Party Streamers

One of the things that interests me most about the digital streaming of music is the way that it has affected party DJing. Two weeks ago I was at a house party in Athens throughout which the whole supply of music came from YouTube. People didn’t have to rely on their own record collections; they could draw on virtually the whole history of record music.

            And what was the result? They played hits. The same thing has happened at parties I’ve been to in the past few years in London, Berlin, Paris and Evesham. Now that obscurity is freely available to all, party DJs no longer feel the need to show off their knowledge of b-sides and bootlegs. It is instead more important to have an insight into the music that people actually want to hear. Gone are the obscure dance instrumentals of yesteryear; DJ’s are now playing sing-a-long songs.

Two further things struck me about the music that was being played. First, despite the fact that most people knew most of the songs, my guess is that very few of them would have owned these tracks if they would have had to buy them as records. The night began with classic rock ‘n’ roll tracks and ‘Let’s Twist Again’ before moving on to disco and synth-pop. We were hearing tracks that, although widely loved, would bestow little cultural capital upon any owner. They were also records of such common currency that no one would have to buy them to be able to hear them, even in the days before digital piracy and streaming. (There were some interesting national variations when it came to the hits, however; in Greece, ‘Jeopardy’ by the Sound, ‘Mr Roboto’ by Styx and ‘Electricity’ by OMD all appear to have been massive.)

            The other thing that struck me was that many of the records would have previously been termed ‘camp’. At one point, one of Athens’s many heavy rockers took over the computer, but after playing a couple of metal tracks he quickly turned to ‘Dancing Queen’, ‘Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)’, ‘YMCA’ and ‘It’s Raining Men’. Greece can be quite a macho society at times, but the playing of these songs caused outbreaks of dancing rather than cries of alarm. Even the rock tracks that he played fell into the ‘camp’ category. We heard Van Halen’s ‘Jump’ and Twisted Sister’s ‘We’re Not Going to Take It’.

            But is ‘camp’ still the appropriate word for this music? In fact, was it ever? Looking at Susan Sontag’s ‘Notes on “Camp”’, I find little in her jottings that fit. She states that the ultimate camp statement is ‘it’s good because its awful’, but there’s very little that’s bad about any of these tracks. ‘It’s Raining Men’, in particular, is one of the most important artworks of the 1980s. It is musically and lyrically brilliant. It’s provocative and liberating. It’s video is pretty fantastic too. ‘We’re Not Going to Take It’ attempts a similar feat and almost pulls it off. For Sontag, the essential element of camp is ‘a seriousness that fails’. Each of these tracks, however, was designed to give pleasure and has succeeded in doing so in spades. Perhaps most importantly, none of us were appreciating this music ironically; we weren’t seeing ‘everything in quotation marks’ and we weren’t claiming to have a ‘good taste of bad taste’. It was a party at which people were having the good sense to have good taste in good music.

            It’s not an exaggeration to claim that digital streaming has set people free. Musical tastes are more diverse than they have ever been and are less hidebound by conventions of cool. We need to push further, however. It’s time to stop excusing the pleasures of the popular by referring to them as camp. When did anyone ever go to a disco in an ironic frame of mind?

Friggin' in the Riggin' of the Charts

We can usually only see ideology when we look at a political regime that is different to our own. North Korea is back in the news again with the execution of the leader’s uncle Chang Song-thaek. Although the news is shocking and troubling, there is also always condescension in the way that North Korea is reported: look at those crazy people, blindly in thrall to their crazy leader. But we’re blind, too. The thing is, we can’t see that we’re blind. As Stuart Hall says, when we are living amongst it, ideology is ‘rendered invisible’. Nowhere is this more true than in the democratic west. We can’t see the full ideological remit of democracy because it is made to look like ‘normal common sense’.

            What is true of politics is also true of the pop charts. The Top 40 used to look like the most obvious thing on earth: the record that sold the most was number one; the record that sold the second most was number two; and so on. But now that there has been a regime change of recording formats we can see the charts have never been straightforward or fair. At present, Britain does not allow streaming figures to form part of its tally. This seems wrong. YouTube, in particular, is the most popular means for accessing music. To not tabulate its returns is to ignore what people are actually doing. In contrast, the Billboard charts in America do include YouTube figures. But this also seems wrong. Are people using YouTube because they actually like the music, or are they catching up with gossip about salacious material? Billboard first incorporated streaming figures in February 2013. The direct result, some have argued, is videos such as ‘Blurred Lines’ and ‘Wrecking Ball’.

            Just as the particularities of video streaming are being used to gain advantage today, so were the particularities of physical formats exploited in the past. We can see this more clearly now. In Britain there were for many years only a limited number of record shops from whom chart returns were compiled. As a result chart pluggers targeted these retailers with free goods and promotional materials. They also sent customers in to buy numerous copies of each release. Once the sample of shops widened, the record companies adopted new tactics. They would release multiple formats to encourage fans to buy more than one copy of each single. Then there were the tactics of release dates. Records were issued to radio long before they were available in shops. They would also be discounted in the first few weeks of release. The effect of both of these measures was to ensure that new releases would go into the charts as high as possible. Singles would also be deleted after a number of weeks, thus ensuring sales within a strict timeframe.

