For the crime of pointing out a new way forward through Republican opposition to the casual granting of market monopolies (makes a lot of ideological sense), Khanna was unceremoniously fired from his post at the Republican Study committee. We’re pretty sure he’s not sweating that situation anymore, seeing as he just authored a White House petition signed by 114,000 U.S. citizens — the first to qualify for the new rules of consideration (the threshold is 100,000 votes).
The proposition? Mobile phone users should be free to unlock their cell phones. Simple enough, right? But a recent decision by the Library of Congress — perhaps under lobbying pressure — made the practice essentially illegal.
Once the petition reached critical mass, the Obama administration agreed with Khanna and the 114,000+ citizens who cried out against the possibility they could go to jail for unlocking their cell phone.
The exciting thing is that this is just the beginning. Khanna has already pledged to take the fight further.
Khanna is a unique figure in the endeavor to transform intellectual property policy into a force for the greater good. His up-and-coming political stature is a rare commodity within the oft-geeky, insular culture of copyright reform. This is an exciting time for those optimistic for a rethinking of copyright that values cultural and social welfare concerns over a strictly labor- and personality-based view of intellectual property’s purpose.
Twenty years from now everyone in the music industry will look back at the plummeting price of access to recordings and shake our heads much the same way the movie industry looks back at its attempts to outlaw the VCR. How could anyone rationally think otherwise? And yet the entertainment industry has been chipping away at the legal underpinnings of fair use established by the US Supreme Court just under 30 years ago.
Justices Marshall, Powell, and Rehnquist joined Blackmun in dissenting, completely ignoring welfare-based theories of copyright. These justices were siding with the MPAA’s view that any leeway given to copyright infringement, even personal copying for private use, undermined the whole system of copyright.
It’s not that they were wrong in their assessment. VCRs did undermine copyright in the sense that fair use enabled people to make tens of millions of copies of copyrighted material. But nothing happens in a vacuum. Consumers were so busy “undermining” the copyright, they developed a voracious appetite for films and TV shows, and the movie and television industries positively exploded.
The same thing is happening in so-called music piracy, it’s just happening incredibly slowly because the music industry is still for the most part fighting free access to music.
Certainly, creators need to be compensated for their labor. Copyright exists to provide this incentive to work, ensuring creative works get made. It also exists to protect our personhood — our identity as defined by our creative expressions. Copyright should prevent our labor from being unjustly exploited, and our identity from being stolen.
For many, this is where copyright ends because they are only thinking about themselves (it’s something of an American pastime.) They ought to stop and think for a moment, because there are an estimated 315,613,999 other folks in this country alone who deserve consideration.
Copyright is not just about protecting your individual right (or, more commonly, a corporation’s right) to profit from or be fairly represented in the exploitation of their works. It’s about the greater good, a concept that trumps any individual concern. We tend to overvalue our own creative endeavors because the labor and personhood considerations of creativity distort our perception. Our value is high because we worked hard and infused our work with something of personal essence.
But while the price of creative work may be set by individual, society at large will ultimately judge its value. This is why record labels have to fix prices — to override the more reasonable value judgement of consumers by exploiting their control over music access. In a truly free market, the value of music remains high and climbs even higher while the value of access to music approaches utility levels (think Spotify) if not zero. The music industry is fighting the devaluing of access to music rather than the music itself. On the contrary, there is now more music being produced per year than ever before — more bad music to be sure, but much more good as well.
Copyright is supposed to ensure the needs of the greater good are met by stimulating individuals to contribute to that greater good. We recognize that having a market in which one’s creative works have value is a strong driver of individual contributions. But we must also recognize the purpose of copyright is to “promote the Progress” of the public and culture as a whole. In the case of labor and personhood, copyright is the art of balancing the individual need for monopoly protection with the public need to access creative works.
We need to stop looking at this like one creator is producing work for 315,613,999 consumers. It’s the 21st century. One creator is producing work for 315,613,999 other creators.
This culture in which everyone participates as both consumer and creator was still a ways off back in 1984 when the Betamax case was decided. Interestingly, dissenting Justice Blackmun unwittingly predicted a future in which the line between creator and consumer would not be so clear:
“Fair use may be found when a work is used ‘for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching… scholarship, or research.’ …other examples may be found in the case law. Each of these uses, however, reflects a common theme: each is a productive use, resulting in some added benefit to the public beyond that produced by the first author’s work…”
In particular, this quote reminds me of the concept of “semiotic democracy“, a phrase first coined by John Fiske in 1987. In studying television culture, Fiske observed that “rather than being passive couch potatoes that absorbed information in an unmediated way, viewers actually gave their own meanings to the shows they watched that often differed substantially from the meaning intended by the show’s producer.”
This concept finds its legal context in addressing the growing creative, participatory role in culture that consumers are beginning to enjoy. In other words, we must start treating every consumer as a potential creator. This is not to say we need to mandate everyone make a cultural contribution, but only that we need to respect use and sharing of creative works as a potentially creative act, and one that cannot be reduced to mere product consumption because that was the intent of the producer.
Again, the market assigns value and meaning to creative works independent of intent. Increasingly, a big part of that value is in source material or inspiration for a new creative act.
Most of us in the 80s (those of us who were around, anyway) didn’t use our VCR creatively. I knew I was the exception when I sat in front of the TV recording little snippets of commercials and shows until I had an avant-garde remix of bizarrely juxtaposed images. Without YouTube, I had no distribution network (and few friends at the time) and did this purely for personal enjoyment.
I might not have seemed so out of place in today’s culture. Some of the most popular videos on YouTube are remixes of existing clips (much more entertaining than my VCR art). Dubstep and mashups have turned unlicensed sampling into the music of a generation. Even consumption is collaborative, with fans forming their opinions collectively through social networks. Welcome to the world of the consumer-creator.
It’s really not such a long way from creating our own meanings for TV shows in our heads to producing an expression of those unique meanings. We’ve been doing the former since the days of the VCR and earlier, but only recently have the means for creativity grown ubiquitous.
What does a world in which everyone’s a creator mean for copyright? It should mean reform.
We can’t do away with financial incentives to stimulate creative labor, but we have to reassess if a virtually perpetual market monopoly is bringing a chainsaw to a knife fight. There is much about current copyright term length and a narrowing definition of fair use that works against a culture of creativity. We need to allow consumer-creators to freely remix our individual works into new works if culture is to progress. (Creative Commons leads the charge in this arena, and you can find dozens of books promoting the idea of making fair use fairer.)
We should continue to protect the author’s personhood and the “essence” they contribute to their works. But we’re overdue to reconsider the roles of attribution and identity in a culture that is transcending our psychological hang-ups around copying as the core of creativity. (Marcus Boon’s In Praise of Copying is a great start.)
Finally, and most importantly, we need to push back against laws that clearly favor neither the individual nor the greater good. Lobbying and litigation have become the tools used by entertainment industry elite to stifle this new culture of the consumer-creator. Often passed of as acts to protect creativity, the industry is really only interested in driving consumption. Corporations like to keep creativity at an easily co-opted and exploited level.
If we can keep the corporations in check, one day, passive consumption will be taboo and participatory creation status quo. It’s what’s already going on in our heads. To keep culture locked up just so large corporations can profit (be they record labels or tech companies) is the opposite of copyright’s charter to promote progress. As the creator-to-consumer ratio changes, so too must the law.
Reddit may boast the largest community of amateur and professional musicians on the web. Its thriving WeAreTheMusicMakers “subreddit” thread had 55,321 subscribers at the time of this writing.
I’m not going to explain to you how reddit or crowd sourcing works, but suffice to say the conversation going on is lively and enriching for any type of musician. So what are all these music makers talking about?
