From Joel Ongthorne Sent Fri, Sep 10th 1999, 00:05
From Joel Ongthorne Sent Fri, Sep 10th 1999, 00:05
>http://www.lrna.org/league/mr/mr3a.html
>
>August 29, 1999
>
>Music & Revolution 3
>
>THE CAPITALIST MUSIC INDUSTRY IS OBSOLETE: WHAT CAN TAKE ITS PLACE?
>
>A music industry that prices music out of the reach of tens of millions of
>people, intentionally keeps most music off the radio, and censors
>musicians has clearly outlived its usefulness.
>
>A music industry that gets laws passed to prevent the distribution of
>music by computer technology, makes music a slave to the whims of Wall
>Street, and would rather work with the FBI to combat "piracy" than put
>money into artistic development is not only obsolete, it's dangerous. The
>beauty and power of music can no longer co-exist with the corruption and
>greed of the capitalist music industry.
>
>These harsh assessments may seem hard to accept, since the rise of the
>popular music that dominates most of the world today has been closely
>linked to the rise of post-war capitalism and to thousands of music
>business entrepreneurs. The Post-War Music Industry
>
>As rock and soul music emerged in the 1950s, new record labels took the
>stage and made the new sounds available at affordable prices. Clear
>channel radio stations beamed music from the deep South out across the
>country. Even payola--the payment of bribes by the record companies to get
>records played on the radio--had a positive aspect. Payola helped to break
>down many of the barriers in the broadcast industry, allowing the music of
>Southern blacks and whites to break out and become the raw material of an
>emerging culture.
>
>Entrepreneurs were indispensable to this process. Although they brutally
>exploited artists, the owners of record labels and radio stations helped
>to create and shape a previously non-existent teen market (the idea that
>youth has a culture of its own did not exist before the 1950s). The
>emergence of the teen market was an important step in the evolution of
>today's revolutionary youth culture. However, the music we take for
>granted today did not emerge peacefully. In the 1950s, there were constant
>attacks on music by politicians, the media, police, district attorneys,
>the Klan, and the church.
>
>In the late 1960s, a concert industry developed which brought a variety of
>artists into every town in America with a decent-sized theater at an
>affordable price. At the same time, both national record store chains and
>a new breed of independent record stores brought a diversity of recorded
>music within driving distance of most Americans.
>
>The strength of the U.S. economy--not just high profits but the growth of
>jobs and even welfare benefits--allowed music to develop as it did. For
>the first twenty-five years of the rock & soul era, the stock market
>allowed music companies to raise the capital they needed to fund an
>infrastructure that brought music to almost everyone. It allowed
>corporations to raise the money they needed to build the factories and
>offices that kept us employed. Those jobs provided the money we needed to
>buy records and concert tickets.
>
>In the 1980s, entrepreneurs made sure that new styles of music became
>widely available and, in the most striking example of that process, rap
>was transformed from a New York neighborhood phenomenon into an
>international language of the greatest importance.
>
>The Worm Turns
>
>The 90s has seen a resumption of the full-scale war against music that
>took place in the 50s. Once again, politicians, the media, the police,
>district attorneys, and the church are attacking music, blaming it for
>everything from drug use to the depressed state of the economy.
>
>But there is a very important difference today. The same music industry
>that helped make our culture possible has become one of the foremost
>obstacles to getting music heard. High Retail Prices.... Although total
>manufacturing cost for a CD is around 50 cents per disc, the consumer pays
>up to $20 for it. In a world where 3 billion people live in poverty
>(including 80 million people in the U.S.), many music fans can no longer
>afford to buy the music they love.
>
>Live Music.... Many concert tours now have average ticket prices of over
>$100. Ticketmaster surcharges are now sometimes more than the price of a
>concert ticket itself was only a few years ago. With millions of Americans
>who used to enjoy a night out now living in poverty, many clubs have gone
>out of business. Those that remain often force bands to pay for the
>privilege of playing while fans suffer from high cover charges and drink
>prices. Many clubs have become dependent on tobacco company promotion
>money and, as a result, musicians must promote lung cancer in order to be
>heard.
>
>Censorship.... The major record companies now place warning stickers on
>many of the albums they release. This means a lot of music that does get
>recorded can't be sold to teenagers or, in many cases, anyone. The major
>record store chains all actively promote censorship. The record companies
>all have in-house censorship committees that, among other things, forbid
>criticism of the police.
