Il concept di questo festival che si è appena svolto a Toronto è “la nozione di cooperazione nel fare musica attuale, in opposizione alla glorificazione del genio individuale”. “In contrast with the stereotype of the solitary composer locked in his attic railing against the ignorant outside world, some of today’s most innovative music is forged out of communities — through co-operation, collaboration and unexpected convergences of mutual interests and ideas”. Se ciò è certamente ottimo e degno di essere lodato e appoggiato, va però anche detto che non da oggi la musica appare un ambito spontaneamente propenso alle pratiche collaborative, molto più, ad esempio, che non le arti visive, o che almeno le modalità collaborative appaiono storicamente prevalenti nei contesti di tipo “extracolto”, ove – diversamente da quanto è in uso nella tradizione classica – non sembra essersi mai attestata una rigida e netta divisione tra la figura del “compositore” e quella dell’”esecutore” (o degli esecutori).
Un aspetto che invece il festival suddetto non sembra aver tenuto in considerazione – perlomeno non nella stesura del programma – è la riflessione sui modi attraverso cui le pratiche collaborative si stanno attualmente ampliando e trasformando grazie allo sviluppo tecnologico, ad esempio con la possibiltà di realizzare composizioni e dischi senza essere presenti nello stesso posto fisicamente e lavorando a distanza – approccio di cui un esempio seminale è costituito da un disco come “A Face We all Know” (1992) dei Cassiber – oppure di utilizzare i vari sistemi di social networking per prendere reciprocamente contatto tra musicisti disseminati in diversi angoli della terra ed avviare così progetti concertistici e tour, in cui può anche accadere che non ci si incontri fisicamente se non in occasione del primo concerto, e che la prima volta che ci si trovi a suonare insieme sia sul palco e di fronte al pubblico. Sarebbe tra l’altro molto interessante trovare parallelismi ed eventuali differenze tra queste nuove modalità di lavoro collaborativo in ambito artistico e quelle in uso nei progetti di sviluppo sui software “open source”, oppure studiare le pratiche in uso in tali ambiti per trarre nuovi spunti da applicare al lavoro artistico.
In compenso, il programma del festival prevedeva però uno “hip-hop/new music summit”, e dato che al momento l’ambito hip-hop e annessi e connessi mi sembra essere quasi sicuramente più innovativo di quello della musica “colta”, mi chiedo come mai iniziative simili non siano organizzate più spesso (ad esempio, trovo scandalosa l’assenza anche di qualsiasi menzione all’hip-hop all’interno del festival Copyright/Copyleft, del quale si è parlato qui).
Altro punto significativo: è difficile dire se è vero – come afferma il blog da cui ho tratto la notizia – che il concept del festival sia stato ispirato dalla nozione di “scenius” elaborata da Brian Eno – ne dubito, in effetti – ma in ogni caso la nozione in questione e le relative considerazioni di Eno sono piuttosto interessanti.
Eno ne ha parlato ad una recente lettura in Australia – della quale qui sono reperibili alcuni appunti – in cui si è trovato ad occuparsi di “governance issues” in materia di finanziamenti alle arti rispondendo ad un gruppo di contestatori che protestavano per il fatto che il suo viaggio in terra australiana fosse stato finanziato dal governo. Deplorando il fatto che le richieste di finanziamento per progetti artistici spesso non fanno sufficiente chiarezza sui possibili benefici che la società – intesa in senso ampio – dovrebbe trarre da tali progetti, ed anche l’approccio deliberatamente mistificatorio adottato dagli artisti a riguardo delle proprie metodologie e tecniche di lavoro, Eno ha preso spunto dall’”Origine delle specie” di Dawin – indicandolo come modello di chiarezza che ha rivoluzionato la nostra visione scientifica – per esprimere l’idea che gli artisti dovrebbero definire in maniera più chiara e dettagliata il loro approccio metodologico. Descrivendo la storia culturale occidentale come evoluzione e interazione di artefatti funzionali e di forme estetiche, ha poi inserito in tale quadro la nozione di “scenius”, definita come “a proxemic subculture which diffuses from an aesthetic response and evolves into a unique design space to solve complex social problems”. Per Eno, il clima culturale della San Francisco dei tardi anni ‘60, il Manhattan Project ed il suo proprio ruolo di curatore e mentore nella scena no-wave newyorchese nei tardi anni ‘70 sono esempi di situazioni descrivibili nei termini di tale nozione. Secondo Eno, inoltre, le questioni aperte dai cambiamenti climatici e dai “limiti dello sviluppo” comportano la necessità di diffondere più profondamente metodi artistici di problem-solving, e rispetto a tali problematiche ciascuno deve potersi sentire in possesso delle abilità e risorse necessarie per contribuire alle situazioni in corso.
Pur tenendo conto della nota tendenza degli artisti moderni e contemporanei ad approcciarsi alle questioni scientifiche con eccessiva disinvoltura e notevole ambiguità, mi pare che siamo comunque a tutt’alto livello a confronto della piega caricaturale che ormai qui da noi tende a prendere qualunque discorso mediatico riguardante questioni come il finanziamento pubblico alle arti o le politiche culturali…
Although this is true in theory ,in practice what generally happens is that
20 or 30 collective artists participates , a few get renumerated (as usual)
and also per usual ,one person or two garners all the fame and glory.
which subsequentally means they are exactly who will get bookings for the next 5 years or more , not to mention numerous residencies in citys world
what must change is how people are PAID, the rest is just interesting
philosophy and old philosophical theories at at that.
