Recording Bias

Music copyright is elitist. Many theorists have made this claim. They have pointed to the fact that copyright law tends to equate music with its notated form. It therefore over-privileges aspects that can be written down - principally melody and harmony – while it deals unfairly with those elements that can only be loosely captured in a score, such as rhythm and timbre. It is suited to classical music; it is not suited to popular music.

There is evidence of this bias in case law. The Spandau Ballet case, for example, stemmed from a dispute between guitarist Gary Kemp, who claimed that he was the sole author of the group’s songs because he initiated them, and the other members of the band, who argued that they should be regarded as co-authors because they fleshed out Kemp’s compositions with their musical arrangements. Park J found in Kemp’s favour, noting that

A composer can ‘hear’ the sound of his composition in his mind before he ever hears it played. Beethoven could hear his music in this sense even when he was deaf. When Mr. Kemp was devising his songs the sound which he had in his musical consciousness must surely have been the sound they would have when performed by Spandau Ballet, not the sound they would have when sung by Mr. Kemp alone to the accompaniment just of his own guitar.

This decision rested on the conception of the genius romantic composer.

            It should nevertheless be remembered that most songwriting agreements do not come to court. In addition, songwriters are free to make their own decisions about musical worth. They can credit groove and timbre if they want to. In fact, common practice amongst hip-hop and R&B composers is to give 50% of the compositional credits to the author(s) of the rhythm track. If there is an elitist bias, it is at a judicial level; it is not enforced by the legislation itself.

            There is a classical music bias that has been overlooked, however. Academics have focused on the copyright in songs. They have not addressed the elitism of sound recording copyright, which it could be argued has had more profound effects. It is in this area that the bias is legislatively embedded.

Sound recordings have regularly been equated with film in copyright law. There is a fundamental difference, nonetheless. Films have the possibility of two copyrights. There is one that recognises financial and organisational skills, which is awarded to the producer, and another that recognises the original creativity in films, which is usually awarded to the director. In contrast, there is usually only one copyright in sound recordings. It recognises financial input and organisational skills, and is commonly claimed by the record company.

Why is there no creative copyright in sound recordings? Classical music can take some of the blame. Film directors have been awarded a copyright because of their genius. These auteurs take the base material of the film script and convert it into a new artistic work (this conception of directors is itself a reflection of the romantic bias of copyright law). If sound recording were to receive a similar copyright, evidence would need to be provided of creative individuals who take the musical composition and by virtue of their ‘personal and original character’ create a new work, which can be judged to have artistic merit of its own.

If we look at popular music, we can see this happening all the time. Records are valued as much for their production values and the recording ability of the musicians as they are for the underlying song. The producer and the musicians are not following the written instructions of a score; they are making musical and sonic decisions of their own. In contrast, when we turn to classical music, we are not meant to hear the recording studio as a compositional tool. Instead, classical music production is dominated by the ‘concert hall ideal’. The recording is supposed to sound as close to a live performance as possible. The job of the record producer is to be unobtrusive. Similarly, the job of the performers is to follow the score. Their creative genius should be submerged; they are obeying the instructions of the musical composer.

Sound recording copyright has been legislated with classical music in mind. Recording activity has been deemed to be passive at best and damaging at worst. As such, it is not considered worthy of a creative copyright of its own. It is beyond the bounds of the Berne Convention, the international agreement that assesses the creative rights of authors in literary and artistic works. In 1908, British delegates to the Convention suggested an author’s copyright in sound recordings, similar to the one that was being created for films. Their proposal was rejected. Other delegates believed that sound recording was a ‘travesty’, stating:

the composer suffers at present moral injury, from the fact that his work is usually deformed by the necessities of adaptation to the instrument [the gramophone]; the orchestration is re-arranged, melodies are modified because certain notes register badly; ‘scenas’ are cut, and arranged to suit the length of playing of the disc.

In Britain in the early 1950s, members of Gregory Committee assessed the legislation of sound recording copyright by attending the recording of a Mozart symphony. They reported that there was a ‘very high degree of skill (in part technical, in part musical) called into play in recording music’, but concluded that recordings ‘approximate more closely to industrial products than to original literary or musical works’. As such, in the consequent 1956 Copyright Act there was only one copyright in sound recordings, which was awarded to the manufacturer. This remains the case in current British legislation. The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act recognises the director and the producer as separate authors of a film. When it comes to sound recording, however, there is a solitary recipient of copyright: ‘the person by whom the arrangements necessary for the making of the recording ... are undertaken’.

Brazil, Chile, China, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Iceland, Peru, Turkey, Uruguay, Zaire and the countries of the European Union all recognise two copyrights in film. They have one that recognises creative skill, while the other recognises the producer’s duties. In contrast, Ghana is the only country that recognises two sound recording copyrights.

It could be argued that this issue crosses the lines of the copyright in sound recordings and the copyright in songs. If recorded performances and record production were recognised as composition, then this artistry could be absorbed into songwriting credits. In many instances, in fact, this already happens. For example, the majority of hit songs in the UK charts last year were co-authored by professional songwriters, recording artists and (sometimes) record producers. Nevertheless, it can be argued conversely that these credits are the result of a defect in copyright law. In many instances composition, performance and production continue to be separate skills. Musicians and record producers are only documenting their artistic practice as composition because the law gives them insufficient recognition elsewhere. If there were a creative copyright for sound recording it would enable this artistic practice to be recognised appropriately. The elitist bias of legislation would be properly located and addressed.

