How do you solve a problem like myopia?

Do you remember the brouhaha a week or two ago regarding President Obama's address to schoolchildren? I wrote about it here.

If, for some reason, you entered that situation in an Obamaphobic state of mind, and my brief outburst was enough to convince you to drop your faux outrage (hey, I can dream, can't I?), then perhaps you are looking for a new home for your habitual bitterness.

If that is the case, may I suggest you could more productively direct your anger here?

I mean, hell, if you're gonna get fired up over an authority figure trying to brainwash the kids, why not go after the real thing? The RIAA has, for a long time, been in the business of trying to re-educate schoolchildren. Among the topics on their agenda: filesharing is completely evil, "fair use" is hardly a legitimate defense, and music is essentially a product, which can't properly exist outside the context of a capitalist system.

All of which is misleading or untrue ("filesharing" can often actually be beneficial to artists, "fair use" is a fundamental creative practice, and music is much more than a product). And all of which fits in nicely with the general devaluation of the arts in public education. Because if, eventually, music can only be accessed from behind the walls of the sort of proprietary listening environment the RIAA dreams of, that will be one more obstacle-to-actually-getting-kids-excited-about-music that the 21st music teacher will have to deal with.

(Try for a moment to imagine how hard it might be to get fired up about some of the music featured on A Blog Supreme's Jazz Now series without the mp3s / youtube videos that accompany each post. Now imagine you're a 12-year-old trying to convince a friend to check out some cool new band you like without actually giving them a copy of the music.)

Want to prevent kids from sharing music? You may as well prevent them from listening to music. There are just too many other things they'd prefer to spend their money on. If they have no way of getting hooked on the power of music now, the chances that they will get hooked later (when they actually have some sort of disposable income) are fairly slim indeed. And ten years down the road, the ghost of the industry will still be wondering from which direction the coup de grâce originated, and we'll be left with a culture in which the beauty of music is known only to a select few.

But don't despair. While kids' ears atrophy, they can do a project like this (click the image above for the full text):

Imagine that you are in the music industry, and you want to send a message about the consequences of songlifting [a neologistic riff on "shoplifting"]. Complete the chart below noting what each music industry professional would say about the effects of songlifting on their career. [...]

With your team of fellow music industry employees, plan an information campaign that lets others know why it's important to get their music the right way. [...]

Challenge: Take your campaign a step further by contacting the editor of your community newspaper or the director of your community cable television station to see if you can submit an article or a video about your campaign.

I'm half tempted to take these lesson plans into my own classroom just to savor the kids' reactions. But I more or less know in advance that they will laugh their asses off. Which is not to say that my kids are that much savvier-in-the-face of-a-hornswaggle than kids in other schools. It's just that kids in general are not terribly interested in pretending to be "music industry employees."

And only a music industry employee could be surprised at that statement. (It takes a special kind of narcissism, I guess.)


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No surprises as I narcissistically shill for the Industrial Jazz Group, right? We're having a fall fundraiser, in support of our October tour. You can find out more, and contribute to the cause (for as little as $1!), here.

Also! Check out the remix contest.

RIAA breaks guitars, and music in general

So the court came down hard on Tenenbaum. Fuck. I was hoping the trial would last at least a week.

There are so many things to say about this. There's the idea that the punishment is excessive (Steve Lawson was one of the first to point out that $22K per MP3 is a complete joke). There's the idea that the record industry continues to fight against inevitable change, instead of working hard and in good faith to develop a viable business model that takes into account new technology, the livelihood of musicians, and the needs of audiences. And there's the idea that none of this will do what the RIAA appears to believe it will do -- specifically, intimidate other music fans into giving up "filesharing" altogether.

That last bit is key. Let me say it again, in a slightly different way: this case is not going to have much (or any) effect on the day-to-day lives of music fans -- except perhaps to galvanize them against the industry a bit more. So it's basically a very damaging exercise in futility, a lashing-out, a naked and spiteful display of power by an already-doomed giant. If this is a "war," as Debbie Rosenbaum says, it looks to me like Vietnam. "Filesharers" (i.e., most of us) are the Viet Cong, and the record industry is the US military-industrial-congressional complex, throwing massive amounts of firepower at the enemy, and finding itself flummoxed when a whack-a-mole dynamic ensues.