Hi Steve,
of course, that’s a great point, but the question is HOW we change the payment system? On one hand it’s clear that often musicians turn to be much more individualistic than collaborative when it comes the matter of cachets; on the other hand, there are plenty of musicians that accept to perform for low fees or no fee at all, and so the story goes on…
Also, sometimes things are different when festivals are self-organized by musicians: same fee for each musician regardless if he’s a celebrity or not, and if you don’t agree you don’t play. But self-organized activities tend to be short-living, as musicians are usually not such brilliant organizers. So, for me one point is that the diffusion of economical and cultural managing skills and competences between artists should be welcomed and sustained in any possible way (or, at least, that artists should be able to cooperate with other people that got the knowledge that they lack…).
Besides that, I think that to go through questions such as how the collaborative efforts between artists could be improved and developed – by means of new technologies but also in any other way – it is not only a theorethical or philosophical (abstract) question, but it has a strong practical value as well, as a mean to make us more strongly aware of how we do what we do, how we make the music we make, how we organize and manage projects, and so on.
Ciao
And course I agree with whats said above.What I belive however is that artists in general and musicians (in particular).must apply somewhat the same force that
labor movements applied in the early 20th century. And this above all is understanding that it is your RIGHT to get paid for you work.
Secondly I think its high time that organizers answer to the exigencies of
musicians .for example since musicians always must prove their worth
to organizers to get hired.How is it that so many organizers dont have to
prove their worth at all to anyone let alone the musicians who their very
job depends on .
An organizer is after all a glorified manager , so should`nt we have some say
as to who determines the management of our lives ??
But this situation is above the fault of artists and musicians themselves.
One important lesson I learned on the streets of philly is that ,people stop
dishing out shit only when you learn to dish it right back.
One thing though at least those little street ganster were honest in their intent which is more than I can say for most organizers .
If all this seems a bit of utopia all I have to say is that at one time the 8 hour day and paid vacations etc were equally farfetched.But these things were not a gift they were fought for …..one thing will remain always true ..power
conceeds nothing ….what did Willie Dixon used to say ” I got a razor,you know I always got a razor “
Hello,
this stuff is very complex from a micro-economics point of view.
For example: your ‘organiser’ is not actually selling your music: he/she may be selling ’seats’ in an auditorium. Now, unlike your product, which is a ‘public good’ (meaning that somebody consuming it does not reduce its availability for the next guy), a ’seat’ is EITHER taken by you OR by the next person. Also, ’seats’ can be divided up into categories (‘front row seats’, ‘balcony seats’ and so on) allowing the organiser to do a thing called ‘price discrimination’ that you can’t do (you perform ONE version of the song for all in the audience). These are just examples of many more seemigly trivial phenomena in your ‘work’, but they DO have an effect in the ‘economics’ of live performances or recorded music, and therefore in the way you ‘fight for just compensation’.
If you can get hold of today’s edition of the Financial Times you’ll find an article titled “Can creative industries survive digital onslaught” in their Digital Business supplement, which might interest you.
It’s not about live performances, but it might give you an idea of the kind of structures that we ALL need to understand, especially if we are sensitive to the issues in ANY ‘creative industry’.
Cheers.
I could`nt get hold of that article , but I think I quite understand many of the structures we face not the least of which are patented genes,nano molecular,
neurochemical architectures etc and I would think many other things of which we barely have an inkling of (at least presently).
I suspect that as so many of these articles, the arguments are a bit one sided and disingenuous. Like so many of those public relation arguments from DuPont , Shell etc ….especially the ecological ones which infer that ” Were all in
this together ” which of course has some truth , especially since they spent most of the 20th century raping and destroying a lot of the earth. However back to the point..
As far as I make out after long years of performance is that naturally an organizer is not selling your product per se . But that organizer is not only selling seats , but Him or Herself as a invaluable curator . Culture is like any other modern business . And an Organizer of culture is basically a CEO . effectively middle management.
It seems at this 20 year anniversary of the fall of the wall. glorified middle management is the name of the game . A cursory look at the DJ phenomena
proves that . But in fact we can say that DJ`s are distribution mangement.
something like a cultural Ikea …..But at least Ikea pays for the product they buy (minimally).
The music ” business” has been brutal , crooked and rapacious since its
inception.Espousing the values America is best known for the digital onslaught in fact has its origins in the player piano rolls of the victorian
era.this innovation had as its creative impetus the mass imitation of ragtime
which was the ” House “music of its day. The gist of the problem was (like
so much music of subsequent decades) white people couldnt play it very easily .and they sure as hell were`nt going to let any niggers in their posh
living rooms.Especially since they would come into contact with to much white women hood. So they made what was in effect a primitive Sampler.
And guess what the black creators of that genre did`nt get a dime.
Yes you are correct in that there are many complex micro-economic factors.
however I dont think it is expedient to get bogged down in a morass like that. And like all good science or if you like philosophy , the answers you will receive are contingent on the clarity of the questions you ask.
Hi to you both,
the article is here: link
Hallo Steve,
to start, I didn’t really understood the relation between dj’s and Ikea, specially as I don’t see none of the two as mere “distributors”: a dj is to me more somebody that does some kind of reorganization of already existing stuff by means of remixing, while Ikea actually produces something. Besides that, I have to say that I generally totally disagree with your main point.
You say that organizers basically sell their autoglorification, but – setting aside brutality and rapacity and so on – what is the actual material basis of this supposed glorification? To me it’s basically due to skill and projectuality, as to say on the fact that they – or at least those that suxceed – have some level of knowledge of what they do which proves to be enough to make their projects and enterprises to work – to don’t fall apart.
