Music + Technology + Random Nonsense from the Music Industry, by Ethan Kaplan

This is in response to this post

There has been the death of the artifact of music. The sanctity of that artifact (album/song) is gone to the point where the media is inconsequential, and it is the content around the music that matters more.

It is the idea that the CONCEPT of a band, and the product generated around that concept through content is of import rather than putting all sanctity in the plastic (the CD, etc).

Here is what has happened though. The Internet, and digital distribution has brought about a world where artifacts as concrete THINGS is no longer of consequence. When everything is subject to the same absolute reductivity, there exists a lack of hierarchy in terms of the sanctity of the artifact, and the value of “original.”

Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” predicted this, but he was concerned with the printing press. His take was that through mass production, the sanctity of the artifact as “original” was decreased, as caused by the lack of aura around reproductions. His point being that a lithograph had no aura, as you could not see, feel, smell, etc what went into it.

What we have now is a post-modern extension on Benjamin. Basically because everything is beginning and ending in binary, without any analog corrolaries (hence no absolute Original), the terminus of original to reproduction (on both sides) doesn’t exist.

Original is just a point in a causal chain between production and consumption, and that point is arbitrary.

The problem with this, is that when the point of originality is so fluid, and the hierarchy that used to exist between production and consumption is likewise eliminated, the capitalization from Original that content providers depended on is likewise eliminated, and if not eliminated, changed to the point where it is not assured.

The model used to be very unidirectional from production to consumption, with adequate revenue inserted at all points. What has happened now is that the model has been subverted, inverted and destroyed.

Content providers (like record companies, newspapers, etc) have had to adapt not by reconstructing the terminus points from production to consumption, but instead inserting as many points of capital siphoning along the n-dimensional network that exists between these points as they can.

Thus, you see things in iTunes Music Store like the Depeche Mode presale, albums with videos or PDF booklets, the rise in prominence of official fanclubs, presales from those, better merchandise deals, more video production, PlayStation Portables as video devices, iTunes phones, DVD burners, Tivo, HD-DVR’s, HBO On Demand, ringtones, video ringtones, ringback tones, etc, etc.

Content is king, and that content for a record company extends far, far beyond an artist in a studio, and a packaged CD.

With the death of the actual artifact, and the media existing only as recombination of binary data, what is more important is how that data is recombined, in what form it is recombined to and to what extent the consumer can participate in a value exchange transaction in order to enjoy that content in many different contexts.