Fear of Musicking

There is a bias amongst some popular music academics. They are for musicians and they are against songwriters. This is not borne out of a need to venerate the incredible playing ability of certain artists, quite the opposite in fact. The desire is to move away from the idea of ‘artists’. Musicians can be viewed as workers. Theirs is a job of honest graft. In contrast, it is songwriters who carry with them the bourgeois notion of the creative genius, operating at a remove from society. This viewpoint is made clear in a recent call for papers for a ‘Working in Music’ conference:

As with any artistic production, music is also - and perhaps mainly - work. Such an idea is opposed to the romantic mythology from the 19th Century which conceives of artistic activity as coming from transcendental inspiration, impossible to rationalize, and of the artist as an exceptional being whose ‘talent’ would be irreducible to sociological analysis.

What we should value is the work (the physical effort that is expended in making music) and not ‘the work’ (the musical product that is credited to an author). Christopher Small, with his neologism ‘musicking’ is key to this notion. He believes that we should think of music as a process - and thus a verb - rather than as an object - get rid of that noun!

To music is to take part, in any capacity, in a musical performance, whether by performing, by listening, by rehearsing or practicing, by providing material for performance (what is called composing), or by dancing. We might at times even extend its meaning to what the person is doing who takes the tickets at the door or the hefty men who shift the piano and the drums or the roadies who set up the instruments and carry out the sound checks or the cleaners who clean up after everyone else has gone. They, too, are all contributing to the nature of the event that is a musical performance.

I’m in agreement with much of this. Music is social; we should take genius down a peg or two; songwriting should not be placed above performance in the musical hierarchy. This outlook generates some questionable claims, however.

            First, there is the idea that the practice of musicians is out of step with the legal and commercial perceptions of music. Simon Frith has recently argued that ‘The law treats music as a work, a commodity, intellectual property, something that can be owned and exploited’, whereas ‘Musicians think of music as a process’. But do they always think in this manner? The recording industry may have declined in recent years, but the goal for many musicians is still to make a recording. They also want to have credit for it. These musicians do think of music as a noun. Frith once described the process of popular music as resulting in an object:

The ‘industrialization of music’ can’t be understood as something that happens to music but describes a process in which music itself is made – a process, that is, which fuses (and confuses) capital, technical, and musical arguments. Twentieth Century popular music means the twentieth century popular record; not the record of something (a song? a singer? a performance?) which exists independently of the music industry, but a form of communication which determines what songs, singers, and performances are and can be.

I would argue that this still remains the case, regardless of the academic vogue for musicking.

            Second, there is the desire to conflate music-making processes. It is argued that the division of labour into composition and performance is a classical music conceit. Popular music, in contrast, witnesses a confusion of these roles. Musicians compose as they are playing; songs are produced communally. Frith stresses this point in his recent article, stating that ‘The law assumes music is authored, created by named individuals’, whereas ‘Musicians know that music making is an essentially collaborative, a social process [sic]’.

            Music making is certainly collaborative and the divisions between composition and performance can be blurred. This does not mean, however, that they are the same thing. Few popular music songs are notated, but most of them are written. This is most obviously true of the lyrics. The words are honed and they are crafted, and it is usually an individual who does this. It is also true of the music: chords and melodies are usually developed by individuals or by small teams of writers; they seldom emerge whole during the rehearsal process.

            There is, of course, the question of whether the chords and melody should be valued above other elements of music, such as rhythm and the timbre. Frith believes not. He argues that ‘The law describes music in terms of notes and tunes’, whereas ‘Musicians think of music in terms of sounds and textures’. Again, though, do all musicians think in this way? There are a lot of performers who still believe in songs, and there are many who believe (perhaps conservatively) that lyrics, melody and harmony should be given greatest compositional accord.

            The idea that performance and composition take place simultaneously is in some ways outdated. It harks back to the idea of the rock group: a band of musicians who work up their material in rehearsal or in the recording studio. This is not modern practice. Most contemporary hit records are made by solo artists or by collaborations between solo artists. These musicians usually have a hand in writing their songs, but they do not write them on their own. We live in an era of professional songwriters. Their job is to work on the notes and tunes. It is somebody else’s job to work on the performance.

            There is, however, one modern example where the lines between performance, composition and recording are truly blurred. This is the lone, electronic artist who writes, edits and records their material on a digital audio workstation. Ironically, this type of music making is the least social or collaborative of all.

            Finally, we come to attempts to solve the legal dilemma. If the law is an ass when it comes to performers, how do we make it into something better? One proposal that has been put forward is to regard performance as composition. Richard Arnold has argued for this. He believes that ‘in the field of popular music many works are created in performance rather than being written down first’. Lionel Bently’s solution is to forgo the conventional compositional copyright for popular music and instead have a copyright in the ‘original work of sound’:

The effect of this would be to save copyright law from being asked to invent ‘musical works’ (and, indeed, ‘performances’) in circumstances (as in much of rock and pop – but not all) where the musical artefact is created in the recording studio (and subsequently marketed, appreciated and consumed) by way of such recording.

