What Musicians Can Teach Us About Employment In A Digital World

It was 1998, the Internet came creeping into our lives like the first tendrils of creamer in a cup of coffee.  The first round of CD burners had to be bought separately. They cost almost half as much as the computer itself with a strong possibility of installing an additional port to connect the giant serial cable.  It wouldn't be more than 3 or 4 years before every computer came with a CD-R as a standard drive. Around that time Napster snuck in with file sharing technology utilizing MP3 compression.  Piracy was no longer about the old tape dub paradigm of buying a cd and making copies for friends. Now you could just go find any new album posted up by someone on the other side of the country.

We had record/video stores back then and the harbinger of doom that would eventually put record stores out of business and loose havoc on the Record industry confronted you in tubes of 10, 50, and 150 CD-Rs on a shelf where top ten albums used to live. The big labels mustered all their collective strength and tried to put up a fight.  DART already gave them a portion of the sales of blank media, but they went further suing websites and even consumers using the file sharing and piracy websites.  It was way too late though, technology had drifted into Wild West territory.  $14.99 could never compete with free.  

In those days, Silicon Valley was quickly maneuvering the wild west of cyberspace into real world supremacy. The computer industry simply had more economic clout than the record industry.  Freedom of speech warred with intellectual property.  There was no game book on how to fight a data storm.  When bandwidth started growing and the video industry became threatened by the same fate as the music industry piracy really met a slightly more prepared foe. The danger of malware being downloaded with the desired new movie or album contributed to that portion of the internet becoming a shady red light district.  SOPA had its moment but collapsed under scrutiny of totalitarianism. Eventually legal disruption would siphon off the profits into software gatekeepers. One by one technology would beat out established institutions,  Netflix would destroy Blockbuster and Spotify and YouTube would become primary means of media distribution. Streaming and On Demand would replace owning and rentals.  Uber and Lyft came for the Taxi companies.  AirBnB came for the hotel industry. Amazon came for brick and mortar retail.  It won't be long before all incomes are effected by this blossoming Technological Revolution, that's the world we live in now.    

So how do we survive?

Musicians, even in the glory days were at the bottom of the food chain.   The creators of the content so deeply craved were consistently beholding record labels who took as little as 50% of all revenue, after recouped costs for advances on recording, touring and promoting.  As now, few rose to the top and made fortunes.  The industry funneled investment into "sure shots" leading gradually to more generic than the generic that came before. Quality of creation suffered for economics, taste factored less and less as businessmen discovered the population would consume whatever they doled out. Minimum investment maximum gain.  

The Internet at the turn of the millennium held a momentary promise of democratizing the industry, returning power to creators by tearing down the infrastructure between creators and consumers.  Little did we know what that meant, but we all made our MySpace pages and bought into the new paradigm.  We were the forefront of the "indie" revolution, directly accessing and selling to our fans like never before. 

The modern musician cannot consider creating music their sole occupation. The artist needs now be an entrepreneur, a marketing expert, a booking agent, a tour and business manager, a publisher, a lawyer, a graphic designer, a highly connected networker, etc. etc.  Oh, and you also need a day job. Fortunately most of this new "workload" can be done from a smart phone. Simultaneously, technology also simplified actual creation, enabling common to achieve standard quality with little or no effort. The market floods, the commodity of music suffers a sort of inflation despite being consumed more than ever before, and the value of the consumable drops dramatically...Yet fortunes are to be made by offering access. 