I scanned the last month of WeAreTheMusicMakers posts to gain some insight on what’s important to the community. I would have liked a larger sample size of posts but reddit’s archives stop after one month. However, the community itself is a huge sample size, and I was able to see a few trends emerge. Here’s the data I ended up with after counting and categorizing each post that received 30 or more upvotes:
Tips, techniques and resources for digital recording, mixing and mastering represented nearly a quarter of the most popular posts. While it’s true anyone with a laptop can produce a great-sounding record these days, it still takes a considerable amount of skill and experience to properly record, mix and master. Many of the most popular posts were links to free resources to learn the ins and outs of digital recording, followed by information on the hottest plugins for “in the box” recording.
The next most popular category was career advice. Clearly there is a lot to talk about here with the big changes happening in the music world. It seems the WeAreTheMusicMakers crowd tends toward the amateur end of the spectrum — musicians that have been playing for a while and are looking for advice on how to begin establishing a career. Luckily there’s a good number of professional musicians in the fray to provide quality advice.
Along that same line, there were robust discussions of the music industry in general — mostly around unfair, exploitative business practices we’ve become too familiar with. But there were also a few posts that looked to gain lessons from the industry success of other artists.
Also popular were requests for specific feedback on non-career issues. These were usually creative ideas about new websites or resources for musicians, and the posters got an enthusiastic response.
Anyone who’s hung with musicians knows they can’t shut up about gear, and the prevalence of gear porn and gear advice among the most popular posts was unsurprising.
The rest of the most popular posts focused on humor, inspiration and commentary on miscellaneous issues important to musicians. There were also appearances by music apps, exhibition videos, requests for collaboration and allegations of copyright infringement.
While these insights may seem self-evident, to me they powerfully illustrate how musicians are taking their fates into their own hands. And that’s a really, really good thing. The odds and benefits of winning the major label lottery are disappearing more and more each day. We’re replacing the old, corrupt system of exploitation with a new do-it-yourself, direct-to-fan attitude.
Digital recording has made every musician a producer. We’re now culturally cool with a lower-fidelity standard of audio quality. We may never individually learn how to make recordings shine in the way an expert mixing engineer can — but as long as we can make the music we hear in our heads, the tradeoff in fidelity is more than worth it. Old folks like Neil Young and Flea might complain we’re a generation of overly-compressed, earbud-isolated kids who don’t know what we’re missing, but it’s clearly the old folks who are missing the point.
Likewise, artists are taking on management and marketing roles for themselves. Again, most of us can’t create amazing music and manage ourselves to six-figure salaries at the same time. But we’re trying because we realize that the first step to “making it” is taking an entrepreneurial attitude and realizing we’re managing a small business. It’s exciting to see that realization dawning after decades of musicians pathetically waiting to be “discovered”, creating great music that dies in obscurity.
How can anyone profess to know what’s best for musicians when there is total disagreement as to what a musician is?
In conversation after conversation, I have come to the following conclusion: the fundamental disagreement in the copyright vs. free culture debate is over opposing definitions of “musician”.
In one corner, we have the musician as defined by the copyright industry. This is the definition with the most qualifiers. To be a musician in their eyes, you must be making a living playing music, or at least actively pursing a music career. There is an aesthetic judgement too — the “quality” of the music must demonstrate a level of competency above the amateur. This is a subjective assessment, but factors include fidelity of recording, originality in composition, and technical acuity in performance.
In the other corner, we have free culture advocate. The underdog. Their definition of musician has virtually no qualifiers — one must only be composing, performing or recording actively to be considered a musician. Quality, skill, experience… these are not necessary for musicianship. One need only play.
Much can be said about these two opposing philosophies, but I am going to stick to how these attitudes relate to the constitutional purpose of copyright, to “Promote the Progress of Science and Useful Arts”.
There has been much debate over what “Progress” means in this clause. One can imagine our two fighting definitions as revealing different interpretations. The copyright industry would likely consider “Progress” to be any work of art that has demonstrated market value. They would see the inclusion of “Progress” as intent to separate amateurs from professionals in economic terms.
A world full of amateurs would not fulfill the copyright charter for these folks. It doesn’t matter what “Arts” progress if none of them are “Progress”. “Progress” for them is the conversion of the amateur musician to the professional musician. This view is driven by economic imperatives, and it comes as no surprise those musicians and businesses that have profited the most from copyright are its most vehement supporters. This view is more in line with the “labor / desert” theories of copyright which justify granting market monopolies as a way to make available the “just deserts” of creators’ labor as a critical incentive to create.
The free culture advocate is quick to point out the hypocrisy in the above view. “Progress” doesn’t emerge out of thin air. Everyone starts as an amateur. There could be no music professionals without a thriving amateur musician scene. How soon the professional forgets they were once the amateur. “Progress” for them is represented by the conversion of the non-musician to the amateur musician. This view is largely driven by creative or cultural imperatives.
It also is demonstrably true that a musician who defines “Progress” from an economic standpoint will often end up working in the music industry instead of being a musician. There simply isn’t much money to be made being a musician, and what profit exists is fiercely competed over, dependent on impeccable timing bordering on luck, and rarely lasts.
On the other hand, most musicians hold the view that defines “Progress” in creative and cultural terms. This is great for culture, but bad for musicians making money. It explains why musicians have historically been bad earners. It also helps explain the system of exploitation the entire record business is based on.
So, the music industry overwhelmingly defines musicians as those who are contributing measurable value to the music economy. Musicians define themselves as creatives making cultural contributions, which may subsequently be recognized financially. What about fans?
I would suggest most fans’ attitudes of what defines a musician fall somewhere between the opposing poles. Which side they gravitate to depends on their musical tastes. Those who enjoy discovering obscure acts and new artists probably hold more of a cultural view, while those with more mainstream pop tastes might have a narrower view of what constitutes a musician. The former celebrate the value in music that isn’t necessarily economically viable, the latter celebrate the value in music produced by big budgets and big business.
In other words, all approaches are variably valid in the eyes of the public, and this is the group copyright is meant to protect. Certainly, copyright is a tool for creators, but its charter is to benefit the greater good. The needs of the musician and the music business are intertwined, but ultimately the needs of the commons take precedence in concerns over copyright’s purpose.
The conclusion? “There is no reliable way to measure the real size of the US musician population.”
Leaves a little something to be desired, doesn’t it? The FMC highlights three key reasons for their assessment:
“(1) There is no agreed-upon definition for “musician”, no certifications or qualifying tests; (2) There is no one organization that represents all musicians; (3) The government’s statistics excludes a huge chunk of the musician population by their own counting standards.”
It’s not likely we’ll have a single organization that represents musicians anytime soon because amateur musicians by definition aren’t professionally represented. Nor will the government be able to shed any light on the uncounted musical masses huddled at the edges of the music career world.
The only way we’ll be able to reform music copyright to be equitable to all is to agree upon the definition of “musician”. I would be remiss to leave the issue hanging here unresolved, so here’s my proposition for how we can move forward in this endeavor:
There is a concept in copyright law called “extralegal norms”. Sometimes traditions and standard methods of operation achieve the “Progress” goals of copyright without having to involve messy and expensive legal procedures. In this respect, under utilitarian theories, copyright is justly viewed as a “necessary evil” that can be rendered unnecessary if the culture of creation provides enough incentive and protection to creators already.
For example, comedians are not granted copyright in part because of extralegal norms that involve the self-policing public shaming of joke-stealers (Joe Rogan vs Carlos Mencia being the classic example). Like fashion, which is similarly unprotected by copyright, comedy is often defined by its context — a moment in time that is fleeting. As such, fashion and comedy are thought by many to be better off without a copyright system that might stifle that rapid innovation required to stay “of the moment”.
This unprotected creativity is starting to sound a lot like music. I think it’s time to take a serious look at the parallel extralegal norms in music and consider that in many respects musicians may not need copyright protection at all. Among them:
(1) Cost of production is becoming so low, musicians no longer have to give up their master rights just to have an album made. The less musicians choose to be exploited this way, the less copyright protection they need.