This idea is problematic in two respects. First of all, it ignores the fact that many songs are not written by the recording artists. As noted above, it is rare today for hit songs to be worked up in a studio like this. Bently’s idea is also unworkable in respect of cover versions: artists whose songs have been covered are not likely to welcome the covering artists as co-composers. The second problem with this proposal is that it posits composition as the desired musical goal. Copyright will give due respect to performers, but only if they cast themselves as writers. Isn’t this where we came in?

The Loser's Standing Small

Poor Prince. Even in death he is not getting the support he deserves. His 1990s battle against Warner mystified many of his fans. It continues to frustrate some journalists. Here, for example, is Barney Rooney, writing in the Guardian,  ‘It’s difficult not to feel that Prince eventually became his worst enemy. Instead of settling for a role as a treasured cult act, he fought the industry, bit the hands that fed him, and painted “Slave” on his face’. And here is the Independent’s Ben Chu, ‘there has been a lot of purple prose in recent days talking about how Prince valiantly stood up for all musicians with his various battles with record labels. But it’s nonsense. When big acts attack the funding model of record companies what they are doing, whether they know it or not, is pulling up the ladder behind them’.

            There are at least two factors that are coming into play here. One is the record industry’s romantic ideology. It has always been acceptable – even encouraged – for artists to fight against their record companies, but to do so they have to fall on the right side of the art/commerce divide. They receive more sympathy if they are fighting for their musical expression than if they are fighting for their contractual rights. And they receive more sympathy if they are not seen to have done well. The complaints of rich people usually fall on deaf ears.

            And this is where the second factor comes into play. The music business has a famous statistic: only one in ten succeeds. Prince was certainly on the preferable side of this divide. He was among the minority who prospered, while the majority around him failed.

            Unfortunately for Prince, the record industry’s success ratio has been presented in ‘winner takes it all’ terms. This idea goes back at least as far as 1776, albeit that the formula was doubled in those days. In The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith wrote about ‘the exorbitant rewards of players, opera-singers, opera-dancers etc.’ and noted that ‘in a profession where twenty fail for one that succeeds, that one ought to gain all that should have been gained by the unsuccessful twenty’.

This is not how things work in the record industry. The losers are the unprofitable artists who are dropped by their record companies. These artists take nothing, but at least they are not left in debt: their labels waive any money that is in arrears. The winners are those who have achieved profitability. Their gains outweigh the losses of the failures.

However, rather than taking the spoils from the unsuccessful artists, it is the unsuccessful artists who rob the winners of their spoils. Or at least this is the case when it comes to copyright. British law suggests that the owner of sound recording copyright is the party who ‘made and paid’ for the arrangements for the recording to take place. The record companies usually claim this honour, arguing that they draw up the plans for the recordings and they provide the funds.

But they don’t pay for those recordings, artists do. The budgets for recordings are issued in the form of advances. Artists then pay back these advances from their recording royalties. A recouped artist could claim that they have paid for their recording in full.

And yet the record companies still cling on to their copyrights. They defend this practice by referring to their success ratio. The copyrights of the 10% of the artists who succeed are compensation for the debts of the 90% of failures. When it comes to the ownership sound recording copyright it is not the successful artist who takes all; more commonly it is the record company.

It is this practice that Prince was fighting against. He had a right to be hostile. 

Building Me a Fence

Popular music has been suffering from some growing pains. Where artists once cast themselves as being against big business and the man, they now have to present themselves as budding entrepreneurs. Take Jack Garratt, for example. Q magazine has described him as being ‘part of a new breed of pop star, led by Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran, who as well as making music see themselves as CEOs, team leaders, motivational speakers and HR departments of their own brand’. This is quite a change. When I was younger, bands would pose as rebellious outsiders. Stiff Little Fingers, for example, announced themselves by saying ‘we’re going to blow up in their face’. Here, in contrast, is how Garratt talks about his career: ‘it’s been a very natural and organic growth from being an unsigned, undeveloped artist then development through my management and then upstreaming onto a record label’.

Garratt’s language is hugely unappealing. And yet it could be argued that he is taking a stronger stand against the industry than punk bands ever did. He is building is own career and he is in control. The problem, as ever, is that such talk flies in the face of popular music’s romantic ideology. Romanticism, as Jon Stratton argued back in 1983, ‘expresses itself as contrary to all that capitalism stands for’. Artists aren’t supposed to be interested in business; they are supposed to recoil in horror from business.

The irony, as Stratton has pointed out, is that romanticism supports the capitalist practices of the record industry. This is because the individualism of the romantic artist ‘operates to counteract the “distancing” associated with the music’s commodification and substitute for it an essential unity between artist and consumer which elides the function – and existence – of the record companies and thus of the capitalist process which has called the music into being’. In other words, record companies differentiate their products by promoting the genius, sensitivity and anti-capitalist nature of their artists. This is how they turn rebellion into money.

Conversely, it is capitalism that supports, or even creates, romanticism. As art is commodified, it is ‘distanced, alienated, from the artist’. On the one hand, this enables creators to blame the cultural industries for the commercialisation of their art. On the other hand, it is this commodification that enables artists to present themselves as visionary outsiders. Stratton argues that ‘the creator/producer is only able to exist as an “artist” because of the ideological elaboration of the capitalist order, and because of the cash nexus which separates him/her from the consumers’. Ultimately, Stratton believes that the whole economic structure of the record industry is dependent on ‘the apparent conflict between art and capitalism’. Without art, capitalism would not prosper; and without capitalism, art would have nothing to fight against. They need each other to present themselves as special.

