The Open Band?

January 19, 2011 2 Comments

I am highly ambivalent about the discourse that posit “open-source” as a way to save the music business. This is because on the one hand I am excited at the prospect of fans feeling more engaged and part of the process of making a bands success, beyond their already existing capacity to sell out shows and purchase tour merchandise. On the other hand though, the strategies offered here appear to be expropriating common fan activities: there is a direct effort to harness the creative and cognitive capacities of fans and translate these into monetary gain for the band. For example.

The first is to put open distribution and community at the heart of the band, and to use these elements as catalysts to build growth, awareness and expose the benefits of what I am referring to as the Open Band approach. (emphasis added)

It seems to me that community is something that develops alongside and through association with a band. As a fan practice, this is nothing new. What is new is the explicit attempt to craft this as a strategy in response to major labels backing down from providing distribution and touring support. Much like what is happening generally under neoliberal ideology, a forced entrepreneurialism raises its head in two ways: 1) the band is more or less compelled to take responsibility for what the label used to do (though really, the large majority of professional musicians have always had to do this, so this alone is nothing new) 2) fans’ traditional (pleasure seeking) activities are discursively situated as assisting in honing the band’s competitive edge. Being a fan now takes on an instrumental logic.

Indeed, this logic, and the language of the market are reinforced further here

In a recording industry environment that is widely regarded as ineffective, if we provide a solid example of a band that provides free access to content (which significantly lowers the barrier to attract fans) and empowers those fans with a community, this results in a wider fanbase that feels a closer sense of commitment to supporting their favorite bands. Of course, the same approach could be applied to other creative endeavors: publishing, art, video and more. My goal is to make Severed Fifth a successful and repeatable template. (emphasis added)

It appears right out of the corporate-speak dictionary. Fans have always proven capable of autonomously producing, maintaining, and (importantly) dismantling communities, and have proved similarly adept at showing their commitment to their favourite artists and to helping promote them (e.g. in my hometown, there is a rail bridge that has, since the 1970s, been emblazoned with gigantic (and fading) graffiti declaring “LED ZEPPELIN”). The difference now is that such organic, autonomous fan tactics are now facing expropriation. Those seeking to profit from their musical endeavours appear to internalise neoliberal ideology in an attempt to colonise and extract value from the common. And it is dressed, as always, in the language of empowerment.

That said, I do wish Severed Fifth musical success and empathise with the “we’ll try anything” approach to getting their music out there.

Tags: , , , . Categories: Media and Music

20 Music TED Talks

January 19, 2011 4 Comments

Via Bachelor’s Degree. I think I might spend some time going through these.

  1. David Byrne: How architecture helped music evolve: David Byrne is so cool he could power a room full of cryogenic pods just by staring at them. Here, he channels his impressive experiences playing everywhere from CBGB and Tootsie’s to Carnegie Hall and Disney Hall to discuss the impact that architecture held over his compositions. Everything had to be written to suit the challenges of a specific space, and Byrne broadens his observations to encompass the whole of music history. He even points out similarities between this phenomenon and similar concepts found in nature, using sparrows and tanagers as an example.
  2. Adam Sadowsky engineers a viral music video: Emerging technologies and social media have changed the face of music forever, and bands such as OK Go discovered creative ways to yield the internet as a promotional tool. Even those who don’t much enjoy their music still appreciate the imagination and painstaking detail that goes into their viral videos. “This Too Shall Pass” charmed audiences in early 2010 for its immensely clever, highly competent use of Rube Goldberg-inspired engineering — and, as intended, quickly went viral. In this illuminating TED Talk, the man behind the plan reveals the methods behind designing and building the wondrous machinery that became a massive online hit.
  3. Eric Whitacre: A choir as big as the internet: Another excellent video demonstrating the increasingly more intimate relationship between the internet and music, this time showing off an impressive understanding and utilization of both. 185 participants hailing from 12 countries submitted videos and audio files of themselves singing the individual parts of conductor and composer Eric Whitacre’s original choral arrangement “Lux Aurumque.” A showstopping virtual choir results, with everyone’s submission carefully, passionately pieced together into one video. It especially warrants viewing by music students and aficionados with a particular interest in how art can blend with technology in new and exciting ways.
  4. Bobby McFerrin hacks your brain with music: Music fans looking for a little stimulation on a time crunch should check out this amazing talk by 10-time Grammy winner Bobby McFerrin, famous for the ubiquitous “Don’t Worry Be Happy.” In only three minutes, he uses audience participation to illustrate the pentatonic scale and points out some stunning facts lurking behind it. With only a small amount of hinting, he’s able to conduct a spontaneous, improvised choir capable of following his musical commands. How this phenomenon works is not exactly explained — scientists themselves might also find it baffling — but it definitely highlights the wonderful mysteries inherent in the human mind and its relationship with established musical patterns.