(2) Songs were meant to be shared. Online, copyright is increasingly unenforceable. An unenforceable law does no good, and when it is enforced, it limits sharing — which is in many ways the purpose of the song’s creation in the first place.
(3) As the language of emotion, music creation is primarily driven by a deep-seated need to express oneself. Most musicians make music for the love of doing so, not for the money. As such, copyright less necessary to provide an incentive for the labor of music creation.
(4) Music increasingly involves collective authorship. In many ways the “amateurization” of music is bringing us back to music’s folk roots. The folk tradition does not require copyright incentives for it is an expressive practice where sole authorship is downplayed in favor of collective, historic tradition. Joint authorship copyright has historically been avoided as a creativity-stifling minefield of competing conflicts of interest.
(5) There are self-policing features in music to prevent outright stealing of material. I would look to the fan outrage over the appropriation of the “seapunk” micro-genre by Rhianna as a parallel example to Mencia vs. Rogan. Such co-option is becoming less of an economic threat because the web connects fans in a way that amplifies their collective attitudes. Witness how fast Seapunk was dropped by those in the mainstream who were caught with their hands in the cookie jar attempting to co-opt it.
There are many more reasons why copyright might also stifle creativity and music in general — they can be found throughout my blog. Here I tried to stick to the extralegal norms that warrant it unnecessary or at least in dire need of reform.
The critical and final point I want to make is that all of the above strongly suggests to me we need a broader definition of “musician”. While I find truth on both sides, I can’t find a single good reason why we should narrow our view of what constitutes a musician.
We should openly embrace the “amateurization” of music and build a music economy and culture in which the millions of aspiring professionals get a fair shot at making a buck by being discovered and supported by their prospective fans.
How do you define “musician”? Is it time to change our collective attitudes and widen the circle?
The web is full of lame career advice for musicians. It can be hard to cut through the noise and find any useful guidance. Do we really need another “10 tips for branding your band on social networks”? We know how to post to Facebook.
Most musicians have only a vague idea of how to make money from our music. We spend the day as graphic designers, contractors, teachers and telemarketers. We are professional in our craft, but our bank accounts have little to show for it.
We’re not in it for the money, we play music because we have to. We have to express ourselves and connect people together.
Yet most of us are in the dark when it comes to earning a career from our musical pursuits. Let’s be honest with ourselves. For decades we’ve been told to focus our energy on making great music and being in the right place at the right time to be “discovered”. Just be special, they said. If you build the hits, the fans will come.
No wonder ours is a generation full of failed and exploited professional musicians. No one ever taught us how to do business.
There are millions of people playing music across the world at this very moment. Hundreds of millions more are listening to music. And billions of dollars are being made.
The ones making the money are treating their music as a business.
It begins by realizing you’re not just a musician, you’re an entrepreneur managing a small business. It’s really uncool to say, but the consolation prize is getting to do what you love for the rest of your life.
John Snyder, founder of Artists House Music.
This is where Artists House Music comes in. The Louisiana-based non-profit is spearheaded by Grammy-winning music and media polymath John Snyder. He states his purpose with great clarity:
“Our mission is to help musicians, artists, and arts entrepreneurs create sustainable careers… We are challenging the lingering view that there is something inherently distasteful about the co-joining of art and commerce.”
These walls are already coming down thanks to the ways the web enables direct fan patronage on crowd funding platforms like Kickstarter, but they’re coming down too slowly. We need organizations like Artists House Music to push musician entrepreneurship forward, to provide expert knowledge and wisdom as a public service. We need a culture of entrepreneurship in music, and it won’t happen without the kind of leadership groups like Artists House Music provide.
The organization fulfills its charter first and foremost by providing a very active Livestream channel full of music conferences, concerts and other events, which are archived along with tons of other great videos on their YouTube channel.
Any musician that happens across this encyclopedic treasure trove of industry wisdom is sure to click subscribe and suddenly lose hours or days within its archives. For example, just the other day I started by demystifying publishing and licensing and got re-introduced to how musicians earn money by selling rights to use their music. Then I got a second and third opinion. I’ll be going back for a fourth and fifth because every topic is covered in exhaustive detail. It’s easy to emerge with a comprehension of complicated music business basics before you even realize it.
Regrettably, I am not only writing this on occasion of the non-profit’s demonstrated utility to musicians at large. if you’ve been clicking through to the amazing links, you’ve probably noticed Artists House Music’s grant funding has run out. They need our support to continue to provide this invaluable content. I wouldn’t be doing my part if I didn’t urge you to drop some coin their bucket to keep the good work moving forward.
We are clearly moving toward a new business model for music. It’s more sustainable and equitable than ever before. Now anyone can start a band, record and release a hit album in their basement overnight. It’s happening more and more. There are more opportunities — and more competition — than ever before. You don’t just have to work harder, you have to work smarter. Often success is as simple as setting your mind to achieving it.
If you’re motivated to learn about the opportunities for you to make money playing music, start at Artists House Music.
I am witnessing a disturbing trend among musicians: they are mindlessly joining the major label chorus and stigmatizing their own fans as criminals for gaining free access to their music.
The trend won’t last that long. If you’re one of these fan-chastising musicians, you will your bread and butter will be toast faster than you can say “filesharing is stealing”.
The approach for most artists is considerably more velvet-gloved than the RIAA, but the message is the same. The graphic pictured at right is a perfect example of the condescending tone some musicians are taking these days. Not surprisingly, I’ve noticed most of these complainers are those who profited from the old recording regime. This includes not only musicians but also producers and engineers, whom have suffered quietly for the most part.
Look, we’re all upset that fans buy $5 cups of coffee daily yet balk at spending the same amount on five songs a month. But guess what? As a Facebook commenter points out, “you can’t download coffee”. It is a scarce commodity. Music is not. Music is everywhere. If musicians suddenly stopped making music today, there would still be more music than anyone could listen to for centuries. But of course that won’t happen, because music will go on whether fans are paying $1 per song or not. In fact, all evidence suggests music will become more frequent, more diverse and more interesting as its price approaches zero.
These are the people who want to support you. Why are you suggesting they are thieves? Why do you think they’re freeloaders who are too lazy to drop you a buck?
Your fans know that the recording business model is broken. They know that when they buy the single for $1.29, a healthy chunk goes to iTunes, and the rest goes to the record label that’s still recouping on your marketing budget.
Your fans know the system of compulsory licensing is broken. They know it concentrates wealth at the top of the industry and creates a tall barrier of entry to those seeking a career as a professional musician.
Your fans know digital distribution costs practically nothing, yet you have to fork over $50/year or 9% annually just to get it on iTunes so they can take their 35% cut.
You’re not giving your fans a way to compensate you fairly. You’re not letting them contribute directly to your projects and to see that contribution reflected back on them and your fan community. You’re not engaging them on a personal level, at a level where you can communicate your financial needs and they can respond. You’re not providing incentives. Albums aren’t incentives any more. They’re advertisements for the experience of being a fan.
But even if you don’t believe any of that, guess what? Deterrence never works. It is a losing battle. Read Pop Song Piracy and learn about the technological arms race the record business has been losing for over a century. It’s not gonna work. All you’re going to do is make your fans not want to access your music for free anymore. I guess that’s what you want, right?
Let’s get a few things straight:
• The cost of access to music to fans is approaching free. In many ways it already is. Accept this and move on because it won’t change. Music is a utility, and you’re selling energy. Electrify the audience and they will power your career. Don’t extort them for loving you.
• Sitting back and collecting “mailbox money” no longer cuts it for a music career. Writing one hit and paying your rent for twenty years is a thing of the past. You and your business team are no longer selling a product, you’re selling a service. It’s time to get creative and forge new revenue streams because the old ones aren’t coming back.