So a shift occured in the nature of the artist.  They continue creating, no longer expecting any real recompense in the here and now.  However, the greatest tragedy the artist can imagine is going through the struggle and loving effort of creating a masterpiece no one will ever see, and a new niche of visibility middlemen was born. Those offering access to consumers convinced the content creators that sharing everything for free rewards the commodity of exposure (potentially with a someday payout).  Every kid with GarageBand is giving away their tracks on ReverbNation while BFA Composers lurk in forums like beggars seeking an unpaid gigs to build a portfolio, and if you wiggle your ears right while touching your nose with your elbow you can get your stuff on internet radio or Spotify. Opportunistic Business Sharks circle picking at the edges.  Music libraries accept submissions and take 50% for royalty free placement.   Networking gatekeepers commodify connections.  Pay to post "seeking", pay to respond.  We fall under the spell of "Market through Facebook, build up a following..." Pay for some ads or risk invisibility.  Use the tools and platforms and networking sites.  Play friendly. Schmooze a little.  Email influencers, like their feeds.  Get a shout out from a blog. See a bump in new commodity of likes.  Pour more hours into the marketing struggle. 

Somehow the system, like a great alchemist, turned creativity into a form of consumerism. 

If the goal was to make a living doing what we love, how did we end up convinced that doing something else would open the doors to getting rich off of our dreams?  It was madness focusing on results instead of process.  Putting promotion over the craft, leaning ladders against wrong walls and wondering why results aren't forthcoming. We called the new pursuit branding and identity.  It's what the stars were doing. All the Success Blogs said it was imperative to breaking through the noise and being noticed.  They sold the desire to be perceived into an outer ideal, rather than leveraging our personal truth, we lost sight of the path.  To have all those hours back, to instead perfect something hidden but unmistakably genius. 

Time unlocks purpose when faced with giving up childhood idolizations and moving on or choosing to carry our efforts into an uncertain future.  Every year that passes you must make a decision to continue. The source of resiliency is passion. The journey is the destination. Everything needed to know could be found in practice.  Slowing down through a difficult passage.  Persistence to build strength and speed.  Coordination and altering approach. Internalizing and assimilating.  Learning the rules to break them.  Baby steps towards greatness.  The practice improves the whole person. The pursuit was a spiritual one, meditations in motion, one step cleaner, faster, stronger, longer. To find joy by disappearing in the effort.  

And that is when you get the reward...  

So how does all of this relate to a coal miner?  

I don't think of coal mining as an emotionally rewarding task.  Not particularly good for the environment either.  Coal miners are, however, losing their lucrative jobs like musicians did thanks to changing technology.   Like musicians they are in need of day jobs. Gainful employment.  

What followed originally was a diatribe against the failings of late capitalism and a romantic exploration of a utopian future. This derailed into a whole new post. To be read...

Instead I'll conclude with the original design intact.   What musicians have to teach us about 

employment in a digital age is:

On occasion you may have to do some menial shit you don't want to do in order to finance the life you accept living.  It may seem beneath you but if it keeps you fed, with a roof over your head you can survive enough to side hustle a true ambition.  Start planting the seeds today and water them every chance you get.

Constantly seek personal improvement with persistence and focus.  A siren song of media and marketing seeks to convert your efforts into their profits. Don't fall for it.  Pursue your goal diligently. Find interest in the cloud surrounding your path and grow from where you are.   Become the best at what you want to be, if you are not that then the propping up will blow down in the first wind.  Change is inevitable, the skills of today will become obsolete tomorrow. If you are not climbing you are sliding down hill.  A good investor will tell you to diversify... the same goes for skills and talents.  Never stop learning.

