Piracy and Music as a Product

Just recently, there was a story on CNN about the “tecnobrega” scene in Brazil and how the musicians there use unrestricted music distribution as a marketing tool. In essence, Brazilians typically can’t afford to buy CDs at full price and so musicians can’t make a living on shelling out albums. How, then, are they making $850 per month (a good wage in Brazil)? Live shows.

Products

Lately, Julie has been taking some philosophy of music classes and I’ve gleaned some information from her readings. One of the topics that interested me was our perception of what music is. In the West, music started just as it did everywhere else - live performances, usually sponsored and enjoyed by the rich, or amateur acts enjoyed in public spaces. In those days, music was not performed so much as a “work”. Not even Handel (late 1600s) had well-defined compositions - he would frequently make modifications to his pieces, like the Messiah, and recycle a lot of material for the court events he conducted for.

As the middle class developed, composers realized they could tap the market and put on well-defined works as a show. Write the music once, and perform it multiple times and charge admission. Composers like Mozart and Beethoven capitalized on this. You could expect to hear the same performance of Mozart’s operas anywhere and any time they were performed. Standardized musical transcription was partly responsible for this as well. Now music was classified as distinct “works” by a composer. It provided a more concrete way to classify, analyze, and ultimately judge music. It also introduced the idea of intellectual property in music. Although the format of music was changing, the context did not. It was still performed live in public venues.

Once music could be recorded, it completely changed they way music was understood by the public. Now, it could become fully “productized.” With a live event, there are many variables that affect the outcome of the performance: weather, sick musicians, venue quality, and audience participation. With recorded music, the only variable is the quality of the reproduction of sound. Before recorded music, music as an art was very transitory - it was of the moment. It was difficult to quantify. Once a note is finished playing, it is gone forever. Today, with recorded music, we can move the play position marker back to an exact time in the recording and replay the same clip of music over and over.

Our attitudes about what music is have drastically changed. The majority of music “consumers” play music in the car, while dancing, or while doing homework. It’s background noise. Very rarely is the music contemplated - because we’re just used to it. It’s not being listened to in the context of experiencing art. If you go to a pop concert, you’re there to see the cool lights, get blown away by the high volume, see the performers dance, and gaze at the beauty of the singer(s). In most cases, the music is either pre-recorded and lip-synced to, or it is so heavily processed that the “live” aspect is greatly diminished. Ironically, even I have a low tolerance for “jam bands” who don’t stick to an established work.

So what?

I think the reason tecnobrega works in Brazil is the cultural attitude toward music in lesser-developed/less-western (is that like Best Western?) countries. Music in Latino/Brazilian culture is still more commonly experienced in a social, live context in festivals or in clubs. People aren’t exactly seen strutting around with white earbuds stuck in their ears. This is why free music distribution works in Brazil. People actually will go see the artists perform in clubs or dance halls. People there go to experience music together more.  Dance music has thrived in the rest of the world because people are more likely to experience music in a social context.  Performers make money by playing for these venues, not by selling albums.

In the US, we’re too used to the “music as product” model. You either listen to Muzak or go to a concert. There’s not a lot of in-between. Even in a concert setting, depending on the concert and audience, there is an expectation that the performers will reproduce their works according to what they’re used to hearing on the album. The closest analogue in the US to tecnobrega I can think of is the electronic music/DJ scene - but even that is more of a fringe style.  In the US, you can’t even get by just playing live shows.  A band doesn’t become self-sustaining until they sign with a label and sell recorded music.

Maybe this explains why AOR (album-oriented rock) arose as a reaction to Disco.  Sort of a battle between “consumer” rock and roll and the social dance music culture.

So will free music distribution change the way we view music?  Will we come to experience music more in a transitory, live context?  Only time will tell.

Tech Explosion

This article is a little old, but it hit me at just the right time. Lately, I’ve been on a binge of researching new programming languages and frameworks, now that I have so much free time and the fact that, lately, I’ve felt like I’ve fallen behind a bit after playing so much EU II and focusing on PHP for a year. In the process of playing catchup I started to feel overwhelmed - there’s so much out there - Hibernate, LINQ, CouchDB, Erlang, Ruby, Smalltalk, hey remember Scheme? SQLite, JQuery, Perl, Spring, ad nauseum.