    Continue reading ’20 Music TED Talks’

Tags: . Categories: Music

Guitar Sweatshops

January 13, 2011 0 Comments

via Another Line of Flight

Musicians usually show up at rallies to protest labour rights but it is very rare for that protest to be at a guitar show! If you own a Cort, Fender, or Ibanez guitar you will want to read about labour relations at their Korean factory.

Embarrassingly, I have never thought about labour conditions in Asian guitar factories. I reflected a little on this after hearing about this action. I think I can boil it down to a blind-spot: because it is music, there couldn’t be anything truly negative surrounding it” I mean guitar making, what could be more pure a pursuit than that? But of course there are always material conditions associated with the creation of things, and thus why should large scale industrialised guitar making be any different than shoes? I own one custom made instrument, I know the maker personally, and I saw the guitar emerge from pieces of raw lumber to become the instrument I now play. I also own an excellent Korean made guitar, a G&L “Tribute” Series. I have now learned that this guitar was very likely manufactured in a Cort facility, I now find this embarrassing. I also now have to question all of the other guitar accessories I own. One thing is for sure, I can use the guitar as an entry point into discussions of labour conditions in guitar factories, commodity fetishism, ideology, and labour more generally — as I pull it out of the case, or if someone remarks on it, for example. In this way, perhaps the workers can speak through the instrument? I dunno.

There has always been a highly racialised discourse about the supposed superior quality of American made instruments over their Asian made counterparts. This is part of a far reaching discourse that characterises the American labourer as a craftsperson, working with his/her hands to extract a beautiful instrument from a block of carefully chosen wood. This is contrasted with the common perception (and realistic) of the Asian factory, with all its attendant “Toyotaisation” (just in time shipping, hyper-Taylorist factory organisation, etc.), and the suggestion that it is impossible for anything truly beautiful to come from such a technologically sophisticated organisational paradigm. Perhaps this perception of the Asian factory has aided in dehumanising the labour process. But it turns out that there are still actual people at the end of that line, working to bring instruments to aspiring and accomplished musicians alike. We need to think beyond the commodity fetish and acknowledge the chain of events and human actions that bring us our products, perhaps we need to do this even more so for things like instruments, to which we attach such mythologies of purity and beauty that further mystify the material conditions of their makers.

What you can do: http://axisofjustice.net/how-to-support-the-cort-workers-namm/

Tags: , , , , . Categories: Music, Politics and Rant

(LRB) Žižek – Good Manners in the Age of WikiLeaks

January 13, 2011 0 Comments

The ultimate show of power on the part of the ruling ideology is to allow what appears to be powerful criticism. There is no lack of anti-capitalism today. We are overloaded with critiques of the horrors of capitalism: books, in-depth investigative journalism and TV documentaries expose the companies that are ruthlessly polluting our environment, the corrupt bankers who continue to receive fat bonuses while their banks are rescued by public money, the sweatshops in which children work as slaves etc. However, there is a catch: what isn’t questioned in these critiques is the democratic-liberal framing of the fight against these excesses. The (explicit or implied) goal is to democratise capitalism, to extend democratic control to the economy by means of media pressure, parliamentary inquiries, harsher laws, honest police investigations and so on. But the institutional set-up of the (bourgeois) democratic state is never questioned. This remains sacrosanct even to the most radical forms of ‘ethical anti-capitalism’ (the Porto Allegre forum, the Seattle movement etc).

via the LRB

Tags: , . Categories: Politics

Chuck D – Never have so many been pimped by so few

January 12, 2011 0 Comments

Chuck D speaks out on media:

HIP-HOP NEWS spreads like any other mainstream NEWS in America. The garbage that’s unfit to print has now floated on websites and blogs like sh*t. For example a rapper working in the community gets obscured while if that same rapper robbed a gas station he’d get top coverage and be label a “rapper” while getting his upcoming or current music somewhat put on blast, regardless of its quality which of course is subjective like any other art. RAP sites and blogs are mimicking the New York POST.

It does the people of the planet little good to hear that an an artist is famous and rich, will wear expensive jewelry straight from the mines, show it off, stay it the hotel, ride in limos, do the VIP with chilled champagne in the clubs, ape and monkey the chicks (meaning not even talking) and keep the dudes away with slave paid bodyguards when real people come close.

Tags: , . Categories: Music and Politics