The Year 2015:
Kid: People used to actually pay for music?

Old person/me: Yes. Yes they did.

Kid: Were you just stupid?

Old person/me: No! We were held hostage by inefficient systems of getting the music to us. We had to go outside, drive far and buy discs and plastic never knowing what we would find or how much we would have to pay.

Kid: The olden days sure sucked

Present Day:

On Thursday June 12, Canada’s Digital Milliennium Copyright Act (DMCA) Bill C-61 was barfed out of generic politician Jim Prentice’s mouth. It was simultaneously vomit and the sputum of an industry that voraciously profited from inefficient music delivery systems to become the bloated, pussy mess it is today.

Music delivery systems have recently become incredibly efficient. No packaging, no traveling, no geographical limitations. Twenty years ago, I had to order Cowboy Junkies tapes from Columbia Music mail order and wait two weeks for it to be delivered. I only knew about the band because I stayed up until midnight on Fridays to watch skip patterns of Muchmusic’s City Limits. I thought static was part of the song. I listened to that tape, The Trinity Sessions, repeatedly for two years until it had become an echo in my brain. I longed for their first album, White Off Earth Now and a whole host of other music I saw on City Limits. But I could not find them anywhere.

File sharing, which actually began before I was born in 1972 with Sneakernet (physically carrying a floppy disk around), changed my life. In 1999, I discovered Roky Erikson on Napster. He understood the horror isn’t scary. He inspired me to make horror shorts and a feature film Bloodchalker. I adored Roky so much I bought all his music, his book Openers II and went to his birthday party and ate Alien-shaped cake with him.

But, I don’t know anyone who buys all their music.

There is also a great deal of concrete proof that numbers of downloads have no correlation with album sales. But let’s imagine that soon everyone will flatly refuse to pay for music. And that the gangrenous music industry does nothing to stop its disease.

Will we be forced to live in retro-music special pertpetuity? Will future generations be namby-pamby for HMV and CD singles because they were the only things driving the creation of new music?

No. Music production does not hinge entirely on income-generating potential. According to data analysis by Kansas Professor of Business Koleman Strumpf:

In 2005, less than one in five albums were released on a major label, and even among those releases, fewer than one in fifteen went gold (the usual measure of record success). With such daunting odds, recording an album may have seemed like a pointless task. But in that year, nearly 44,000 albums were released—enough to provide almost three consecutive years of listening. Regardless of what happens to companies that produce and distribute music, I am sure that recorded music will continue to be made.

Anyone involved in the culture production game knows that it is not thirst for economic success that fuels creativity. One could argue that a huge motivation will be lost when the promise of a major record deal is not a dangling carrot for new artists. But, having lived for nearly a decade among actual working musicians, I observed that their goal was never to “get signed” but rather to become independently successful through performing and touring. And after many major label recording artists, most recently and successfully, Trent Reznor, have made very visible and assertive stands against the recording industry, it is clear that getting signed has become a curse to many artists in the context of emerging digital technologies.

One aspect of the future of music is certain: freedom. Free music. Free ads. Free sharing. The Canadian DMCA is more a threat to political leaders in Ottawa than it is to this future. It will have the opposite effect and cause the Canadian digerati to become even more large and powerful. It will also cause digital Canadians to become entirely disenchanted with the Canadian government.

Unfortunately, in the meantime if Bill C-61 passes there are many who could get hit with culture-shift shrapnel. If you share your music with anyone—family, friend or torrent user Kissyphur—you could face fines of up to $20,000. That means that all you parents out there who don’t even know what torrents or Pirate Bay are had better start a special savings account: The majority of Canadian kids say that downloading music is their favourite Internet activity. Copyright for Canadians makes it easy to complain to your local member of parliament. So everyone go do it. Now.

Tags: Copyright, file sharing, online music

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Posted on Monday, June 16th, 2008 at 9:42 am. Follow comments through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comment or trackback.