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Two more digital dilemmas: Who are we?

Mulling over all the untyped and half-formed ideas spilling out around my response to Peter's recent blog, his celebration of the rise of the digital single, two more notions kept insisting that attention be paid.

One of the presumptions behind music criticism is that the critic and the listener are attending to identical texts. That is, that we're all listening to the same record, and in the same sequence. But we seem to be moving toward a world in which listeners download songs a la carte and sequence them according to their own sensibility, and that presumption seems likely soon to fade and, with it, the presumption of a common listening experience.

While Dave Marsh and others (notably my colleagues David Cantwell and Bill Friskics-Warren, in their book Heartaches by the Number) argue eloquently for the possibilities of long-form writing about individual songs, the premise of the traditional musician feature is that we have and share the text of an album to discuss, and all the doors it opens. If criticism is now to be focused on individual tracks, I fear we will continue to see one- and two-sentence reviews and an even greater emphasis on celebrity journalism. Which ain't writing, it's typing, to borrow a friendly cliche. And, anyway, if we start writing features about singles, won't we end up emulating the British music press, turning our fangs on pop stars before they've had even a chance to create a measurable body of work?

This also poses a somewhat technical question for we gatekeepers; most stories in most music magazines are written around the occasion of a new release, and artists are made available to we ink-stained wretches because the labels have an interest in spreading word of that release. But what constitutes a release in the digital era, much less a release schedule? There is a certain useful Darwinism to obliging artists or their agents to actually mail a copy of the CD to critics. And fairly accurate judgments can be made based on packaging and who does the sending; that's how the triage of listening gets done. Do we need now to study the hierarchy of websites? Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

(I suppose there is no small possibility we gatekeepers will be deemed unnecessary, too, but art without a critical tradition is just advertising. And even advertising has a critical tradition at this point.)

And then, of course, are we all listening to the same music? It seem likely to me that artists will take advantage of the intangibility of digital music to alter mistakes, change words, doodle and noodle on what would otherwise be finished songs. I suppose this is called interactivity and is, in many circles, considered to be a good thing. But imagine that a critic notes an awkward phrase in a song, the songwriter concurs (which would be a shock, but might happen) and alters that phrase, thereby obliging the watchful critic to rewrite and, once again, change history.

Are we even listening to the same thing? Doesn't the very nature of file compression and competing reproductive technologies (sorry) make it even less likely that the sonic issues critics attend to, particularly on reissues, will become increasingly murky? (And, yes, I realize that critics couldn't presume that their readers had identical stereos, but there was at least a more or less identifiable standard for good sound which has now eroded.)

Here's the other problem with a singles economy: The labels -- the big ones who stroke the star-making machine -- can't recoup their expenses selling digital singles. The marketing budgets which fund videos and radio tours and press junkets, hair and make-up and "Good Morning America" appearances and all the rest run to seven figures in the creation and promotion of major stars. Either the single has to become much more expensive to purchase (which, I suspect, nobody thinks is a good idea), or consumers have to buy albums because the promotional costs can be amortized much more easily over a $10 or $20 purchase than over a .99 download.

Now, I can already hear a number of readers celebrating: No more Shania Twain, or whomever! (Or, good riddance to the labels.) Part of the fabric which knits our scattered society together is the common cultural language created by singers and songwriters whose work reaches a mass audience. (And I shan't trouble to say one more time -- at least not at length -- that it is the quality of the work, not the quantity sold, which matters.) And the financial success of the Shanias of the world has historically funded the careers of less-affluent, less accessible artists. Do we really wish to leave the creation of stars to "American Idol"? We need the common language that big hit records provide, even "Who Let The Dogs Out?". And I think, though their behavior has often been reprehensible, we need big record labels.

I continue also to believe that the now-inevitable transfer to a digital ecology is a disaster for music, for all of us. A system has been created by and for 18-year-olds who don't believe they should pay for intellectual property. In doing so we have destroyed the brick and mortar world in which new artists were incubated, in which casual consumers occasionally succumbed to the temptations of in-store play or celebrity or just simple good taste and bought a record once in a while. We have also slaughtered countless jobs which allowed young and struggling musicians to make a kind of a living surrounded by music all day, listening to what is new and old, ingesting sounds they'd not have sought elsewhere, socializing with like-minded people, meeting and greeting their potential audience. We have destroyed hundreds of community meeting places, and sitting at this screen typing to imaginary friends is no substitute for walking into Second Time Around on Saturday afternoon when Uncle Kenny had just found a new treasure and had to play it as loudly as possible.

My in-laws and my father and countless other casual consumers of music with whom I am acquainted are never going to go online and seek out songs. They don't have time for that, and they view the computer as a tool, not as an entertainment device. As do I. By converting the ecology of the music business to a download-only system the industry has just cut off the casual consumer, perhaps for all time. Not to mention those who live in rural areas cut off from the highspeed internet we take for granted.

In some ways this is all the culmination of the industry's broad failure to acknowledge the interest and buying power of mature consumers. O Brother and Buena Vista Social Club were blips on the radar, in the end, but lots of people who didn't typically buy music responded to those albums. The industry sniffed and called it a fluke, rather than embracing the possibility that adults, too, will still spend money and time listening to good music.

We just don't want to get fooled again. What's new is not necessarily what's best.

Posted by grant on May 1, 2007 8:21 AM | Permalink