The Future of Noise Music and Childrens Rebellion

In this time of Miley Cyrus, Beiber boinking Selena Gomez, American Idol, Rhianna getting beat up over a herpes incident,  Lady Gaga's fashion use to gain stardom,  Green day getting old and political,   Chocolate Rain and the Double Rainbow Song blasting to insane YouTube heights, remixed and remashed media overload,  shortening attention spans,  the flooding of the markets by the amateur,  the birth of indie music.  the death of indie music, a label driven genre called indie.  Where are we headed?  Blending backwards and round we go again, shifting each pass with a new hue to collide with the old.  Musical trend cycling has placed us in an 1980s shit warp.  The music industry has been shaken in so many ways by technology since the early nineties, the advent of digital music,  freeing up the market to the underdog.  What began as an assault on the damage already done by the big record labels has backfired by the the "Do It Your Selfers" flooding the market with thoughtless mediocrity.  The recording of music was once difficult when proper facilities and the knowledge of their operation was required... now any Joe can do it with programs that come standard on a MacBook or in an iPhone app.  Quality control right out the window.
So now the trick is to get noticed amongst the rubble... somehow... and the musical revolution has been reduced to a media manipulation popularity contest.  To have the time to create quality creations often means the neglect of the realities of the day: kitten comments,  Chuck Norris,  drunk babies and the ruthless recycling of media on and on, though the concept of Memes has become a digital virus, its not really a new idea is it?  Warhol was doing it and now you can too with the war hole preset on Mac Photo Booth.   Complain about it as much as we can,  this reality is here to stay.  What is? What is just stupid?  Indifference and small thought.  It has all been said before.

There is rumor on the wind of Americana bursting through the earth and back into the mainstream, but  the nature of revisionist roots music is inherently reproducing a much further back past. So we wait for a movement, in which something unique will bubble its way into the Echelons of Popular culture. 

But there is hope, Ruscha knew it 40 years ago.

There is possibility the future must be opening towards, and rebellion must certainly play its part in the midst of the brainwashing seeking to render us all thoughtless at the mercy of Murphy's Glee recycling.  Some massive cataclysmic shift away from the American Idol prototype of stardom.   Thought is hoped to prevail,  but it is rebellion which is unavoidable.  If you like the music your parents like, most likely it's not cool.  For those fortunate enough to have parents with good taste, there will probably be a period of rebelling into something else in between.   So that you can come back to it with a mature mindset shaped and renovated before being allowed to think its cool.   Noise is the path, the disturbance in the status quo,  like Obi Won Kenobi It's our only hope.  Just wait and see.  The pure opposite of pop... but as pop? 

It has begun rising up through the Cracks especially in Electronic music like Mr. Oizo, The Books, Matmos, Lexanculpt, Hrvatski, The dirty synthesizer,  the Digital Concréte manipulation of audio files.  Despite being ideas Explored By Pierre Schaeffer, Stockhausen, Iannis Xenakis in the early 1900s they have not fairly found their way into the public sight.  Merzbow with his monstorous forward thinking, leads Japan as a beacon of hope to the underground success of noise followed by such names as Melt Banana, The Bordoms and then the much more highly musical Worlds end Girlfriend who pulls no punches when it comes to being noisy.  Add this all to The Underculture of Industrial, Einstürzende Neubauten, Diamanda Galas, Skinny Puppy, Wolf Eyes, Yellow Swan, this stuff makes the Ultimate act of musical rebellion of the 70s seem like kids with guitars.  Not to subtract from Punk music in any way,  It has most definitely paved the way. And is probably the greatest example of how a countercultural movement can swing its way into becoming a Pop culture phenomenon. 

Mark my words, It will not be too long before noise rises.  The economic situation is ripe, people feel unsettled, it leads to needing an outlet, something aggressive perhaps they will take to the streets perhaps they will burn things. We can hope that a creative outlet overwhelms the destructive one.  Street art carries the poetic terrorism inherent in boundary pushing, and doesn't something so underground rising to popularity deserve its own special soundtrack.  New is needed, something is going to have to give,  Kids will only put up with so much of what they are fed. The standard quality of music has become flaccid, There is just not enough time to practice being a real musician. The tools exist to turn everyone into a walking sampler. And this will truly be the failing and breaking point of the noise movement.  The copy cats who think that noise has no shape or form.  The limited mind space to look at the abstract painting and say I could do that and regurgitate with out the background.  But none the less this is the nature of Pop, and the blanket it will weave will ever grow. and in the end perhaps computers will make music only for other computers to hear.

