The Social Music Evolution – Part 2
In the final of part of this two part essay, frequent Hypebot contributor Kyle Bylin continues his look at the on going
evolution of the music industry. The essay is inspired by the work of Talcott Parsons, a former Harvard professor who wrote that society was in a
natural state of equilibrium or balance. When changes occur in one part of society there must
be adjustments in the others. Bylin examines how the music industry is evolving using the same four distinct processes that Parson used to illustrate how change occurred in societies. Read Part 1 here.
Stage 3 – Inclusion occurs when groups previously excluded from society are now accepted.
- The possibility for the full inclusion of The New Musical Middle Class in a music industry that allows more sustainability and a more proven financial future. If not the inclusion of The New Musical Middle Class, what else?
Stage Four – Value Generalization is the development of new values that tolerate and legitimate a greater range of activities which leads to increasing the legitimization of the ever more complex system.
- The music industry reaches a state of equilibrium and the newly formed parts coexist with the main system.
Conclusion: Where Is The Musical Middle Class?
The image above is a social systems paradigm of The Musical Middle Class
which examines what functions the various elements of the social system
perform in regard to the entire system.
This image evolved from my previous research into The Evolution of
Tribal Curiosity. As you move up the four classifications
(Hunter-Gather; Tribe; Chiefdom; and State) their realm of social
influence increases along with their discretion of what makes “good
music.”
The Musical Middle Class was placed between Chiefdom and Tribes,
because they are the core supporters of it’s existence. Without the
support from Independent Leaders (Opinion and Company Based) and from
what we’ve come to understand as more organized communities of
followers or Tribes, it wouldn’t be able to sustain its growth from
side to side. Often defined by its closer relationship with those two
groups and it’s levels of sustainability, ownership, and control, the
one thing unclear about it is: How much income does it generate?
While that is the biggest question that challenges those In Support Of
The Musical Middle Class, there was a question that was equally
important to me: Why do we believe it exists in the fist place?
The Digital Music Revolution reflects on how the music industry was
impacted by technological advances which changed the way music is
consumed, but it fails to provide insight into its social changes. By
evaluating the four stages a society goes through as it evolves, I saw
opportunity to apply what I had learned to the changes in the music
industry. Within this newfound opportunity, I discovered new insights
as to why this space in the middle of the industry was opening and
growing, which eluded to the creation of The Musical Middle Class.
This in turn led me to believe that what we are experiencing is no
longer a Digital Music Revolution, but a more apparent Social Music
Evolution.
@Bill-Thank you and yes I have seen that post. Perhaps some undercurrent of inspiration took place as I do read all of his work as well, but I purposely took a more generalized approach because I didn’t want to try and generate the future. Stage Two was about illustrating the strength of empowering curiosity as I imagined it.
@Scott-Thanks for commenting and I’m glad you would like to see the rise of the middle class as well. I’m a songwriter myself, so maybe I’ll talk more about our future another post.
@Keith-I really enjoyed the music on your site and thank you for commenting. Hopefully the second part brought all the ideas together. Sounds like your business is doing well.
Interesting angle on what’s going on with music these days. Although I don’t fully understand the diagram and the implications of your study.
I’ll give it a re-read.
Thanks
It’s very possible that I might have buried the lead.
In Theory… Because of the drastic changes that have occurred in the music industry in the last ten years it has become an unbalanced society. In order to reach back to equilibrium Parsons alluded that adjustments must be made in all other parts to allow the social change to occur. When social change occurs in a society or industry it’s possible that subsystems are created and in order to become balanced these new systems must be included in the main system.
According to the diagram, what we know the music industry is that its a system that functions from the top down or the bottom up. The money is found at the top and the struggle being at the bottom.
Due to the increase of complexity in the main system or Major Labels, what the diagram eludes to is that due to the four processes of evolution or social change, there could have been a middle system or middle class of musicians created.
The system as a whole has since been adjusting to service or include this middle space, but equilibrium won’t be reached until its included and new values are created to tolerate this new part.
I further challenged, that if not a middle class of musicians, than what has the social change created? If the way we interact with music has changed and then how is that impacting the industry?
The idea is to look at it from a social perspective rather than a technology based change.