re missing, and as we have discussed, louder is not always better. If the quality of delivery improves, it will make the experience more enjoyable. Now that it is possible to store more data in smaller format, there is no reason why quality should suffer. A major current marketing trend is experiential marketing; if music can be connected with a particularly positive experience in high quality format, the music (and/or what is connected to it) will sell more.
Of course none of this addresses the fact that so much music is available for free online. This is one major area where innovation and further creativity are needed. If the public believes that the music they want to hear should be free, where does that leave the creator/producer of said music? One of the answers might be found in diversification of/interaction with the music.
As we have seen/discussed with such guests as Karen Collins and Brian Whitman, the way the public interacts with music is also changing. The public is no longer comprised of just passive listeners (although there are some who will remain so). If there are specific tracks of songs made available to the public that they can mess-with on their portable media device to create something new, and they are willing to pay more for that track, how is that a bad thing for the original creator of the tune? Tools such as Audacity, available for free online, currently allow you to do this, but not necessarily legally, and not to a very sophisticated level for the average user. A portable version of Audacity would allow such things to happen on portable devices. The use of music in gaming also influences this – actions performed in a game that trigger sound ‘effects’ can (in one sense), be considered composing/creating. What if games were created where the purpose or intent was ‘action composition’? If these ‘composition’ games were portable, and you could record the music for further ‘messing-with’/mash-ups, what would happen then? The public already supports live performances of video-game music, so the potential is there. A whole new area of composition is waiting for the adventurous musician/composer/gamer.
The future of cell-phones is also very closely tied to portable media. There is already little to no distinction between the media player, telephone, organizer/calendar, game-player etc., for the iPhone or for other comparable products. A recent article in the New York Times (“Cellphones”) points out that users can take a photo, or just scan an item of clothing that they like in a store window and purchase it, or have it shipped to them. This already happens with music. There is an application for the iPhone that ‘hears’ and identifies the music playing, then asks if you wish to purchase it. Why not at a live concert? You see a band/performer you like, you find their music on your portable media device, and you purchase it right there. Wait – this already happens! Whether it happens in the store, in your home, or at a concert, is up to you. The key for the future is to make this possible for smaller musicians, and taking the power (and some of the profit) away from the large distributors and putting it back with the musicians/creators.
One last area that I have not addressed is how portable media can affect live performances of music. Over the last few years, more big-name acts are charging more money for live shows. (eg. Seeing The Cult play live in Vancouver in 1989 for $20 cdn (floor seating) vs. going to see The Police in Montreal in 2008 for $120 – second level up in the stadium. Portable media could be (and probably is) used to advertise live performances of smaller acts (integrating social media sites such as Facebook and MySpace). The expansion of these features is the future of accessibility to music. A combination of cloud networks and subscriptions will likely be the way that the public will consume music for portable media in the future. You’ll subscribe to music channels (live or otherwise) on your cell phone/media device the same way you subscribe to cable/satellite television channels (music or otherwise) right now.
Portable media will never replace the ‘experience’ of a live performance, but the ability to experience the music in a more active, integrative, and better quality medium will be a big selling point. Portable media is here to stay. How we integrate this into our musical lives is up to us.
Works Cited
Rosenbloom, Stephanie. “Cellphones Let Users Point, Click and Purchase.” New York Times 26 Feb. 2010. 28 Feb. 2010.
Unknown Author. “Sony History: ‘Why No Record Function?’.” Web Page. 2009. 28.Feb.2010 , .
Since then, music has been the focus of ever-changing, more technologically advanced, portable media. Of all areas of humans’ artistic and recreational lives, music has been the most affected by the availability and innovative advancement of portable media. This advancement shows no signs of slowing down, and, arguably, will be the single most important tool for the music industry and for musicians to maintain connections with the consuming public (aka: fans) for the future.