And to me that’s absolutely the main thing: some aspects of innovation of musical technologies – such as the development of piano roll – may well has been (partially at least) driven to a purpose of exploitation of blacks, but on the other hand you know very well that a big portion of the most technologically innovative music of the last four decades has been black music. So the main question is: how some essential knowledge can be retained and developed in order to serve interests opposite than the ones of exploitation? How that knowledge can be used, for example, to develop different forms of expression, of organization, or to reinforce the public realm?
We are encapsulated on a reductive political wiew which in fact is the mere transposition of street gang behave – of brutal counfrontation of opposite powers – into an order of problems where this may be just completely senseless and counterproducing, to put it euphemistically.
What in fact may be the utility of showing the razor when the point is to set up something and trying to make it WORK? We fail, exactly because we think that stuff such as micro-economy is a “morass” in which we can only get bogged down.
I strongly think that all our real chances to change anything are deeply rooted in our possible efforts in deeping our knowledge, thinking about it and use it to develope new projects, ideas and practices.
Ok, paragraph by paragraph..to start:
True the simile of Ikea and DJ is a flawed one ,perhaps Starbucks would closer
reflect my point.And I did not say merely distribute , but rather distributive
mangement.But you are correct, Ikea does produce somethings.The dj on the other hand generally does not. Apart from that the dj has always been a parasitic form of entertainment , parasitic defined here as not necessarily
derogatory , rather a statement of fact.
I did not state that organizers per se were either brutal nor rapacious..this was directed at the music business itself which has indeed been so since its
inception. That being said though Im sure a few of them are. Many of them are simply people who know how to place themselves well,endear themselves to the right people , grab power and stay there.Talent ,yes indeed!! and easy to keep things together with publicity and finance machines behind your
endeavours.And certainly in that position you start probably believing,that you are yourself creating the art….ever watch someone play air guitar ??
The third paragraph is for me the most interesting.because that is precisely how black and amerindian culture,survived in that most hostile usa. And of course went on to pretty much shape the culture of the 20th century. And yes a large part of that was the desemination of info via radio and records.
But the impetus was pure greed in terms of the music industry, and it certainly backfired in the political sense.especially in the bonds created between the white and black races.And maybe most importantly the reintroduction of dance ritual in western culture.
Reductive ? Yes perhaps ,but not simply so. There is a great force
in reducing discourse (the technique of Malcolm X for ex.) And its
not a mere transposition of street gang tactics, Anymore than his was.
Senseless and counter productive ?? The systems we live under presently
are both.and have been for a real long time.I have been stepping up and making things work (or at least trying) for almost all my life.And I know enough about the ins and outs of “micro-Economy” to fill 2 lifetimes.
but in any case im more than willing to hear some alternatives to this
mess.
And as an aside: only a fool shows their their razor,
unless of course its already in use.
What to me is reductive is the idea that instead of theoretical discussions we just need to stand up and “fight for our rights”. To me we need theory exactly to find how to fight in the proper way, and more generally to search possible ways to solve most of our collective problems. People seem to believe that solutions to all problems are always just easy and near at hand, and that they are usually mostly related on find who to put the blame on. I think that this is wrong; the possible solutions for most of our problems are not obvious at all, and we need quite a lot of collective hard-thinking to face them. We urge spaces where to go deeper in the investigation rather than try to jump immediately to some sort of conclusion.
And what in fact we do really need, in my opinion, and not only for music, is to develop collective ways of projecting new organizational structures and practices, and to put them to work. And I also think that WE have to do it, as nobody else is going to do it for us. So if you have two lifetimes of micro-economy knowledge that’s just great for you; I don’t – in fact I am totally absolutely ignorant on the matter, so what I mostly search is ways to share those and other knowledge with others, and to put them at work. You say that you are more than willing to see alternatives, and that’s same as me. So my suggestion is, let’s just work on that.
About organizers, for sure I haven’t the slightest appreciation for the fact that within the same program the solo act of a “celebrity” could be so much well payed than the overall fee of a whole ensemble made of lesser known musicians, and regardless of any consideration for the quality of the music itself. But therefore I go back to my point: how do we change this situation? We have to be aware that we aren’t early 20th century wage-earners, but autonomous (or precarious) workers within the context of 21th century restructured capitalism, and that changes a lot. What margins we have to impose our conditions to organizers, and which conditions? We have just to work on that.
Self-organization, or a more deep involvement of musicians – and especially of musician’s collectives – into organizational activities, is a possibility that deserves as well to be strongly investigated, and I think that now – with the increasing expansion of the net – is just the right time to do it. But, again that’s nothing easy or simple, so that also requires thinking and theoretical work.
To add just a small example of the encountering problems in any attempt to start such a work, here – http://www.furious.com/perfect/indiedownloads.html – is an article by Chris Cutler, where he write some basical but in my opinion senseful things about the impact of peer-to-peer file-sharing on independent music making (the article is from few years ago so in some aspects is not updated, but that’s not relevant here). At one point, in relation to the issues of music and copyright, he advocates the coalescence of artists and users to set up “some new independent and voluntary entity that would constitute itself as an accredited artist-user body”, enabling participants to “negotiate, formulate and agree reasonable rules and rates and then oversee compliance and adjudicate where applicable”. Right after he declares his own above mentioned proposal to be “horribly utopian”. Why is it so utopian? To me it has a lot to do with the fact that, on the artist’s side, the main model of behaving is still rooted in 19th century bohémian individualism – which has absolutely nothing in common with amerindian or any other traditional communitarian social structure – while on the consumer’s side the predominant attitude is just free-riding, with little or no consideration – if Cutler’s account is right – if that’s at the expenses of greedy and profiteer mega-corporations or of poor and unresourceful independent musicians and labels. So, if that’s the overall situation, how just even start to think about whatever possible form of collective action?
about Cutler’s article, I actually mean *senseful*, not senseless (I corrected it now)… sorry
Well, I guess the micro-econ. analogy with a ‘morass’ might work, after all. If fact, like in a ‘morass’, you might unwittingly end up deep in the stuff if you DO NOT watch your step.
