{ brad brace } on Thu, 9 Sep 1999 22:38:39 +0200 (CEST) |
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<nettime> THE CAPITALIST MUSIC INDUSTRY IS OBSOLETE (fwd) |
http://www.lrna.org/league/mr/mr3a.html August 29, 1999 Music & Revolution 3 THE CAPITALIST MUSIC INDUSTRY IS OBSOLETE: WHAT CAN TAKE ITS PLACE? A music industry that prices music out of the reach of tens of millions of people, intentionally keeps most music off the radio, and censors musicians has clearly outlived its usefulness. A music industry that gets laws passed to prevent the distribution of music by computer technology, makes music a slave to the whims of Wall Street, and would rather work with the FBI to combat "piracy" than put money into artistic development is not only obsolete, it's dangerous. The beauty and power of music can no longer co-exist with the corruption and greed of the capitalist music industry. These harsh assessments may seem hard to accept, since the rise of the popular music that dominates most of the world today has been closely linked to the rise of post-war capitalism and to thousands of music business entrepreneurs. The Post-War Music Industry As rock and soul music emerged in the 1950s, new record labels took the stage and made the new sounds available at affordable prices. Clear channel radio stations beamed music from the deep South out across the country. Even payola--the payment of bribes by the record companies to get records played on the radio--had a positive aspect. Payola helped to break down many of the barriers in the broadcast industry, allowing the music of Southern blacks and whites to break out and become the raw material of an emerging culture. Entrepreneurs were indispensable to this process. Although they brutally exploited artists, the owners of record labels and radio stations helped to create and shape a previously non-existent teen market (the idea that youth has a culture of its own did not exist before the 1950s). The emergence of the teen market was an important step in the evolution of today's revolutionary youth culture. However, the music we take for granted today did not emerge peacefully. In the 1950s, there were constant attacks on music by politicians, the media, police, district attorneys, the Klan, and the church. In the late 1960s, a concert industry developed which brought a variety of artists into every town in America with a decent-sized theater at an affordable price. At the same time, both national record store chains and a new breed of independent record stores brought a diversity of recorded music within driving distance of most Americans. The strength of the U.S. economy--not just high profits but the growth of jobs and even welfare benefits--allowed music to develop as it did. For the first twenty-five years of the rock & soul era, the stock market allowed music companies to raise the capital they needed to fund an infrastructure that brought music to almost everyone. It allowed corporations to raise the money they needed to build the factories and offices that kept us employed. Those jobs provided the money we needed to buy records and concert tickets. In the 1980s, entrepreneurs made sure that new styles of music became widely available and, in the most striking example of that process, rap was transformed from a New York neighborhood phenomenon into an international language of the greatest importance. The Worm Turns The 90s has seen a resumption of the full-scale war against music that took place in the 50s. Once again, politicians, the media, the police, district attorneys, and the church are attacking music, blaming it for everything from drug use to the depressed state of the economy. But there is a very important difference today. The same music industry that helped make our culture possible has become one of the foremost obstacles to getting music heard. High Retail Prices.... Although total manufacturing cost for a CD is around 50 cents per disc, the consumer pays up to $20 for it. In a world where 3 billion people live in poverty (including 80 million people in the U.S.), many music fans can no longer afford to buy the music they love. Live Music.... Many concert tours now have average ticket prices of over $100. Ticketmaster surcharges are now sometimes more than the price of a concert ticket itself was only a few years ago. With millions of Americans who used to enjoy a night out now living in poverty, many clubs have gone out of business. Those that remain often force bands to pay for the privilege of playing while fans suffer from high cover charges and drink prices. Many clubs have become dependent on tobacco company promotion money and, as a result, musicians must promote lung cancer in order to be heard. Censorship.... The major record companies now place warning stickers on many of the albums they release. This means a lot of music that does get recorded can't be sold to teenagers or, in many cases, anyone. The major record store chains all actively promote censorship. The record companies all have in-house censorship committees that, among other things, forbid criticism of the police. >From its beginnings in the mid-1980s, the current wave of music censorship has been orchestrated from the highest levels of power, led by politicians who receive strong music industry support. For example, in 1986 a secret meeting was held in the Maryland countryside to discuss the danger music presents to the ruling class. Sponsored by the Parents Music