In 1984, the portable CD-Player made it possible to have even better quality recordings available on the road, anytime, virtually anywhere. Now, with the ever-decreasing cost of digital storage, the increased sophistication of listening devices (headphones, portable speakers, etc.), and wireless networks; music can be accessed, purchased, created, and messed-with/mashed-up, instantly, anytime, anywhere.
As a musician, I have mostly good feelings about this. I love being able to carry the music I’m learning around with me for instant access. I also love being able to record my lessons/coachings to my portable digital device, and re-call them and listen to them whenever I wish, archive them to my computer, and/or play them for friends. I have several applications on my iPod Touch that allow me to play with music, namely the Theraminator, Ocarina, and Tonepad; while applications such as Metronome, iTick, and FingerLite (piano), allow me to accurately practice detailed aspects of the music I am learning.
The main aspect of portable media that I find less appealing is the current cost vs. quality ratio, (although that is changing). When the Massenberg panel spoke to our class about quality and sound engineering, and played examples showing how quality (and the perception of it) has changed over the last 20-30 years, it was very apparent to me that the industry, particularly where portable media is concerned, has a long way to go with matching quality to portability. Musicians are not the only ones to care about quality, especially sound quality. If the general public has not been given a choice about sound quality (as in the case of mp3’s), they don’t know what they’re missing, and as we have discussed, louder is not always better. If the quality of delivery improves, it will make the experience more enjoyable. Now that it is possible to store more data in smaller format, there is no reason why quality should suffer. A major current marketing trend is experiential marketing; if music can be connected with a particularly positive experience in high quality format, the music (and/or what is connected to it) will sell more.
Of course none of this addresses the fact that so much music is available for free online. This is one major area where innovation and further creativity are needed. If the public believes that the music they want to hear should be free, where does that leave the creator/producer of said music? One of the answers might be found in diversification of/interaction with the music.
As we have seen/discussed with such guests as Karen Collins and Brian Whitman, the way the public interacts with music is also changing. The public is no longer comprised of just passive listeners (although there are some who will remain so). If there are specific tracks of songs made available to the public that they can mess-with on their portable media device to create something new, and they are willing to pay more for that track, how is that a bad thing for the original creator of the tune? Tools such as Audacity, available for free online, currently allow you to do this, but not necessarily legally, and not to a very sophisticated level for the average user. A portable version of Audacity would allow such things to happen on portable devices. The use of music in gaming also influences this – actions performed in a game that trigger sound ‘effects’ can (in one sense), be considered composing/creating. What if games were created where the purpose or intent was ‘action composition’? If these ‘composition’ games were portable, and you could record the music for further ‘messing-with’/mash-ups, what would happen then? The public already supports live performances of video-game music, so the potential is there. A whole new area of composition is waiting for the adventurous musician/composer/gamer.
The future of cell-phones is also very closely tied to portable media. There is already little to no distinction between the media player, telephone, organizer/calendar, game-player etc., for the iPhone or for other comparable products. A recent article in the New York Times (“Cellphones”) points out that users can take a photo, or just scan an item of clothing that they like in a store window and purchase it, or have it shipped to them. This already happens with music. There is an application for the iPhone that ‘hears’ and identifies the music playing, then asks if you wish to purchase it. Why not at a live concert? You see a band/performer you like, you find their music on your portable media device, and you purchase it right there. Wait – this already happens! Whether it happens in the store, in your home, or at a concert, is up to you. The key for the future is to make this possible for smaller musicians, and taking the power (and some of the profit) away from the large distributors and putting it back with the musicians/creators.
One last area that I have not addressed is how portable media can affect live performances of music. Over the last few years, more big-name acts are charging more money for live shows. (eg. Seeing The Cult play live in Vancouver in 1989 for $20 cdn (floor seating) vs. going to see The Police in Montreal in 2008 for $120 – second level up in the stadium. Portable media could be (and probably is) used to advertise live performances of smaller acts (integrating social media sites such as Facebook and MySpace). The expansion of these features is the future of accessibility to music. A combination of cloud networks and subscriptions will likely be the way that the public will consume music for portable media in the future. You’ll subscribe to music channels (live or otherwise) on your cell phone/media device the same way you subscribe to cable/satellite television channels (music or otherwise) right now.
