I'm going to try not to make a habit of making everything I write a
3-part reading commitment, but this globalization of music idea has
been running on the proverbial hamster wheel all day and I have to get
this out.
An uber-intellectual friend of mine suggested I read the economic theories of Tyler Cowen on Gains of Trade.
Don't stop reading, I'm not going to get all business all of a sudden. Ok, maybe for just a second.
The
idea behind Cowen's analysis is that the globalization of business is
mutually beneficial to both the culture spreading ideas as well as the
culture accepting these new ideas. Now, I wouldn't necessarily agree
that it is mutually beneficial for McDonalds to set up 30 new stores in
Nepal to spread the love of rat-burgers, but that is a discussion for a
different blog.
While I may disagree with (pronounced "not
understand") the business aspect of this theory, I think the creative
context applies appropriately to global music.
As what we as
humans consider "local" quickly spreads to include the entire Earth,
musical backgrounds, abilities, influences, and experiences will begin
to homogenize and create new and exciting music that we can't begin to
imagine.
What I think this all means is that while we will
inevitably see a great deal of mediocrity, it also presents an
opportunity for us to experience music that is unfathomably amazing.
Think about it.
As
the Earth's puddles of musical genius converge into an ocean, there are
endless possibilities for innovation. So endless that we can't even
begin to predict the course music will take.
We are in an invigorating place in music history, all it is going to take to realize the future is a global venue.
I realize that in the last few posts I have made a pretty major
oversight of my own. It's likely that I don't know most of the bands on
we7.com because they are rising English bands, and they don't do U.S.
tours that often... and CERTAINLY don't get much U.S. airplay... Most
U.S. bands don't get that luxury...
This got me thinking about
the evolution and distribution of modern music and how things are going
to change in the next 20 years.
Historically, music has evolved from the interpretation and metamorphosis of influences experienced locally.
That is to say someone writing a piece of music in Vienna in 1350 would
have had no way of being influenced by someone in Buenos Aires.
Initially
the scale of what one would consider "local" was significantly smaller
than it is today. Influences have been contained by innumerable forces
(geography, language, and culture to name a few), and as our bank of
technological knowledge has expanded through time, so has our
understanding of what is "local".
While it is arguably the case
already, in the next 20 years the entire world will be "local". Low
Earth Orbit commercial airliners will make hopping continents something
to be done before lunch, and computers and wireless data transfer will
rule the World's industries.
In this high-speed, highly
accessible world, music will be transformed by a global melting pot of
cultural, linguistic, and instrumental elements to create unpredictable
new genres.
How feasible is it that all of this content is going
to be distributed on CDs? Are people going to have to start building
additions to their homes to accommodate all of the CD racks?
Obviously not.
Consider
this: if you are a MySpace member, you have inevitably experienced the
bombardment of bands requesting your attention. I'd say I'm being
generous by saying that maybe 15% of them are worth your time. At this
rate, MySpace will no longer be considered a worthwhile place for bands
to promote themselves within the next 5 years. With the unfortunate
exception of Soulja Boy, it is pretty dead already.
So where are
artists going to turn next for exposure? Some soon-to-be-created
internet music hub? Maybe that is what places like we7.com and
spiralfrog.com are trying to accomplish; to create a database of music
large enough to accommodate the inevitable bloom of content that we are
on the cusp of creating.
If the future of music is going to be
in the form of internet-based high-speed wireless delivery, a focus is
going to have to be put on the global scale of the future of the art
form. We will soon be experiencing situations like this: After
attending a live music festival in Denmark earlier in the day, Joey
(now back in his apartment in Des Moines, IA) wants to get the new
release from his new favorite Icelandic band.
The way things are
now, this would be a task of all tasks. If not available for download
on iTunes, it's P2P time... DAYS before the album is there. Otherwise,
it's navigating a website slowly pushing through the language barrier
to find a way to get it FedEx'd to the U.S.
Just too complicated.
We7.com
and Spiralfrog.com are onto something big, for sure. They are building
the foundation for the future of music distribution, but there is
obviously no way anyone could account for all of the variables we are
going to experience along the way.
Granted, I feel that they
have both made enormous mistakes from the get-go, but I will try to let
that go and hope that they figure it out on their own.
If anyone
is going to be able to usurp the technology monopoly that Apple is
continuously building upon, the global nature of the future of music is
going to be a key element to master in an internet-based content hub.
Be it a licensing issue (content not available in certain countries) or
an issue with content availability (no Jethro Tull records available),
the entity that will rule the future of content distribution will nail this on the first try.
We
are very close to someone taking the reins of the future of the music
industry, and the entity that gains the respect from the public will do
so by thinking of all of the variables in advance and catering to what
the industry WILL be next week, not what it is today.