Jack Garratt, with his talk of upstreaming and branding, comes from a different place. And yet, despite the fact that we live in an utterly commercial age, and despite the fact that the cash nexus can now exist directly between artist and consumer, and despite the fact that the conflict between art and commerce was only ever ‘apparent’, his talk still feels uncomfortable. We are not ready to let go of romanticism just yet. 

Between Protection and the Public Domain Lies a Lifetime (plus 70 years)

In battles over the scope, value and morality of copyright three main players are put in play: the authors (who create the material that can be copyrighted); the companies (who make money out of those copyrights, through assignment or ownership); and the public (whose access to these copyrighted goods can be restricted, dependent on how much the goods cost).

When companies have wanted to extend copyright they have called upon the figure of the author. This practice has a long history. In 1710, Britain passed the world’s first copyright law: the Statute of Anne. This Act, which was concerned with the book trade, set a time limit on the period for which intellectual property could be owned. Authors were granted the initial copyright in their works. This right could be assigned to another party, but its duration was restricted for an initial term of fourteen years. If the author was still living at the end of this period, copyright could be extended for a further fourteen years.

            Prior to the Statue of Anne, the Stationers’ Company had dominated the British book trade. This organisation had reserved the ownership of book copyrights to its members and viewed the duration of ownership as being perpetual. According to Adrian Johns, the booksellers were ‘horrified’ by the prospect of a limited term and they successfully lobbied parliament during the passing of the Statute to have its proposed authors’ rights reduced.

            These booksellers began to think differently about authors. In the mid-1700s, when the initial 21-year period of the Statute of Anne was reached, there was a ‘battle’ over the duration of copyright. On the one side were booksellers from Scotland, who were not members of the Stationers’ Company. They argued that the Statue of Anne created a firm 21-year limit. On the other side was the Stationers’ Company itself. These booksellers argued that the Statute of Anne supplemented, rather than replaced, British common law. Although the Company’s power had originally derived from Licensing Acts, which had given them their perpetual monopoly rights over the publishing of books, their claims to ownership were now made via their authors. They argued that writers had a property right in their works whose duration was without limit. This right could be assigned, but it could not be curtailed. Initially, the Stationers were victorious. The author’s common law right was affirmed in the case of Millar v. Taylor (1769). This ruling was soon overturned, however. The case of Donaldson v. Beckett (1774) firmly established a set duration for copyright within British law. In doing so, it created the idea of an authorial public domain.

            Although author’s rights had failed to deliver the Stationers’ desired aims, the author emerged as the figure upon which it was best to pin arguments for copyright extension. Lee Marshall has noted how writers henceforth assumed a central position within copyright law, signalled by later copyright acts, which began to associate the duration of copyright with the birthdate of the author, rather than with the date of the publication of the work. In 1814 the term of copyright was extended to the author’s lifetime or 28 years after publication, depending upon which was longer. In 1842 it was extended to author’s lifetime plus seven years or 42 years from publication. By the 20^th century it was only the author’s lifetime that mattered. The 1911 Copyright Act introduced a term of ‘the life of the author and a period of fifty years after his death’. The 1988 Copyright, Designs and Patents Act extended this to ‘70 years from the end of the calendar year in which the author dies’.

            This is not to say that authors have been the main beneficiaries of these changes. Marshall warns us to be wary of their glorification. He has sated that

the Romantic author is the primary rhetorical tool which copyright holders use to counter copyright infringement and gain stronger copyright protection. This is because the centralisation of the author leads copyright to be understood not as an economic issue but as an aesthetic, and thus a moral, one.

Siva Vaidhyanathan has stated similarly that ‘The unrewarded authorial genius’ is the best way of ensuring ‘maximum protection’, while Mark Rose has noted that ‘the notion of the author as the creator and ultimate source of property’ has been ‘at the heart of the long struggle over perpetual copyright’. In short, perpetuity seems more reasonable when the case is being made on behalf of authors, rather than for the companies to whom their rights have been assigned.

            The laws that have benefitted the publishers of books have also benefitted the publishers of songs. In 1777 a test case was won by Johann Christian Bach and Carl Friedrich Abel, which established that ‘a musical composition is a writing within the Statute of the 8^th of Queen Anne’.  The duration of songwriting copyright has subsequently been twinned with and reliant upon the campaigning that has taken place in respect of books.

            Sound recording copyright has worked differently, but here too the Romantic artist has been employed. Performing artists are rarely the initial owners of sound recording copyright; this honour is instead more commonly awarded to their record companies. The music industries have nevertheless been aware that artists are the best means to extend copyright. In 2004 the British trade journal Music Week launched a campaign to increase the duration of sound recording copyright from 50 to 70 years. In their editorial they advised:

Let us be clear: this is not an issue which affects just record companies. And if it is presented as such, any attempt at change will be far harder to achieve. This affects the entire creative community – and that is a message which must be hammered home.

In placing the artistic community at the centre of their campaign they made some peculiar claims, arguing that

When the 50-year term was introduced in the UK, half a century ago, it was intended to reflect life expectancy. Today, when Britons can expect to live for longer, an 80-year-old musician cannot earn royalties from the work he recorded in his twenties – just when he needs the money most. That is a scandal.