The fate of the twentieth century version of the music industry, as represented by the RIAA, is sealed. No matter how anti-social human beings may get, you cannot prevent them from sharing stuff they like, especially when the technologies to facilitate sharing are so ubiquitous. And so this trial was an expression of a strategy that has already failed. Mr. Tenenbaum, unfortunately for him, is collateral damage.

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Incidentally, I find myself wondering why no musicians were singled out by the RIAA Dragnet. Surely musicians steal music too? Don't we? (Yes, I'm talking to you, fellow jazzers. Don't tell me no one has ever burned you a copy of a CD.) What would a musician have done in the face of one of those pompous subpoenas? How would a musician have "fought back"?

Well, I can't speak for anyone else, but I think I know how I would have approached things. (Not that the trial would have had a different outcome.)

Mostly, I would have wanted to look the court in the eye, at some particularly dramatic moment, and ask: "Do you really love music?" Assuming the answer was "yes," I'd go on: "Do you want more of it in the world? Would more good music, on balance, be a good thing for the planet?" Assuming the answer was again "yes," I'd go on some more: "Where do you think good music comes from? A vacuum?"

And if the answer to that was also "yes," I'd know I was dealing with the assumption that musical brilliance springs full-blown from the mind of genius composers who lock themselves in musty attics for years on end, and whose output does not depend upon interaction with a vibrant, accessible musical culture. I'd have to go into a long rant about an opposing (and, in my opinion, more accurate) theory: that in order to make good new music, musicians have to be knowledgeable about already existing music, and being knowledgeable about already existing music (especially on a typical musician's income) sometimes means that it has to be passed around for free.

I'd point out that biographical data usually suggests that, at some point, developing musicians have access to a public and / or private social context in which they can hear a good deal of high-quality music. Everyone knows, for instance, about Louis Armstrong, and the public music making that occurred in the New Orleans of his youth (parades, funerals and other social events). I'd talk about Bach and Zappa, and any number of my other heroes and heroines, and how they depended upon the existence of a public sphere for music, and to the extent that they couldn't get music that way, and to the extent that they couldn't purchase it, they too had to "steal" it. Sheee-yit, there was filesharing way before Kazaa.

Oh, I'd school those highly-paid, tone-deaf lawyers. I'd argue that, yes, musicians need to be remunerated for their work (not that you were ever very good at making that happen, dear RIAA!), but if you try to make sharing impossible (and that's what's at the bottom of the industry's slippery slope, isn't it?) you're going to end up with a musical culture that is a whole lot less interesting and creative.

I'd talk about how it's not about not paying for music if you can (something no true fan would ever even consider), it's about not automatically being denied music just because you can't. It's about ensuring the existence of a "musical commons" (part of the "intangible commons of the mind"), which doesn't have to include all music, but which has to exist, and which, as a commons, should be accessible regardless of one’s economic resources.

(To clarify that "slippery slope" crack, I'd argue that the RIAA, with its infernal DMCAs, and its confounded Sonny Bono Copyright Acts, its craptacular DRM technologies, and so on, has, since this nonsense started 10 years ago, been pushing toward a totally proprietary listening environment -- the complete and precise opposite of a musical commons.)

What else? I'd talk about the generally lame state of music education in the US, and how that further depletes the musical commons.

And then, for good measure, I'd point out that the framers of the Constitution thought copyright should be used to attract people to a life in the arts and sciences by providing a material incentive -- which is different than saying that copyright should reward the hoarding of intellectual property as if it was a scarce good. Copyright was designed to promote creativity, not to divide musical culture up into little fiefdoms.

And finally, as they carried me out of the courtroom, kicking and screaming (I presume), I'd leave them with this bombastic recap: if you think music can optimally continue in an environment in which the act of sharing is technically, officially, and legally verboten, you're kidding yourselves!

