OFF: Future of music...

[Henderson Keith]

Hello, Folks...

I was just thinking about all the recent news about idiotic record companies
suing 12-year old kids and the like for downloading music.  And this talk I
now read about how CDs are already being 'replaced' by more immediate and
fluid media, essentially a hard drive full of musical data that every kid
will carry around with him.  And that seems to me like a revolution that,
unlike vinyl-to-cassette-to-CD or whatever, will really change the nature of
how artists and listeners 'communicate' or 'connect' with each other.  And I
can only see it in a negative sense I'm afraid.

OK, maybe I can already see how nice it is for people to go to a show by
some largely-unknown but taping-friendly band, record the thing on a
minidisc player with great sound, download the concert and put it up on a
site where anyone can come and listen for themselves and burn copies to keep
forever.  But then when it comes to studio works, it seems that this
'99c-a-song' culture really makes an ARTist feel like the ART is being taken
away from them.  It's like a cafeteria culture suddenly, where the consumer
is now scooping up whatever flavors and portions they want and forgetting
the rest.  I dunno...so much of 'our' type of music has always been of the
conceptual, coherent, or inter-linked kind, that I can't imagine a future
with an alphabetical list of song titles that I can't put together into
coherent little units called things like "Levitation" or "Space Bandits."
And have a picture in my mind (I mean the album art of course) that I 'see'
whenever I think or hear that music live.  To me, if "music is the
soundtrack of life," I don't want that life to be simply a Greatest Hits
compilation album.

And I think the culture of this goes *way* beyond music, too.  In (American)
sports (at least), and maybe European too (with Asia hardly caring what team
ole Becks played for these days), one can see this pattern too, with the
'team fandom' at certain times lagging behind the 'star fandom,' because the
Jordan's and Kobe Bryant's and Shaq's are bigger entities and forces than
entire franchises.  And anyway, so many sports fans are rewriting the sports
(as offered) by being in these so-called 'fantasy' leagues, which to me is
quite an interesting analogy to this online music phenomenon.  I'm afraid
though, that this "free-choice-overload" that can happen with modern things
like satellite TV, TiVo, cell phones/SMS, etc. is now taking hold in music
so much so, that even though right now it seems only to be important for
that Big Ugly Leviathan (that is the pop music industry) and of no concern
of ours, I still wonder if it will forever alter the way that commerce,
distribution, manufacturing, recording contracts, tours, etc. works that
*all* of the industry will be overhauled completely in 10 years.  (That's
quite a sentence, innit?)

So I wonder...will (non-kollektor) people still be fighting on Ebay for that
rare CD reissue of "25 Years On" in 10 years, just because they can't find
the CD in any stores?  Or will the existence/availability of CDs even
*matter* then, 'cause most people would have already 'caved' and turned
their collections into data?  And what will happen to those who can't think
of anything but the old 'hard-copy' type of collection?  Will they find that
there are no longer any stores in which to buy product in, and no
state-of-the-art devices that are geared toward their (antequated) choice of
media?

As a non-artist, and therefore industry lay-person, I can't predict what's
happening, 'cause I don't hang around the kids that are driving the culture
these days.  I'm guessing that many of them don't appreciate the value of a
self-contained 40- or 60-minute 'opera' of music, that was carefully
written, organized, planned, recorded, produced, packaged, and offered to
the public under a meaningful title, with an intent to be consumed as such,
and remembered as such, long into the distant future.  Is this form of
expression really going to die?  (And how deep will it go...all the way down
to 'us'...or really just for 'them'?)  Or will it somehow still exist, or be
recreated in a new image, within the new 'data' culture?  This is really the
A.I. movie applied to music instead of children, maybe...

Thoughts anyone?

Grakkl (FAA)