The Future of Music

The record business, and by extension the music industry, is in deep crisis. It is not necessarily terminal, but the signs are extremely disturbing nonetheless.

Sales of physical product – CDs and albums – have been dropping steadily. Sales of music via a variety of digital platforms have failed to balance the losses.
The culture of file-sharing – of the illegal uploading and downloading of music – has taken its toll. It was once widely accepted that if people wanted to own a recording they paid for it. And where people consumed music by proxy, those who stood to gain from that interaction paid for the privilege – notably radio stations, TV broadcasters, live venues and other places of entertainment.
In cultural terms, one of the most important developments of recent centuries was the system of copyright which enables artists or creators to assert ownership over their work. Of course these can be complicated matters – but the principle is still a crucial one. The author, or those who join with him or her (or them, if there is a collective involved) in legally binding arrangements to publish or disseminate their work, are together entitled to control the cultural output in question, and to negotiate terms of payment from any third parties who might want to buy or use the work.
That’s more than a mouthful, but it comes down to something relatively simple. Zadie Smith writes a new novel. Unless she is already bound to a publishing contract, she is free then to sell that novel to the highest bidder, or to the publisher likely to do the best job with it, whether that means ensuring that the book is treated as a significant work of art, or selling as many copies as possible – or preferably both.
Usually, the writer hands over control of the work to the publisher. The marketing and selling of the book is typically a joint venture. And both parties stand to benefit from the effort put into making all of this happen – from the first word bashed out on a laptop to the display of books in the shop negotiated by the sales team – according to an agreed split of the total revenues. No third party is then entitled to interfere by printing or publishing copies of the book without the permission of the original publisher or the author. And, historically, any rogue publisher who did would immediately be subject to an action for damages, and inevitably forced to pulp any unsold copies of the pirated book.
The same principles applied in music. If a band made a record and released it on one record label, then no one else had the right to copy that recording and release it, without agreement. Similarly, anyone who wanted to use the recording as part of the soundtrack to a movie had to make not one but a series of accommodations – with the songwriters and publishers, with the owners of the master recording (usually the record company) and, latterly at least, with the performers employed in making the record. Books, movies, records, DVDs, video games – they were all covered. And, in theory at least, every copy of a cultural artefact produced delivered royalties or some other form of payment to the creative driving forces – the original writers, directors, producers, composers, musicians or bands involved in making it all happen.
That was then. This is now.
Over the past decade and a bit, that civilised – and from an artist’s perspective in so many ways liberating – set of conventions, has been subjected to an unprecedented and sustained attack. It is unnecessary to go into the intricate history of how here. The bottom line is that the pervasive computerisation of society and the increasing ease with which ever larger ‘files’ can be transferred electronically have transformed the dynamic in the area of the production and use of art, and especially music, in a way that very few people foresaw.
It is perfectly obvious now that the record companies and other right holders were far too slow to realise the extent to which music could, and would, be swept up in a process of technological advancement. The emergence of broadband, a boon in so many ways, plunged the wider entertainment industry into further difficulties. Films could now be copied and sent hurtling through the ether to any number of destinations at once, there to be downloaded and viewed or distributed. Meanwhile, in what has been described as one of the greatest heists in recent history, Google has engaged in a massive plan to digitise all books, a process that was started without any agreement – and which will almost certainly result in a collapse of income for writers, if it goes ahead without some form of serious
set-to.
There is an ideological battle going on here. U2 manager Paul McGuinness wrote about the issue as it effects music in an eloquent piece in GQ magazine recently. In it he identified the myth of ‘free’ as being at the heart of the problems faced by musicians and by the entertainment industry. And he is right.
The view that everything online could and should be ‘free’ developed in the early, Wild West days of the internet. The idea was floated, and took hold, that the internet would be a brave new frontier in which information could disseminated and shared without anyone having to be paid. For some this may have been a utopian ideal. For others it was an attitude born of cynicism. Either way, it was impractical and unworkable. And in the long run, as has now emerged clearly, utterly destructive.
Which isn’t to suggest that people shouldn’t give anything they want to, to whoever they desire, without asking for payment. Free is good – if that is what you freely choose to do.
But, in general, cultural production – and especially quality cultural production – is an expensive business. Movies cost a lot to make. Records a bit less. Books less again. But all are characteristically the product of the blood, sweat and tears of gangs of people working long and hard in the writing, editing, production, design and manufacture. The same with newspapers. The same with games.
Free doesn’t work for newspapers. It doesn’t work for magazines. It doesn’t work for books. The highly protected arena of broadcasting aside, it doesn’t work for anything that requires a heavy commitment to employing people in significant numbers. It doesn’t work for movies. It doesn’t work for music.
In the current issue of Hot Press, Sharon Corr makes another crucial point. One of the things that causes the most affront in the abuse of copyright via the internet is the way in which people have arrogated the right to put other people’s work into the public domain, often in an unfinished state, inevitably ahead of the planned release date – with the effect that it proliferates before the artist has had a chance even to finish it. What gives anyone the right to do this? How can they assume even the tiniest shred of moral authority? And why have they been allowed to?
If you think this is about The Man, forget it. The corporations will survive. It is the small guy, the independent artist, who is most likely to get crushed. It is young bands who will hurt. The irony is that some of those journalists who have publicly championed the file-sharing of music would themselves be horrified if they were not paid for their work, or if it was published without their permission, in an unfinished, unedited or uncorrected form. So why is something to which they would have a deep-seated objection in relation to their own work OK in relation to the creative output of musicians? There is no good reason.
The argument that musicians benefit from the ‘publicity’ created by the pirated use of their music by getting more people to their gigs is a thoroughly spurious one. As the songwriter Nick Kelly put it: “What about The Blue Nile? What about Steely Dan?” There are bands and artists and songwriters who have no interest in going out on the road. Are they now to be entirely denied the opportunity to make a living?
I spoke to another leading Irish singer songwriter. He admitted to being thoroughly despondent about what has been happening to musicians. “No one can make a living from music anymore,” he said. And he is one of the successful ones.
The suggestion too that the genie is out of the bottle and that, in effect, the tide cannot be turned back, is lazy and self-serving. The answer is this: it is the job of legislators to ensure that the decimation of the creative industries, which is happening in real time as we speak, and is being driven by the technology, and elements within the telecom industries, is turned around.
We have seen over the past 50 years an extraordinary flowering of the arts and of popular culture of genuine creative depth and calibre. But, with mechanisms for earning an income from writing songs and recording music on the verge of drying up, all of that furious ferment of artistic creation is in grave danger of being destroyed.
All of this and more will be discussed and debated at The Music Show, which takes place at the RDS in Dublin over the weekend of October 2 and 3. There may not be any easy answers. But the spirit of music will occupy the building and great music will reverberate throughout.
See you there.