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The end of the world as we (musicians) know it

“You know, Johnny”, a musician friend told me, “I’ve got around 200 of my songs waiting, just here in my computer.”

My obvious reaction was relish, of course, and so I pleaded, “I’d so like to hear some of them.”

After listening to a few of the songs, I was aghast but not for the predictable reasons. Each “song” I heard lasted no more than 10 seconds.

After polite encouragement, I found pause to say goodnight, and as I drove home darkly, my humor was working overtime.

Perhaps the dreaded TEOTWAWKI—yes, the end of the world as we (musicians) know it—is at hand. Conspiracy theories abound of the plot to kill the CD, to be supplanted by their wavy digital doppelgangers, particularly the compressed and “lossy” MP3. If my friend’s songs are rendered into 3-minute loops, you can buy them for 99 cents apiece.

The way I see it, it’s the software that’s the work of art in all of that, with reams of business potential catering to a teeming cottage industry of desktop music virtuosos. Who cares about the sonata allegro form? Those verse-refrain-verse routines with the chorus hook and the concluding coda can all just follow. This is the wishfully thought Armageddon.

Music as accessory


The business of music could be moving into pathways and territories where music itself is the accessory. The real profits to be made these days are in the music appliances with the headphones and the optional phone calls you make. The onslaught of 128kbps files running three minutes at approximately 1 Megabyte per minute is a collective behemoth.

You don’t have to know what a major seventh chord is these days. Just “sample” a few seconds from somewhere, or press some clustered notes, add a torrent of effects, loop them, tweak the speed, and when it’s finally unrecognizable, it’s all yours to sell. They term the process “Collective Commons” in various shades. It’s a bit like, “show me yours, I’ll show you mine.”

What doesn’t kill the beast makes it stronger

Collective Commons first emerged in 2001, akin to a demilitarized zone that buffers between copyright and the public domain. There was much protest to the U.S. congressional bill called SOPA (“Stop Online Piracy Act”) that proposed to empower the Attorney General to sanction website operators suspected of content infringement.

In this dangerous scenario, the search engines (e.g. Yahoo), ad providers (e.g. Federated Media), payment providers (e.g. PayPal) and Internet service providers are beholden to a feared capitalist superstructure. The global knee-jerk reaction sent the bill’s proponents back into the legal trenches, but we know what doesn’t kill the beast will only make it stronger.

A record industry insider confided that they’re contemplating publishing books now, with bonus CDs included inside. They can’t sell the audiophile CD too well but they can sell the book. Box sets abound for established artistes in the specialty shops, featuring CDs with extensive memorabilia, perhaps a vinyl thrown in, a DVD, and lavish packaging.

Those privileged enough to be accorded the royal treatment by the record companies will be cordoned off from the avalanche of DIY desktop composers and 10-second MP3 masterpieces.

Go forage online stores like Amazon and see for yourself.

It’s an edgewise game these days and production values will either go sky-high or knee-deep. In the end, you really get what you pay for.

Johnny Alegre is a jazz musician who records for Candid Records (U.K.) and MCA Music Philippines. He has won a Palanca award for Literature, written about technology and digs DC and Marvel comics.

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