There was a three-page article in GQ Magazine recently, in which U2′s manager Paul McGuinness makes the case for artists needing to make money from their music in a world where people are downloading it for free.
He called it “How To Save The Music Industry“.
In it, he asks that the sort of clever, innovative people that you might find at Google, Apple and Facebook put their mind to solving the problem. The presupposition, of course, is that we all agree on both the diagnosis of the problem and the need for a solution.
Now, this is the sort of thing that I talk about a lot. It’s my job. I’m Reader in Music Industries Innovation at BCU. And McGuinness does have a very good point, which is that innovation is really important when it comes to the music industries these days. Can’t argue with that, at least.
That same old argument again
There will, of course, be another polarised argument about whether McGuinness is justified in his call for safeguarding the recording industries, or whether it’s outrageous for more successful businesses to be expected to prop up an industry that has essentially failed but refuses to die (and so on, etc.).
There’ll also be arguments about ‘free’, piracy and the ethics of the old record label models. But I think there’s a more interesting (hypothetical, perhaps, but important) conversation to be had, which is this:
Let’s assume McGuinness and his innovative friends in other industries are able to ‘fix’ or ‘save’ the music business to his satisfaction. What would that actually mean?
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Let’s say that McGuinness was able to put the record business back together again. What would that mean for the music industries as a whole (not just the record business)?
What would it mean for young artists? For consumers? For the increasing majority of people who bridge the gap between ‘producer’ and ‘consumer’? For innovation? For culture?
Because I think the tension here is not between the music industry and downloaders, or even between the music industry and the major telcos that are profiting from the public hunger for fast broadband.
The tension seems to be more between the read-only culture of the 20th century, with a very clear revenue stream – and a far more participatory (albeit perhaps less obviously monetisable) read/write culture.
Case in point
It just so happens that I have a handy example I can draw on:
People like my son Jake, for instance, can now make and distribute music in ways that would have been utterly inaccessible to them 20 years ago.
But let’s suppose Jake has no desire to become a rockstar, and that nor does he see making music as a career any more than I see photography as a potential career for me (even though I love taking and sharing pictures).
Making music is something he enjoys and is passionate about, and connecting with other people over that music as a creative outlet is something that obviously means a lot.
You can pay for his music should you wish (though you’re welcome to it without paying) – but the idea of ‘protecting his income’ is essentially meaningless. He doesn’t feel he has the right to make money from his music – though he does feel he has the opportunity.
But that opportunity comes with baggage. In fact, it’s utterly disruptive to a world in which bands struggle to be discovered by record labels, have world-wide tours and make careers in the public spotlight.
And yes, of course, I know that world is largely mythical. I know that most famous bands have not made money anywhere near commensurate to the value they have created. I’m not having that discussion here.
I guess what I’d like to discuss is whether it’s a good trade off.
Hypothetically speaking – what’s better? A world in which only professionals can create, distribute and make a good living selling music to consumers who pay them every time; or a world in which anyone can be a creator if they want to be, and find an audience if they care to?
Would we prefer a world with a hundred U2s in it, or a world with a million Jakes? Or is there something in between those two that we could start to work towards here?
Right now:
You should follow me on Twitter here
Tagged: Jake, Music, Music Industry, U2
No Trackbacks
14 Comments
PS: Yes, I know it’s a false dichotomy – that’s what makes it hypothetical.
how a single band can make each of its members and the manager rich beyond anyone’s wildest dreams and still lead to them worrying about ‘the future’ (given that they’ve just done their biggest tour ever), is baffling. McGuinness is an astonishing fantasist, and probably quite sad about the state of play. Which is heartbreaking, really. Given what U2 could do with all that dough if they grasped the new opportunities and decided to ‘use some of their wealth to make sure loads of incredible music exists’ – because micro-funding of projects like Jake’s – grants to make music and an open platform for discovery – is the kind of thing that U2 could do for the cost of transatlantic hop on their private jet, and keep an entire musical ecosystem going for years. Instead, they continue to rape the planet with unsustainable tours, and site Hollywood as an example of a struggling industrial model, at a time when movie gross records are being broken left and right.
It’s really sad. Oh, and gimme a million jakes any day. In fact, I’d take 10 Jakes for 100 U2s, thanks :)
“…can now make and distribute music in ways that would have been utterly inaccessible to them 20 years ago.”
I’d argue 5 years ago, perhaps even less.
In 5 more years we will marvel at the new opportunities affforded to musicians because of the internet, and wonder what all the fuss was about when people were trying to “save” the music industry.