For a sample, just point your browser to http://econpapers.repec.org/scripts/search/search.asp and enter “music” or “artist” or “culture”, lean back and relax. I suggest you read Michael W. Carroll’s “Whose Music Is It Anyway?: How We Came To View Musical Expression As A Form Of Property – Part I” , for fun if for nothing else.
When you, Steve, talk about “middle management” you mean “middle-men”, I think. Economists call those suckers “intermediaries”. Now, it so happens that the “culture” environment is ALL about intermediation-disintermediation. If you look at it from a strictly economical point of view (which is NOT, by ANY means, the only or more relevant point of view, I grant you THAT), then the economics of intermediation DOES matter (this year’s Economics Nobel prize has been awarded to a guy studying just that, by the way). For example, there was a time when, if you wanted to own a print of a picture you had taken, you went to a ‘photoshop’ where somebody used specialized and expensive equipment and chemicals to process your film and create it. You wanted another copy, or an enlargement, and you paid for it. The bloodsucker was extracting money from his/her specialized assets and know-how. Not anymore. The intermediary is gone in that instance…
As to Mr Cutler’s article, Luca, I fail to see why he calls his scheme “horribly utopian”: craft guilds have been around for centuries (with both horribly good and bad consequences), and I think the Oscar is awarded in Hollywood by an organisation called the “Actor’s Guild” or something…
But the most perplexing (to me) of Cutler’s statements are things like the following:
“You pay the plumber and the electrician”… Well yep, I do. I pay for specialised (i.e. ’scarce’) know how when the electrician or plumber installs something at my house or office. But of course the ‘trick’ is that MY installation is NOT usable by you as well. Suppose the electrician fixes the street lights inteas: everybody in the neighborhood benefits from it (just like when you play a song), so WHO should be charged? The CITY is, of course.. Think about that.
Similar considerations apply when Cutler talks about “vegetables”: the analogy is flawed: can you see why?.
Good thinking, tough. Keep it coming!
hi yes , this is for me quite a productive discourse. And im happy to encounter
some folks really using their brains. its encouraging !! Yes there are cetainly no
easy solutions.But I agree wholeheartedly on the fact that we need far more
theoretical application which is based on practical implementation.
A real understanding of what is often referred to as advanced capitalism,
but in my opinion is quite something different altogether would be useful.
and a discarding of useless left over marxist theories which were for all
their worth, obsolete more or less by the end of WW1.
After didnt Marx himself say he was`nt a Marxist.And how right the comment
referring to the lack of communitarian values and Mr Cutlers dismissal of his
own lucid point as ” utopian “. And yes some solutions are not always at hand so to speak, however they often are if we can adjust and tune our minds a bit. For example how about the genuis and simplicity and effectiveness of the sit down strike ? Or the yippie action on wall street !!
I recommend a mass action and takeover of facebook for example. thats if some of the artists who are constantly advertising every little thing they do
could contribute something a bit more beneficial then gossip.
Of course these actions are small things but at least we could try to take public space back into our hands.
I think a bit more talk of whats called conspiracy theories is useful ,especially in a historical sense. I find it just a bit interesting for example that the founders of the EEU (the later european union.) were a core of ex nazi bankers and industrialists who if tried at Neunberg served either very light sentences or none at all.And in fact most were not even named.
Of course this kind of money could care less about our petty needs,
but can we be naive enough to believe that it somehow does`nt
determine our lives whithin the feudal systems we misname democracies ?
But back to basics. When I started coming to europe in the late 1980`s
one thing that struck me was that it was at least possible to make a meagre
living performing, and in fact that was a strong reason why I left the US.
over the past 20 years I`ve seen a persistent deterioration of the support
systems through the various countries .This notably since the rise of the EU.
An interesting trend is the co-option of music into the “ART” world.. so you have these festivals where the organizer puts out a book , incredible pub,
webstreaming , documentarys….etc. The peformer gets on average 500 euros
good hotel and food etc. But what of all that other considerable expenditure?
And of course since this type of festival is a theme, you will be lucky to get invited whithin 2 or years if then.
On the local level (small scale) its been my experience that everybody will always tell you that the cant afford to pay. And yet they damn sure are paying someone ! Even in Philly which is poor, any shit bar could come off 200/300 dollars and thats 30 years ago !! As said before artists live in stupid 19th century ideas , not only individualistic but politically , And unfortunately simply do not equate what they do as labor…at least one can still get fed and accomodated to some extent ,but that also is slipping.
I believe it has all to do with attitudes.
And I heartily recommend An artists review of organizers in which we judge they`re performance ,qualifications; comportment towards artists.This can easily be done on the web and im sure the repsonse will be interesting and effective.
I agree also that many of Cutlers analogys are flawed..unfortunately though im to tired to continue at the moment.
