The Digital Dilemma: Finding a Path to Salvation

Kyle Bylin, Associate Editor

With the rise of corporatism in the record industry throughout the 80’s and 90’s, executives disconnected themselves from what used to matter the most to them:  the music.  As the business evolved from the long-range, career-building view that artist development allowed to the short-term, hit-making machine that mass-media provided, they grew dependent on a business scheme that was never intended to serve music fans as actual people, who had a personal connection to their culture, but as mere consumers, who were free to make meaning together, as long as they did so as identity seeking individuals.

Yet, by adopting the ethos of MTV, commercial radio, and big-box retail outlets as their own, to create an speculative, abstract model that supported the creation of blockbuster artists, they had disabled the mechanisms through which they might address and correct the collapse of the “real” music industry that had once operated outside the walls of these media conglomerates and multi-national corporations.  This “real” industry is now slowly starting to re-form itself on the Internet, but the social ecology of music culture that took decades or more to develop offline, isn't just going to reappear overnight online.

"their salvation lies in offering services that are more in step
with the emerging social norms of Digital Natives…"

“But make no mistake,” Law Professors John Palfrey and Urs Gasser forewarn in Born Digital.   “We are at a crossroads,” they say.  And, “There are two possible paths before us—one in which we destroy what is great about the Internet and how young people use it, and one in which we make smart choices and head toward a bright future in the digital age.”  For major labels, famous stonewalling technological innovation, their salvation lies in offering services that are more in step with the emerging social norms of Digital Natives, without hindering the development of the culture that could, one day, be their savior.

However, even if the record industry has seen the light and now wants to do the right thing, it will be hard, because so much of the structure that holds together music culture has disappeared and their audience has become fractured to the point where executives can’t simply spend money in hopes that the social ecology that corporatism destroyed will re-form from the ground up.  “The stakes of our actions our very high,” they continue.  The choices that the record industry is making now will preside over how future generations create meaning, understand, and interact with their cultural objects in the digital age.

2.  Money to Burn

To comprehend the importance of the choices that lie ahead and what effects they may have on the development of digital ecology though, we must understand how the structure that held together music culture formed and why it started to disappear in the first place.  That structure, by and large, for many years, consisted of a vast network of local, specialized record shops and home-grown radio stations that had developed over slowly over the course of close to a century.  But it would only take a single decade for corporatism to dismantle the audience for buying recorded music and scatter them throughout the Internet.

In both cases, corporations would emerge and cause the social ecology of music culture to become detached from the aesthetics of the local scene.  Once detached, the corporations began monopolize the market, because they had more money to burn, rendering local record shops and radio stations incapable of competing with them.  As their competition went out of business and the community became dependent on large retailers and commercial radio stations, they began to extract value from the community.  As opposed to the local shops and radio stations that worked to create value for their community.

"songs were chosen for their ability to influence ticket sales,
and the culture of radio deteriorated…"

Under the premise of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, wide-scale industry consolidation happened in radio over the next five years and Clear Channel, having spent about $30 billion in the process, gained ownership of over 1,200 stations nationwide.  With that influence, they began to exercise “highly centralized control over what had been a highly local form of media,” Douglas Rushkoff writes in Life Inc.  In turn, “Diversity of music decreased by every measure, stations lost their local character, songs were chosen for their ability to influence ticket sales, and the culture of radio deteriorated,” he says.

Furthermore, “The centralization of record companies and labels under a few corporate giants,” he argues, “favored the rise of large distributors and retailers and the decline of local, specialized shops.”  During the CD Boom, which lasted from 1984-2000, “labels had shifted their resources away from these steady music-only chains and towards mega-sellers such as Best Buy, Wal-Mart, and Target,” Steve Knopper explains.  But the problem with having corporations, instead of a local scene, is that they “are not dedicated to creating new kinds of music and entertainment in order to promote a richer culture.”

No, Rushkoff continues, “Corporations depend on understanding trends so they can sell people whatever it is they already have.”  Familiarity, rather than “adventuresome music chosen for reasons of taste,” would become the mainstay of commercial radio playlists and big-box retail shelving for years to come, making it increasingly difficult to tell the difference between stations and stores across the country.  Since they all essentially played and stocked the same music, they perpetuated the exact same message.  That to succeed in the record industry meant wishful artists had to fit themselves to the mold set forth.

 3.  Second Chances

Except, we forget that the record industry, as we know it today, was built from the ground up and those involved in this process watched it change “from small-time guys who packed their products into the crates themselves to an international network of distribution executives with MBAs.”  Still, its evolution came at the expense of other social mechanisms.  Mainly, the local, specialized record shops and home-grown radio stations that helped in grow into a “nearly $15-billion-a-year juggernaut.”  Then, once file-sharing tipped, they used their very existence as evidence that this is the way our music culture has always been.

"we work to prop it up by any means necessary,
so incapable are we of imagining an alternative…"

Truth is, “We are deep in thrall of a system no one really likes, no one remembers asking for, yet no one can escape.  It just is,” Rushkoff says.  “And as it begins to collapse around us, we work to prop it up by any means necessary, so incapable are we of imagining an alternative.”  For a century the record industry has controlled almost all aspects of virtually every album that was created.  So why change?  “Corporations,” he further notes, “can’t help but resist any maneuvers that threaten the status quo, even if it means sacrificing long-term profitability in order to protect the authority through which they operate.”

In the place of the commercial radio stations and big-box retail outlets that the record industry favored and the local culture that was left for dead, a new, more chaotic digital ecology is emerging, fueled by the audience that scattered throughout the Internet and gained a deep enthusiasm for the music that they didn’t even know existed.  But the social ecology of music culture that’s starting to reappear online is often confused the pirate community that grew up right alongside it.  Sometimes those people may be one and the same, but, regardless, they are rebuilding what decades of corporatism saw fit to destroy.

“Behind the bad news, there is much to look forward to,” Rushkoff writes about the publishing industry in a way that rings true to the spectacular crash of the record industry in the digital age.  “Our industry has for too long favored those skilled at negotiating the corporate ladder and punished those who simply [write] great [music.] Now that [music] has revealed itself to be a bad growth industry, it is free to rebuild itself as the vibrant, scaled and sustainable business the [listening] public can support.”  This time around though, if corporatism and bad choices dismantle the music culture that’s slowly starting to re-form itself on the Internet, there may be no bright future for the record industry in the digital age, because if they hinder the development of this social ecology, there are no second chances. This is the only one that they’ve got left.

Quotes:

• 2.4, Greg Kot, Ripped 
• 3.1, Steve Knopper, Appetite for Self-Destruction
• 3.1, Greg Kot, LA Times

Additional Reading:

• Killing Itself to Live: How the Record Industry Conceived It’s Own Demise
• Cradle to Grave: The Untold Story of Digital Natives
• Conditioned To Steal: Popular Music and Obsolescence in America
• "The Death of the CD-Release Complex" (Part 1) & (Part 2)

Get In Touch:

• kyle(dot)bylin(at)gmail(dot)com