Perverted by Language

By Sam Frank

When musician/producer Steve Albini expectorated those words in a 1994 The Baffler, he was talking about (what else?) the music industry. There ain't many topics that inspire such high-dudgeoned burn-the-bridges-and-drown-the-babies rhetoric (earlier in Albini's essay, he compares the signing process to backstroking through "a trench, about four feet wide and five feet deep, maybe sixty yards long, filled with runny, decaying shit")—or, inversely, the "They burned our bridges and drowned our babies, man" whining of Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich. Musicians and labels have always love-hated (emphasis on the latter) one another, and—big egos, big money, and all—always will, loudly and publicly. But now, what with this whole Napster/Metallica/MP3 lawsuit thing, there's a new twist. If you believe the hype, we all are already this fucked, and, moreover, we're the ones doing the fucking.

Bull. Napster, MP3s, the Information Intergalaticon Megaroad—no apocalyptic paradigm shifts here. No, life after Gnutella is going to be like today, only more so.

Try as the majors might, there's no stopping pure digital music. Sure, we're commodity fetishists all, and for 10, 20, even 50 years we'll cling to our precious CDs with their liner notes and album art. But face it: CDs are a crappy commodity to fetishize. Does anyone really think that when we all have photo-quality printers and direct Internet connections that can download in-the-flesh muscleboys on demand (oh—and liner notes and album art) we'll give two shits about a cheap piece of plastic encased in a cheaper three-piece suit? Remember the eight track? Didn't think so.

SARAH ENGLAND/YH

Clearly, for most people (pop fans, at least) availability won't be an issue. If you can hear it, you can record it and encode it. If protective labels can encrypt it, hackers can rip it right back open—Napster bans are temporary barriers, if that. A glistening sea of binary Eminem shimmers in the mind's eye. The flood that destroys the music industry as we know it?

Nope. The flood'll be in the other direction. Call it pollution in the digital ocean. It's already here—angry musicians dropping Napster "bombs" (viruses labeled as MP3s; obscure bands misrepresenting as the jailbait of the month); talentless acts taking up bandwidth like so much seaweed. From Blue Lagoon to Hudson River, just like that. Some people will enjoy trawling for Britney in the rough (you know 'em—they're the ones who enjoy pants shopping at the Salvation Army), but most others will beg for...

Gatekeepers. Major labels. Some entity to tell them what's good, to guarantee polish and palatability—for a fee. Same goes for indie labels. Even hipsters need to be led by their nose rings, and they'll actually pay for the privilege. Moreover, given that one minute of searching for the Band will return more hits than one year of searching for the Band of Susans, obscurantists need their not-for-free oases too.

So far, we're back where we are today. But just as cassettes and CDs allowed more bodies into the biz by cheapening access, pure digital will cut costs to the bone. Since most labels and musicians lose money on the deal anyway, digital distribution just cuts their risk—they can't lose money on the 1,000 albums they don't sell because they don't make the albums to begin with. They record the songs and encode them. Simple. Cheap. Democratic.

Also, pure digital will only emphasize music's twin drives to disposability and ponderousness. Why are pop songs three minutes long? Because that's how much music fits on a side when singles were invented. Why are old rock LPs 40 and new rap CDs 78 minutes long, even when they only have one good song? Again, the medium is the message, and musicians want to cram in as much message as possible. Pure digital has no limits to push—nothing's to stop pretentious artists of all stripes from recording one-second opuses or hundred-hour spasms and calling them albums. Digital will expand the range of expressive possibility for a few and produce a ton of acts who have no greater ambition than to be one-hit wonders. No more need for albums, forget filler, we want the hits, so let's have 'em and nothin' but!

So where does that leave us? With major labels and indie labels. With singles factories and artistes. With self-promoters who spam the entire world with their tunes. With cult favorites who record their whole lives and stream it direct to their own personal Medicis. Music will be both less escapable and more obscure; both more free and more expensive. As today, some will thrive and others will starve—but the extremes will be that much more extreme.

Bottom line: pure digital will bring the music industry to its logical conclusion. The hacks should quit their bitchin' and learn how to make money off the damn thing. Because while digital does make the trench bigger and runnier, now more than ever there's no excuse for taking a dive.

Back to Opinion...