CONFLICT! Music’s Future

With sites like Wikipedia, Digg and YouTube coming into their own in the last few years, the power of collective groups on the Internet has received its fair share of press. While the power of collectives may be on the rise, the recent White Stripes leak and subsequent backlash from said band has highlighted an often overlooked sacrifice to collective power—individual artistic control.

Having read several blog posts and news agency accounts on the leak of Icky Thump, the latest White Stripes album, on a Chicago radio station, I came back with a negative impression of Jack White. Though I love his music and fearless eccentricity, his response seemed unnecessarily drastic and angry. In his reprimand of the DJ who leaked the album, White reportedly said she was responsible for “ruin[ing] the music industry.”¹ While at first it seems odd that White would even be concerned with this, rather than a loss of sales, I think he was referring to a loss of artistic control. Though White would probably prefer to present his songs in a certain format, at a certain time, and in a certain way, the speed of communication and accessibility of layman distribution systems makes even a sample demo given out to maybe 25 individuals likely to find its way onto the Internet. While the music itself may remain unchanged from the vision the artist intended, the context in which it is released moves out of their hands.

With the increase in sampling, remixing and musical borrowing and editing, the work of an individual artist is far less likely to be preserved. However, this is not radically different from the way a song is produced in the first place. For many artists, there is constant manipulation on the part of their label, producer or engineers. While the White Stripes may come close, it’s difficult for most starting artists and even established artists to create an individual vision because of the collaboration inherent in musical culture. The difference with sampling is that, while previously the musician had some amount of say in his collaborators, the sampled musician does not and since the floodgates of audio editing and layman musical collaboration have been opened there has been little to stem the tide of borrowing.

As I see it, there are two options for musicians trying to create an album or song. The first involves tight-fisted control, limiting who you work with, what you allow others to hear at what times and actively pursuing leaks with punishing lawsuits and (somehow) stopping leaks after they start. The result of this position would be an increase in animosity between the audience and the musician, the label and the musician, and the musical press and the musician. It’s also likely to be expensive… very expensive when you consider not just legal and technological costs, but also the strains this would put on album promotion due to alienation of the audience. The only advantage of this method, if it works, is that the musician would be confident that they have “final cut.”

The other option is the “open” method that Creative Commons licenses afford. Instead of limiting what can be done with your music, you essentially allow others to interact with it and distribute either your copy or their manipulated copies at will. You gain buzz, open your music to new creative possibilities and satisfy your fans who get your music for free, all while maintaining the majority of your income, which you make from touring.

What’s to lose? Well, publishing rights for one, and that’s going to be the hardest part of a transition from a closed system to an open system. While this won’t have a big affect on the artist, it will on the label. This leads to another big drawback: loss of label promotion. Ever heard of Jessica Simpson? Can you whistle (or hum) any of her songs? People like Jessica Simpson, Marylin Manson and Britney Spears (who hasn’t released music in five years) are famous because of good artist promotion—they stay in the news with the help of advertisers, labels and publicists. Because there’s no incentive to promote an artist who doesn’t ship units, many labels would be unwilling to fund publicity for artists who don’t ship CDs and don’t get royalty checks for films and advertisements.

While I’m not going to try to argue that there’s the same amount of money to be made from sales when the product is available essentially free on the Internet, there’s no guarantee that this is “the end” for the album as a product. From personal experience I can admit to downloading an album from a torrent and then buying the album in physical form later if it has cool packaging and neat linear notes (Arcade Fire, White Stripes) or some compelling features that I couldn’t get from just a torrent (DualDisc DVD, Beck’s sticker encrusted The Information), and while this market would be smaller, it would still clearly be a market. Another factor to consider is the marketability of distribution through online media services—who am I kidding?—through iTunes.

In any case, record companies as we know them are going to either remake themselves or die slow, painful deaths. One interesting idea would be to shift their focus into a sort of music promotion company, taking their share out of touring income, but that’s for another post. Similarly, artists are going to have to rewire their habits for an age when your house is on Google Street View and your song is getting ripped and dubbed at breakneck speeds. Or they can build a big wall and see where that gets them.

1. DJ Electra, So Does This Make Me A Pimp And A Prostitute Too?, 30 May 2007. ↩