Portable media will never replace the ‘experience’ of a live performance, but the ability to experience the music in a more active, integrative, and better quality medium will be a big selling point. Portable media is here to stay. How we integrate this into our musical lives is up to us.
Works Cited
Rosenbloom, Stephanie. “Cellphones Let Users Point, Click and Purchase.” New York Times 26 Feb. 2010. 28 Feb. 2010.
Unknown Author. “Sony History: ‘Why No Record Function?’.” Web Page. 2009. 28.Feb.2010 , .
Emilie Wapnick - Synthesis Essay
In recent years, live concerts as well as the licencing of music for use in films, television and video games, have grown into significant sources of revenue for artists. This development might support the hypothesis that music is transforming from something that was formerly enjoyed alone, mainly through audio devices like CDs, audio cassettes and vinyl to something with a greater visual component. However, it is not music itself that has transformed, but the means through which music is packaged, commodified and sold. First, there is no indication that non-visually-accompanied music has decreased in popularity. This can be seen through the prevalence of peer-to-peer file sharing. Furthermore, profit from music that is distinct from any visual elements may once again jump as people come up with new ways to monetize musical recordings. Examples of the increased coupling of music and visual elements are troubled by new developments such as the growth of digital music applications and the emergence of the Cloud.
The popularity of peer-to-peer file sharing is indicative of the ongoing demand for musical recordings that are distinct and not coupled with visual elements. If it were true that music was transforming into something that always accompanies a visual element, there would presumably be a decrease in the consumption of musical recordings. Yet this is not the case, as the practice of file sharing is still perceived as a serious problem by copyright lobbyists and the recording industry. During his presentation, John Gomery, spoke of the need to monetize file sharing through the implementation of a levy system. He even referred to file sharing specifically as a “euphemism for piracy”. This attitude toward file sharing is not uncommon among those who rely on the old model of music distribution or view music as a commodity.
In contrast, those whose business models do not rely on the productization of musical recordings unaccompanied by visual elements are less troubled by filesharing. Donald K Donald and Dan Seligman both spoke about the thriving live music scene. Concert producers are making money by coupling music with a visual element, assuming “visual element” is defined broadly to include live spectacles. Karen Collins spoke about the increasing importance of music to the gaming industry. When used in video games, music plays a supporting role by complementing the visuals and enhancing the player’s emotional responses. Along with film scoring, video games offer perhaps the best example of music’s “transformation” into something that accompanies a visual element. However, this seems to be at odds with the continued prevalence of filesharing. The coupling of music with visuals, although having become a greater source of revenue, has not replaced the consumption of music on its own. It would be incorrect to assume that music itself is transforming, but rather, it is the way that money is made off of music that is transforming.
Technological advances over the last decade have allowed people to consume media at an unprecedented rate. The recording industry has been slow to respond and has reacted in counterproductive ways, such as bringing legal action against individual downloaders. Meanwhile, policy makers have fought over copyright reform and a lot of noise has been made about how “a solution is coming” (a mantra that, ten years later, is still being thrown around.) There has been moderate success with subscription models and applications like iTunes. Yet as Sandy Pearlman explained, these models have not been economically viable and have failed to deal with the monetization of filesharing on a significant level. It is out of this economic and cultural reality that businesses combining musical and visual elements have begun to expand.
