Suisman, David. Sound and sense. January 11, 2009.

From Driscollwiki

Jump to: navigation, search


Suisman, David. Sound and sense. January 11, 2009.

Contents

Silence has a price

Ciccone Youth, "Silence", Ciccone Youth costs $0.99 on iTunes

Sheet music era

Tin pan alley

  • Roots of payola, an "early innovation"
  • Song pluggers: testing songs in public places
  • Song slides: visual accompaniment, proto music video

Phonograph

Victor

  • Early success via effective advertising
  • Using celebrity sponsors
  • Defeated Edison in the advertising environment

"Businessmen first, musicmen second"

Tin pan alley leaders

  • Prior sales experience
  • Some music experience

Commercialism is not new in music industry

  • Despite recent lament, anxiety of industry actors
  • Tin pan alley were "song factories"
  • 1904: music biz is "like any other" industry, a "line" of goods
  • "There was no golden age"

Present industry is "not a given"

  • But the result of decisions of specific people
  • According to specific context

"What does it mean to produce culture in a capitalist system?"

  • Rather than "is it a commodity?", we might ask
  • "What kind of commodity is it?"
  • "How is music different from other commodities?"

Genre, format, etc do not drive the business

  • The goal is profitability
  • Thus, future of industry may be B2B
    • Licensing for soundtracks

Earlier industrial crises

Tin pan alley faced precipitous fall in sheet music sales because of phonograph records and piano rolls

  • Record publishers did not pay royalties to songwriters
    • Claimed they had paid when they purchased the sheet music
  • Publishers sought change to copyright law to reflect the need for royalties

Copyright Act 1909

Established royalty structure for the publishers

Performance rights 1917

Supreme court established "performing rights"

Publishing societies

  • US: ASCAP, BMI,
  • UK: PRS (Performing rights society)

Contemporary copyright tensions

How is policy effected in the internet?

  • Via technological means
    • Comcast

After PR failure of RIAA lawsuits

  • RIAA mobilized "powerful lobbying agent" to effect policy change
  • Pressure on ISP via policy

Problem is not the tech

  • But the culture of the tech
  • PC users tend to not want to pay "out of pocket" for music

Blanket licensing for college campuses

Warner music initiative

  • Little publication
  • Schools are not identified

New cultural sensibility 

Raymond Williams "Structure of feeling"

Old models of music-making don't disappear completely

  • Notion of linear, successive progress suggests mp3 replaces CD replaces tape, etc
  • However, sale of musical instruments has risen since the late 1990s as sales of recordings have fallen
    • Industry data does not account for 2nd hand sales
    • Printed music sales also rising

"What has been bad for recording business has been good for musical culture"

  • Despite 1800s fear that records would atrophy musical training
  • The musicization of daily life may have "cultivated dominated musical culture"
    • Residual forces have never been absent

QRS Music Tech (Buffalo, NY) closed in 2000s

  • Player piano roll production
  • Evidence that the player piano was hardly dead for the 100 years prior

Q&A

Role of place in industry

Emphasis on specific places

  • Victor in Camden, NJ
  • Tin pan alley, Manhattan, NY

Certain cities had existing industries that enabled transition into music

  • E.g. machinists in Philly

Victor created "unified national market"

  • Nation-wide release dates
  • Controlling path from producer to retailer

Jukebox and ownership 

Is streaming a "virtual version" of the jukebox?

Jukebox rises during a time when radio was gouging record sales

  • Jukebox and radio are listening devices
  • Not ownership technologies

Jukebox operators learned what people "actually" listened to

  • In bars, restaurants
  • Eventually this was automated
  • Record companies relied on this information
  • One result: surge in r&b, c&w production in 1950s

Terrestrial radio future

Value

  • Inexpensive
  • Stable
  • Automotive

LPFM

  • Realtime
  • Localized

No platform advantages?

  • Wireless v. internet broadcasting

Differing judicial philosophies internationally

  • Copyright "gels" internationally ~1890s
Retrieved from "http://www.kevindriscoll.org/wiki/Suisman,_David._Sound_and_sense._January_11,_2009."
Personal tools