Creative Accounting

On Saturday, I spoke about songwriting splits at the bi-annual IASPM conference. I’ve written about the subject in this blog, but this was the first time that I’ve discussed it publicly. A copy of my paper can be accessed here.

Come Play With Me

On Wednesday, Music Business Worldwide reported that Spotify is gaining extra income by making its own recordings and inserting them into its playlists. These playlists are a modern form of Muzak: wishy-washy instrumentals, curated according to genre. By these means Spotify brings you ‘jazz, chill and peaceful piano playing’. These playlists are also extremely popular. The article reports that five of these Spotify-owned tracks have each racked up more 500,000 streams, while one has been played over a million times.

            Spotify is playing an old game here. When physical formats were dominant, businesses and artists would play tricks with formats in order to rake in extra copyright income. When a customer bought a 7-inch single, for example, the b-side would earn as much in songwriting royalties as the a-side. As a result, some business moguls would deliberately force artists to include works that they controlled as b-side material. Artists too would take advantage of b-side credits. The Rolling Stones balanced their early a-sides, which were cover versions, with group-composed b-sides. And similar games were played with albums. When a physical album was sold, the copyright income would be spread equally, regardless of the popularity of each track. As such, some groups deliberately chose to divide the publishing spoils (witness the Who’s album, A Quick One, which includes compositions by Roger Daltry and Keith Moon, in addition to Pete Townshend’s and John Entwistle’s more popular songs), while others had members who usurped the credits (Roger Waters of Pink Floyd went from the egalitarian splits of Dark Side of the Moon, which includes a false compositional credit for Nick Mason for ‘Speak to Me’, to the complete control of The Final Cut).

Ironically, it had been thought that streaming was bringing such games to an end. Streaming income, such that it is, is based on plays rather than sales. As such, the copyright worth of b-sides and album tracks has been reduced, while the bias towards hit singles has been increased. Spotify does have a successful longer format, however: it is the playlist rather than the LP. And as we have learned, they have now found a way to monetize it to their advantage: by creating their own works and inserting them in a sequence alongside better-known recordings.

There is one difference from previous practice, however. The tricks with b-sides and album tracks were centred on songwriting income. Spotify is making its money through sound recording copyright. Music Business Worldwide reports that the company isn’t necessarily interested in the publishing money, it is the ‘master rights’ in the recordings that they are most keen to own. This is reflective of the income split that has been somewhat forced upon them by the record companies and which has had the publishers up in arms. The record companies generally see 55-60% of the revenue from streaming services, the service providers retain 30%, which leaves the publishers with just 10-15%. Is this evidence that the money is no longer in the publishing?

Tomorrow Creeps in this Petty Pace

Last night I listened to the Beatles’ ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’. It was one of those times when I marvelled at the freshness of a sound recording. It’s 50 years old for Chrissakes! And yet it is still astonishing. Listening to it you can find yourself declaring that this track is more sonically exciting and challenging than the majority of music made today.

            Some people find this longevity problematic. There is a belief that popular music should be constantly progressing. We should not be harking back to older records. There is something seriously wrong with pop when the sounds of the past are more innovative than the sounds of the present. This is part of Simon Reynolds’ case against the ‘retromania’ of our times.

It struck me that if people do have an issue with musical nostalgia, it is not centred upon songs. It is the steadfastness of old sound recordings that troubles them. There have always been long-lasting tunes. It doesn’t bother us that ‘Stardust’ is nearly a century old and is still being sung. If anything we enjoy the longevity of compositions such as ‘Greensleeves’, ‘House of the Rising Sun’ or ‘Scarborough Fair’. Conversely, there can be something irksome about the fact that Revolver still tops best albums lists, or that the Stone Roses’ debut album is still being praised.

            There are folk reasons for this. Songs are iterated. They are remade by the generations and they shine anew. Sound recordings, in contrast, are static. If they last, they last in their initial form. They can be remixed and they can be sampled but you cannot escape the original. They are monolithic.

            There is also an issue of auteurship. Although all music has multiple points of influence, we are used to the idea that songs are individually authored or are co-authored. The idea of the songwriting author is enshrined in copyright law. The duration of copyright in musical composition is tied to the lives of the individuals concerned. In Britain, it lasts until 70 years after the last of the co-authors to die.

            In contrast, the auteurship of sound recordings is not as well established. There is an issue of just who it should belong to: the songwriters, the musicians, the producers, the engineers? British copyright law awards it on the basis of financial risk. It goes to the party who has made the arrangements for the recording to take place. This legislation does not recognise artistry; it instead rewards record companies. Copyright is not tied to the life of an individual. It lasts for 70 years from the date that the record is issued to the public.

There is nevertheless an increasing sense that sound recordings are artworks in their own right. Some of the pangs of retromania are no more than growing pains: sound recording is becoming canonised. We have no problem with the idea that the greatest works of literature, fine art and musical composition achieve classic status. We will eventually have no problem with the idea that the greatest sound recordings are worthy of the same accord. Music retail, music broadcasting and music journalism have already moved in this direction. They kowtow to the records of the past; they appreciate their artistry; they help to establish the auteurs. Copyright law is lagging behind.

And yet there is one final twist. There is a reason why recordings such as ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ are timeless: their makers had one eye on the future. Until recently the imperative in popular music was either to be forward looking or to ‘be here now’. The celebration of old records makes this harder: musicians are now saturated with and intimidated by the music of then. If any records of today are going to be canonised, it will most likely be the ones that are not overly indebted to the past masters. It is a question of balance. The greatness of sound recording should be acknowledged; the greatest sound recordings should also be transcended. 

