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.