The Recording Industry: A Historical Perspective
It has only been possible for musicians to make money from recording
performances for a relatively short period of time. Although technologically
possible since Emerson it was not until the mid nineteen twenties that
gramophones were aimed at a mass market (Norman 1998). As the recording
industry developed the sale of classical music made enough money for the
particular companies to grow but few individual musicians could refer to the
sale of their recordings as primary sources of income. It was not until the
nineteen fifties that recordings of particular performances were bought by
sufficient numbers of people to make a primary source of income for
musicians. Up until around sixty years ago then, musicians made money by
performing, not by recording their performances and selling that recording.
The Beatles were the first group to become recording rather than performing
artists. From Sergeant Pepper onwards the group stopped touring and the
albums became the performances (MacDonald 1995).
When the Beatles launched “The Beatles” commonly known as “the white
album” it was principally available on vinyl LP. As cassettes became more
popular the situation became slightly more complicated and we witnessed the
first great panic to seize the recording industry. Home taping, consumers were
assured, was killing music. Although Beatles fans might have thought that
they had bought the white album, the recording industry’s position was that
they had in fact merely bought a piece of circular plastic with grooves cut into
it. The recording industry still owned the music and if the music became
available in another format then consumers would have to buy that as well.
And following the development of the compact disc this is exactly what many
consumers did. They bought for a second time the albums they had
previously owned in the LP format. This was, of course, a very profitable
situation for the recording industry which made as much if not more from its
back catalogue during the 1980s than it did from new recordings. So it was in
Men In Black that Tommy Lee Jones could show Will Smith a newer, tinier
music disc and tell him that this was going to replace CDs “Now” he remarks
“I’ll have to buy the white album again”
But the new format was not a newer smaller CD as the makers of that film
imagined. The mini-disc never really took off as a replacement for CDs. The
new format was not a tangible object, it was a computer file. Marsall McLuhan
famously argued that the medium is the message. The results of industrial
automation were job losses regardless of the kind of machine in question
(Mcluhan in Munns and Rajan eds 1995). In this sense the iPod is a
fundamentally subversive technology. The final layer of its justly celebrated
packaging is a cellophane wrapper bearing the inscription “Don’t steal music”
in four languages. However, when it is connected to a MAC it immediately
copies every song from the iTunes library into its memory without any
reference to whether the music has been paid for or not: it is essentially
amoral despite the manufactures admonitions. Increasingly music users are
engaging in moral debates in order to justify and validate their experiences of
technology. The British government have launched a music manifesto which
will teach children that file sharing is wrong (Lettice 2004). However the
interpretation of file sharing as theft can be and is contested (Woodworth
2004). Some music consumers then are beginning to think that they have
bought the white album enough now...
Although it is commonly argued that personal stereos are alienating, turning
what was once a communal activity (listening to music) into a personal one
and making public spaces private, the scenario illustrates the ways in which
experiences of technology can be as intense and moving as any experience
of art.
“at its height it [experience] signifies complete interpenetration of self and the
world of objects and events” (Dewey 1934: 19)
The user brings their own past, constantly changing expectations and
reflections to bear on an experience. The user’s personal history, knowledge
and values then play a large part in the experience and the technology allows
for the expression of a range of values.
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