And yes Francesca , I cetainly mean middlemen and certainly I find morass
a lovely word. It really emanates its semantic qualites.Step gingerley…
Interesting Cutlers Medici referrence !! All I can say is I worked for a few
known killers and they did pay well and wthout problem…dont know about the long term however.
Agood book also is HITMEN, about music publishing, very intertesting.
I am afraid Cutler’s point is all BUT lucid (bear with me for a sec: I’ll try to explain momentarily).
Let me use your own expression “communitarian values”. Then the interesting point in the post is – to me – that we should try and turn around the question from how comm. values influence the production of music, to “how do we organise socially the production of music so that we PRODUCE certain comm. values?”. THIS is the hard part, THIS is what makes musicians NECESSARY to a community. And mind you: in my last sentece I’m talking about necessary musicIANS, not necessary music.
Now calling something “horribly utopian” is really a learned travesty for not-thinking-matters-through: I frown and state some half cooked noble ambition without taking the trouble to think-it-through, accepting vaguely that it is SO noble that you would blemish it somehow if you DID think it through, or that not needing thinking through is precisely what makes it noble, and then you call it “horribly utopian” absolving yourself from ever having to, well, think it through. For example, craft guilds are not utopian necessarily, but they CAN be ‘horrible’. The same goes for powerful and loaded Patrons: the Medicis were perhaps fine for Renaissance artists, but they were kicked out of Florence at one time by the Florentines nonetheless, and just about any Tyrant throughout history have patronized the arts to uphold their authority or lend it an aura of legitimacy, including Feldmarshal Goering. Fine if you are IN the guild, or in the graces of the Church or the Tsar, less so if you’re not, and history has no record of the artists who didn’t make it because of that.
Take this “copyright” mumbo jumbo so carelessly thrown around these days. For some reason Italians call it “Diritto d’Autore” (which translates to “Author’s Right”), but it was NOT meant, when the British Monarchy ‘invented’ it, to protect the AUTHOR’s rights: it was meant to protect the EDITOR’s rights. It did NOT protect the musical composition, it protected its printed SCORE, the physical medium which could physically be ‘copied’. So, for example, the article by Michael W. Carroll that I mentioned in my other comment makes a horrible mess – in my opinion – when it discusses “property of MUSIC”, stating that the Ancient Greeks did not have that notion, even when physical means of recording existed, because they, unlike us, thought that music could not be ‘owned’ any more than physics or mathematics can be owned. But of course this line of reasoning does not hold water: why do we pay professors of physics or mathematics? Is it because they ‘own’ physics or math? Of course not!: it is because they ‘own’ KNOWLEDGE of physics or maths, and this KNOWLEDGE is HARD to create, hold and maintain, and so is knowledge of MUSIC, of how to play music, even or even more so when, as Carroll says about the Ancient Greek musicians, it is directly infused by the Gods: there are NOT many types around whom the Gods treat so nicely. Nobody “owns” music more than physics, not even in today’s “advanced capitalism” (whatever that means). A ‘guild’ is a means to make that KNOWLEDGE even SCARCER than it is, it is a means to CONTROL scarcity (so much so that Carroll is right in poiting out that they were invented and upheld by the Authorities of the day to control PEOPLE’s access to KNOWLEDGE, to control access to HOW TO MAKE WHAT THINGS, not to the ‘things’ themselves).
Now, do people who can own one billion songs because they are available for free know, just because of that, how to play a violin or how to compose a nursery rhyme? Does THAT spread knowledge of music? Do I make Feyman’s lectures on physics freely available to everyone and, just because of that, everyone turns into a physicist? Is it because everyone knows how to read, write and spell that they are all Shakespeares? Maybe, marginally, it can happen. Maybe you are moved or inspired to want to LEARN how to compose music, or do physics or write a tragedy, and you get yourself a teacher. If you do, do you remind yourself of this whole “copyright” bullshit and ask the teacher to give you lessons for free because ‘music is no one’s property’? Mind you: Ancient Greeks paid handsomely for music or philosophy lessons, even when the teachers were slaves, and even when ‘community values’ (which included accepting that musicians were involved in a servile trade) prevailed over diabolic mercantilist attitudes.
So, do we want more recorded music around, or do we want more MUSICIANS? How do we support people who spend years training and practicing music (or physics), and WHY do we want them? Would it be more ’socialistic’ if people owned more records or mp3 files?
Or do we want more KNOWLEDGE of MUSIC? And WHY so? Because acquiring KNOWLEDGE of music, vs. ‘records’, implies a discipline, implies developing certain social norms, implies devolping a special attitude to PROBLEMS, implies devolping a certain concrete relationship with the material world, implies develping or producing, in short, COMMUNITARIAN VALUES. No less. We’ll never go around this issue unless we stop complaining about the prevailing comm. values and realise that thiose are PRODUCED, and that producing them is WHY we learn and perform music (and physics, and economics, and just about any other ‘cultural’ PRODUCT).
Copyright law is of course an issue, but it has VERY LITTLE TO DO with what I state above.
Cheers.
(By the way, my conclusion above IS consistent with Cutler’s article, mind you. It’s the “horriby utopian” bit that gets me:-).
Ok, in fact I think that this Cutler’s article is “lucid” only in comparison with the prevailing positions about file-sharing issues…
The point is that peer-to-peer file sharing is an actual phenomenon, a matter of fact, and it has material consequences on the musician’s work and to the recording label’s economies. And from one side those consequences are favorable, as to some extent free circolation of production means more visibility, and therefore free promotion, but on the other hand it also means less incoming, sometime at the price of the impossibility of recovering expenses.
