Comments on: Music, or the Triumph of Technics?

By: Vince Carducci

Vince Carducci — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 22:13:00 +0000

I do take your point about technology. Interestingly, it seems to have worked against the licensees as much as it has helped them. Hence the ramping up of the control mechanism. I wonder if there would have ever been such as thing as Pop art if today’s intellectual property regime had been in place in the 1960s. Compare Warhol’s Brillo boxes and Campbell’s Soup cans with anything by Jeff Koons or Richard Prince, both of whom lost lawsuits recently.

By: Nancy Hanrahan

Nancy Hanrahan — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 16:46:00 +0000

The historical record is littered with accounts of artists being denied the financial rewards of their work by major record or media companies. No question about that. And yes, appropriation has always been important to artistic development and innovation. But using that as a justification for eliminating (as some would wish) or easing the restrictions on copyright protection is problematic. It’s ironic that in fighting the power of the major media companies in the name of artistic freedom, the unintended consequence is to make it more difficult than ever for the majority of artists to “survive.” I’m not sure what kind of accomplishment that would be.
In the debates about copyright, important distinctions between copyright owners who are individual artists and musicians, and those that are third party owners or licensees often get lost (just as “musicians” or “artists” are often invoked as undifferentiated categories). For instance, you wrote in your comment that “the use of preexisting source material in the creation of new expressions ….have been seriously curtailed due to overzealous copyright control.” Whereas the major media companies have the power to enforce that control, individual musicians and composers certainly do not. It also seems to me that the possibilities of using that “preexisting material” have expanded exponentially with the new technology, so I would have to disagree with your claim that the technology is beside the point. Transformative appropriation may have been going on for centuries, but the very different material (including technological) conditions of that appropriation have a direct bearing on both the form it takes and the economic impact it has on artists.
All that said, I think we’re puzzling over the same thing. We want artists to be able to work, to be paid for their work, and to produce work that’s good. My sense is that it’s the last term – the aesthetic “good” – that may underlie some of our disagreements.

By: Johanna Bockman

Johanna Bockman — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 12:46:00 +0000

Does owning the means of production (studios, copyright, instruments, distribution; or even cooperative studios/distribution/etc) alter the power dynamics? It doesn’t sound like it, though this might be because the market is full of musicians willing to accept low pay or no pay. On a sillier point, does the revival of interest in vinyl (probably a small marketing group) alter the power dynamics in the music industry?

By: Vince Carducci

Vince Carducci — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 03:58:00 +0000

When I used the term “distributors” my language was imprecise. What I meant was “record companies,” which your own evidence shows control the majority of revenue streams through their copyright ownership. It’s true that the major labels represent a fraction of the cultural producers working but they do represent a substantial majority of the money being collected, which again your own research seems to offer evidence for in support. I knew a noted postbop pianist and composer, now deceased, who recorded two albums for Blue Note in the 1960s, which were reissued a couple years ago to glowing reviews in the New York Times among other places. When I congratulated him on it he said that the recordings were reissued to prevent the master tapes from reverting back to him and that he saw none of the revenue. Something similar happened with Little Willie John and the final recordings, which were finally issued in 2008 after more than 40 years in the can. The other part of your argument, about the state of live performance conditions, is certainly well taken; however, it doesn’t really address the issue of copyright, which is what I was talking about. I have a friend who promotes concerts of some pretty marginalized music. It’s again true that the pay isn’t very good (not that he wouldn’t like to be but the audience is small). In those cases the musicians actually make more selling copies of their CDs, which the distribution channel (this time I think I’m using proper language) tends to keep out of the hands of the public due to the influence of megastars and corporations you note. This still doesn’t really get at what I have been talking about, which is the restrictions on transformative appropriation. That is, the use of preexisting source material in the creation of new expressions, which have been seriously curtailed due to overzealous copyright control. In this case the technology really is beside the point in the sense that folk music, for example, has operated on this principal for centuries and it’s only recently that reproduction system has allowed for expanded control however subverted that systems gets at times.