• Fans sharing your music are the opposite of enemies — they’re your brand advocates. They’re out there doing unpaid marketing work, spreading your music virally among peer groups faster than you can fill out your ASCAP paperwork. You should be thanking them and listening to their advice.
• Finally, stop whining and go work on your music. You look like Lars Ulrich.
One decade ago I decided to write a book. I blogged and I blogged and I blogged. The book never amounted to more than a fragmented manifesto, but I did get noticed enough to make some cool music/tech biz career moves working for iLike and Pump Audio.
One year ago, I resolved to work every day toward accomplishing the goal of writing my book. I also started my fourth blog, the one you’re reading now. Don’t worry, a fifth is on the way.
One year ago I collected 500 index cards, each with a topic I wanted to cover in the book. This became the first of dozens of outlines, which became the first of several books. I really did write about three or four versions of nearly half of the book, only to scrap 90 percent of it and start over. I figure I’ve written 200,000 words by now.
2012 was a banner year for the blog. Thousands of readers streamed to my ethical defense of a generation during the debate between NPR’s Emily White and Cracker’s David Lowery about the ethics of filesharing. A post about the origin of music continues to draw thousands more as a popular StumbleUpon link. I was asked to contribute a guest post to the Musician’s Union in the UK, and this article continues to be top Google search result for the query “How do musicians make money?”
As great as the blog was going, progress on the book was steady but slow. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was learning how to write non-fiction. I thought my years of blogging, of writing for newspapers and magazines, of technical and professional writing had steeled me for the rigors of non-fiction book writing. I knew it wouldn’t be easy, but I was surprised at how little it resembled any other type of writing I’d done prior.
I love doing the research, often more than the writing itself, but the amount necessary to tell a story of the scope I’ve chosen is enormous. I have found it necessary to develop a reading habit in order to write the book with the veracity I would demand of any author I read. The writing was a grind as to be expected, but it still had those great “eureka” moments when prose and purpose crystalize.
It should have been obvious to me from the start, but the most critical part of book writing was the most challenging: To tell a compelling story that many people could empathize with. I soon realized there was no point in writing a book if it wouldn’t connect with people.
I ditched the polemical manifesto and pursued the “story” in “history”. I began to look for the novel, compelling, human stories that illustrated the point I was trying to make. Suddenly, it became clear: my book was about people sharing songs. I would title it “Music is Free: The History and Future of Song Sharing”.
And it would be published by a traditional publisher.
Back in August of last year I told you my book was “almost done”. One of the big lessons I learned since then: don’t ever say something is almost done, especially something like a nonfiction book about the entire history of music… and the future of music too.
Somewhere along the way I decided that I could always self-publish it, but it would be much more fun to get the backing of a real publisher, and that’s what I’m doing now, shopping this book to publishers and agents. I’m going to LA in a couple weeks to meet up with a NYT bestselling author to kick off a long stretch of pitching my book.
The more obvious question, especially to anyone who knows me and my stance on copyright: Why go with a traditional “dinosaur” publisher? Why sign all of your rights over when it’s the antithesis of what you believe in and what your book is about?
To the first question: Only a traditional publisher offers the real physical book distribution to a huge chunk of potential readers who prefer to consume it that way. It’s what my target audience wants.
To the second question: I haven’t signed anything yet. 😉
Not incidentally, I’ll be a copyright expert in twelve weeks thanks to this Harvard Law School (HarvardX) copyright course. I was one of 500 out of several thousands students selected to participate. By spring I’ll have the foundational knowledge to really give substance and expertise to my book — perhaps just in time for my advance to roll in.
As I shop around my proposal (drop me a line if you’re interested) I’ll be changing the format of the blog a little bit. Since I’ll be pretty busy with Zac Shaw Goes to Law School, I’m going to be musing here on some of the topics I’m simultaneously tackling in the book. In other words, not so much current events, but more testing out core parts of my book’s hypothesis as the final draft falls into place.
Thanks again for supporting me all these years, I can’t wait for you to read the finished text.
“We are probably entering a new ice age right now. However we’re not noticing it due to the effects of carbon dioxide.” — Lars Franzen, professor of physical geography at University of Gothenburg
In other words, man-made global warming is preventing us from entering a new ice age. That’s not to say climate change is a total boon to humanity, but it does suggest a silver lining. What does this intriguing theory, gaining traction in the scientific community as of late, have to do with music?
It’s the first thing that came to my mind when I read about the stabilization of record sales in 2011-2012 in Digital Music News. Metaphorically speaking, without the plummeting price of music, album sales would have continued its downward trend, crashing hard in the last two years.
In other words, with the ‘cultural warming’ of increased free or near-free access to music, we are staving off an ‘ice age’ of decimated album sales.
It’s quite clear to see how free music spurs album sales. Study after study after study confirmed that those who shared illegal downloads also purchased more music as a result.
Now we are awash in near-free music from Spotify, Pandora and the new school of streaming audio — aka the companies fighting to control the operating system of the “celestial jukebox”. Don’t you think it’s pretty astonishing that despite the growth of these services in the market, album sales remain flat?
Album sales have not been saved by music industry litigation, paywalling, DRM, or any attempt by those running the antiquated record album business model to protect it and stifle innovation. Album sales remain stable (or stagnant) because music is approaching free, and as a result, more people are listening to more music than ever before. No matter how hard the industry elite try to bring on a new ice age where they go back to controlling access to music, no one can stop the proliferation of free songs spurring a new generation to a deeper love of music than we have ever seen. But there is a limit to free music spurring album sales. When that limit is reached is as much up to content creators as consumers.
The album itself is anachronistic, we are moving into a world of singles. The album-based business model would melt in front of our eyes if not for the phalanxes of music industry lawyers erecting a stockade of copyright law to protect their walled gardens. Consumers never really wanted to have to buy songs they didn’t like in a bundle with songs they did — that was forced upon them artificially.
The album is also a die-hard tradition for musicians and fans. It’s kind of fascinating how the economic imperative of the album become part of the art of music. Bottom line, fans don’t demand quantity of songs, they demand quality. It is nearly impossible to write 10 consecutive songs of the kind of quality fans demand and deserve — think of how many “perfect” albums you can name. Therefore, the future of music will not necessarily see the disappearance of the album, but a transformation from 10-12 song collections to more varied numbers of songs, more mix tapes and compilations (collaborative albums) and some new concepts like curated licensing, app albums and status-based perk-bundling. (If you want to know more about these, sign my mailing list to get word on when my book will be out.)
Ultimately, the “cultural warming” I talk about transcends any particular revenue stream or business model. Free and near-free access to music also stimulates more music creation. As listening becomes more interactive and creative (music games, remixing stems, mood-based browsing), it will become harder to separate the “musician” from the “listener”. In the end, album sales will begin to decline again as music takes on a different role in society. There will still be “albums” because it’s useful to organize groups of songs under a single title to denote an era or concept, but the bundling of songs will entirely be in the consumer’s control. Increasingly, fans will opt for bundles of the songs they like, rather than being forced to buy songs they don’t, or blindly following tradition.
Most “Best Albums of 2012” lists would be more accurately referred to as “Carefully Treading the Line Between Superficial Hipster and Music Fan”. It’s no surprise that our love of music must be kept in check by other people’s opinions of its coolness or un-coolness. After all, music is based on social sharing. Sure, mainstream music’s popularity is usually manufactured, but that doesn’t mean a few mega-produced releases have more to offer than the latest lo-fi indie recording, even if we won’t publicly admit it.
The truth is there’s no such thing as the Best Albums of 2012. The closest you can get is Metacritic or a similar score aggregator, and even then you’ll see a reflection of our own social hang-ups when it comes to the music we love. How do you reconcile the fact that nearly all of the top-selling albums of 2012 don’t make these lists? Are the people buying the best-selling music of 2012 not actually music fans?