So what do we do? I can assume that I have all and any right to protect my authorship, and therefore i can praise the legal persecution of copyright infringiment and any attempt of extend the copyright protection; or I may come to the conclusion that I have nothing to loose from free (as in ‘free beer’) circulation of culture, and therefore I advocate it as a mean of resistance against the power of the ugly and bad corporations and major record companies.
But, is that a chance that average sustainers of the first option are professionals that ‘live’ from their work (or sometimes “celebrities”, such as Metallica), while most of the sustainers of the second are subject whose activity has less or no commercial circulaton at all, or are somehow on the other side of the fence (consumer’s associations or “militant activists”)? To me it has a sense to reconnaise – as Cutler does – that a practice such as file-sharing represent in the same time an opportunity and a problem, and therefore some RULES must be developed in order to minimizing the problems and maximizing the opportunities.
Then of course, the actual solutions he proposes have to be discussed. But I am not sure that what suggests is a guild: in fact for what I understand he suggests some sort of independent table of discussion between operators (musicians and labels) and consumers, to fix some rules about how to manage file sharing practices, what prices to apply, and so on. Is that a guild? I don’t know (really). I may imagine that in fact it is an unpractical idea, and that it could maybe work only for activities of a very small range – like the informal circuit of small independent labels Cutler himself is involved with.
But the main point that I wanted to stress is that, for the most, within the independent music scene Cutler is involved with (and myself and the largest part of the musicians that read and write in this blog as well) there is a strongly radicated individualistic approach – which is what I generally refer as “bohemien” – which is exactly – to me – the source of disengagement with the attention for social norms, and which therefore brings to the lack of ‘special attitude to PROBLEMS’ and to the concrete relationship with the material world you advocate, and I do as well.
And so that goes to the main question: How to start to produce new commonal values within the specific context of the independent music we are involved with? Why the inner SHAPE of those activities has an overall tendency on being so fragile? In some aspects I am convinced – and this is for you, Steve – that we have to learn a lot from afro-american musicians collectives and communities. Just watch at this, which of course you know so much better than me (http://aacmchicago.org/about-us). My concern is: why nothing of any comparable STRENGTH has been developed in Europe within the last four decades or so?
Also: an a footnote in the same article, Cutler complains that in the UK the “government has tried to shift support for the arts onto the backs of corporate sponsorship and the state controlled (but not owned) lottery”, and that “getting money from them is a question simply of knowing how to talk application speak and tick the approved boxes: best projects should involve the local community, children, ethnic minorities and a list of other politically correct and artistically irrelevant criteria; you will not be judged on the quality of your work”. Where of course is absolutely clear that no one really gives a heck about “local community”, “children” and “ethnic minorities”, and that those are mere pretences to show that somehow the money spent for art project founding is not lost, as it is “socially useful” in some mysterious and inscrutable way.
Then my point is: this kind of artistic self-consciousness that reduces any actual link to the rest of society as “politically correct and artistic irrelevant criteria”, of what culture is the product? Why the relationship between artistic knowledge and the rest of the society as a whole is not actually at the core of the practice and production of art and music?
And I say this for the very own benefit of the music knowledge and practice: ok, I certainly know that there are some deeply specialized aspects in it, concerning theory, technique, history, esthetical values and so on. But then, what is the interface between this specialized knowledge and the rest of the world? How someone comes to understand that he may enjoy to become a musician or a composer, why, and of what music?
My belief is that if those questions are minimized, it ends up that the only real connection between musical production and the rest of the world get to be the products and the entertainment: records, concerts, shows, mp3s, gadget and so on. And the only problem then it becomes how to have even more, and possibly for free (and i am not saying that Cutler itself is part of this minimization, but that the ‘independent’ music whose practice Cutler represents is in itself a product of the general historical movement that also produced that minimization).
And one evidence it, in my opinion, is that the ‘independent’ music scene almost didn’t developed any serious attempt in the field of didactics.
So here I see one first big difference: when those people from AACM says that “The organization takes particular pride in developing new generations of talent through the free music training program conducted by members for city youth, the AACM School of Music”, we can be sure that this is no pretension, that is not just a way to “check the right boxes”, but it is TRUE – and that they’re actually keep on doing it since 44 years from now…
“My belief is that if those questions are minimized, it ends up that the only real connection between musical production and the rest of the world get to be the products: records, concerts, shows, mp3s, gadget and so on. And the only problem then it becomes how to have even more, and possibly for free.”
CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP !
“So here I see one first big difference: when those people from AACM says that “The organization takes particular pride in developing new generations of talent through the free music training program conducted by members for city youth, the AACM School of Music”, we can be sure that this is no pretension, that is not just a way to “check the right boxes”, but it is TRUE – and that they’re actually keep on doing it since 44 years from now…”
EXACTLY RIGHT EXACTLY RIGHT EXACTLY RIGHT EXACTLY RIGHT
“How someone comes to understand that he may enjoy to become a musician or a composer, why, and of what music?”
THIS ABOVE IS THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT QUESTION ANYONE DOING ‘CULTURE’ SHOULD ASK THEMESELVES.
Here’s my answer: it’s not just because one ‘enjoys’ it. IT IS BECAUSE doing something like ‘composing’ or ‘performing’ music is a paradigm for SOCIAL PROBLEM-SOLVING, to use Eno’s expression. Besides, DOING that is an all important part of the enjoyment.
(Why are everybody so enchanted with growing their own onions to defeat consummerism, but NO ONE ever thinks about composing and performing their own music, which they expect to CONSUME freely?)
Great stuff.
CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP !
