Tag Archives: Colin Symes

We’re Still Asking The Wrong Questions (re Music Industry)

Note: I accidentally posted this before I finished, which is why you might have seen it before.

It surprises me at how chronically we ask the wrong questions regarding the music/movie industry’s failure to adapt, a failure that has marred its business efforts since its inception (for more on this, check out the excellent Setting the Record Straight by Colin Symes).

Usually, the problem is with the music/movie industry, which asks the wrong questions about consumer behavior and how it should respond to new distribution methods, etc. The latest wrong question, however, has been asked by /. editors when they titled a semi-recent post about cheaper DVD prices “Is Piracy In the Consumers’ Best Interests?.”

What is in the consumers’ best interest is for the industry to provide individuals with what they want. That is, industries are convenient because they (should) provide an easy delivery mechanism for desired goods, as well as a certain degree of quality control (e.g., you know the files/discs will work; that when the album says R. Kelley, it is the R. Kelley you, not me, knows and loves).

It is not in the consumers best interest for a black market (i.e., piracy) to exist, especially when both the government and industries are doing their best to expand what that black market encompasses through new/expanded intellectual property/copyright regimes (with the intentional side effect of criminalizing as many people as possible).

With black markets/piracy decidedly not in the consumers best interest, it makes more sense to ask whether piracy benefits the music/movie industry. The answer is, it does, and not in the conventional sense.

The conventional sense is that filesharing leads to increased sales. This is a standard argument with a great deal of controversy surrounding it.

An alternative argument is that piracy serves as an inexpensive test to identify consumer preferences and new business models. The music/movie industry has piggybacked on the labor of programmers and been able to observe how people download and interact for music. As a result, they have had an early and cheap beta phase for their numerous online/downloadable-music stores, such as iTunes and Napster.

It required zero market research on the industry’s part, zero cost in developing software, etc. Had they adopted the method earlier, rather than waiting, waiting, and then sueing everyone in sight, they would have also been spared legal costs and also the majority of the costs they claim come from piracy.

Piracy, therefore, serves as an enormous gift to the industry in that it has refined a new/adjusted business model, and yet the industry fails to accept the gift.

If you are not satisfied with that question, try asking whether Piracy Funds Terrorism.

Re: Attacking Recording Technology

Generally, debating and analyzing the affects recorded music has had on society is left to avant-garde musicians and academics, but the release of several books detailing the history of recorded music has changed this. The consequences of Edison’s development of the phonograph has, as of late, gained a larger interest in the public eye. Unfortunately, the interest, although being informative and thought-provoking, is significantly flawed.

Two of the most widely read and extensive accounts of our ability to record music are articles that review these recently published books. The first is “The Record Effect: How Technology Has Transformed the Sound of Music,” by Alex Ross and appearing in The New Yorker. Ross critically reviews: Mark Katz’ Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music (University of California Press; $19.95), Colin Symes’ Setting the Record Straight: A Material History of Classical Recording (Wesleyan University Press; $39.95), and Robert Philip’s Performing Music in the Age of Recording (Yale University Press, $35). The second article is Charles Rosen’s “Playing Music: The Lost Freedom,” which appeared in The New York Review of Books, and reviews Philip’s book.

To be clear, I haven’t read these books, so my response is limited to and more of a reaction of Ross’ and Rosen’s digestion of those books. Responding to arguments initially presented in longer, more thorough, and detailed book form through review essays is problematic, however, I–like Ross and Rosen–take on the larger ideas.

Two of the largest ideas the authors seem to agree upon is that the advent of recorded music has mortally wounded live performances, both their quality and attendance, and constrained music in various ways. Ross captures these major themes when he writes:

Yet, for most of us, music is no longer something we do ourselves, or even watch other people doing in front of us. It has become a radically virtual medium, an art without a face….Zombified listeners will shuffle through the archives of the past, and new music will consist of rearrangements of the old.

The problem with this diagnosis, despite the authors’ claims, is that it is actually a diagnosis of the state of classical music. And even this is done in a non-critical way that is unwilling to examine the foundations of the dead, white, man music the authors prefer. This may read harsh, but just like past history texts have failed to examine the role and life of minorities and common people, these musical histories fail to examine the birth, evolution, and state of other forms of music. And as social histories have eclipsed traditional historical narratives, so to has social music eclipsed classical music.

The analogy with classical historical narratives is not a stretch. Consider Ross’ dismissal of both non-classical music and entire groups of the population:
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