The End of Tangible Media
I want to make a bet with you today. By January 2014 I will wager that in the US almost all forms of tangible media will either be in sharp decline or completely extinct. I am not just talking about print, but all tangible forms of media — newspapers, magazines, books, DVDs, boxed software and video games.
I made this assertion in my thesis, too (though Dr. Saylor was skeptical). We’re going to see the end of the CD, and other tangible media, soon. Rubel’s right.
When the internet becomes ubiquitous, there will be little incentive to continue selling tangible media à la CDs. When bandwidth isn’t a concern any more, the internet will provide something CDs can’t: instant gratification, which our society so covets.
Related: Tim Bray reported that one of his favorite music stores has gone out of business.
Lyrics for Political Purposes
Writing a good political song — without coming across as sanctimonious, naïve or worse — is a particularly tricky thing to pull off, but I knew I had to come up with something.
Lewis talks about how it can be difficult to write a good set of lyrics, especially for political topics. I hadn’t considered that before; I had assumed that words pour out of lyricists like water from a $10 kiddie pool.
It’s tough to write lyrics that deliver the message you want to convey, while still providing adequate room to breathe, let alone fitting it to an appealing melody. Words that rhyme well with surrounding text might not be the word that conveys your intent. That’s a tough balance, especially for controversial topics. Writers have it easy — they can use whatever words they want to convey their point without having to worry about how those words will sound when fitted with a melody.
It can also be hard to write about topics you aren’t familiar with:
In general I’ve found that writing political songs can feel like losing my home-turf advantage if the topic is not a part of my own life experience — what song could I write about a miners’ strike that would sound as good as a song an actual miner would write?
It takes a lot of thought and context to write lyrics that are worthwhile. Music can compensate somewhat for poor lyrics, sure. But actually creating lyrics that fit well to music, while also conveying the writer’s intent, is much more difficult.
Paying for Lyrics
Wired recently ran a piece entitled “How Companies Pay Artists to Include Brands in Lyrics”:
Yes, you read that right: things have gotten so weird in the music business that high-profile acts are inserting ads into their song lyrics. The next time you hear a brand mentioned in a song, it could be due to a paid product placement. And unlike magazines, songs are not required to point out which words are part of an advertisement.
This reminds me of a scene from The Truman Show, where Truman’s wife gave a cheery 1950’s-like product placement ad. Product placement itself is an interesting advertising medium. I consider it less obtrusive, and therefore less annoying to customers, than traditional advertising, but I don’t know what the returns on investment are like.
Should musicians be opposed to “selling out” by placing product advertisements in their lyrics? I see no harm in a product placement or two in songs. Musicians already parody commercial interests openly as expression; whether those product mentions are corporate-sponsored or musician-inspired doesn’t make much of a difference.
One could also argue back to the debate about “What is art?” — most popular songs fade out of prominence very quickly. In a decade, most songs played on the radio today won’t be popular any more, and whether they contained product placements or not, they’ll be outdated anyway.
Musicians must assume the risk of product placement: An ad in a song will may improve the musical aesthetic and/or popularity of a song. It may detract from the song. Or it might not even have an impact on listeners. (How many of you actually know all of the lyrics to the songs you listen to?)
If a musician wants to incorporate corporate interests into his or her music, the more power to ‘em, I say. Great music — whether corporate-sponsored or not — will live on. The rest won’t.
Muxtape: Bands Have a Voice Too
News from Muxtape, an online service which previously allowed users to create playlists of MP3s:
Muxtape is relaunching as a service exclusively for bands, offering an extremely powerful platform with unheard-of simplicity for artists to thrive on the internet. Musicians in 2008 without access to a full time web developer have few options when it comes to establishing themselves online, but their needs often revolve around a common set of problems. The new Muxtape will allow bands to upload their own music and offer an embeddable player that works anywhere on the web, in addition to the original muxtape format. Bands will be able to assemble an attractive profile with simple modules that enable optional functionality such as a calendar, photos, comments, downloads and sales, or anything else they need. The system has been built from the ground up to be extended infinitely and is wrapped in a template system that will be open to CSS designers. There will be more details soon. The beta is still private at the moment, but that will change in the coming weeks.
These changes came after Muxtape closed down due to complaints from the RIAA. The idea of becoming a portal for individual bands — a one-stop shop — has potential. Perhaps this will help give independent artist more of a voice.
Music & Religion
I continue to stumble upon new nuggets of musicopolitical thought for my Music & Politics blog, this time from my favorite tech pundit, Andy Ihnatko. Last year, he posted a series entitled the “iTunes Event Calendar” in which he wrote about many different song choices from iTunes (mostly in the holiday spirit).
Lo and behold, a sliver of insight about music itself:
Again I come back to the observation that you don’t need to be religious to be affected by religious music. If you can listen to Bach’s Mass in B-Minor and not be moved, then you definitely need to have a fresh set of batteries installed somewhere because somethin’ ain’t workin’ right. Great music is created and performed by people who truly believe in what they’re doing, who feel as though this thing they’re creating is important; people who are very, very highly motivated to not screw this up.
I’m religious, but I think he’s absolutely right. Anyone can be moved by music — even religious music. Emotion is an innate part of every human being. Music can stir our emotions. Music and humanity are inextricably linked; that’s why music can be so powerful.
Blended: Hundreds of Songs, 45 Years
Andy Baio writes about Gurl Talk’s “Feed the Animals”:
Girl Talk’s Feed the Animals is one of my favorite albums this year, a hyperactive mish-mash sampling hundreds of songs from the last 45 years of popular music.
He compiled data on which songs were sampled in the album, sorted by time, and posted the results for all to see. (Perhaps more interestingly, he used Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to find cheap humans willing to help him gather data. An article for another time.)
I downloaded the music for free and listened to a few songs, but I didn’t recognize much. Granted, this is all highly illegal, being a mishmash of copyrighted work, but it is very original nonetheless.
Musically speaking, these songs could certainly be considered a new, unique work, even though they are essentially smashed-together splotches of existing songs. Unethical? For the artists who created the original songs, I’d say yes. If I had composed a work that became a part of one of these pieces, though, I probably would not be too concerned. It’d have been nice to get permission first, but if it doesn’t cut into my (hypothetical) profit margin I wouldn’t be too bothered.
Profit is everything, in most cases. If money isn’t involved, people are much less likely to care… with nothing to lose, there’s little to be upset about. Artists gain extra publicity in most cases, which may actually stimulate sales.
I don’t like the music, though — I’d much rather they mishmash a collection of songs that I actually like in the first place. Ah well, I guess that could be a project for myself when I feel like evading the law.