In fact it is not properly true that NO ONE ever thinks about composing and performing their own music… some does (a lot in fact, much more than what one could think).
But it would be good that
a) composers and performers could have the chance to think about their work – and to put it in practice – within a general social and cultural context where this thinking and action may be developed at the best possible condition – and of course that is part of a general process of transformation of society as a whole, and therefore is up to musicians and artists themselves TOGETHER with anybody else, and that
b) media and ‘public opinion’ stops to give credit to the idea that the main value of produced things lies in their being representative of some sort of “simbolico plusvalore cognitivo” (so that ‘alternative’ music or ‘alternative’ onions are symbolical acts of resistance against consumerism), and not in the activity of production ITSELF…
(By the way – i still didn’t got a totally clear wiew about how music making differs from plumming, and to the production of vegetables too…
)
Dear Luca,
I think we both agree that worrying about how to price and distribute revenue from recorded COPIES of a cultural product like ‘music’ is only marginally relevant to the bigger question as to how to think about cultural production. In fact I’d like to be even more radical and simply cut the ‘inertial’ assumption that making a copy of a book or recorded music can be grouped in the same category as cultural production. I don’t say that they’re not both relevant, I merly state that they are different activities. Just think of the following AACM’s statement:
“AACM remains steadfast in its commitment to the free training program for inner city youth”.
There MUST be a difference between committing to free TRAINING versus handing out free records, don’t you think?
For pricing music files you may want to check http://www.economist.com/businessfinance/economicsfocus/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14699573
That discussion is closely related to the e-mail I sent you last night. (For your clarification: what the article calls “consumer surplus” is the portion labeled “questi avrebbero pagato di più” in the first graph in the old KK’s blog post).
But again, this is not really “our” interesting problem.
As for vegetables and plumbers versus musicians, consider this:
Once a potato has been eaten by you there is one LESS available for me (potatos are ‘rival in consumption goods’). If I need one somebody has to ‘make’ another. The same for plumbing services: if you use it to fix the bathtub at your house I can’t use the SAME ‘unit’ of such service for mine at my house. This is unlike people at a concert who ALL comsume the same ‘unit’ of your performance. This means that the ’standard’ microeconomics equilibrium theory that describes the demand/supply model and the ‘market clearing’ price does NOT work for musical ‘products’, and that means that a ‘price’ cannot be established by such ‘market’. I’m not saying that a price cannot be established at all, only that it is not determined by the same ’standard’ model that works for potatoes or plumbing services.
Another way to think about this is the following: your production costs (say time and effort) are the SAME whether you play at a street corner to 20 people or in front of a full Yankee Stadium. This is why the intermediary signing you up for a gig in the Yankee Stadium (the guys providing the stadium, the amplification, the ‘organising’ in short) get a sizeable chunk of the proceedings: they produce ‘value’ on top of the one you produce. But of course they won’t feel the stadium unless you’re very good, and that is why they don’t get ALL the additional ‘value’: in that setting you provide the playing PLUS the ‘appealing’ to the crowd.
In other words because what you make is SO unlike potatoes or plumbing services the entire production involves lots of intermediaries doing actual work and providing a miriad of additional goods and services that ‘turn’, so to speak, your ‘non rival in consumption’ good into things that CAN be priced via the ’standard’ micro-economic model: things such as ’seats’, advertising, transportation, ect.
I hope this makes it a little clearer. But just ask if you’re not convinced.
F.
hi well looks lively !! sorry been busy ( all those potatoes)
Then my point is: this kind of artistic self-consciousness that reduces any actual link to the rest of society as “politically correct and artistic irrelevant criteria”, of what culture is the product? Why the relationship between artistic knowledge and the rest of the society as a whole is not actually at the core of the practice and production of art and music?
This is a good place to start . I`ve always felt this way and have observed how so many artist do their work to call attention to themselves.And un-
fortunately I feel that some of the most snobbish ivory tower types are in
fact the biggest practicers of ” alternativism.And I feel that this insularity
contributes a lot to the non-receptiveness of public to so called new music.
Most improvised shows for example break down to the musicians speaking their own language amongst each other…and then they wonder why there is always only 10-15 people in the house.
For me the social interface Luca refers to is akin to the call and response
mechanism in so much african american music.what do black folks say when the music gettin hot…? Talk About it ,Tell Me Something, Word etc.
In Apartheid Amerika music was directly linked to various cultural function and indeed cultural survival. As well African based music has linguistic syntax
inherent in its construction.Rhythms can and do talk indeed.One of the main reasons that Africans and Ameridians were kept as seperate as possible from
almost day 1 was this fact.
I suspect that nothing like AACM has come about in Europe has to do with several reasons . Not the least of which is the internalized arrogance of racial superiority , which commenced with the greeks.But I think the main reason is the intense savagery of life in Amerika drives one to find solutions simply for survival.And remember AACM evolved in an era of the black panthers , malcolm x etc.
Another important fact is that western european culture has managed to entirely seperate( along with all else) art from everyday life a few cultures dont even have words for art dance or music !! And one of the biggest drives of my whole career has been to make sure dance and music were not seperate (at least in my work).
I agree with Francesca fully about guilds ,the same exact structure as church
heirarchy . designed to create scarcity and worst of all that fake aura of artistic mystery.
As for many of the theories of Mr Cutler .when i first met him one of my biggest questions was about the song lyrics. many which I didnt really like
because I felt them to be to ambiguos.I found it incredibly ironic that the receiving audience of Henry Cow in the USA were pretty well off middle class
young men . IN fact only they could afford all that socialist material !!
