OFF: AI Staff Picks for Best of 2013

[Carl Edlund Anderson]

On 01 Jan 2014, at 12:30 , Keith Henderson <khenders64 at YAHOO.COM> wrote:
> Anyway, I hope all this great music isn't being simply lost in
> the overwhelming scale of our global culture these days.  It seems there's just way too much of everything for any one little thing to get noticed much, although maybe it was always that way and it was just never possible to become aware of what *wasn't* being noticed.  If that makes any damn sense at all, which I'm sure it doesn't.

Actually, I think it makes pretty good sense -- and I think that's true well beyond the little world of music making and listening.

> I hope also that bands that *are* being noticed to some degree, actually see something tangible come about from their efforts.  I imagine that making music of this sort will never make anybody any significant amount of money (Carl's unsolicited $3 being a noteworthy exception), but it would be nice if the bands could at least buy a new pedal or microphone or something occasionally.  [...]
> So I am left with lots of streaming and little buying, as some part of me even wonders if maintaining a "collection" will even be necessary or have any advantage at all in a few years.  Spotify, Rhapsody, Bandcamp, and the like are starting to make me wonder if "having music" even means anything anymore, if you know what I mean.  I kinda hope at least the connection between the fans and artists can be maintained, more than just clicking a "like" button or something.  I'm not sure how this is gonna end up, does anybody?

I'm not quite sure that anybody does -- but does anybody, ever?

Firstly, I actually think this is a great time for music, in the sense that the capacity to make music and/or listen to the results has perhaps never been greater for a larger number of people -- and we can reasonably expect (barring global demographic catastrophe, which we should not entirely rule out!) that trend to continue.  There is a lot of good (and, of course, less good) music being made all over the world and a lot of chances to find it that simply didn't exist before.  There are numerous difficulties of various kinds in terms of finding what you want and then being able to listen to it readily (legal, technical, informational, etc.), but we shall see how all that plays out.

Of course, the "music industry" as grew up in the '50s-'80s has been pretty much trashed in consequence of things having changed faster than the industry itself, but I think this is largely a situation of "oooo, when I were a lad, things were diffr'nt!". 

For example, the idea of a collection" is largely an artifact of recording/distribution technology that depends on physical media.  Obviously, before records existed, no one had "collections" -- except, one supposes, of sheet music ... or of composers! (in the "collections" of rich patrons? ;) ).  

I do think human nature will continue to lead people to want to display their associations with artists they like: even if we all have all-streaming access to all music all the time (which we do not; not yet, anyway), I might still want to buy the merchandise associated with my artist, see the live show with other fans, etc.  We already see touring and merchandise becoming the major revenue streams for many artists (some version of the "Grateful Dead model"?), and so a great deal is going to be about building relationships with fans and generating senses of community that encourage people to spend their increasingly limited and fragmented entertainment budget of both time and money on that given artist.  In other words, if Artist X (and their other fans) interacts with me through social media in what I perceive to be a cool way, I will spend more time paying attention to what they are doing and be more likely to spend money on music, videos, T-shirts, fluffy slippers, concert tickets, etc. This has, to an extent, always been true -- but the ability for people to interact in this way has vastly increased in speed and scale, so it has become accordingly more important.

Nevertheless, I think we are some way off from all-streaming, all-the-time. You can really only do that effectively with a good wi-fi connection, and those are still relatively few and far between.  Streaming music through a cellular phone network is just way too data-intensive at the moment; too costly (for everyone). The day that this becomes the norm is perhaps coming, but it is not yet today or tomorrow.

But, in any case, music is still being made and heard.  I can, in my spare time, record music on my dodgy computer that sounds (with my artistic limits!) _pretty_ good in comparison with what required state-of-the-art facilities in the year of my birth. I can make that music available to a large percentage of humanity at little to no cost. Yeah, lots of people can do it better than I, and I can't make a living at it (though luckily I don't need to), but that's still pretty amazing.

Cheers,
Carl

--
Carl Edlund Anderson
http://www.carlaz.com/