While it might have been true that Britons were living longer, Music Week’s knowledge of copyright history was suspect. The 50-year term had been introduced in the 1911 Copyright Act, rather than the 1950s. Moreover, sound recording copyright was explicitly differentiated from copyrights whose duration was based on the life of the artist. Duration was instead pinned to the year in which the recording was first released.

            There were further oddities about Music Week’s campaign. Industry insiders and experts were called upon, several of whom talked about sound recording copyright reverting to artists. Pete Jenner stated ‘Any extension of copyright must benefit the creators/performers. That could be achieved by giving copyrights back to creators’. Music Week noted that Feargal Sharkey had successfully ‘regained ownership’ of the Undertones sound recording copyrights. Sharkey himself suggested that sound recording copyright should follow the ‘rights reversion’ policies of the music publishers.

            This idea of reversion came to be enshrined in law. In 2011 the European Union issued directive 2011/77/EU, which extended the duration of sound recording copyright to 70 years. Although they pinned this term to the date of release, rather than the life of the performer, Clause 8 of the directive suggests – erroneously – that the initial ownership of sound recording copyright resides with artists:

The rights in the fixation of the performance should revert to the performer if a phonogram producer refrains from offering for sale in sufficient quantity, within the meaning of the International Convention on the Protection of Performers, Producers of Phonograms and Broadcasting Organisations, copies of a phonogram which, but for the term extension, would be in the public domain, or refrains from making such a phonogram available to the public.

I welcome the fact that this directive has provided record companies with a ‘use it or lose it’ scenario regarding their sound recording copyrights. However, the idea that these rights might revert to artists is bogus. If they do manage to get hold of them, most of them will be owning them for the first time. 

Record Collecting 5: Mystery

In recent interview Jack White has stated, ‘For me, vinyl is a MacGuffin. It’s something to lure you in, and at Third Man vinyl is a MacGuffin for a mechanical, romantic relationship with music’. MacGuffin is a term that Alfred Hitchcock popularised. It is a plot device that lures you in to a story, one that gets the mystery going, but it is of no overall importance.

            It’s interesting to hear Jack White talk in this way. One of the world’s leading advocates of vinyl is suggesting that, ultimately, it’s not vinyl that matters. It’s what vinyl signifies that counts. And what is that? The idea of a ‘mechanical, romantic relationship with music’ is an odd one: the romantic and the mechanic were traditionally supposed to be at odds. But I think I know what he means. Mechanisation no longer stands for the robotic and the modern, but instead for a time when things were tangible and you could engage with them. It is traditional values that are being held up here.

In the preceding blog entries about record collecting I have been focused on the idea that vinyl is collected because of what it is not. People are operating in a dialectical manner. They are collecting vinyl because it is old, not new; because it is analogue, not digital; because it is physical, not intangible; because it is independent, not corporate.

            And yet, there’s always been more to it than this. There has been a fascination with analogue records that is in excess of that for other formats. What’s more, this fascination was in place before some its rival formats existed. People didn’t need the CD to feel that the analogue was special (although the CD certainly helped). They didn’t need retromania, nostalgia, the desire for the tangible, a need for authenticity, or a search for truth to fall in love with analogue records (although these aspects have helped as well).

            Writing as early as 1934, Theordor Adorno was transfixed by a shellac record’s ‘thingness’. He was drawn towards the record’s grooves and the links that they provided ‘between music and writing’. In his 1959 novel. Absolute Beginners, Colin Maccinnes outlines his hero’s love of LP sleeves, calling them ‘the most original thing to come out in our lifetime’. Growing up in the 1960s, Stuart Maconie was fascinated by label designs:

Daft Ken Dodd bore the deep royal blue of Decca, Elvis wore the coal-black livery of pre-Seventies Orange RCA, the John Collier Theme still had its laminated sleeve featuring a giant Trilby. My favourite, though, the sight of which always quickened the pulse a little, was the very emerald green of a goalie’s jumper, the word Columbia grandly embossed in silver about the little hole.

For Roger Manning, keyboard player with Jellyfish, it was the scent of records that was intoxicating:

What really got me was the smell of the records I grew up with – maybe it was the pressing plant they used, for some reason records on the Casablanca label had a smell that blew our minds – when you smell that, it brings you right back to childhood.

Each of these writers returns us to a theme that these entries have been circling. What is it that we love most about analogue records: is it their ‘thingness’, or is it the music that they contain, or in what way is it a combination between these two elements? This dilemma is as old as sound recording itself. Writing in 1919, Rainer Maria Rilke recalled his first impressions of the phonograph:

It must have been when I was a boy at school that the phonograph was invented … At the time and all through the intervening years I believed that that independent sound, taken from us and preserved outside of us, would be unforgettable. That it turned out otherwise is the cause of my writing the present account. As will be seen, what impressed itself on my memory most deeply was not the sound from the funnel but the markings traced on the cylinder; these made a most definite impression.

Ultimately, it’s too easy to say that people are attached to vinyl records because of what they signify or how they can be articulated. There is something inherent in vinyl records themselves. What exactly this is, though, is the biggest mystery of all. 

Composure

Can songwriting set popular music free? Well, it depends upon what it is being set free from and who is calling for its liberation.

