“The habit of concert-going and concert-giving, both as a social institution and as chief symbol of musical mercantilism, will be as dormant in the twenty-first century as, with luck, will Tristan da Cunha’s Volcano; and that, because of its extinction, music will be able to provide a more cogent experience than is now possible.”
-Glenn Gould, “The Prospects of Recording”
Music has charmed and challenged us for a good long while now. Go ask Plato and he’ll tell you that “rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul.” That’s higher praise than anything you’ll see in Rolling Stone. The Muses, the Greek deities who inspired all artists, are the origin of the word “music.” At that point in time there was at least some respect for musicians.
Continuing along these Eurocentric lines, we find that musicians evolved from such lofty beginnings to play the humble role of the minstrel-basically a jester with a lute in his hands. Then we find the Renaissance wherein the rich courts of Europe really start to like music and pay for all these new jobs, such as court composers, musical directors, singers, and instrumentalists. The key thing for all music up to this point was that you needed a human being to perform it.
Then we start recording: this was the major change in the economy of music. Suddenly we no longer needed the creators to be present to get our auditory fix and we had a product in our hands that could be bought and sold. And slowly but surely this crazy little thing called the recording industry developed.
The number of people now involved in making music who are not musicians is countless: sound engineers, producers, managers, marketers, lawyers, manufacturers, and distributors are all involved. Since music is now a product it needs to be created in one place, packaged, and then delivered to the customers. The artists, the ones who were creating the product, only play a bit part in the process.
By the time we get to today, this evolution of music marketing is entirely out of control. Music videos are more important than the songs, the choreographer is more important than the composer, and make-up is more important than melody. The song-rights pie is divided up so much nowadays that the musician is rarely a majority owner of their own work.
So what is to be done about this downloading question? Is it out of control? Does no one pay for it? Is the musician to become a volunteer career? Is the incentive gone to ever again create good new music?
Although this seems like a dystopic brave new world, it is in fact more like a return to a rustic past: similar to having the travelling minstrel come to your door and play you a tune: there is no more middle man. Music can now come directly to you from the person who records it: no more marketing, no more image, only sound. I believe that goodwill in listeners will make us support the artists: buying CDs or music files, merchandise, concert tickets, or something else. Nonetheless this technology allows us to cut to the chase: find what we want, listen to it, and reward the musicians whom we truly adore.
With downloading, we can throw out the materialist grime that sullied music one hundred years ago; and once more listen to the song as if it’s