Most critiques of music critics center around our subjective response to music. Where does one get off saying this album is good and the other is bad when the qualitative assessment is always on an individual basis?
If the root of our response to music is physical, emotional, spiritual and social — and I believe it is (or I wouldn’t be writing a book about it) — then the albums we choose as our favorites of the year offer some insight into our modern human experience in each of those realms. If so, a casual glance at the recurring “Best of 2012” album lists would reveal we’re horny and heartbroken but too fucked up on drugs and consumerism to care, let alone move. Sounds like 21st century America in a nutshell!
What does my “Best of” list reveal about my physical, emotional, spiritual and social state? Well, my taste for loud music with a healthy dose of melody, rhythmic novelty and a wide dynamic range might suggest I’m in a state of carefully calculated angst. Or it might just mean I like heavy, catchy music. I’ll let you decide. But ask yourself this: “What do my favorite albums say about my internal state?” You might surprise yourself.
#10 Deftones Koi No Yokan
As one of my all-time favorite bands, it’s a bit of a disappointment not to put the new Deftones album closer to the top of the list. At the same time, it’s pretty incredible this band is still expanding its audience… even if I have to roll my eyes when new Deftones fans tell me Koi No Yokan is their best album ever when they haven’t even heard Around the Fur.
Nonetheless, if this is the album creating the widest and deepest emotional connection with the audience anchored in this specific time in history, I’m happy to see the Deftones gain altitude on popularity mountain. “Swerve City” is a standout track and was a good move as a quick second single when the less driving “Leathers” flopped. Other standout tracks include “Gauze” and “Rosemary”. No band does heavy and sensual like Deftones, and they have basically owned the new metal genre in terms of pure artistry for over a decade.
#9 Diamond Rugs Diamond Rugs
This was a divise album for people who were too cool for school vs. real music fans. I think it’s probably the most “real” album on my list — and my that I don’t mean some sort of vague “authenticity” but rather that it reflected the world and the way I see it not just lyrically, but from a production and songwriting perspective as well. You won’t hear another album produced or performed quite like it. There’s this awesome musical effortlessness — almost laziness — that turns the lo-fi approach into something so evocative. Pitchfork inexplicably tore apart the album’s single, “Gimme a Beer” as “fatalistic ‘fuck it'” while praising Cloud Nothings for “a gracefully arcing chant that’s equally vengeful, self-loathing, and hopeful”. While I’d agree the Cloud Nothings were a little more eloquent, they’re more brooding and introspective too — Diamond Rugs touch a raw nerve on the same topic, namely, the emotional emptiness of modern life. Both bands are commenting on this same subject matter in different ways, and both perspectives offer a rich listening experience. I think both deserve our listening attention. Other catchy tracks of fear and loathing include “Blue Mountains”, “Country Mile” and “Totally Lonely”.
#8 Gaza No Absolutes in Human Suffering
Note for note, no band quite matches the brutality of Gaza. I’ve always felt like this band exists at the vortex of all things heavy — sort of a hybrid or multi-headed hydra from the various subgenres of extreme metal, but without the technical wanking. They can go from blast-beat to sludge in a blink, and it usually makes musical sense rather than the tech-metal scene with their potpourri of riffage. It’s hard to pick a standout track because this is one of those kinds of albums that are getting rarer and rarer — it’s the kind of album that begs to be heard back-to-front. It’s not exactly because each track is a standout single because, let’s face it, this would give people nosebleeds if it was played on the radio. Rather, the album works a holistic experience. In that sense No Absolutes in Human Suffering has kind of an ambient emotional effect — I found myself “feeding off” the songs to drive an overarching mood of, say, dark matter destroying galaxies, rather than listening to their individual articulations. But if you listen close you’ll hear stunning use of dynamics and technicality while not letting up one bit on the pummeling, punishing sound of inevitability. “This We Celebrate” has so many dynamic ups and downs, so many parts, and yet it just sounds so cohesive and powerful. “Winter in Her Blood” can only be described as relentless, and the album-closer “Routine and then Death” is the bleakest panorama of death anthem of the year.
#7 Future of the Left The Plot Against Common Sense
This band has officially escaped the atmosphere. Caustic noise rock at its best, Future of the Left are super-snarky riff punks with a serious ear for melody. From the opening “Sheena is a T-Shirt Salesman” and throughout, a dizzying array of non sequiturs, social critiques and freak-out hysteria drive rocket this album passionately forward. And yet with all the craziness, the band often evokes a sort of trance-like groove with mechanical repetition of phrases. The music is deliberate, heavy-handed and unsubtle, the lyrics stick out like a sore thumb, and it all works itself into something new and exciting to hear. “Beneath the Waves an Ocean” is a sarcastic lyrical onslaught with an aggressive throb that demands “no way you’ll ever find peace with the name they gave you” while “Polymers are Forever” is wonderfully bizarre atonal flourishes and robotic dance moves. These anthems of doom and human stupidity have at least a conceptual cousin in Nomeansno, but they’re so much more strange and heavy. “Robocop 4 – Fuck off Robocop” is a brutal rhythm-bender that references Howard the Duck. However my favorite track hands down is “I am the Least of Your Problems”, which is also the album’s most straightforward in terms of songwriting. It’s just high-quality, timeless pop-punk at its most driving, sneering best: “I get the point of missing you / no one else will do it for me”.
#6 Baroness Yellow & Green
No sooner did Baroness simultaneously release their career-defining third and fourth albums than they got into a horrible bus accident — so it was definitely a best of/worst of year for them. Let’s focus on the positive: the band’s Yellow & Green double album was exactly epic, anthemic antidote metal needed to get out of its mainstream funk. Unfortunately, the mainstream didn’t think that way. Even though Mastodon or High on Fire can put out the same album several times, apparently Baroness still must tread outside the limelight despite evolving to new heights of songwriting with each release. Some long-time fans felt alienated by this leaning toward song structure vs. jams and riffs. I chalk it up to the same limiting mentality that prevents Ride the Lightning fans from admitting The Black Album was a masterpiece of songwriting and production.
“Take My Bones Away” is the strong-as-hell opener, and from then on you can’t ignore the weight of the production or the precision of the performances. With its interludes and dynamic shifts, it’s easy to find yourself at the end wondering what just happened. Other killer tracks include “March to the Sea”, “Eula” and “Sea Lungs”. Sometimes it feels like every Baroness song is the perfect opening or closing track — there’s no middleweight songwriting here. Sure, the album has a lot of what one might consider “interludes” or even “filler” but then turn around and give Godspeed You Black Emperor! (who also released a great album this year) a 10.0. What Baroness is really doing here is bringing post-rock and post-punk to metal, and doing it quite gracefully.
#5 NOFX Self-Entitled
I’ll admit I had the wrong idea about NOFX until War on Errorism grabbed me by the ears and forced me to listen. Their self-titled album is right up there with War for pop-punk catchiness while displaying a similar razor-sharp wit. The album pushes beyond the political to tackle heavy subjects (“She Didn’t Lose Her Baby”) while at the same time boasts that snarky but dead-on NOFX humor (“72 Virgins”) that one critic described as “culturally insensitive” (the understatement of the year). I could listen to Fat Mike’s takes on the downside of fame all day (“My Sycophant Others”, “Cell Out”), or, for that matter, his acknowledgment and mocker of the the new world order (“Secret Society”). And the band really outdoes themselves with the quintessential punk rock divorce song (“I’ve Got One Jealous Again, Again”). To me it’s their best album yet (outside of The Decline EP), but then again, if you’re a long-time fan you’re probably wondering (as I was earlier with the Deftones) what the hell I’m talking about. If you have a sense of humor and are outraged by the world, this is your band.
