09 January 2010
the blip of the recording artist
Technopop got me thinking again about paying for music. What if the latter half of the 20th century was a blip, not a shift? That is, for thousands of years performing artists [attempted to] earn livings by performing. Then, for a few decades, it was possible to make a living by selling recordings rather than by performing per se. Having grown up with the latter, it seems perfectly natural and something we assume we should sustain. But of course this model is rapidly eroding. There's lots of worry about how to save it, but it may just end up reverting to the performing artist compensation model -- sponsorship & performance-based pay -- of hundreds of generations prior?
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6 comments:
there's also money to be made by licensing one's recorded music, and composing. i don't think performing will become the sole means, iow.
But my point is that I don't see how licensing is viable over the long-term, unless we want to go to a society in which everything about everyone is monitored, observed, and policed.
The historical model for composers would be sponsorship and/or commissions, right?
a lot of what i meant is commission. from what i can tell @ gearslutz, a lot of guys are hanging on by making music for commercials / tv shows (sometimes licensed from existing work, sometimes for-hire).
but for any "large use" of existing pop songs, such as national commercials and Guitar Hero / Rock Band, there's obviously existing licensing in place. maybe i'm thinking too small and too short-sightedly, but i don't see the copyright protections in place being relaxed anytime soon where, say, Ford will be able to use a Britney Spears song for a national ad w/o having to pay for it.
But "large use" is a pretty small effect, for only a very small percentage of actual working musicians and composers.
I don't think that the two of you are disagreeing. Licensing will make some money for some artists -- and it won't always be well-established ones. Tart actually made a couple grand licensing "Whore" a film called "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", which of course ended up being the pilot for the series. And Chicago's Lonesome Organist, who I doubt has sold more than 10,000 records in his life, ended up making a hefty downpayment on a house after Nike licensed one of his tunes.
More broadly, Ron, you're thinking along the same lines as Roger Linn, the inventor of the Linndrum drum machine, who once told me that we'll end up looking back on the whole 20th century as an aberration in music history. I think we'll get there, for sure, though it may take a long time. The label system still has a surprisingly firm grip on how the distribution and promotion of music take place.
I think the real problem is that the label system's lobbyists have a surprisingly firm grip on the legislative process.
The whole purpose of IP law was to get useful information and inventions into wider circulation - offering a limited monopoly in return. Society doesn't seem to be getting much out of the deal these days.
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