The decrease in album sales over the last decade has resulted in the pursuit of avenues for revenue and might lead one to believe that music is transforming into something that accompanies a visual element. Even if one were to accept this as a starting point, there are strong indications that music absent a visual component will be profitable again in the future. There are those who, instead of gripping to old business models or abandoning them altogether, are coming up with new innovative ways to monetize the growth of musical culture. Brian Whitman, for example, has a company that powers intelligent music applications, analyzes songs and sells musical data to companies. The Echo Nest demonstrates both that recorded music is alive and well and that there are creative ways to profit from music without resorting to visual media. Music applications and recordings that allow the user to engage with music interactively, are other ways in which visual components may be unnecessary in the future.
Finally, the possibility of streaming music off an external server, or “the Cloud” is another example of a potential future for music that exists absent any visual element. This could redirect the gate keeper power from being in the hands of users, to potentially larger entities like record labels or collective rights organizations. According to Sandy Pearlman, the future of music may likely move in this direction, as influential actors such as Google are already experimenting with Cloud technology.
Music will always exist both alone and as an accompaniment to visual elements. It would be mistaken to assume that market interests mean that music itself has transformed or that fewer people are listening to musical recordings. Peer-to-peer filesharing, which is more prevalent than ever, illustrates the extent to which music is alive and well. The trend in music involving the coupling of music with visual elements is merely a reaction to the current economic and technological situation. The industry may just as easily shift back to a purely music-based approach as new innovations and business models are adopted.
The popularity of peer-to-peer file sharing is indicative of the ongoing demand for musical recordings that are distinct and not coupled with visual elements. If it were true that music was transforming into something that always accompanies a visual element, there would presumably be a decrease in the consumption of musical recordings. Yet this is not the case, as the practice of file sharing is still perceived as a serious problem by copyright lobbyists and the recording industry. During his presentation, John Gomery, spoke of the need to monetize file sharing through the implementation of a levy system. He even referred to file sharing specifically as a “euphemism for piracy”. This attitude toward file sharing is not uncommon among those who rely on the old model of music distribution or view music as a commodity.
In contrast, those whose business models do not rely on the productization of musical recordings unaccompanied by visual elements are less troubled by filesharing. Donald K Donald and Dan Seligman both spoke about the thriving live music scene. Concert producers are making money by coupling music with a visual element, assuming “visual element” is defined broadly to include live spectacles. Karen Collins spoke about the increasing importance of music to the gaming industry. When used in video games, music plays a supporting role by complementing the visuals and enhancing the player’s emotional responses. Along with film scoring, video games offer perhaps the best example of music’s “transformation” into something that accompanies a visual element. However, this seems to be at odds with the continued prevalence of filesharing. The coupling of music with visuals, although having become a greater source of revenue, has not replaced the consumption of music on its own. It would be incorrect to assume that music itself is transforming, but rather, it is the way that money is made off of music that is transforming.
Technological advances over the last decade have allowed people to consume media at an unprecedented rate. The recording industry has been slow to respond and has reacted in counterproductive ways, such as bringing legal action against individual downloaders. Meanwhile, policy makers have fought over copyright reform and a lot of noise has been made about how “a solution is coming” (a mantra that, ten years later, is still being thrown around.) There has been moderate success with subscription models and applications like iTunes. Yet as Sandy Pearlman explained, these models have not been economically viable and have failed to deal with the monetization of filesharing on a significant level. It is out of this economic and cultural reality that businesses combining musical and visual elements have begun to expand.
The decrease in album sales over the last decade has resulted in the pursuit of avenues for revenue and might lead one to believe that music is transforming into something that accompanies a visual element. Even if one were to accept this as a starting point, there are strong indications that music absent a visual component will be profitable again in the future. There are those who, instead of gripping to old business models or abandoning them altogether, are coming up with new innovative ways to monetize the growth of musical culture. Brian Whitman, for example, has a company that powers intelligent music applications, analyzes songs and sells musical data to companies. The Echo Nest demonstrates both that recorded music is alive and well and that there are creative ways to profit from music without resorting to visual media. Music applications and recordings that allow the user to engage with music interactively, are other ways in which visual components may be unnecessary in the future.