            With the move to digital formats these policies have disappeared or have been reduced. The multi-format release is a thing of the past; singles aren’t usually discounted when they first come out; and they aren’t issued to radio as far in advance of release as they used to be. Perhaps most importantly, they aren’t deleted any more. Any recording can reach the charts at any time of its life.

            Where this has had most effect is in the lower reaches of the UK chart. Although the top thirty is still largely the preserve of the records that have been the most hyped, the numbers below that are more of a free-for-all. One effect of the permanent availability of ‘singles’ is that, more than ever, the charts are reflective of what is going on in the world. Last week ‘Free Nelson Mandela’ was part of Britain’s Top 100. A few weeks before that, the ghost of Lou Reed was back in the charts with ‘Walk on the Wild Side’ and ‘Perfect Day’. On some occasions the higher reaches of the charts are being affected as well. On 14 April 2013 ‘Ding-Dong! The Witch is Dead’ made it to number two. This was the week after Margaret Thatcher’s death. (Thatcher, in fact, is the great exception to the ‘ideology is invisible’ thesis: she had no qualms about openly parading her philosophy and this is one of things that made her so terrifying.)

            At the moment the chart is full of old Christmas songs. There are 14 in this week’s Top 100, only one and a half of which are new records (Elvis Presley has returned from the grave to duet with Susan Boyle). There’s something hugely pleasant about this. It’s great to see Brenda Lee and Andy Williams fighting it out alongside Avicii and Rizzle Kicks. It’s particularly gratifying that it is the right Christmas songs that are doing well. Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want for Christmas is You’ is now correctly identified as a classic. ‘Fairytale of New York’ is also flying high: quarter of a century after its release it has achieved one million sales. For reasons that I can’t explain, seeing Chris Rea’s ‘Driving Home for Christmas’ back in the charts has made me feel that all is right in the world.

Gareth Stedman Jones has described this sort of repertoire as offering a ‘culture of consolation’. It’s clear, too, that the festive season underpins capitalist ideology. A mixture of sentimentality, morality and drunkenness are sent our way, along with a whole load of shopping. What does it say about me that I enjoy it more with every passing year?

The Birth of the Readers

Who are the authors of a hit record? Legally, there are the two. The songwriting copyright is automatically owned by the songwriter(s); the sound recording copyright is usually owned by the record company.

            But what about Roland Barthes? He tells us that ‘a text is made of multiple writings, drawn from many cultures and entering into mutual relations of dialogue, parody, contestation’. He’s writing about writing, but his post-structuralist theory can also be applied to music. Rosemary Coombe suggests that ‘no area of human creativity relies more heavily upon appropriation and allusion, borrowing and imitation, sampling and intertextual commentary’. These ideas automatically call copyright laws into question: if writing and music draw on such a diverse array sources, how can anyone claim ownership of them?

Barthes’ interest lies elsewhere, though. His response to sampling is tell us that there is only ‘one place’ where the multiple strands of a text can be focused: this is in ‘the reader, not, as was hitherto said, the author’. There is no single meaning to any given work; there are many meanings. We shouldn’t look at the intentions of the writers; we should look at the responses of the readers instead.

            Fine. But popular music is received both individually and collectively. It is consumed in the privacy of headphones and in the commune of the gig. Its meanings are forged individually and collectively too. While listeners can have their own private associations with particular songs, audiences can adopt songs en masse and transform them or amplify their meanings. This is most apparent with YouTube phenomena such as ‘Harlem Shake’, but there is a sense in which all hit songs are taken over by their fans.

            Artists acknowledge this too. Those who are lucky enough to have had hits often talk of the fact that the songs don’t feel like their own any more. They have turned them over to their public to do with what they will. The irony here is that the more that the public starts to ‘author’ a song, the more the copyright owners profit from it.

And so, should the copyright laws be changed so that hits are fast-tracked towards the public domain? Despite Barthes’ advice, our attachment to authorship is strong. The attachment of the law is stronger still. Nevertheless, there is evidence that people feel that certain well-known songs should be theirs. A case in point is ‘Happy Birthday’, which can prompt outrage when people find out that it is still in copyright. What’s more, one area of legal policy acknowledges the public’s authorial role. When it comes to privacy laws the famous have to abide by different criteria to the rest of us. This is on the grounds that ‘if you choose to go into an arena where you get fame and maybe fortune, then your name and reputation is a matter of public interest and public property’. If we can have a share of someone’s reputation, then why not have a share of their hits?

The Media was our Helper and our Lover

The New Statesman has kindly re-posted my blog entry on ‘Retromania, Newness and Nowness’, giving it the new title ‘Pop has Substituted “Newness” for Innovation’. Published on this wider forum it has provoked some unrest. The criticisms of my work can be grouped into three mains areas. First, I’m told that if I want to find innovative music I’m looking in the wrong place. Second, it is pointed out to me that Retromania is not a new phenomenon. Third, I’m informed that as a Lecturer in Popular Music I have no right to be talking about popular music. I’ll deal with the second two complaints in later blog entries, but here I’ll address the search for innovative music.