[Photo credit: mercredis]

A big fat pain in the ass

If you haven't yet read Joel Tenenbaum's essay, How It Feels to be Sued for $4.5m," you probably should.

Tenenbaum is one of the 30,000 random people the RIAA decided to sue for copyright infringement a few years back. His is the second case to go to trial (here is the first), and things got going in earnest this past Monday. You can follow developments via this website, or (of course) via Twitter.

One wonders if anyone at the RIAA is thinking ahead, following this chain of events to its logical conclusion. Let's say, for instance, that they win. What then? They get their $4.5m (sounds like a lot of money to you and me, but it's basically a 10% down payment on a one stage for a lousy U2 tour). They deepen the rift with their audience. The basic activities the case is about continue, unabated. Valuable time and energy that could have been spent working on a new business model (something like this, perhaps) are squandered forever.

Last nail, meet coffin.

Anyway, here's Tenenbaum, in his own words:

In 2005, my parents received a letter from Sony BMG, Warner, Atlantic Records, Arista Records, and UMG Records claiming "copyright infringement". They were given a number to call, which was their "settlement information line", a call centre staffed by operators who, we are emphatically told, are "not attorneys". The process of collecting money from these threats was so huge, they had set up a 1-800-DONT-SUE-ME-style call centre.

The operators did little more than ask how you would pay (they wanted $3,000, I believe) and repeated intimidating lawsuit statistics. I sent them a money order for $500, which they returned. I told them I couldn't pay any more. We discussed whether I might qualify for "financial hardship", and then I stopped hearing from them, which I didn't question. I graduated from college and began studying for my physics doctorate.

And then in August 2007, I came home from work to find a stack of papers, maybe 50 pages thick, sitting at the door to my apartment. [...]

I had frequent contact with one of their Colorado counsel. While she was impudent to the point of vicious ("Come on Joel, I think you did it"), I continued to use phrases like "I respect your position" and "we have a respectful difference of opinion". I have no record of this intimidation because the person in question made sure to keep contact restricted to phonecalls.

Every conversation consisted of her trying to get information out of me about my defense, telling me how much bigger the settlement would be if I didn't settle now. Shaken, I would call my mother, who was a state-paid lawyer in child custody cases, and ask her what to do. We blindly fired all kinds of motions at them. Eventually my mother became afraid to answer my calls, worried it would be about the case. For the court "settlement" I offered $5,250, which the RIAA declined, asking $10,500. I saw myself on a conveyor belt, being pulled inexorably toward the meshing of razor-sharp gears.

[...]

My sisters, dad and mother have all been deposed. My high-school friends, friends of the family too. My computer's been seized and hard drive copied, and my parents and sister narrowly escaped the same fate for their computers. And the professor who supervises my teaching is continually frustrated with my need to have people cover for me, while my research in grad school is put on hold to deal with people whose full-time job is to keep an anvil over my head. I have to consider every unrelated thing I do in my private life in the event that I'm interrogated under oath about it. I wonder how I'll stand up in a courtroom for hours having litigators try to convince a jury of my guilt and the reprehensibility of my character.

Concerns about privacy...

...can sometimes lead to weirdness.



Ganked from "The Best of Google Street View" at the Times Online.

The caption: "Automatic face recognition obscures a Bobby Sands mural in Belfast." Does this mean the painting was so realistic that the machine thought it was an actual face? Maybe we'll never know.

Part of my (hopefully brief) foray into pseudo-photo-blogging. (This time it's not my photo.)

Now that's what I call bricolage

(What's "bricolage," you ask? Check here.)

Smart guy

If you haven't seen it already, Seth Godin's quick summary of the state of the music business circa 2008 is chock-full of all kinds of analytical exactitude. In a way that few such summaries are.

Some samples:

The music business had a spectacular run alongside the baby boomers. Starting with the Beatles and Dylan, they just kept minting money. The co-incidence of expanding purchasing power of teens along with the birth of rock, the invention of the transistor and changing social mores meant a long, long growth curve.