#4 The Evens The Odds
Ian MacKaye, what can I say? The man stands for everything that is right and good with the world, particularly the world of music. He’s an unassailable icon of revolutionary thought in America, yet simultaneously as humble and approachable they come. In this kind of post-Occupy Wall Street environment where youth are tragically accepting disenfranchisement as part of their permanent identity, we needed an album like this.
I would put The Odds right up there with anything Fugazi ever did in terms of general awesomeness. One of the most alluring aspects of this album is its noticeable stripped-downness. There are still loads of dynamics because the studio production captures a live sound that makes it sound like the mom-and-dad duo of MacKaye and Amy Farina are in your living room.
Since this album came out right at the end of 2012, I’m still processing it… like, everyday. I’ve got lots of stars next to A-side songs like “King of Kings”, “Wanted Criminals”,”Sooner or Later” and “Warble Factor” for their instant singalongability. You’ll find yourself “whoa-ing” even before you know the words. MacKaye continues to smolder over socio-economic injustice in catchy songs like “Competing with the Till”, which is all I’ll ever ask of him. It’s not the happy-go-lucky album some fans feared would result from a more “mature” MacKaye, as certain music critics romanticize The Evens as post-post-hardcore.
I think none of this would be possible without the counterpoint of Farina’s vulnerable yet angst-laden vocals and the chemistry she shares with MacKaye from songwriting to performance to child-rearing. Intimacy and post-hardcore generally don’t mix, but this duo has found a way to transcend that awkward combination with pure veteran musicianship.
#3 Chairlift Something
Weirdly enough, this was the only “Best of 2012” album that slipped past me until I was checking out the Best of 2012 lists — and I listened to a crap-ton of albums off those lists. Something sees Brooklyn’s Chairlift break out of electro-pop stereotypes to triumph with incredible songwriting, inventive production and incredibly catchy melodies. The whole album teeters on the brink of 80s nostalgia but never jumps the shark, instead coming across as authentically future-seeking songcraft. “Sidewalk Safari” is one of the year’s best, most unique electro-pop singles, but I have to say “I Belong in Your Arms” is even better. While “Safari” is a bit, well, weird, “I Belong” is a total mainstream radio hit that you don’t need to feel the least built guilty for liking. “Take it Out on Me” is like the best Samantha Foxx she never wrote. The whole A-side of this album is gold, and the B-side endures with great tracks like the crystals-and-fog machine of “Amanaemonesia” and the tipsy swag of “Guilty as Charged” with the refrain “if I gave you what you’re asking for/you wouldn’t want it anymore”… but I can’t wait for the next album, and to see this band live in my home state of New York.
#2 Cloud Nothings Attack on Memory
The best albums defy description. This one is pretty tough. Eight tracks clocking in at 33:47. Every second compelling. Cloud Nothings to me represent the modern-day Nirvana. Here’s Dylan Baldi, one dude in the basement just recording stuff to GarageBand and posting it to MySpace pretending to be a full band. One thing leads to another and now they’re in the limelight. Lyrically, Baldi and Cobain were addressing the same topics: existential angst, nihilism, boredom, irony, failure… and those are just the lyrical similarities. Baldi’s scratchy-throat, piercing vocal delivery is from the same realm as well.
These comparisons are not meant to suggest Nirvana was the band’s biggest influence or anything… I consider them more of a spiritual successor. The songwriting is perfect, the production by Steve Albini is spot-on. “No Future/No Past” is kind of a gentle but firm post-rock flare that’s launched as warning for the 9-minute following epic that never once drags, “Wasted Days”. Then “Fall In” pops up with a more cheery, upbeat acceleration and daring tempo shifts. “Stay Useless” is the timeless hit single of our generation, “Separation” keeps the album driving forward, an awesome instrumental that builds into a sonic fireball. “No Sentiment” is a droning, noisy lament, “Our Plans” has a Strokes-y swagger to it but a sound all its own, and when the album closes on the melancholy “Cut You” you get the feeling this is a great time to be listening to music.
#1 Muse The 2nd Law
My favorite album of the year is one of those I spoke of earlier that sold a ton of copies (well, a ton for modern standards) and didn’t make too many “best of” lists. Muse may never make these lists, because their stadium bombast is antithetical to the concept of being cool. In that sense they strike me as much in the tradition of Queen-meets-Smashing Pumpkins — wanting to experiment with many different genres, wanting heaps of orchestration, wanting each song to be an anthemic, lighters-held-aloft choral experience, going for the Gold record. Whatever you want to call it, Muse have released their best album to date, and their track on album releases is pretty superb.
“Madness” is the monolithic single, an exercise in sonic taste featuring glistening neon-in-the-rain production. “Follow Me” is the anthemic single, a lighters-aloft ode to lead singer and songwriter Matthew Bellamy’s then-unborn child, which begins with the infant’s heart beat and crescendos into kind of a roller rink song on PCP, with a hint of dubstep. It’s that dubstep influence, most present on the teaser track “The 2nd Law: Unsustainable”, but I for one find it tastefully done and very much in character with Muse’s sonic personality, which in the past featured all the disparate elements of dubstep (nasty synths, polyrhythms, epic drops).
The stylistic standout is “Panic Station” with its danceable, upbeat mood driven by an all-star horn section, a total pop gem with the Bellamy’s noisy guitar grit inclusions. Two of my favorite tracks off the record, “Save Me” and “Liquid State”, bass player Christopher Wolstenholme steps out from the shadows to write and lead these tortured songs of alcoholism and redemption. They amazingly fit naturally into Muse’s palette while expanding it into more of a primal scream vs. Bellamy’s nigh-operatic vocal approach. And it’s the latter that will probably prevent most people from getting into Muse. I think this is stupid because while Bellamy is certainly not the next reincarnation of Freddy Mercury in his waifish, sci-fi fashion, but he embodies the same spirit.
To come full-circle to the meta statements I made at the outset, Muse is a perfect example of a band no music blogger or critic would be caught dead with at the top of their Best of 2012 list. They are already massively popular (strike one). Their album features million-dollar production and performance talent (strike two). Muse may be popular, but no one would accuse them of being ‘hip’ or fashion-forward (strike three).
I put them at the top because I love music. Specifically, to quote myself, I have a “taste for loud music with a healthy dose of melody, rhythmic novelty and a wide dynamic range”. Based on that criteria, Muse clearly wins. It’s not nearly the coolest album I liked all year, but it’s the one that resonated the most.
This morning, the Web is abuzz debating copyright, and the comments coming from both sides continue to be snarky, obstinate, and most importantly, worlds apart.
Yes, the political and industrial elite are still trying to ensure we don’t even have this discussion. We may be a bunch of people screaming at each other in a room, but at least our voices are being heard.
But why does there seem to be no middle ground between those who believe copyright is critical, and those who believe culture should be free?
Or, to put it another way: Why can’t copyright supporters realize their policies are killing our culture, and why can’t free culture advocates realize without copyright, culture would fall apart?
What we have here is a complete contradiction in positions, so the violent clash comes as no surprise. Each side believes the other is killing culture, and will fight to the death to protect it.
So who’s right?
The problem with the debate is that both sides think they’re fighting over the same culture — and in a way, they’re right. Culture by definition is something we all share, an invisible but interconnected web of expression and communication.
But that’s not the way the debate should be framed for one big reason that virtually everyone is ignoring:
We are trying to kill each other’s culture, trying to stop each other from sharing the way they want to share. And it’s got to stop.
There are no absolutes in human culture. Some folks want to be Steven Spielberg (Star Wars and Jaws), others are happy being like Harmony Korine (Gummo, Kids, Trash Humpers). Both represent the apexes of their respective cultures — the biggest difference is that Spielberg’s culture is about pleasing the greatest amount of people and making the most amount of money, while Korine’s culture is pleasing only himself and his small niche audience, worrying about money only as far as it allows him to sustain his art.