            My first response is that I never claimed to be looking for it myself. The article is instead about the proud boasts of major record labels and radio broadcasters that they are uncovering ‘new’ music. As such it is focused on these institutions as well as on the media companies who underpin their operations, hence the use of quotes from Q and the NME. My claim is that each of these players concentrates on the music of now, rather than on the music of the future; as such the article it is much against Simon Reynolds’ idea that retromania is all pervasive as it is against record companies’ and radio broadcasters’ claims to originality. The title that the New Statesman has given to the piece doesn’t help to make this clear, but I must admit that I’m also guilty of confusing the issue: my suggestion that that the last 20 years has seen a dearth of innovative music could be seen as provocative and distracting.

            But what about the point that has been made: that I would find original music if I would only look in the right places. I’m sure there is some innovative music out there, but my own lazy belief is that we shouldn’t have to look too hard for it. It is the duty of radical music to enter the public consciousness. In my earlier piece I made the mistake of concentrating solely on aesthetics, however I would argue that any truly innovative work should be provoking change at a social level, as well as musically. I would go further and say that the two factors cannot be divorced: if a work is not prompting social change it cannot be regarded as aesthetically new. With formulations such as this it is always tempting to reverse the wording, thus adding that if music does not have a radical aesthetic it will not be effective at prompting social change. It is the case, however, that a song can be aesthetically conservative and yet still be the cause of social transformations. This can be because of factors in the music (lyrics inspire action, realism invokes idealism) and because of factors beyond the music (songs have radical videos, records can be attached to causes, artists make political statements in interviews). Nevertheless, it can be argued that popular music’s greatest moments of rupture, such as rock ‘n’ roll, psychedelia, punk, hip-hop and rave, have each promoted both aesthetic and social change. Conversely, a common criticism levelled at artists such as Madonna and Lady Gaga is that their art is not equal to their desire to provoke. The objective correlative does not add up.

            In order to enter the public consciousness a new musical movement has to move beyond its own confines. It has to draw both converts and enemies, and it can only do this by encountering media organisations: it has to move beyond what Sarah Thornton has termed ‘micro media’, and deal with ‘niche’ and ‘mass’ media as well. Niche media would include music journalism and specialist radio programmes. Mass media is aimed at the general public, and would include TV programmes and the daily papers. Some of popular music’s greatest moments of frisson have occurred when artists have moved from the micro to the mass: the Sex Pistols with Bill Grundy; the Sun promoting and then denigrating acid house; Nirvana on Top of the Pops. These are the occasions when parents find out what there kids have been up to.

But this is to write of the world that I grew up in. It is also to write about a peculiarly British situation. The UK has for decades had a niche music press, but this press used to have a mass national readership: in the 1970s both the NME and Melody Maker achieved weekly sales of 300,000 copies, figures similar to the daily circulation of Britain’s broadsheets today. In this era the predominant specialist radio programmes (notably John Peel’s show) were also being broadcast nationally to large audiences: the BBC was retaining its hegemony. This set-up provided the means by which musical movements could be transmitted across regions even before they were picked up by mass media. It could also be argued that the mass media reached a wider audience than it does today. In the 1970s Top of the Pops could attract up to 15 million viewers (over 25% of the population). Once a song reached this programme it was truly a part of daily life.

The internet is different. Musicians can now, in theory, communicate directly with their fans – they should no longer need traditional forms of media. Alternatively, it is argued that the internet is a medium that has the potential to be more massive than anything we’ve seen before. Nevertheless, the dormancy of the majority of the long tail would indicate that links between the internet, niche media and mass media are needed, but they are not working properly for all. It is mostly songs backed by effective promotional campaigns that have received attention across the board. Consequently, the musical world is being skewed towards the major labels and their priority signings. It is not the long tail that should be the focus of studies, but instead the short head.

The most popular legal platform for music is YouTube, whose slogan ‘broadcast yourself’ proclaims it to be a mass media forum. But YouTube operates in both a narrowcast and broadcast manner: viewings for its videos can range from none to nearly two billion. It is a medium that has the ability to transmit videos to both niche and mainstream audiences, but only certain types of music are reaching a wider circle of people. What is more, they are only doing so after they have been reported on in other media outlets. At the moment these are primarily novelty songs (‘Gangnam Style’, ‘What Does the Fox Say?’) and sexuality-exploitative songs (‘Blurred Lines’, ‘Wrecking Ball’). On their own, massive viewing figures are no guarantee that a song has moved beyond its confines. YouTube is also watched individually or with peers, rather than with the family, thus I would argue that even a song such as Justin Bieber’s ‘Baby’ (which is the second most popular video on YouTube, with nearly one billion views) has not entered the general public consciousness. It has drawn neither converts nor enemies; it is for Beliebers only.

If this is the case for the most popular of songs, what does it mean for the radical new music that I’m told is hiding away in the corners of the internet? How will it provoke the social change that for me marks the triumph of aesthetic innovation? My main hope is that I am out of date. I hope there is a mass underground movement that I don’t know about yet because I don’t understand new technology. And then I want Top of the Pops to come back again so I can watch as this music goes overground and sit there tut-tutting at my kids.