Finally, the possibility of streaming music off an external server, or “the Cloud” is another example of a potential future for music that exists absent any visual element. This could redirect the gate keeper power from being in the hands of users, to potentially larger entities like record labels or collective rights organizations. According to Sandy Pearlman, the future of music may likely move in this direction, as influential actors such as Google are already experimenting with Cloud technology.
Music will always exist both alone and as an accompaniment to visual elements. It would be mistaken to assume that market interests mean that music itself has transformed or that fewer people are listening to musical recordings. Peer-to-peer filesharing, which is more prevalent than ever, illustrates the extent to which music is alive and well. The trend in music involving the coupling of music with visual elements is merely a reaction to the current economic and technological situation. The industry may just as easily shift back to a purely music-based approach as new innovations and business models are adopted.
New Quebec Music Distribution Model from an Existing Player
Posted by request of Geneviève. Taken from La Presse.
En reprenant le projet d'album-compilation promotionnel d'artistes de la relève que pilotait autrefois la SOPREF, Disques RSB inaugure espace-emergence.com, nouvelle plateforme web servant à la fois de vitrine et de boutique en ligne de l'émergence. Du coup, le manufacturier de CD québécois réaffirme sa présence, déjà remarquée, sur le web.
«Beaucoup de musiciens indépendants se produisent eux-mêmes et viennent chez nous pour faire presser 500 ou 1000 exemplaires de leur album, explique Richard Bélanger, président de Disques RSB. Après, ces artistes vont souvent disparaître. Alors on s'est dit: si on fait une plate-forme pour les aider, ils vont pouvoir se faire connaître et vendre plus de disques.» Et ainsi continuer de faire rouler l'usine de Disques RSB.Essentiellement destiné aux acteurs de l'industrie, le projet de compilation Québec émergent de la SOPREF (aujourd'hui inactive) était un bon outil de promotion pour les musiciens participants. L'idée perdure avec le soutien de Disques RSB, qui en profite pour ouvrir sa première boutique en ligne avec espace-emergence.com.
Les internautes sont invités à télécharger gratuitement le premier volume de la compilation assemblée par Jason Dupuis de la boîte Gong Communications. Ève Cournoyer, MC LaSauce, L'Indice, Otarie et plusieurs autres y offrent une chanson. Les artistes ont ensuite l'occasion de vendre, en format physique ou numérique, leurs enregistrements sur le site web.
Quant à Disques RSB, il étend ainsi son réseau de plateformes web spécialisées dans la musique et les services aux entreprises musicales.
Déjà propriétaire de Postedecoute.ca (pour écouter en ligne les albums pressés par l'usine) et de 45Tours.ca (service de distribution numérique destiné aux radios), l'entreprise vient d'acquérir MusiquePro.net, service de distribution numérique d'albums promotionnels fondé par Audiogram il y a presque deux ans. Ce service sera bientôt renommé Divertimento et étendu aux activités promotionnelles d'autres secteurs de l'industrie culturelle, indique David Thibodeau, gestionnaire des services numériques de Disques RSB.
Cette diversification des services offerts par Disques RSB, combinée à une adaptation des installations de l'usine de pressage, permet à Richard Bélanger de faire face à une conjoncture défavorable à l'industrie du disque.
Car qui dit moins de CD vendus dit aussi moins de disques à fabriquer, n'est-ce pas? Bélanger nuance: «On imprime de moins en moins de CD, oui, mais c'est le volume en tant que tel qui réduit, pas le support ni la variété des titres. Des disques platine à 100 000 exemplaires, il y a 10 ans, c'était fréquent. Ça l'est beaucoup moins aujourd'hui, alors qu'on estime que 25 000, 50 000 exemplaires vendus, c'est vraiment un hit. Ainsi, le volume de disques produits par titre tend à baisser, mais la quantité d'albums différents ne baisse pas.»