            If it is people from the outside who are making these demands, then the answer to popular music’s problems should not be found in their complaints about songwriting. As I explored in the previous entry, some ‘high’ cultural theorists are overly focused on the compositional process. They look at pop songs and see standardization everywhere. They argue that hit records create ‘response-mechanisms wholly antagonistic to the ideal of individuality in a free, liberal society’. What these theorists tend to miss is that popular music is about more than its tunes. It doesn’t need to ape the ‘total’ compositional methods of classical music to have revolutionary potential. The best response to these theorists is not to answer their complaints about songwriting with songwriting, but to look instead at the areas in which popular music excels. It is the life force of popular music that can be radical and redemptive. It is here, in the human performance that gets captured in the grooves, that you can find the ‘magic that can set you free’. You can find anarchy and attitude, solace and soul. This is the democratic process that the best pop records enact. If the music were to prioritize composition in the way that cultural snobs demand, then popular music’s own particular magic would dissolve. In the order of things, it would forever play second fiddle to classical music, the composed form par excellence.

            But lets forget about outsiders for a minute. What does a focus on songwriting look like from within popular music? What difference can it make to people who are actually making and consuming this form? Here, there is a potential for composition to be democratizing. Conversely, there is a potential for the ‘life force’ of popular music to be tyrannical. Far from being a magic that can set you free, the prioritizing of ‘feel’, ‘soul’ and ‘attitude’ can distort our perceptions of the music. It gives kudos to musicians who have a supposed ‘authenticity’. It places a focus on the lives of the artists rather than quality of the work. It also favours men. Keeping it real or being true to the streets are by and large masculine pursuits. They should not be the standards by which all popular music is judged.

            A turn to songwriting can open things up. When someone like Noel Gallagher centres his greatness on his songwriting ability, it is invitation to be measured against Bjorn and Benny, rather than Brown and Squire. If fans are told to focus on the ‘song’, they can forget about authenticity for a while. They no longer have to suffer the ‘perfect pop’ of Big Star or Teenage Fanclub and can listen to genuinely perfect pop instead, including records that actually made the charts. Putting songwriting first helps to give female artists a greater chance. If we ignore the poets, seers and sages who have become the Romantic pin-ups of popular music’s history and instead concentrate upon composition, the gender biases of popular music and artistic genius can start to dissolve. In this order of things, Carole King has as much validity as Jim Morrison. It is no coincidence that female musicians are having increased success now that popular music has a greater focus on songwriting. After years of boys showing off about their noise, the music is regaining a sense of composure.

            This is not to say that girls can’t make a great noise too, but because the phallic grind of popular music has become encoded as male, the noise of girls has to be thought out in a different manner. In order to create the gushing thrust of ‘Whole Lotta Love’, Led Zeppelin didn’t have to write much. They merely had to take Muddy Waters’ ‘You Need Love’ by way of the Small Faces ‘You Need Loving’ and play and produce the riff with a power it had not previously known. In order to create their female rock music, the Slits had to think about the semiotics of each chord and each beat.  The group’s guitarist, Viv Albertine has stated, ‘The four of us constantly questioned everything. Each note had to be as exciting as the one before it and no clichés’. With her ‘mosquito’ tone, she aimed to replace ‘the old, oppressive patriarchal way that guitars sound’. Warpaint, a contemporary female four-piece, have also expressed a determination to write in a textural rather than climactic fashion. They want to avoid the punchlines that are common in both the music and comedy of men.

            And so where does this leave us in our search for popular music and liberty? Will we find emancipation in the grain of the voice or in the structure of the music? I’m going to equivocate. The thing is, I like both Led Zeppelin and the Slits, and I have found moments of freedom in records by each of these bands. Popular music can be a standardizing and reactionary force; it can also be challenging and cathartic. And these polarized tendencies can be found in both the structure and the grain. The songwriting process can reinforce the edicts of capitalism in both its musical and economic aims; it can also force us to think twice about societal norms. The concepts of soul and groove can become clichéd and can reinforce racial stereotypes; they can also bring out untapped emotions and encourage listeners to search across cultural divides. Authenticity can be a bind and a distraction, but some role-model artists can encourage people to think twice about how they live their lives.

A record can be transformative because it does exactly what the artist intends it too. Alternatively, a record can be revolutionary because audience members reinterpret it in a radical way. That reinterpretation doesn’t have to be ironic either; it can be more earnest than the author’s original intentions. Moreover, the divide between the artistic and the re-interpreted doesn’t have to be made along rock and pop lines, with the 'untouchable' works of art falling in the former category and the reworked works of art falling in the latter. In fact, records from any genre can be used in different ways: audiences can find what they want in them – or what they hate in them – by accepting or rejecting the composers’ intentions. Ultimately, the reductive and redemptive aspects of popular music work in accordance with everything else about this popular form: we takes our choice. 

Decompose

If left wing commentators view popular music as a problem, songwriting usually lies at the heart of the matter. This critique spirals out from a statement made by Marx and Engels in The German Ideology: ‘The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it’. Mental production in popular music is most often equated with the songwriting process. The danger, from a Marxist point of view, is that pop songs are no more than a reflection of the economic system that underpins their creation.