I always felt that position to be a bit blah blah blah . A bit like all those “concerned artists ” in the early 80`s NYC whose main political stance was Nicaragua .while mean while all around them everyday were people homeless
and inner city kids strung out behind tons of coke and shooting each other left and right. But of course its more noble to go pick coffee 1000 miles
from home , then to pick up some poor sucker off the street .
And for me that was such an important point about independent music being
the product of general historic movements that indeed produce and even start to reproduce the mechanism of the systems from which it evolved.
I do feel frankly however that there is very little future in getting paid for
music reproduction unless you are like say metallica.or Cutler who has a well established label.Individual Bytes of information at this stage in history are simply not worth enough. Unless it is a very hot encrypted algorhytm or something like it.In fact almost everyone I know has made most of their cash from playing shows. And at the shows selling their CDS . But even the buying of cds at gigs has diminished.After all why bother when you can put it
onIpodor even record it with your phone ??
And finally cause Im tired again!! A word in relation to the cynciism of
subventions. Having lived in Geneva Ive had much opportunity to study
this syndrome. Although at face value it appears like support,in reality its
quite an effective means of cultural control.In reality it stifles the vitality of
a cultural scene,since everyone knows how they should tailor their project in
order to appeal.For example when the dance quartrely of Geneva LÀDC
comes out ,on the second page is a list of what company or dancer
received subvention and HOW much. This is usually about 9-12 receipients.
when you go further through the issue you will see all the advertisements of
that seasons shows.And you will also see that those engagements are filled solely with the receipients on page 2.
bouno notte
I think you guys are on to something really interesting, something that actually matters.
I won’t discuss some of Steve’s takes just yet, such as “internalized arrogance of racial superiority” which I think are a rather crude description of certain dynamics. But I do appreciate them, simply noting that THIS, however ‘crude’, is still miles above the ‘copyright’ stuff.
Since you asked me, Luca, let’s get it out of the way. Check this out:
http://urbiloquio.com/kkblog/images/majorcopyright.gif
First of all a word of warning: this is not the WHOLE story. Just a hint.
A copyright is a legal right to DENY somebody making a COPY. It only generates an income for you if ’somebody’ really, REALLY wants to make one. Let’s say its ‘value’ is actually determined by how bad somebody wants to do so (in cold microeconomics terms: “by the demand schedule for such copies”).
Suppose the demand schedule is the downward-sloping red line in the graph.
Then you see what happens in two cases:
- in the left figure, the demand is ‘elastic’: a slight increase in the price reduces quantity by a LOT. You see that in this case a small increase in the copyright income reduces the sales income to ’somebody’ by LOT.
- in the right figure, the demand is ‘anelastic’: given the same increase in the price the quantity is not reduced as much as before. Now ’somebody’ looses much less even if the copyright income is much more.
So when, as in the case of both pictures, the SUPPLY elasticity is basically infinite (’somebody’ can make as many copies as they like for any price, including $0: this is the case of digital downloaded music), the elasticity of DEMAND actually plays a big role.
What is then this demand elasticity? You can think of it as a measure of how BAD people demand the goods, how BAD they want it: there are no SUBSTITUTES, therefore even if you increase the price the quantity demanded does not decrease much. This is exactly the case of ’stars’: there are no ’substitutes’ for Miles Davis, or not as many as there are for some lesser figure.
And this explains why ’stars’ tend to be much more vocal than non-stars in wanting to enforce copyright: those who *need* it LESS stand to *gain* MORE as you can see in the picture: to the left, that’s me. To the right: that’s you or some other big shot of a star.
Take me: I’m a lousy nobody. Suppose I want the producer to pay me copyright revenue nonetheless. If he/she does, I sell a LOT less, so I STAY a nobody, so I don’t get much now and I won’t get much later. If I exercise my copyRIGHT and DENY him/her the right to make copies, I sell nothing. If I allow him/her, I can’t charge much more than zero, which is the ‘market price’ of my legal copyright.
As I say, there is much more than this to it, but it might give you a hint as to how to reason about this stuff.
Cheers.
Hi Francesca, thank you for the additional information and explanations. I have to say that this microeconomic stuff is quite hard for me to understand, and that everything is far from being fluently clear. However, it is *slowly* becoming clearer…
Anyway, as I wrote in my mail, I am little or not interested at all in the copyright stuff PER SE; I just thought that it could be a good starting point to investigate on several more complex and – possibly – more interesting questions (at least for me, as a musician);
so here it is a partial and provisory list of some of those questions:
a) the reorganization of the “discography” field, and – more generally – the ways in which the whole corpus of musical production practices is changing under the effects of digital technologies, the internet, and so on.
b) new possibilities for cooperative ways of producing, teaching, studying and criticizing music and for organizing musical projects of any sort by means of ‘open source’ model of practices.
c) the practice of reuse and trasformation of pre-existent recorded music to produce new creative works, with specifical attention on the development of sampling technology – and also, a comparative look of the different ways in which those technologies and practices have been developed in western *white* avant-garde and experimental music and in *black* popular music.
d) cultural implications of the ideology of “free music against corporations” (which has been already started to be discussed in the old kkblog post – link).
[of course, that's a lot of different stuff, and copyright is just but one possible connection between them, and probably a somehow marginal one - in fact it came under attention kind of by chance, just because we happen to discuss of this stuff here (link); maybe it could make more sense to start investigating those phenomena from the point of wiew of their general relatedness with the development of digital technologies and digital networks, leaving the copyright thing aside - at least for the moment...]
Ciao