As a result, the music business built huge systems. They created top-heavy organizations, dedicated superstores, a loss-leader touring industry, extraordinarily high profit margins, MTV and more. It was a well-greased system, but the key question: why did it deserve to last forever?

Why indeed? It's funny the way things can seem inevitable after they've been around for a mere fifty years or so.

On the other hand, it's important to remember that the above-inferred decline (and the generally gloomy media prognostications) do not necessarily signal the crash of the CD market as a whole. A few weeks back I was actually wondering -- again -- do I really need to release the next IJG album as a CD? Why not, from this point onward, just create a spiffy website "frame" (i.e., an online equivalent of liner notes, artwork, etc.) in which to "house" each new "album" (i.e., collection of downloadable audio files)?

And then I was reminded: yes, the major CD releases are tanking more and more every year, but indies seem to be doing better than ever -- as in, indie CD sales are up by 35%. (Of course, this suggests a whole other can of worms: potential disagreements over what exactly the definition of "indie" is.)

Copy protection in a digital age is a pipe dream

If the product you make becomes digital, expect that the product you make will be copied.

[...]

Most items of value derive that value from scarcity. Digital changes that, and you can derive value from ubiquity now.

The solution isn’t to somehow try to become obscure, to get your song off the (digital) radio. The solution is to change your business.

You used to sell plastic and vinyl. Now, you can sell interactivity and souvenirs.

It's not that music itself is less valuable. It's just that the ways people are connecting with it are... potentially different. Again, it's easy to forget that the carefully catalogued CD collection is a very historically (and culturally) limited phenomenon -- one that owes a great deal to, say, nineteenth/twentieth century practices of book collecting (hello, Walter Benjamin!). It is not at all the default position via which to experience music (though, alas, until recently it has happened to be my favorite).

Perhaps this moment is about the gradual de-commodification of music itself, and the simultaneous commodification (or ramping up of same) of the activities that surround music. And if the commodification of music is what led to nonsense like this, then perhaps undoing those commercial entanglements would be a good thing -- you know, for art's sake.

But perhaps I'm being too naive and optimistic (I've certainly been guilty of that before). Perhaps the commodification of music is somehow vital to our perception of it as "art"? (Or is that just a historical coincidence? Or an inherent western weakness?)

Interactivity can’t be copied

Music is social. Music is current and everchanging. And most of all, music requires musicians. The winners in the music business of tomorrow are individuals and organizations that create communities, connect people, spread ideas and act as the hub of the wheel... indispensable and well-compensated.

How does one create a community around the idea of jazz? Let alone "new" or "avant" or "wacky" forms of jazz?

It should be the easiest thing in the world. These art-forms are generally improvisatory, which means (to me, anyway) that they are not just opportunities to showcase the mad extemporaneous skills of specific performers, in a top-down way (see Kris Tiner's heartbreaking account of this idea taken way too far), but that they are customized; i.e., responsive to the specifics of a particular environment or audience. In a very real sense, the audience and the space participate in the creation of the music itself.

To the discriminating ear, performances always vary, regardless of the genre. But with jazz -- yes, even big band jazz -- one of the charms is that the performance (and to some extent the "content" of that performance) is going to be really different from night to night. What could be more interactive than that?

Many musicians have understood that all they need to make a (very good) living is to have 10,000 fans. 10,000 people who look forward to the next record, who are willing to trek out to the next concert. Add 7 fans a day and you’re done in 5 years. Set for life. A life making music for your fans, not finding fans for your music.

The opportunity of digital distribution is this:

When you can distribute something digitally, for free, it will spread (if it’s good). If it spreads, you can use it as a vehicle to allow people to come back to you and register, to sign up, to give you permission to interact and to keep them in the loop.

Again, selling the experience, not the product.

And 10,000 fans? Holy shit, that actually seems do-able. Who needs a gold record?

To hell with conventional wisdom

Cuz what initially seems counterintuitive can often be right.

Take this for example.

An excerpt of the excerpt: "Our review of existing econometric studies suggests that P2P file-sharing tends to decrease music purchasing. However, we find the opposite, namely that P2P filesharing tends to increase rather than decrease music purchasing."

My experience exactly.