The world is full of Korines wanting to become Spielbergs. At some point along the way, the transformation from Korine to Spielberg requires being exploited and making compromises. This is precisely where art crosses over to business. How quickly the Spielbergs forget their humble beginnings, and how quickly the Korines resent their success and judge them for it.
We all need to support the Korines, but over time the copyright system has transformed from something to protect the Korines, to something that protects the Spielbergs. That should come as no surprise to those who understand copyright has always been meant to protect business, not art.
Want to bridge the polemical gap? Let’s start with the truth: we need each other to succeed. The Korines need the Spielbergs to keep the market going, the the Spielbergs need the Korines to keep the art going. Without the Big Content megastructure, there wouldn’t be as much business opportunity for the indies, but without the indies, Big Content dies.
We should celebrate our passions, whether they be business, art, or a mix of both. But we have to be cognizant that while we may be at opposite ends of the media ecosystem, there’s room for both of us to thrive if we can foster mutual respect. Only then will we get the kind of copyright reform we need, or else both our cultures may die.
Your living room was made for music. Fran Snyder’s Concerts in Your Home website was made to do “nothing less than rebuild the touring infrastructure for small touring acts.”
The idea behind Snyder’s website is simple: Hosts sign up to welcome touring artists into their living room. Beneath that simple idea is a complex operation to cultivate a community of musicians and music lovers in a win-win value exchange.
I recently wrote about the living room show trend, and that’s how we got to talking about the triumphs and tribulations he experienced in his years setting up one of the most incredible independent networks of support and camaraderie for musicians and fans alike. I’m thankful to have Snyder’s input for the “living room show” section of my book, but the whole interview was so great I transcribed the best parts here so you could appreciate Snyder’s dedication to supporting music and musicians. Let’s look under the hood of this ambitious and successful operation:
How did Concerts in Your Home start out?
Fran Snyder.
I started as a performer in the early ’90s doing every kind of gig there was: the bars, the beaches, the restaurants, all that kind of stuff. I was continually frustrated by the fact that I was putting myself in situations playing music for people that weren’t really interested, and not liking the idea of having to fight for their attention or to be a human jukebox. Anyway, “woe is me”… that’s what every musician faces when they first start out.
After graduation, I played concert hall opening slots and did the college circuit for many years, traveling around the country. I finally tried a house show with one of my fans and instantly fell in love with it. I realized, “this is why I do music, it’s about connecting.” Obviously I need to make a living, but the idea of fame and fortune were never driving factors. For me, making money is not something you have to reject out of hand, but it’s important to know why you do what you do. House concerts really woke me up to the idea of being intimate with the crowd, talking to people, sharing stores, getting to elaborate a little bit about who I am, the history behind the songs, and the things that make me tick.
It was transformational for me, and at the time in 2006 there really wasn’t a good website to promote the idea of house concerts, so I set about fixing that. I asked myself “How can we inspire people to host shows? How can we help artists connect with these people?”
When I realized how much work it was going to be, I had to figure out a way for it to pay for itself, and that’s how we came up with our business model of helping the hosts for free — they help the artists, and the artists keep us going with a membership fee.
So it all started out with the living rooms you were playing and it spread virally from there?
Yes, there are a couple of cultural hotspots when it comes to house concerts: Texas, California, and places in the southeast and northeast where you have folk festivals. A lot of these folk artists really give access to their fans, and at some point word gets around at the festivals about the house concerts, and people start inviting people.
Part of the growth of our site was finding these people and showing them, “Here’s this resource…. we don’t want you to sign up just so you’re on our list, we want to help you, we want to provide tools and give you a community of like-minded people where you can share ideas and get to know each other. That’s how it has grown.
What motivates a host to put on one of these shows?
We’ve noticed that a lot of our hosts are empty-nesters, so they’ve got a house with space that feels a little empty. They love to entertain, and it’s easy for them to accommodate guests overnight, so they have this perfect space and they have all this new free time that they need to fill with a hobby.
The romantic notion is that a lot of these hosts play an instrument, and have at one time or another dreamed about being an artist. Maybe they got locked into a career too early, had kids too early, and made the decision to go for security instead of art. Now, 20 years later, they’re finding they can bring music back into their lives by supporting the artists that are out there doing it… and not just as a pass through guest. Many times, hosts develop friendships with the artists.
What are the unique challenges that a host faces to host a living room show?
It should come as no surprise the biggest challenge is getting people to show up, getting people to commit in a reasonable amount of time — that is, giving the host an RSVP instead of waiting until the night before to decide to come. People say they’re going to come and then cancel, or don’t show up and don’t even tell you. Those are the two pariahs of this business, and in that sense it is not unlike the clubs. Butts in seats is the most challenging thing.
What we try to do is set each host on an easy path to success, and the way we do that is to start small. We have what we call a “Dinner and Song” or “Dessert and Song” during the week, and just get seven or ten people to show up. Artists are dying for meaningful things to do during the week, and when you throw in the value of a free place to stay, a free meal, and a captive audience, that means they didn’t have to spend ten hours promoting the show. The musician just gets to show up and do what they do best, be friendly and make friends.
So if the host sets a limit and says, “We’re going to have a Dinner and Song and we’re only allowing in ten people, they can sell it out.” They can invite 150 people, and then 40 will respond, and 30 of them will be disappointed they didn’t RSVP soon enough. That’s how you train people that what you’re doing is valuable an in demand. That’s how you create a buzz, right? You can’t create a buzz if you’re not turning people away. That’s how you make someone feel they can be a part of something special before they even show up at the door.
Snyder performing at a house concert.
What motivates musicians to join the Concerts in Your Home community?
I think a lot of them are like me, I think they’re fed up with playing places where they’re not paid attention to, and they’ve got to appeal to the lowest common denominator.
One of the key things for me — even though it’s not explicitly stated — when you play in a bar, the value of what you do is measured by how much alcohol is sold. And I think that’s a shitty way to measure music. I don’t have a problem with people drinking, that doesn’t bother me at all. But if the value of what I deliver to people is measured in alcohol sales, I think it’s a pretty shitty way to measure what I do.
What does the music fan get out of it?
The big attraction both for hosts and fans of house concerts is the pin-drop atmosphere. You don’t have the drunk guy behind you talking while you’re trying to listen to music, so it’s movie theater etiquette. And when artists have everyone’s attention, magical things start to happen. It becomes spiritual, it becomes communal, it takes the show to another level. There’s a sort of unity, a “Kumbaya” thing where we’re all one — that starts to be tangible. I think that’s a big part of the appeal to fans, the house concert high: “We were all there, we were a part of something.”
I think a lot of shows inspire a looser atmosphere too, but anything that’s going on has to do with the show. So, even if you have the performer joking around with the people in the second row, or getting their shoe tied by someone in the front row because they’re so close — it all serves the show as opposed to being a distraction.
What is it about the music climate or the music industry right now that has encouraged this living room trend to gain so much traction and popularity?
There’s a couple ways to look at this. Demographically, kids don’t buy CDs. When I was first starting out, the hot market was the CDs you sold to kids. Everyone was trying to be half their age in terms of material and presentation so they could appeal to 16 year-olds and 19 year-olds because those were the people who bought the music.
Well, these people are now in their 40s and 50s — well, I’m not that old — but these empty-nesters are the ones who grew up with the culture of buying a souvenir after the show. So if you’re going to sell CDs, house concerts are one of the last markets left where there are people that still value taking the music home on an artistic medium rather than a hard drive or thumb drive.
When I play colleges, people come up and say, “You’re awesome!” and I say, “Thanks, do you want to buy a CD?” And they say, “No, we’ll just check you out online.” You hear that enough times, and you say, “Well, shit, why am I making all these CDs? Why am I playing for 22 year-olds who don’t want what I need to sell to live?” That is the demographic answer.