En 2009, Disque RSB, qui fabrique la grande majorité des albums d'artistes québécois, a connu une baisse de production de 3 % seulement par rapport à 2008.
Malgré ces données encourageantes, la perspective de voir les supports physiques perdre du terrain est une réalité à laquelle Disques RSB doit faire face.
«Je ne crois pas que le format physique disparaîtra du jour au lendemain, avance Richard Bélanger. Cela dit, les mégausines conçues pour produire d'importants volumes vont sûrement accuser la baisse. Nous, ça fait cinq ans qu'on adapte notre usine à fabriquer de plus petites quantités.»
Les plateformes digitales de Disques RSB viennent, bien entendu, asseoir l'avenir de l'entreprise dans un contexte de bouleversements.
«Il ne faut pas avoir peur du téléchargement, dit le président. C'est un ennemi, oui, mais il est là pour rester. Il faut apprendre à travailler avec la menace.»
En reprenant le projet d'album-compilation promotionnel d'artistes de la relève que pilotait autrefois la SOPREF, Disques RSB inaugure espace-emergence.com, nouvelle plateforme web servant à la fois de vitrine et de boutique en ligne de l'émergence. Du coup, le manufacturier de CD québécois réaffirme sa présence, déjà remarquée, sur le web.
«Beaucoup de musiciens indépendants se produisent eux-mêmes et viennent chez nous pour faire presser 500 ou 1000 exemplaires de leur album, explique Richard Bélanger, président de Disques RSB. Après, ces artistes vont souvent disparaître. Alors on s'est dit: si on fait une plate-forme pour les aider, ils vont pouvoir se faire connaître et vendre plus de disques.» Et ainsi continuer de faire rouler l'usine de Disques RSB.Essentiellement destiné aux acteurs de l'industrie, le projet de compilation Québec émergent de la SOPREF (aujourd'hui inactive) était un bon outil de promotion pour les musiciens participants. L'idée perdure avec le soutien de Disques RSB, qui en profite pour ouvrir sa première boutique en ligne avec espace-emergence.com.
Les internautes sont invités à télécharger gratuitement le premier volume de la compilation assemblée par Jason Dupuis de la boîte Gong Communications. Ève Cournoyer, MC LaSauce, L'Indice, Otarie et plusieurs autres y offrent une chanson. Les artistes ont ensuite l'occasion de vendre, en format physique ou numérique, leurs enregistrements sur le site web.
Quant à Disques RSB, il étend ainsi son réseau de plateformes web spécialisées dans la musique et les services aux entreprises musicales.
Déjà propriétaire de Postedecoute.ca (pour écouter en ligne les albums pressés par l'usine) et de 45Tours.ca (service de distribution numérique destiné aux radios), l'entreprise vient d'acquérir MusiquePro.net, service de distribution numérique d'albums promotionnels fondé par Audiogram il y a presque deux ans. Ce service sera bientôt renommé Divertimento et étendu aux activités promotionnelles d'autres secteurs de l'industrie culturelle, indique David Thibodeau, gestionnaire des services numériques de Disques RSB.
Cette diversification des services offerts par Disques RSB, combinée à une adaptation des installations de l'usine de pressage, permet à Richard Bélanger de faire face à une conjoncture défavorable à l'industrie du disque.
Car qui dit moins de CD vendus dit aussi moins de disques à fabriquer, n'est-ce pas? Bélanger nuance: «On imprime de moins en moins de CD, oui, mais c'est le volume en tant que tel qui réduit, pas le support ni la variété des titres. Des disques platine à 100 000 exemplaires, il y a 10 ans, c'était fréquent. Ça l'est beaucoup moins aujourd'hui, alors qu'on estime que 25 000, 50 000 exemplaires vendus, c'est vraiment un hit. Ainsi, le volume de disques produits par titre tend à baisser, mais la quantité d'albums différents ne baisse pas.»