Pop of Ages

Period dramas have a common fault: they are confined in their period. Set and costume designers study the trends of the era in which the drama is set; they then decorate their rooms and their characters wholly in those contemporary styles. The problem is that styles co-exist. Many people in the 1970s, for example, wore fashions from the 1950s and 1960s. Many homes of the period had modern gadgets, but they also had heirlooms, second-hand furniture and antiques. The same is true of any era. They are amalgams.

And what is true of the past is also true of the present. This struck me on a recent holiday to Corfu. We stayed at the house of some friends while they were away. My three year old daughter was kindly donated the room of their 15 year old son. If you see children’s rooms on television or in films they usually only have the most up-to-date toys. Those toys are strictly from that child’s age group. This rarely happens in real life. The boy’s bedroom in Corfu was a case in point. It had some things that you would expect from a child of 15: a computer, some computer games, To Kill a Mockingbird on the bookshelf. It also had books by the brilliant Dr Seuss, a pirate ship, and Star Wars’ Lego.

It is not just the case that you are too lazy to clear out your old toys when you are that age. You also have a strange amalgam of tastes. This same holiday provided me with reminders of my younger self. Our host had many of the punk and post-punk records that I grew up with. As usual, it was more exciting to play familiar records from someone else’s record collection than to play them from my own. Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures was one of them. I have it at home, but hadn’t listened to it for a while. Seeing it in Corfu reminded me what a great record it is.

I put it on and it took me back. My maturity was all over the place when I first heard it. I was twelve. I already knew enough about the pain of the world to feel the depth in ‘New Dawn Fades’ (‘a loaded gone won’t set you free . . . so they say’). I was also daft, and so I joined in when my friends-and-relations laughed at the opening phrase to ‘I Remember Nothing’ (Ian Curtis’s long cry of ‘weeee’ made us think of urine).

We were the right age for punk. Jon Savage has claimed that punk fans were divided between the ‘arties’ and ‘social realists’. This may have been true for older teenagers. From an adolescent’s perspective the music was instead balanced between enlightenment and childishness. Punk was the sound of a generation who thought that they were smarter than their parents (and they were often right about this too). It was also the sound of silliness.

It was possible to like both elements. I enjoyed the Damned as much as I admired Crass. I had records by GBH and by the Gang of Four. While some bands were strictly po-faced, others were comedians. There were also groups who slipped between the adult and the immature. The Sex Pistols most obviously. Their songs ranged from the profound depths of ‘Holidays in the Sun’ (Greil Marcus once commented: ‘no one has yet seen all the way to the bottom of “Holidays in the Sun,” and probably no one ever will’) to the (very) low humour of ‘Friggin’ in the Riggin’’ and ‘Belsen was Gas’. They could even swerve between the two in a single song: what should a 12-year-old make of ‘Bodies’? What should a 50-year-old make of it?

There may be little difference. What is true of punk is true of much other popular music. It is adolescent in the most interesting sense, being both sophisticated and moronic. One reason why it has so much impact when you are young is because you believe the music harnesses eternal truths. One reason why it still hits you when you are old is because your teenage spirit never quite dries up. 

London, I Love You

Despite the tragedies of Brexit, London remains wonderfully diverse. On Saturday night I travelled from my home in Wood Green to the depths of the south. Wood Green is like London was 25 years ago. It is knee-deep in litter. It has the kind of roughness that Lori McKenna celebrates in her song ‘BuyThis Town’. (McKenna’s song is one I always misremember. In my head the lyrics go: ‘maybe one day, I’ll have enough, to buy this town and keep it rough’.)

            From Wood Green I went to Brixton, a gentrified area that Wood Green could perhaps mimic 25 years from now. And from Brixton I went to Dulwich, which is like the village green preservation society. There is no litter at all.

            While there, I was among friends harking back to a song that used to obsess us, Donaeo’s ‘African Warrior’. This song is hilarious and brilliant and profound, perhaps the best combination of qualities that pop music can gather. It is one that I remember correctly: ‘I’m an African warrior, rolling with my stick in my hand’. On so many levels, I should not relate to this. But I do. It should not sound right in Dulwich, but it does. And that is why I love this town. 

Music on the Blockchain

Today sees the publication of a report on blockchain, led by my Middlesex University colleague Marcus O’Dair, and featuring contributions from myself, Zuleika Beaven, David Neilsen, Paul Pacifico from the Featured Artists Coalition and - yes - Nick Mason of Pink Floyd.

There has been much hype about blockchain over the past year. It has been argued that this technology will ‘save’ or ‘revolutionize’ the music industry. Our report highlights four areas in which blockchain could have transformative potential:

1.     As a networked database for music copyright information

2.     Facilitating fast, frictionless royalty payments

3.     Offering transparency through the value chain

4.     Providing access to alternative sources of capital

It can be read in full here.

Europe ... end ... less

Every now and again I DJ at the National Portrait Gallery in London. There is only one song that I always play: Kraftwerk’s ‘Europe Endless’. Each time I play it the song takes on a different hue. I have played it in support of the Greek fight against the austerity programme, and last year I played at as the refugee crisis reached one of its peaks. It is a song that resonates with people. The melody is uplifting and it contains all the promise of a European union. The song is nine minutes long, but aside from the repeated title there are only a dozen or so words. They nevertheless say all you need to know about Europe’s grandeur and its facade: ‘parks, hotels and palaces, promenades and avenues, real life and postcard views, elegance and decadence’. Usually someone will come up to me and say ‘what is this?’, or they will probe me with their Shazam. The last time I played 'Europe Endless' things were different, however. It was only two weeks ago. For once, the song was ignored. People talked all over it and it couldn’t get itself heard. I guess this was a sign.