Re: [microsound] industry lost big redux

[Tim Kugel <guitardo@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Sorry for late follow up on this subject, but I wanted to add a few cents.  I
lived in LA in the early 80s and worked closely with musicians who were/are
"stars" and some of their sidemen, so I saw the music business from theirPOV.
They are not all sell outs, some realized too late what they wanted as children
was hollow once achieved.  Then later I ended up back home in the DC area
involved with an old friend who was at that time (1994) working for the RIAA as
a media person. Until she left a year ago I heard lots about the industry from
that perspective, and I met the top cops at the RIAA as well. They were also
not all capitalists, some just went to work and liked having a salary and a
good health insurance plan.

The industry was as early as 1997 doing focus groups and studies about how much
they were losing due to downloading, and although THERE IS NO WAY TO EXACTLY
QUANTIFY IT, believe me they know they are losing big time and have been for
awhile. Sometimes the parent company makes the hardware used to rip off the
subsidiary!  They also know their product often sucks, but most of our national
commercial cultural output does depending on who you ask. Nothing new.  I
myself just turned away from mainstream culture, no problem.

In my house this was quite a wry experience. My friend is entirely apolitical
and likes mainstream music more than I do. And I was an industry hater....

I felt as early as the 70s that intellectual property ownership was somehow
wrong. I thought this because I knew that someone someday would patent a cure
for diabetes, which I have suffered my whole life. Would I kill this person? I
asked myself.  The Nabster case brought this IP (intellectual property)
argument into focus for me.

Whether I like artists or not as humans or as a class is not material.  Most
have always been working for the privileged classes.  They do not work for
survival or public good unless you want to stretch the definition of public
good.  Most of the musicians I know would not even call themselves artists
anyway and are teaching or trying to eke out a living doing weddings. Most have
had day jobs.

They are not to blame for trying to sell.

The pHarmanaut wrote:

> This prompts me to think of Adorno and Horkheimer's "culture industry"
> chapter from _Dialectic of Enlightenment_ (of course it does!). Broadcasting
> an artistic work over commercial radio debases the work: "When thrown in
> free, the now debased works of art, together with the rubbish to which the
> medium assimilates them, are secretly rejected by the fortunate recipients,
> who are supposed to be satisfied by the mere fact that there is so much to
> be seen and heard. Everything can be obtained."

And on to the rubbish heap, everything can be disposed of...but some seems to
last for millennia anyway. Societies leave traces.  Pooer societies leave less.
How many starving souls on this planet have a CD player or even a radio? The
dancers and painters of "tribe X" do not generally consider themselves to be
"artists," I  would wager - they work as does the rest of the tribe to produce
food and survive.  Rich societies produce special job descriptions called
"artist" - at least as I am now assuming we can define this term. And there is
no proportional relationship between good art and good morals, only a
combination of historical timing and technology and money.

Kim Cascone wrote:

>  ubiquitous...so everywhere you go you hear a
> particular piece of music...the mall, clothing shop, shoe store, electronics
> store, MTV, radio, dentists office, gym, etc...

Exactly. How ruinous. It is noise pollution and I think causing widespread
depression as well as other problems in our species. But more importantly, as
children, we thought music was special. There was no music in the shopping
mall, or practically anywhere. People generally did not own a personal stereo,
or hi-fi. The car radio was AM, sounded like crap despite love poems to the
contrary,  and to hear music one had to try.

Now one has to try to NOT hear it. This can be blamed on the industry if you
like;  I blame the consumer and the voter if anyone.

> Music has been a physical commidity since the first days of mass-produced
> vinyl records,

This is too short a historical perspective. Music and sound enjoyment predate
industry. I found I could not enjoy most of it as music anymore, only as
cultural artifact, and it is too often a blip on a screen that is also showing
bombs drop on humans who have little or nothing to defend themselves with.

Aside: these Iraq/Afghan wars are partly for the oil and gas we use to power
our lives and grow our food, IMO. There are those (and I am one) who also
believe we are at war for profit, not simply oil.  It is the old military
industrial boys wanting to test and sell weapons.  We who shop as Bush told us
to can do almost nothing to stop them.  Through a "less' ethic we will
eventually perhaps prevail, like MLK, or Gandhi we can only deflect their
evil.  Downloading isn't the revolution, it is more like looting. Just don't
listen to anything from the majors at all, don't buy the soap, and even do your
laundry less often. And turn off the lights, TVs, computers when you can.

Ant Weiss wrote:

> sadly this is no news, the US are about to give us antoher proof of them
> being the ultimate Empire of Evil, and we here in Israel are anxiously
> anticipating the Iraqi bio-chemical reaction.

Microsound is therefore crucially interesting to me because it is done with
less equipment and energy (not always) and uses less or consumes less than some
other forms of music.  It also exists mainly in a community of sharers, it
seems.  It is also backgroundy/ambient and this I appreciate because of the
super ubiquity of music sounds discussed above. This background ambiance is
also like nature herself, less grandiose and less harmful or egoistic. To me,
it suggests a relationship between artist and work, also artist and audience
that is potentially more healthy, certainly than "rock n roll" "punk" "country"
etc. More down size...

The punk movement started as a reaction to over laden rock groups, and at that
time, I think they overlooked the electricity they would need (do we have any
progenitors of punk on this list)?

The industry can go on, I am sure we will not lose "the industry" anytime
soon.  The 2nd article I posted showed the link between the 5 major music
labels and the news and publishing industry.. Imagining a world where these
corporations do not exist will take more than the passive resistance of
downloading. Also, if they are giving it to you free, they can load it with
subliminal and overt propaganda.

Two further thoughts. Our society seems to increasingly work on a business
model that works like this: create a need or an addiction (like for example a
disease) and sell the cure.  Create a downloading market, then sell the browser
or ISP that will stop it.  Create a software then sell the upgrade. Create a
drug addicted society and you make money selling drugs as well as from the
"cottage industry" that springs up around it. It all comes down to hyper
consumption doesn't it?

Also there is the idea of open source and the copyright registry project. Has
anyone registed/copyrighted work using this method?

thanks for listening.
tim

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