            In Marx's and Engels’ formulation we have the base (the economic system) and the superstructure (the political and cultural system). Marx suggested that ‘The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life-process in general’. This is where we get the idea that economics ‘determine’ cultural production. Engels did, however, add a proviso. He stated that, while economic conditions are ‘ultimately decisive’, the influence isn’t wholly one-way: ‘the traditions which haunt human minds also play a part, although not the decisive one’.

            The relationship between the base and superstructure is at the forefront of criticisms of popular music, whether these are made by academic theorists, journalists, fans or musicians themselves. For example, the indies vs. majors debate has rattled on for nearly a century now and is reliant on a belief that the major corporations’ economic systems are reflected in their musical product.

            These criticisms were at their most acute when records were mass produced. It was suggested that the standardized, factory-based nature of creating records was reflected in the standardized nature of recordings. This is what Theodor Adorno almost said. He hated popular music and he hated popular music songwriting most of all. Spelling out his thoughts in his ‘On Popular Music Essay’ of 1941, he claimed, ‘The whole structure of popular music is standardized, even where the attempt is made to circumnavigate standardization’. Adorno, along with his fellow Frankfurt school theorist, Max Horkheimer, coined the term ‘culture industry’ to make clear the link between the production of popular culture and the assembly-line manufacture of industrial goods. Adorno’s argument could occasionally be subtle, however. He pointed out:

Though all industrial mass production necessarily eventuates in standardization, the production of popular music can be called ‘industrial’ only in its promotion and distribution, whereas the act of producing a song-hit still remains in a handicraft stage. […] It would not increase the costs of production if the various composers of hit tunes did not follow certain standard patterns. Therefore, we must look for other reasons for structural standardization – very different reasons from those which account for the standardization of motor cars and breakfast foods.

Adorno’s answer was ‘imitation’. He suggested that, ‘As one particular song scored a great success, hundreds of others sprang up imitating the successful one’. This resulted in ‘the crystallization of standards’, which were ‘rigidly enforced upon the material to be promoted’. The major record companies  ‘institutionalized the standardization, and made it imperative’.

            Adorno’s views were echoed by Jacques Attali, the French economist and music theorist who acted as advisor to François Mitterrand. In his 1977 book Noise, Attali drew up a Marxian historical account of musical development, equating four stages of music with four phases of production and reception. His account of the era of mass production was labelled ‘repeating’. Just like Adorno, he saw stultifying standardization:

Fetishized as a commodity, music is illustrative of the evolution of our entire society: deritualize a social form, repress an activity of the body, specialize its practice, sell it as spectacle, generalize its consumption, then see to it that it is stockpiled until it loses its meaning. Today, music heralds […] the establishment of a society of repetition in which nothing will happen anymore.

Also like Adorno, Attali stopped short of suggesting that the repetitive nature of record manufacture determined the repetitive nature of music. In fact, he viewed things the other way around. He argued that music ‘heralds, for it is prophetic’. Here, the superstructure precedes the base: ‘music is prophetic … social organization echoes it’.

Attali’s way of thinking has been pertinent in the internet age. We have seen music at the forefront of change. Along with pornography, it has been the most prophetic form of popular culture when it comes to dematerialization, piracy and transforming the economic base.

            It is therefore worth returning to the conclusion of Noise. Attali posited ‘repeating’ as his third musical era. He did, however, envision a fourth: ‘composing’. He had a utopian vision of a society that would be beyond commerce: ‘composition is revealed as the demand for a truly different system of organization, a network within which a different kind of music and different social relations can arise. A music produced by each individual for himself, for pleasure outside of meaning, usage and exchange’.

            If music can be viewed as being prophetic, then so can Attali. The internet has provided a ‘different system of organization’, it has produced a musical culture that exists outside of ‘exchange’, and it has made it more readily possible for each individual to create and distribute music. It has also, as I argued in an earlier post, produced a greater focus on ‘composition’.

            But where are our new ‘social relations’? Moreover, where is our new music? Despite all the economic changes of the present century, popular music could still be regarded as being standardized. In fact, songwriting has now moved beyond the handicraft stage to become industrial. Adorno viewed popular music songwriting as being ‘individualistic’. This may have been the case in the 1940s, but songwriting teams piece together many of today’s hits. While some people will work on the rhythm track, others will provide the top line. One composer can provide the lyric for the main melody, while a hip hop artist can be called upon for a middle eight of rhymes.

            Adorno and Attali were fixated with songwriting. For them, composition lay at the heart of all that was wrong with popular music. Consequently, it provided the solution if this form of culture was to get things right. Adorno also prioritized particular elements of musical creation: those that have been central to classical music, such as melody and harmony. It was these that popular music needed to improve. However, as Bernard Gendron has pointed out, if we focus on these elements it is possible to see ‘sameness’ in popular music. Conversely, if we focus on ‘timbre and connotation’ we can see ‘difference’ from song to song and between artist and artist. Gendron’s case against standardization is a strong one, but it remains subject to a ‘classical’ point of view. The response to Adorno’s criticisms of popular music doesn’t have to be found in songwriting; there are other and perhaps better ways of suggesting that the music is diverse. It can have huge variety when it comes to feel, inflection, groove and dynamics.