En 2009, Disque RSB, qui fabrique la grande majorité des albums d'artistes québécois, a connu une baisse de production de 3 % seulement par rapport à 2008.
Malgré ces données encourageantes, la perspective de voir les supports physiques perdre du terrain est une réalité à laquelle Disques RSB doit faire face.
«Je ne crois pas que le format physique disparaîtra du jour au lendemain, avance Richard Bélanger. Cela dit, les mégausines conçues pour produire d'importants volumes vont sûrement accuser la baisse. Nous, ça fait cinq ans qu'on adapte notre usine à fabriquer de plus petites quantités.»
Les plateformes digitales de Disques RSB viennent, bien entendu, asseoir l'avenir de l'entreprise dans un contexte de bouleversements.
«Il ne faut pas avoir peur du téléchargement, dit le président. C'est un ennemi, oui, mais il est là pour rester. Il faut apprendre à travailler avec la menace.»
Monday, March 1, 2010
Copyright violation is expensive
Yikes. From http://www.courthousenews.com/2010/02/26/25098.htm:
The 5th Circuit ordered a college student to pay $27,750 for illegally sharing 37 copyrighted songs on a peer-to-peer file-sharing network. The court rejected the former high-school cheerleader's claim that she was "too young and too naïve" to understand that CD copyrights applied to downloaded music.
A federal judge in Texas had ordered Whitney Harper to pay $7,400, or $200 per infringed track, based on her "innocent infringer" defense. Under this defense, a court can reduce the statutory minimum damages from $750 to $200 per infringed song.
But the federal appeals court in New Orleans didn't buy it and fined her $750 per track.
"Harper's reliance on her own understanding of copyright law -- or lack thereof -- is irrelevant" in the context of the law, the court ruled. And the law clearly states that the innocent infringer defense doesn't apply when the defendant has access to CDs with proper copyright labels, the judges added.
"Lack of legal sophistication cannot overcome a properly asserted ... limitation to the innocent infringer defense," Judge Edith Brown Clement wrote.
"Harper cannot rely on her purported legal naivety to defeat the (statutory) bar to her innocent infringer defense."
Harper, now a senior at Texas Tech, said she didn't know it was wrong when she began sharing songs online at age 14.
In court documents, she called the application of copyright law to her situation "unfair and over-reaching" and said the fine "exacts an unreasonable punishment."
The record companies that sued were Maverick Recording Co., UMG Recordings, Arista Records, Warner Bros. Records and Sony BMG Music Entertainment
The 5th Circuit ordered a college student to pay $27,750 for illegally sharing 37 copyrighted songs on a peer-to-peer file-sharing network. The court rejected the former high-school cheerleader's claim that she was "too young and too naïve" to understand that CD copyrights applied to downloaded music.
A federal judge in Texas had ordered Whitney Harper to pay $7,400, or $200 per infringed track, based on her "innocent infringer" defense. Under this defense, a court can reduce the statutory minimum damages from $750 to $200 per infringed song.
But the federal appeals court in New Orleans didn't buy it and fined her $750 per track.
"Harper's reliance on her own understanding of copyright law -- or lack thereof -- is irrelevant" in the context of the law, the court ruled. And the law clearly states that the innocent infringer defense doesn't apply when the defendant has access to CDs with proper copyright labels, the judges added.
"Lack of legal sophistication cannot overcome a properly asserted ... limitation to the innocent infringer defense," Judge Edith Brown Clement wrote.
"Harper cannot rely on her purported legal naivety to defeat the (statutory) bar to her innocent infringer defense."
Harper, now a senior at Texas Tech, said she didn't know it was wrong when she began sharing songs online at age 14.
In court documents, she called the application of copyright law to her situation "unfair and over-reaching" and said the fine "exacts an unreasonable punishment."
The record companies that sued were Maverick Recording Co., UMG Recordings, Arista Records, Warner Bros. Records and Sony BMG Music Entertainment
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