>
>>From its beginnings in the mid-1980s, the current wave of music censorship
>has been orchestrated from the highest levels of power, led by politicians
>who receive strong music industry support. For example, in 1986 a secret
>meeting was held in the Maryland countryside to discuss the danger music
>presents to the ruling class. Sponsored by the Parents Music Resource
>Center (an organization founded by current Second Lady Tipper Gore),
>participants included the commandant of the Marine Corps, representatives
>of foreign countries, most Democratic and Republican Presidential
>candidates of the past twenty years, a former chairman of the Federal
>Communications Commission, current vice-president Al Gore, a
>vice-president of Merrill Lynch and a vice-president of Northwest
>Airlines. The music industry has gladly accepted many of the demands of
>the Parents Music Resource Center, such as placing warning labels on CDs
>and cassettes.
>
>Radio.... Since the 1996 Telecom bill made it legal to put together giant
>radio chains--including ownership of several stations in the same
>city--radio has played a narrower and narrower span of music, focusing on
>selling advertising to national corporate clients. Record companies now
>openly pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to radio chains to get their
>records played. This keeps anyone without a multi-million dollar slush
>fund from being heard.
>
>Many people have turned to unlicensed ("pirate") radio as a way to
>broadcast the music and news ignored by the big radio chains. The response
>of the broadcast corporations has been to pressure the Federal
>Communications Commission to shut down all pirates. Over the past few
>years, the FCC has raided hundreds of unlicensed stations, often at
>gunpoint.
>
>Technology.... There has been a steady stream of advances in music
>technology since the end of World War II: stereophonic sound, eight-track,
>cassette players, compact discs, DVD, etc. The music industry embraced and
>promoted them all until the most important advance ever--the
>Internet--came along.
>
>A lot of people all over the world use computer technology to listen to
>and distribute music without paying for it. The response of the giant
>music monopolies has been to hire people to search the web for
>"unauthorized" use of music, to sic their lawyers on music-lovers who use
>the Internet to distribute music or lyrics for free, to prevent artists
>from putting their music up on the Internet for free, and to get
>legislation passed to criminalize the free distribution of music.
>
>The Stock Market
>
>The role of the stock market has changed. Today, the only thing Wall
>Street wants to hear from a company is how many jobs it's going to
>eliminate. The more people who hit the street, the higher a company's
>stock price goes. The increase in poverty and homelessness that results
>undermines the distribution and enjoyment of music because it removes
>millions of music consumers from the economy.
>
>The stock market is also used as a club to force record companies to
>censor themselves. Politicians in several states who control pension funds
>that own record company stock have threatened to dump that stock on the
>market if music that's critical of society isn't eliminated. For instance,
>every major record label passed on issuing a pro-choice compilation album
>featuring several well-known musicians, saying that to release it would
>cause them to be attacked in the stock market.
>
>What can replace the capitalist music industry?
>
>There was a time when it was almost impossible to even record music
>without using a full-blown studio controlled by a record company. Today,
>it's easy for any musician to make high-quality recordings and to
>distribute the result via the Internet. In other words, we no longer need
>the capitalist music industry. For anything. It's obsolete. It's
>worthless.
>
>But the rapidly-growing music underground is only an indicator of what a
>bright future culture can have. By itself, the underground is not that
>future. We can't settle for simply finding ways to circumvent the
>capitalist music industry while most musicians remain in poverty and the
>attacks against the music underground continue in the form of lawsuits,
>raids, and punitive legislation. That is a losing strategy.
>
>The League of Revolutionaries for a New America (LRNA) proposes that we
>turn the music underground into an overground of unlimited musical
>creation and enjoyment. We already have the capability to guarantee the
>basis for the full creativity of every human being: Food, shelter, medical
>care, education, and 24 hour a day access to all the tools anyone needs
>for producing music.
>
>It is computer technology that makes the current music underground
>possible and modern technology also produces an abundance of food,
>shelter, medicine, and, of course, musical instruments. We simply need to
>take music and the other essential elements of life out of the hands of
>the capitalists and place them in the hands of the public. By removing the
>barriers of the music industry, of the stock market, and of capitalism
>itself, what naturally wants to happen will be able to happen.
>
>The result will be that everyone who wants to create music will be able
>to. Musicians will be able to be heard by anyone on earth who wants to
>listen. They won't have to work at degrading day jobs. Music and other
>forms of culture will finally be free to fully reflect and uplift the
>human spirit as part of a cooperative society that nurtures humanity every
>step of the way.
>
>- --
>
>The entire contents of Music and Revolution 3 can be found at on the
>League of Revolutionaries for a New America web site at:
>
>http://wwwlrna.org/league/mr/mr3.html
>
>Send articles from Music & Revolution via email to everyone you think
>would be interested.
>
>League of Revolutionaries for a New America
>P.O. Box 477113
>Chicago, IL 60647
>(773) 486-0028
>E-mail xxxxxx@xxx.xxx
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