            Or at least this used to be the case. Looked at from one angle, developments within computing technology have transformed popular music economics; looked at from another, they have made the creation of popular music more conservative. The focus is now on composition, just as it is with classical music and other 'high' arts. Adorno and Attali might have considered this the route to musical utopia, but as their writing makes clear, putting songwriting at the forefront only makes popular music seem more standardized. Moreover, despite the transformation of business practices, the music hasn’t entirely escaped exchange. If anything, the creation of mainstream popular music is more economically motivated than it was when it was less ‘mentally’ indebted. We have lost a bodily focus on timbre and feel and replaced it with a cerebral one that is centred on planning and editing. Popular music still has its problems, but it is clear that songwriting is not the only answer. An alternative solution is to decompose.

Romanticism vs. Versus

Why does the NME present a ‘godlike genius award’? Because of Romanticism, that’s why. Romanticism promoted ‘the ideal of self-expression’ and ‘the idea of genius’. It also identified ‘the hostility of modern society to talent and sensitivity’. It was anti-capitalist in nature. The last three winners of NME’s award were Johnny Marr, Noel Gallagher and Dave Grohl, each of them an old man. Why? Because the Romantic ideal is dying.

            Romanticism used to serve the record industry well. During the 1960s and 1970s it helped to sell records. In America, income from record sales rose from $700m in 1963 to over $1bn in 1967. In the UK, album sales rose from 22m units in 1963 to over 80m ten years later. Many of the best selling artists were anti-corporate in nature: the Beatles (‘love is all you need’); Jimi Hendrix (‘mister businessman, you can’t dress like me’); Jefferson Airplane (‘all your private property, is target for your enemy, and your enemy is we’).

While there was a large market for commercial music, there was an even larger one for hippie ideals: a market that liked to think it was not prey to market forces. This audience felt that the major labels’ investments in military weapons, car parks, funeral parlours and brain scanners might perhaps be inimical to art. This was the era of the physical record and this audience was suspicious of its manufacture, making the connection that the standardization of the duplication process would lead to the standardization of the creative process. They thought that the major labels would want music to be neatly packaged and alike.

            But the majors wanted a slice of this audience. Consequently, they turned to Romantic ideals. They promoted some of their artists as genius outsiders; rebels who were opposed to the system. Jon Stratton has argued that this ‘served to distract the consumer from the commodification which had taken place’. It also ‘allowed cultural products to be viewed as something other than simply more commodities’. Music was made to feel special and unique once again. As such, capitalists used the anti-capitalism of Romanticism to sell more products to anti-capitalist consumers than they might otherwise have bought.

            The major companies downplayed their involvement in the creation of the music. Their aim was to promote the artist star rather than the corporation. Albums replaced singles and consequently the cover sleeve (focussed on the musicians) replaced the single bag (focussed on the record label). Jon Stratton, despite exposing Romantic ideology, was blinded by this process. He constructed a flow chart in which the artist ‘creates the music’ and the record company merely ‘buys music and places it on vinyl and tape’. But weren’t record companies involved in the artistic process too? (They certainly claimed authorship of the finished recordings, as can be witnessed by their ownership of sound recording copyrights.)

            Things have changed. The download has taken over from the physical record and consequently duplication is becoming a thing of the past. Popular music might still be ‘samey’, but its standardization can no longer be linked with factory processes and procedures. In fact, some Romantic idealists argue that artists and consumers no longer need record companies at all: musicians now have the ability to transmit their recordings directly to their fans.

            This has got the music industry worried. In response, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) has produced a promotional report: Investing in Music (2012). This document outlines the reasons why artists should still think of industry: without the music business they will not have the financial clout to conquer new territories; they will not have the know-how to market their music; they will not have the ability to collect the money they are owed.

Investing in Music overturns the Romantic ideal. If godlike geniuses can now go directly to the consumer (hello Radiohead), the industry wants to promote a different type of artist. These days the labels are as likely to talk about collaboration as they are about self-expression. One of these collaborators is the label itself. Going against earlier industry practice, IFPI proudly proclaims the record company to be a creative partner in the birthing of new songs. They state that ‘behind the highly visible world of artists and performers […] is a less visible industry of enormous diversity, creativity and economic value’. They also depict the industry as the match-maker between artist and artist: record labels ‘can help developing artists by opening the door for them to work with the best talent in the music business’; labels have ‘the ability to allow artists to go in with fantastic songwriters and producers’.

            These collaborations can be intimidating. New artists have always been wary of gatekeepers; the people who will permit or deny them access to success. But whereas in the days of mass reproduction it was mainly industry personnel, media institutions and retail outlets that were standing sentinel, today established artists have joined them on their watch. Andrew Nosnitsky has depicted the scene in hip-hop, where newer artists can only get a foot on the ladder by guesting on older artists’ tracks: ‘it’s become almost impossible for a middle-tier rap artist to ascend to [hip hop’s] upper tier without the explicit cosignature of existing upper-tier rap artists’. This works all the way down: middle-tier artists invite those below them to rap for eight bars on their tracks, and those on a lower tier also have someone who needs a leg-up from them. Similar scenarios are taking place beyond the world of hip-hop. Collaboration is a way that new R&B and EDM artists can first reach the charts.

            In the end, though, it is the record companies who permit these collaborations: they are the final gatekeepers of every hit that has a ‘featuring’ or ‘versus’ credit. The IFPI report hammers this point home. And so, if you have ever wondered why so many chart hits are collaborative, just think which type of artist the industry now needs.