mjp
Founding member
Jerry Casale from Devo was on NPR last night, pontificating about something he learned in college when he made a good point. He said "our culture has devalued music so much that people don't even want to pay for it."
I'm all for the death of the big record companies, but the byproduct of the rise of the technology is we've reached a saturation point and actually have too much recorded music. No human can absorb all the music that's created now. Even in one tiny sub-sub-genre. So devaluation would seem to be a natural progression.
A similar thing happened to television of course, when cable came along and gave people more than 3 or 4 choices. But cable is (so far) finite. Music just keeps expanding like the universe or Jesus' love for you.
Now that "anyone can create music," the (expensive) marketing of that music has become more important than ever. We went through a brief period where you could cultivate a sizable fan base online and even tour and survive as a musician, but as the expansion increases that becomes less viable (the same thing happened in the art world in the very early days of the internet).
We're way past the days where one band or one TV show can have a wide ranging cultural impact. That probably bodes poorly for us as a culture. As time goes on we'll have less and less common language and experience, and it will be that much easier to ignore and dismiss each other.
So, yeah. I'm sure you already know all that. I don't know why I just typed it.
I'm all for the death of the big record companies, but the byproduct of the rise of the technology is we've reached a saturation point and actually have too much recorded music. No human can absorb all the music that's created now. Even in one tiny sub-sub-genre. So devaluation would seem to be a natural progression.
A similar thing happened to television of course, when cable came along and gave people more than 3 or 4 choices. But cable is (so far) finite. Music just keeps expanding like the universe or Jesus' love for you.
Now that "anyone can create music," the (expensive) marketing of that music has become more important than ever. We went through a brief period where you could cultivate a sizable fan base online and even tour and survive as a musician, but as the expansion increases that becomes less viable (the same thing happened in the art world in the very early days of the internet).
We're way past the days where one band or one TV show can have a wide ranging cultural impact. That probably bodes poorly for us as a culture. As time goes on we'll have less and less common language and experience, and it will be that much easier to ignore and dismiss each other.
So, yeah. I'm sure you already know all that. I don't know why I just typed it.