I guess the important part is knowing the fundamentals. Really nail down a few major languages and frameworks and you can work from there and google your way across the bridge when you come to it.

SQL

One thing that’s always bothered me is when people pronounce “SQL” as “sequel.”  Where did this come from?  I prefer to spell it out and say “ess kew ell” and I think it probably annoys people who say “sequel.”  I was reading about a new technology called SPARQL, which Wikipedia says is pronounced, “sparkle.”  Then I got to thinking: wouldn’t it be more logical to pronounce SQL as “sickle?”  

Thoughts on Music Distribution

Just read Porridge’s post: http://www.livejournal.com/users/perfectporridge/35655.html

There was a time I thought, “Oh no! The album format is dying!” But now, I’m really doubting whether this is true.

Here are some random thoughts on the subject:

-Back in the day, my Pentium-era laptop with 5GB of disk space could only hold a few MP3s (as it had to contend with Windows and other programs/data). So, I’d have to pick out my most favorite songs. Today, I haven’t even begun to fill up my 80GB drive on my Powerbook, yet I have 2,608 songs occupying 7 days, 15 hours, 32 minutes, and 17 seconds of play time and 11.33GB of space. I used to have 15GB of music prior to October ‘03. I keep songs that really annoy me because space is not at a premium.

-Back in the day, a 56k modem would take a half hour to download a single song. Now I can grab one in a matter of minutes.

-A common way that people shop is to buy in bulk from some place like Sam’s Club. You may not really need 5 gallons of mayonnaise, but people buy it anyway, because the cost per tablespoon is less.

-Back in the day, when going on a long trip, you’d bring a tape/cd player and your collection of your most favorite tapes/cds (because your tape/cd holder could only carry so many). Now, you can buy an MP3 player that’s smaller than a walkman or CD player, yet holds more than your entire music collection.

Now, let’s look at some historical examples:

-In ancient times, in order to record a story, one had to chisel letters into stone, or carve letters into clay or wood, or write on animal skins or expensive papyrus. Texts were very succinct and compressed, because space was at a premium. When the printing press and mass production of books came along, you could suddenly write very long novels, encyclopedias, dictionaries, and spic series’ with ease. So, we go from short descriptions of empires on carved stone and short legends like Aesop’s fables, to Shakespeare’s plays and Luther’s commentaries, to full novels, to long series of novels like Tom Clancy’s stuff.

-Similar trend in the movie business. Movies started out as short “peep shows” on the street and silent films. Later, color was added, stereo sound, surround sound, digital effects, and now fully computer-generated motion pictures. We also see long, epic movies being shelled out at a faster rate.

-And the music business is no different. We go from live sessions (very expensive and rare) to Edison’s wax cylinders (short recording time, fragile), to records, tape, CD, MP3, and now DVD and SA-CD.

The common trend is that technology enables:
-Larger works of art at lower cost
-Higher fidelity of the reproduction
-Increased democratization of creation of art

At the same time we also see the emergence of “instant gratification” entertainment:
-90 minute action movies
-Sitcoms
-John Grisham or Michael Chrichton novels (and other NYT best sellers)
-Pop music singles

Did any of these developments destroy the medium from which they emerged? (ie. does the release of Scooby Doo 2 prevent the release of The Lord of the Rings?) Does the latest Brittany Spears album prevent Radiohead from releasing a new album or keep the London Symphony Orchestra from performing Tchaikovsky?

No. I find that most of my time spent listening to music is while dodging traffic or pumping out computer code. For some, it also may be during this thing called “exercise”. Not times when I can sit down and analyze a work of art. While I watch the Simpsons most days, I still find time to watch a good classic or epic movie. While I listen to the occasional single from a popular band while I work, I still sit down at home and play through a good album.

I don’t think the album format will disappear, it will just change context. Instead of listening to songs from certain albums while I fly down I-66 at 75mph, I’ll be hearing a collection of like-themed songs from my favorite artists. When I get home, I can listen to an artist’s full album.