Sep 16, 2013 |
“When was the last time we had an instrumental UK number one?” I ask, apropos of nothing in particular.
A little out of the blue to be sure, but the question had popped into my head and the topic is entirely in keeping with the kind of abstract ‘media, popular music & culture’ themed conversation that tends to get lazily batted about on a Friday afternoon in our office like a game of keepy uppy with a partially deflated helium balloon.
It is, after all, a research centre for media and culture – and Craig and I tend to handle the music industry side of things – so basically, this is more or less what we do for a living.
“Ooh, that’s a good one,” says Craig. “One for Twitter.”
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Jun 14, 2013 |
Peter Jesperson inspects the tape vaults at New West Records
A few years ago, I was obsessed with an idea. This is nothing unusual. It happens a lot. It had to do with music, copyright and technology – so no surprises there.
It was going to be a book, but I wasn’t ready to write it. It was going to be a campaign, but I wasn’t ready to lead it. It was going to be a major project, but I wasn’t ready to undertake it.
Starting to think that I might be now. Or at least – I’m increasingly surrounded by people whose set of parameters about what is and isn’t possible in the world is much grander than I’ve been used to, and it’s starting to rub off.
The obsession was something I called Deleting Music. The basic premise is this:
There are millions of songs on iTunes, Spotify, Deezer, Pandora, and so on. Tens of millions. But as impressive as that seems, this is just the tip of the iceberg of our musical heritage.
Most recorded music is not available for sale, is completely unavailable to listen to and does not generate income for anyone. It sits in vaults, unreleased. We’re talking decades of back catalogue master tapes. The history of both popular music culture and unpopular music culture.
95% or more of everything ever released by record labels is utterly inaccessible to the public, and makes no money whatsoever for the music industries or, for that matter, musicians. That number again: 95%. And that’s a conservative estimate.
But what’s worse is that most of this stuff exists in a form that decays over time. Magnetic tape does not last forever, and no matter how well looked after this stuff is, it is becoming irretrievably damaged. All of it. And we’re letting that happen.
We have the capacity and the technology to stop that from happening. Tapes can be digitised. It’s not a trivial problem and there are hundreds of thousands – if not millions – of person hours involved in the task of retrieving, indexing, cataloguing and digitising those tapes. But we can do it.
We can do it with the whole history of books. We can do it with cinema. I’m interested in doing it with music.
But here’s the big problem: even though this music is not commercially valuable to the record labels – or rather, because of that – there is no reason for them to actively preserve this music.
Some companies are more proactive than others – major labels are more of a serious problem than independents simply because of catalogue depth and the primacy of corporate profit motive over all other considerations.
They own the recordings as assets of the business, which means that nobody else can have access. But they do not see a commercial upside to investing in preserving or making available recordings that nobody has been interested in for 30, 40 or 50 years, so they simply do not bother. Why would they?
Other than the fact that the tapes fall apart…
For want of a dividend to investors, the vast majority of our recorded music heritage is being systematically deleted through neglect.
Like I say – I don’t think this is a trivial problem to solve. It’s a complex one. There’s a tangle of legal rights to deal with. There’s a technological and workflow solution to devise. There is a case to be made at a policy level as well as an entire industry to get on board.
But I think that there’s a way to begin to address this problem. To save much of what hasn’t already been lost. I believe a case can be made at a policy level. I think that a solution can be devised that intervenes and arrests that deterioration process. Most importantly – and this is the thing that has changed for me – I’m beginning to think that a profit incentive can be developed through innovation, which will start to remove the blocks that currently prevent this from happening.
It is not up to us what is of interest to the cultural archaeologists of the future. We can’t select to preserve only music recordings on the grounds of their popularity or commercial viability, because we don’t know that this will continue to be the criteria by which our culture’s musical history will be measured.
Museums will tell you they are as interested in the artefacts that ancient cultures discarded as they are in those that were treasured.
Our responsibility is to make sure that as much of our culture is preserved as is possible. We can learn from it. We can build on it. It can inspire new works. It can be studied and used to illuminate understandings of who we are and what we value.
Because even though we don’t necessarily have an obvious commercial incentive to save everything, and nor do we currently have the technological and legal means by which we might achieve this aim, we sure as hell have the storage capacity and the moral imperative.
Music is not just entertainment commodity. It speaks to who we are as a society and a culture. It’s time to stop sitting on our hands while we watch the vast majority of our musical history simply crumble to dust.
Let’s solve this problem.
Thanks to Craig Hamilton of Harkive, Jez Collins of the Birmingham Music Archive and Simon Grigg of Audio Culture for reminding me just how strongly I felt about this. Time to get to work. I’ll let you know as soon as I know just exactly what that work might entail…
Apr 6, 2013 |
I’ve started hosting couchsurfers again. If you’re not familiar with the concept, basically people travelling who need a place to stay can come and sleep on your sofa, your floor, or – if you have one – your spare bed.
They get to stay for free, and you get to share their stories, hear about their travels, share a meal and maybe make new friends. And, the deal is, you get to go and sleep on other people’s couches when you go and travel too.
Generally speaking, it’s a bunch of really interesting (predominantly young) people who are curious and want to explore the world, but don’t have a massive budget to do so – and aren’t letting that stop them.
In the case of Latvian couchsurfers Liga and Liva (pictured above), that was pretty much the case. Liva has been living in the UK for a little while and her friend Liga is working in Slovenia. They haven’t seen each other for ages, and so they decided to do a bit of travel together. Couchsurfing was how they could make that happen.
And it was an absolute delight to host them. I learned about the 4-yearly Latvian folk festival, which is a massive deal, heard some Latvian popular music, talked about food and culture and had dinner with them in my living room.
I left them to it after a while so they could hang out, catch up and not have to speak English all the time – and this morning after breakfast, we all went to the Kings Heath Farmers Market together before they set off into town to do some more exploring.
Next week, I’m hosting a young Norwegian guy who is hitch-hiking around Europe. We’ll see if he manages to get here on the agreed dates.
Don’t know if I’ll make it a regular thing, because as enjoyable as it is, it does knock you out of the routine a fair bit, and you need to have not much else going on in order to make the most of it. But from time to time, it’s a real treat to have new people around.
If you’re interested, check the website.
Aug 24, 2010 |
There’s a piece in the Guardian in which DJ and film-maker Don Letts dispenses a few observations about culture and society.
There’s one line in it that some friends of mine on Twitter (professional musicians and DJs, as it happens) have seized upon and retweeted as a bit of a ‘hell yeah!’ to the bumper sticker soundbite that Letts has come up with:
“The downside of affordable technology is mediocrity.”
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Mar 23, 2010 |
Photo by Dunechaser
The record industry is in turmoil. We’ve known that for a long time. But today, the news comes that Guy Hands is desperately trying to stave off a firesale by doing some sort of deal with the other major record labels to manage its catalogue.
I’ve been reading a book recently (actually, listening to the 21-hour audiobook) called Too Big To Fail by Andrew Ross Sorkin. It’s about (among other things) the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the impact on the global financial system. Not my usual choice of subject matter, but the storytelling in it is pretty great.
Anyway – the parallels between Lehman boss Richard Fuld trying to do last minute deals at any cost 18 months ago in an effort to save Lehman and “avert economic catastrophe” (as if he wasn’t already in the middle of one), and the current EMI situation are striking to say the least.
EMI needs to find £150m by next week in order to stop Citigroup taking control. But the choices are not simply bankruptcy or collusion. There’s a third way. EMI could be nationalised.
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