But I think with technology, community starts developing over the Internet — the idea of sharing spaces and sharing experiences is another thing that causes the upswing [in house concerts].
Even more important that that is the idea of embracing small — that’s probably the most important part of why house concerts are surging. Twenty years ago, you pretty much went out to a bar, drank, and listened to bands — that’s what you did on weekends. Now you have video games, groups for every interest under the sun. There are more sports on TV and on the field than ever before. There are so many distractions. So we can’t have 400-500 people at the club every weekend listing to original music. You have to figure out ways where if the shows are going to be smaller, how do you make that work? And house concerts are the best example I’ve seen of making it work.
When dealing with professional musicians who are used to professional venues, is there an attitude adjustment that needs to happen before they feel comfortable performing in a living room?
I think it depends. Ellis Paul, because of what he’s accomplished — because he can still sell out small- to medium-sized venues in 30 or 40 markets — he has a different standard. He’s not going to do a house concert for 30 people — you have to have big house. You have to seat 80-100 people at your house to have Ellis Paul play, and even then, it’s tough to get him. So part of that is just the economics of success. You’re going to go where you’re going to be the most productive.
There are artists that feel they should be at the level of Ellis Paul — or maybe once were and are no longer — that are facing the wake up call of, “Okay, I have to learn to make do with less, I have to learn to enjoy to play for smaller crowds.” Some take to it like a duck to water because of the atmosphere, and for some of them, the economics really still bugs them.
To put a finer point on it: Because we encourage so many hosts to start small, the idea of playing for 12 people in a cozy living room, even on a Wendesday night… there are a lot of artists that say, “I can’t do that, I won’t do that.” And that’s fine. They can go play a club and have 12 people there. And then they have to go find a place to stay. (laughs)
The prima donna stuff does not cut it in our market. Fortunately, there are a lot of really talented artists out there who are nice people with decent expectations, and even when they have odd experiences they can handle it gracefully and move on to the next opportunity and the next day.
This is not a perfect world. We have people who try to host concerts and fail. There are some who will schedule a show and cancel it a few weeks out. We have 20-30 new hosts each month that we train and coach to try and get them on the right foot, and not all of them succeed.
It sounds like you’re very hands-on with the hosts…
Oh yeah, we’re hands on with everybody. Everyone who joins the site has a conversation with us. We don’t have the money for background checks. We try to get a sense of why they’re doing it and make sure they know what they’re getting into and their responsibilities. That slows things down, but we think it’s a really important thing, especially when we have 22-year old women touring by themselves, we don’t want this site to be anonymous.
Where do you want to take living room concerts next?
We started a new website called BenefitArtists.com which basically allows us to tie artists together with charities. The charities help us build an audience and we help them raise money. We connect charities with artists who have an affinity for that cause, so it’s a win-win situation. An artist gets to support a cause they love, and they help the host build an audience.
Listening Room Network is becoming our fan portal. Within the next few months that’s going to really develop in terms of creating a house concert club. If you’re into this experience you’re going to be able to meet people with similar interests and connect with all the house concerts in your area.
Our goal here is to get our community to the point where we have all these hubs that develop organically, where artists can book a tour off of one conversation. They get connected with the right host, who’s connected with the other hosts, and the artist will book five or ten shows with one contact. To me, that’s where this needs to go, because booking is impossible. It’s ridiculously draining, and we have all these artists spending more time booking and doing social media than they are on their music. To me, that is a huge loss. We [musicians] are terrible at booking, we hate it. What I’m trying to do is create a system where the fans are enabled and empowered to make it happen and to do it through community. Everyone else out there is trying to do it through technology, we’re trying to do it through community.
If you believe that the purpose of copyright is to compensate the creator of the content, that copyright is free market capitalism at work, or that the current copyright legal regime leads to the greatest innovation and productivity, there’s a recently released report you need to read.
Notice the letterhead? Yeah, that memo came from the Republican Study Committee, which helps set policy for congressional Republican leaders. Keep in mind that even Democrats, most of whom at least half-heartedly support net neutrality, have never come this close to the outright rejection of the current copyright paradigm. The document at hand represents the most forward-thinking copyright policy ever presented at this upper echelon of government.
You can guess what happened next. Once the RIAA and MPAA got wind of the brief, they hit the phones hard and browbeat Republicans into issuing a full retraction of the too-sensible-to-be-true copyright policy memo. The Republican organization claims that this retraction was due to poor oversight, which is hard to believe since it wouldn’t have been released without plenty of oversight. We can plainly see the exact reason for the retraction is because the report is the antithesis of the RIAA and MPAA’s corrupt stance on copyright, and they went ballistic. It must be stressful working at an organizations that survives by perpetuating the kind of copyright myths that are so clearly debunked in the Republican Study Committee’s report. In that sense, the RIAA (and MPAA, but we’ll focus on the former) are mythical beasts that need to be slain for the greater good. Specifically:
1) The RIAA hides behind the myth that copyright is meant to compensate the artist, playing to our natural desire to compensate the creators for their works. Their #1 claim when protecting obscene exploitation of artists is hypocritically that they’re protecting the artist’s ability to make money. Never mind the wealth generated by these works is concentrated in corporate coffers, not the pockets of musicians whom they ruthlessly exploit, turning copyright around to victimize rather than enable artists. Modern music fans know that they’re not usually supporting the artist when they pay for access to music, because musicians are not the gatekeepers of access. Of course, musicians want to be heard more passionately than they want to be paid, and would prefer to keep their own gates, thank you. Fortunately, technology is changing in favor of the greater good, and one day not to far from now, the RIAA will be revealed for its true nature: As antiquated as the KKK.
2) As the report points out, “Copyright violates nearly every tenet of laissez faire capitalism” by entitling content producers “to a guaranteed, government instituted, government subsided content-monopoly.” Now, that wouldn’t be half as bad if that entitlement was actually due to musicians — of course, that is not so. Nearly every musician who has made a living recording music first had to sign over their entitled rights to be exploited by a third party. When you see that copyright protects corporate interests much like other questionable government subsidies that were originally meant to protect the average Joe, you see copyright needs to go, along with the RIAA.
3) The third myth in the report relates to the stifling of innovation by copyright, which was well-documented earlier this year in the research paper Copyright and Innovation: The Untold Story. In it, Michael A. Carrier of Rutgers University School of Law presents his findings from numerous in-depth interviews with business leaders from the past decade of digital music. His damning critique confirms what anyone in the digital music business knows anecdotally: the RIAA and its cronies, wielding copyright, have all but scorched the earth of innovation in the digital music industry. The RSC’s redacted copyright report supports Carrier’s conclusion, noting that our current corrupt copyright laws “Retarded the creation of a robust DJ/Remix industry” of the kind you see in many other countries — ever more depressing when you realize the US is used to being on the cutting edge of many new music movements.
It’s crystal clear to anyone studying the state of music that the RIAA has had a net negative effect on nearly every aspect — one might expect them to ruin music’s expressiveness and aesthetics in pursuit of profit, but they’ve really ruined the business they’re sworn to protect as well. I hope that folks working in cahoots with RIAA read this blog post and take this RSC report as a sliver of light shining through the exit door. Are you the head of a hydra hell-bent on destroying music, the biotechnology of group formation? Do you really think perpetuating copyright myths is helping musicians?
We can either face the truth and change for the better, or repeat the past and risk damaging music’s cultural, social and personal significants even further. Music will survive the crushing limitations of copyright, but those at the RIAA who are betting their gatekeeper position is sustainable have another thing coming.
If you believe that the purpose of copyright is to compensate the creator of the content, that copyright is free market capitalism at work, or that the current copyright legal regime leads to the greatest innovation and productivity,