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.