I had this very discussion (or at least one close to it) with my Uni lecturer last year.
He gave us as reading material an article citing the punk movement as the moment at which music making (“production”, if you like) truly came into the realm of the “consumer”. Both the article and my lecturer saw this as a negative thing for “profesional musicians” such as ourselves.
My argument was that the impact for “us” (as a class of BMus students) depended on how we viewed ourselves. I think myself extremely lucky to be able to make music fairly inexpensively, and release & promote it for free. In my mind, I am an amateur (in terms of artistic skill) who has been lucky enough to encounter the technology to make a living in music (thus making me a “professional”).
He didn’t get my point.
I’ll take 1,000 Radioheads, 100,000 Jakes, and 2 U2s please.
As rhetorical questions go, that’s pretty much a no-brainer.
@Steve — and cheap at twice the price!
@Nick – Well you’ve jinxed it now!
Get busy, be glorious, and if that fails, write about it.
hat U2 could do with all that dough if they grasped the new opportunities and decided to ‘use some of their wealth to make sure loads of incredible music exists’
U2 and The Ireland Funds announced July 20th that they will finance a scheme to offer children and young people in Ireland the opportunity to learn a musical instrument and/or avail of vocal tuition. U2 will provide €5m to ensure the national rollout of the instrumental and vocal tuition elements on a phased basis to 2015.
I’m sorry but your son’s music is terrible.I’m not U2′s greatest fan but I prefer one U2 to a million Jakes. Some people are just more talented at music than others and the economic incentive for them to devote themselves to their talent should be protected, not destroyed by the greed of the technology industry.
Astute observation here.
Thanks to the big consumer hardware stores in the US, I can be an amateur plumber, carpenter or an electrician, but I will never be professional contractor. I can also go out and grow or hunt my own food, but I will never be a supermarket. The list goes on. I would wager that if we graphed our ability to approximate a professional service or utility, the closer we come to approximation…the more we consume of the professional service or utility. Every time I attempt to upgrade or fix my home, I end up calling in a professional, and every time I grow something, I end up going to the supermarket; etc. While not being disruptive, anything that enables approximation drives consumption of the real thing? Thoughts?
I agree with your observations, Bruce Warila, but not your conclusion. Because I hear one of the million Jake’s, does not make me buy one of the U2 caliber artist songs. In fact, I think that because there are a million Jakes has made NEW music in some ways more inaccessible to me. It’s overwhelming. And it’s indeed, as a producer of original music, it’s overwhelming for those whom I’m trying to get to listen, even just once. Talk about competition for shelf space. The information age has us all inundated and bombarded and time is precious. I’m 37 and not in college anymore, I DON’T HAVE TIME to weed through a million Jake’s to find what I like. And, even though technology has tried to make it easy for me to find new music that I would like (Genius buttons, Last.fm stations, Pandora, etc…), and I have purchased individual new songs I heard through these mediums, somehow it doesn’t seem like I’m getting the same amount of good new music as I was in the past. In fact, here in Atlanta, the majority of FM stations fall back on artists whose careers were established before the last 5 years, and I would say the same goes for most of the satellite radio stations. The only truly Mainstream new music seems to be coming from hip hop, country and Justin Beiber. Shit.
New communication and publication technology always leads to a massive increase in new, and especially amateur content. Some of it terrible, of course.
Before the printing press, as Clay Shirky points out, every book was a masterpiece. But even though there was the ‘terrible downside’ of many, many books to choose from – dreadful romance novels, self-published vanity books and a whole bunch of other literary works that weren’t on a par with the classics of antiquity – it allowed for new forms to emerge that hadn’t existed before, for experimentation to take place, and for new masterpieces to come about that would have been impossible otherwise.
Same thing’s happening here. Whatever you think of U2 (I’m actually listening to them right now – their Greatest Hits are playing in the Helsinki cafe where I’m writing this) – the question’s not about whether you like one type of music over another, or prefer professionalism to amateurism. The question’s about scale.
Do you want to live in a world where there can only be 100 U2s?
@ Johnson, I believe I miss-communicated? I was implying that it would be the Jakes of the world that would purchase U2′s music as they attempted to approximate it, and not the listeners of Jake’s music. Sorry about the confusion.
@catullusrl – Don’t apologise, thanks for taking the time to listen to my music. All my music so far is a work in progress. If I’d been making music since 1976 then I’m sure I’d be a little better at it too.