I recently read a longish article in The New Yorker about Spotify and its founder, Daniel Ek. It provided me much food for thought, which I'll share below. I think it's important - but not necessary - to read the original article first, so here's the link to the online version:
As I said, it's longish, but if you have an interest in music, or even just technology, I think you'll find it interesting. These are the ideas that spun out of MY brain after reading it.
Throughout the article, Ek insists on referring to music as a "commodity," and he speaks of his website in business terms. He paints himself as a "friend" of music, but in all his chosen language I get the sense that what he's really after is a cool thing to do for 5 years or so, a thing that will hopefully net him a hefty paycheck. That's cool. I got nuthin' against someone wants to make bank. But I disagree wholly with the concept that music is a "commodity." It's not: it's an art. Someone creates something new, where there was previously nothing. I'd have a hard time coming up with a BETTER definition of "art" than that. Certainly, the end result of creating art is to have a "product" to show for it: "Look, I created art, and the product is paint on a canvas! Which I now hope to sell! For a lot of money!!" I'm not dumb, or overly-naïve: I get it. Hey, Iron Fist is in that boat, too! We want to have a product (an album) that is the result of our art, and certainly, we want to sell it to as many people as we can. No question. But missing from Ek's whole hypothesis is the one thing I'm asking YOU, the reader, to stipulate: that music begins as someone's artistic statement. I don't really care if you're Igor Stravinsky or Jon Bon Jovi…if your music fills a previous silence, then you've created art. Next…!
Unlike most other art forms, music is intangible. There IS an "item" you can hold: an album, say. Books are like that, too. You can go and buy you the newest Stephen King book, and hold it in your hand. But…BUT!…there are many, many "copies" of that art. A painting isn't like that: there is but ONE Mona Lisa. Oh, sure, you can find that vague smile adorning everything from posters to coffee mugs…but there is still only ONE "real thing." No one copy of Kiss "Destroyer" is the "real thing," any more than a singly copy of "Cujo" is the "real thing." Each individual copy is the SAME thing…making those art forms more like clones of each other, with perhaps the only "original" existing as, I don't know, a file on a computer. So: a single copy of Water Lilies, 30-some-odd million copies of "Thriller."
The creator of a tangible art form is paid once for it. If Monet completed a painting, and then he sold it, that's the only money he ever saw from his artistic statement. Likewise, anyone who owned that painting, and then sold it later, only got paid once. It strikes me that that's why some art is, like, ridiculously valuable. There might be X number of Jackson Pollock "splatter" paintings, but there's only ONE of each. And, when one sells, it's for tens of millions of dollars. What if…what if Bon Jovi wrote "Livin' On A Prayer," and then sold it…to JUST ONE PERSON?? And that was the ONLY copy in existence? I would think Jon et. al. would have been paid a pretty decent price for that song…as would each successive seller. Seems silly when you apply it to music, doesn't it? And yet: still art.
What Spotify does is RENT music. You pay a fee, and then you get access to all the songs on the site. That's what streaming is: renting the art. What if that worked for jewelry? ARE there places you can go to rent jewelry? It seems likely that in fact there are, although I've not heard of any personally. But, then how does the jeweler get paid? And I mean, the person who CREATED the jewelry, not the store owner. A person makes a pair of earrings, sells 'em at an art fair, and that's the money he makes. If he sells the earrings to a store owner, who then rents the earrings - for a fee! - then what does that jewelry-renting business have to do with artistic creativity? Nothing. Just some guy, comes along and says "Hey, I can afford to buy all this stuff from the art fair, now I'll open a shop and rent it all out!" That's not art…that's just business. Any profits from which are certainly not shared with the original creator.
That's the thing with music: a musician can only create a song ONCE. Then, he has to sell it…but, by the nature of musical art, he has to sell it again and again and again, for a little money each time. The song gets played on the radio: musician gets paid (well, the WRITER does, at least). The song gets played live in concert: the musician/writer gets paid. The very intangible nature of music is why you don't have to pay $100,000 to listen to "Livin' On A Prayer." You buy the album, once, for not much money. Or, you buy the single, once, for even less. Or, you just hear it on the radio. For "free," if you're willing to put up with the inane jibba-jabba by the DJ. The point is, it's not a one-of-a-kind item, and the artist is paid accordingly. But he IS still PAID.
Let's reverse this whole thing: what if, instead of a museum paying an exorbitant amount for a work by a living artist, the artist simply GAVE the painting to the museum? But then, the museum installed software that calculated how long each person looked at the painting? THEN, the artist was paid for the total number of seconds his painting was looked at? THAT is the closest switcheroo between the world of music and visual art! That's how musical artists are paid. Each album or song purchase represents one "look," and the musician is paid for the accumulated number of looks. And, one would HOPE, the better the art, the more looks, and the higher the pay.
Spotify and its ilk want to dismantle this whole system. And - who am I kidding! - most of society wants to as well. We've moved to a world where music is just a "thing" you "consume," and we've decided that the price for this "commodity" ought to be "free." Go down the resultant slippery slope, and you'll certainly find a whole host of amateur artists who are willing to give the results of their hobby away for free; but the really GREAT art, the art that's created by professionals who rely on the income their artistic statements generate…well, that art will slowly wither away. Music is art; music should not be free.
Outstanding, partner!!!!
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