Bjork's new App/Album - Biophillia

It looks like Bjork has been busy, and just to show the world she hasn't lost her touch for pushing the industry forward,  she is releasing her newest musical work as a complete album/application for iPhone and iPad.  In addition to stop motion videos, 

Biophilia as a 3-D multimedia collaborative effort made possible through a large group of artists, scientists, designers and instrument building programmers.  Some notables are Scott Snibbe and Michael Gondry and M/M design in Paris who she has worked with many times before. Science Icon David Attenborough narrarates the opening introduction.

  

 The listener is invited to wander through constellations in order to access Album art, games, notation, lyrics and music.  The interactive approach allows full multimedia immersion in the entirety of the ideal presented in the work, primarily How nature music and technology interact.   The album presents itself as an instrument to be played, toying with organic ideas exploring space and microscopic environments alike.  The games allow the listener to become involved in actually creating the music building rhythms chord structures out of the earth, and fighting mutating viral rhythms.  Then of course you can also just listen Bjorks above par music. In a world where pop artists try and try to be different but still make mediocre cookie cutter songs Bjork shows up and shows Mother Monster she has a lot to learn about being an artist.

Amy Winehouse Joins Forever 27 Club

AMY WINEHOUSE - September 14, 1983 - July 23, 2011

Image by BTOY 

Her music and voice were modernism clashing with the past.  Her story was a constant rollercoaster of drugs and drinking and sex and all the things that the legends of rock and roll martyr themselves for.  So now on July 23, 2011, Amy Winehouse joins in the elite Forever 27 Club where she is latched into the eternal party with Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Brian Jones, Kurt Cobain, Jean-Michel Basquiat,  Jeremy Michael Ward, Ron McKernan and Robert Johnson who purportedly sold his soul to the devil and is considered to be the first initiated into the club, Joseph Merrick, "The Elephant Man", also died at age 27 but unfortunately was not beautiful enough to make it on most lists.   In honor of her we shall skip over "Rehab" and leave with "Back to Black."

The Confusing Racial Implications of the Goat Rider Party

Strange musical economy... the rules never changed. Instead the method to the madness mutated in a most dismaying manner. It does make some sense though, and the blogs really are doing a service to the musicians at this point.  Especially because everyone is an artist now, Garage Band musicians are falling out of the trees like shaken up termites chewing at the rims of media formats. and Double Rainbow is getting the most plays.

Strange musical economy... Maybe the rules did change,  but still The artists remain poor at the bottom of the money net, and instead of spending money in studios which used to separate the chaff from the grain, they now pay for marketing and promotion or to submit their music through some third party who managed to convince venues a tollway between them and the artists was a good idea(quality control, you know?)

I did so think that the world of Americana music would have divorced itself from such silliness as that which spawns Lady Gaga's embryonic form of Miley Cyrus, that doomed offspring of my Achy Breaky Heart.  The entirety of the Disney clan now fully aware of the sordid lives they must lead in the aftermath witnessing their star role model Brittany Spears and sister sliding down awkward paths.

Indeed the Justin Beiber Selena Gomez Sex Tape is only the beginning.  After all with Usher producing it and Demi Levato lending a hand(quite literally) the show should be spectacular. "But they are still children" the Christian right wing will cry out uncertain who to blame for the actions of those left in charge of babysitting their own lost children trying so hard to be grown up versions of their idols. They rapidly duplicate every move of virginal experimentation detailed by the Twitter play by play and steal mommy's credit card for the new Disney Porn Site selling subscriptions by the millions. Indeed, the mouse will sell everything after the hostile acquisition of Hustler.  Amy Winehouse toasts from her "Snuggie" on heroin couch,  While Madonna bitterly explains to her manager "I did that years ago." Sex always sells the most of everything,  Its the lowest common denominator that the media craves, and because the market is now set to be based on media,  the ad campaign must be original... Much like The Avant-Americana Stylings of TEARS OF THE MOOSECHASER... 

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