Reframing The Debate
Has the music business been ruined by the Internet, with sales of CDs in the dumper and executives out of work, or are we at the advent of a golden era, with music cheap and plentiful for the masses and performers handsomely rewarded for their efforts?
You know what the RIAA says. We’re headed for nuclear winter and if the government doesn’t step in, there will be no music and no money and the country will be poorer for it.
But is this true?
You may have caught the story that the NTSB wants to ban cell phone use in automobiles. But instead of taking the tack that driving and talking/texting is equivalent to getting behind the wheel drunk, they’re now saying cell phone use in the car is like smoking. It’s addictive. You remember smoking, right? That cool activity that has been turned into a social taboo? Smokers are now pariahs. The NTSB is reframing the debate.
Is the music scene chaotic and barely comprehensible to much of the public? I’ll posit it is. But that does not mean we must return to a rigid world of tight playlists and MTV videos. Hell, MTV has moved on, videos have gone to the Web. As for radio, there are numerous alternatives. Are you saying alternatives are bad? Or are you taking the RIAA position…we’re fat cat despots raping our customers while telling them we know best!
Talking about reframing the debate… One can argue strongly that the RIAA companies are like the Middle East rulers, no different from Mubarak in Egypt and Gaddafi in Libya. And that Shawn Fanning was more akin to the fruit vendor in Tunisia than a thief.
Yes, we’re living in the midst of a revolution. Have been for ten years. And anybody with a stake in the old game is inside the ivory tower, behind the walls, struggling to prop up an ancient edifice that the public has no use for.
It’s not only the purveyors, it’s the artists too. They’re famous for bitching. That synthesizers and drum machines would put them out of business. But forward-thinkers embrace innovation. Elton John used synthesizers and without drum machines, we’d lack most of hip-hop, most of modern music. And if you think that’s a good thing, you haven’t listened to the new music of the classic rockers, to say it’s mediocre would be charitable. In tech they say to innovate or die, why should it be different in music?
But it’s not only the established players, wannabes, complain they can’t get a deal, that no one will fund their efforts. This is like serfs complaining they don’t want to own the land. You now have freedom and you want to go back to being a slave?
The victors in the new world will be those who jettison ancient thinking, who stop lamenting the disappearance of the past and embrace those elements of what was that still survive and meld them with the new to create something appealing to the public.
Instead of complaining that no one will pay, lawmakers should be told to keep their hands off, that we’ve got it under control, that we’re driving the Ferrari down the highway having a blast of a time, that it’s a new golden era!