Resource Center (an organization founded by current Second Lady Tipper Gore), participants included the commandant of the Marine Corps, representatives of foreign countries, most Democratic and Republican Presidential candidates of the past twenty years, a former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, current vice-president Al Gore, a vice-president of Merrill Lynch and a vice-president of Northwest Airlines. The music industry has gladly accepted many of the demands of the Parents Music Resource Center, such as placing warning labels on CDs and cassettes. Radio.... Since the 1996 Telecom bill made it legal to put together giant radio chains--including ownership of several stations in the same city--radio has played a narrower and narrower span of music, focusing on selling advertising to national corporate clients. Record companies now openly pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to radio chains to get their records played. This keeps anyone without a multi-million dollar slush fund from being heard. Many people have turned to unlicensed ("pirate") radio as a way to broadcast the music and news ignored by the big radio chains. The response of the broadcast corporations has been to pressure the Federal Communications Commission to shut down all pirates. Over the past few years, the FCC has raided hundreds of unlicensed stations, often at gunpoint. Technology.... There has been a steady stream of advances in music technology since the end of World War II: stereophonic sound, eight-track, cassette players, compact discs, DVD, etc. The music industry embraced and promoted them all until the most important advance ever--the Internet--came along. A lot of people all over the world use computer technology to listen to and distribute music without paying for it. The response of the giant music monopolies has been to hire people to search the web for "unauthorized" use of music, to sic their lawyers on music-lovers who use the Internet to distribute music or lyrics for free, to prevent artists from putting their music up on the Internet for free, and to get legislation passed to criminalize the free distribution of music. The Stock Market The role of the stock market has changed. Today, the only thing Wall Street wants to hear from a company is how many jobs it's going to eliminate. The more people who hit the street, the higher a company's stock price goes. The increase in poverty and homelessness that results undermines the distribution and enjoyment of music because it removes millions of music consumers from the economy. The stock market is also used as a club to force record companies to censor themselves. Politicians in several states who control pension funds that own record company stock have threatened to dump that stock on the market if music that's critical of society isn't eliminated. For instance, every major record label passed on issuing a pro-choice compilation album featuring several well-known musicians, saying that to release it would cause them to be attacked in the stock market. What can replace the capitalist music industry? There was a time when it was almost impossible to even record music without using a full-blown studio controlled by a record company. Today, it's easy for any musician to make high-quality recordings and to distribute the result via the Internet. In other words, we no longer need the capitalist music industry. For anything. It's obsolete. It's worthless. But the rapidly-growing music underground is only an indicator of what a bright future culture can have. By itself, the underground is not that future. We can't settle for simply finding ways to circumvent the capitalist music industry while most musicians remain in poverty and the attacks against the music underground continue in the form of lawsuits, raids, and punitive legislation. That is a losing strategy. The League of Revolutionaries for a New America (LRNA) proposes that we turn the music underground into an overground of unlimited musical creation and enjoyment. We already have the capability to guarantee the basis for the full creativity of every human being: Food, shelter, medical care, education, and 24 hour a day access to all the tools anyone needs for producing music. It is computer technology that makes the current music underground possible and modern technology also produces an abundance of food, shelter, medicine, and, of course, musical instruments. We simply need to take music and the other essential elements of life out of the hands of the capitalists and place them in the hands of the public. By removing the barriers of the music industry, of the stock market, and of capitalism itself, what naturally wants to happen will be able to happen. The result will be that everyone who wants to create music will be able to. Musicians will be able to be heard by anyone on earth who wants to listen. They won't have to work at degrading day jobs. Music and other forms of culture will finally be free to fully reflect and uplift the human spirit as part of a cooperative society that nurtures humanity every step of the way. - -- The entire contents of Music and Revolution 3 can be found at on the League of Revolutionaries for a New America web site at: http://wwwlrna.org/league/mr/mr3.html Send articles from Music & Revolution via email to everyone you think would be interested. League of Revolutionaries for a New America P.O. 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