Soothsayer
July 20th, 2003, 11:55 AM
This article was taken from the Kalamazoo Gazette in Michigan, and was written by Mark Wedel... saw this and thought it should be posted. One more artist for the cause!
Music as sacrament Todd Rundgren makes a spiritual case for file sharing
Sunday, July 20, 2003
BY MARK WEDEL
In 1978, he hosted the world's first interactive concert, broadcast live from the Warner/QUBE system in Columbus, Ohio. He developed the first digital-paintbox program for personal computers -- the Utopia Graphics Tablet -- marketed in 1980 by Apple Computer Inc. In 1995, he released one of the world's first full-length enhanced CDs, "The Individualist."
In 1996, years before the MP3/file-trading revolution started by Napster, Rundgren had the idea that he could record a song and send it through the Internet to his fans and avoid the middlemen of the music industry entirely. He created PatroNet (www.patronet.com) and, after many trial-and-error experiments, launched it as a subscription service in 2000.
Then the Internet technology bubble burst. PatroNet lost funding, and Rundgren had to step back and rethink this whole music/Internet thing.
Meanwhile, Apple and other companies had been setting up shop selling MP3s over the Internet. Young upstarts like Ween (who'll be playing at the State the day after Rundgren) were doing their own experiments in distributing their music online.
"I suppose that in some ways things have turned out as I had imagined," Rundgren said. "Yet again in other ways I shouldn't have been so optimistic. Like, I think it's great that people are starting to get into online music distribution because that was always the big thing with me."
But the music industry, led by the Recording Industry Association of America, is still not comfortable with digital music distribution, because it takes a lot of the physical control over music away from them, he said.
"I think it's not great in the way the industry has reacted to (digital music distribution) in the sense that I don't think they understand it, they don't understand the dynamic behind it, and so they think it's possible to make people continue to think in this sort of old-fashioned way that sees music as a commodity, as an item that costs 99 cents like a hamburger or something like that, whereas music was always something sort of ephemeral," he said.
"In the past, I don't know Ǡ100 years by now, since Edison invented the phonograph, people have started to associate music more with the recordings than with the performance of it. I think people have come to recognize the 'commoditized' model of music as being something distinctly different from music the art form and music, you know, the sacrament."
In other words, music is not a CD, not a record album. When it's ripped from a CD and sent flying off into cyberspace, it enters the realm of bird songs or people singing in church, Rundgren said.
"So there is a sacramental aspect about music that requires it to sort of belong to everyone, and we're always coming up against this thing, this cartel, the RIAA and its members, trying to constantly control music -- where it goes and who can hear it."
Music floating about on the Internet represents "all these futuristic elements that put this dream back within our grasp, which is that music could exist on a sacramental level as opposed to a purely commercial level.
"The record industry wants to convince you that that's somehow wrong. ... A sacrament is something you share ... but the whole idea of people just willy-nilly handing it about and having other people hearing it and enjoying it, that's somehow a crime."
Doesn't somebody have to get paid for making the music?
"Yes, but like when I first realized that music was important to me, you don't start calculating in your head exactly how much your career as a musician is going to return to you," Rundgren said. "The first thing that you feel is you want to create this joy, this communication or something. Before you could ever consider getting paid for it, you had to perform in front of people who had a response: 'Mmm, that was nice, I liked that.'"
Rundgren imagines a new movement in music in which artists make enough money by playing live. "But when it comes to recorded music, we're just going to give it away, and that's it," he said.
Music should be a service, not a product, Rundgren said. This is where PatroNet comes in, where people can subscribe and get all the Todd Rundgren music they want. PatroNet will be relaunching later this month and will feature The Interociter, software that, like KaZaA or the old Napster, will let users get into a network. But it's a controlled, private network, Rundgren said, without the usual messy anarchy of the Internet.
"It's been a challenge," he said of the past few years. Aside from the recession of the Internet boom, there's the "waiting for the gold rush to happen," he said. That would happen when enough homes have high-speed Internet service, necessary for frustration-free downloads of large media files.
We're very close to the time, he said, "when the penetration of high-speed Internet into homes not only in this country but internationally has achieved a critical mass so that you can now say, 'Hmm, maybe I don't need a record label to distribute my music, maybe I can distribute it directly to people.
Music as sacrament Todd Rundgren makes a spiritual case for file sharing
Sunday, July 20, 2003
BY MARK WEDEL
In 1978, he hosted the world's first interactive concert, broadcast live from the Warner/QUBE system in Columbus, Ohio. He developed the first digital-paintbox program for personal computers -- the Utopia Graphics Tablet -- marketed in 1980 by Apple Computer Inc. In 1995, he released one of the world's first full-length enhanced CDs, "The Individualist."
In 1996, years before the MP3/file-trading revolution started by Napster, Rundgren had the idea that he could record a song and send it through the Internet to his fans and avoid the middlemen of the music industry entirely. He created PatroNet (www.patronet.com) and, after many trial-and-error experiments, launched it as a subscription service in 2000.
Then the Internet technology bubble burst. PatroNet lost funding, and Rundgren had to step back and rethink this whole music/Internet thing.
Meanwhile, Apple and other companies had been setting up shop selling MP3s over the Internet. Young upstarts like Ween (who'll be playing at the State the day after Rundgren) were doing their own experiments in distributing their music online.
"I suppose that in some ways things have turned out as I had imagined," Rundgren said. "Yet again in other ways I shouldn't have been so optimistic. Like, I think it's great that people are starting to get into online music distribution because that was always the big thing with me."
But the music industry, led by the Recording Industry Association of America, is still not comfortable with digital music distribution, because it takes a lot of the physical control over music away from them, he said.
"I think it's not great in the way the industry has reacted to (digital music distribution) in the sense that I don't think they understand it, they don't understand the dynamic behind it, and so they think it's possible to make people continue to think in this sort of old-fashioned way that sees music as a commodity, as an item that costs 99 cents like a hamburger or something like that, whereas music was always something sort of ephemeral," he said.
"In the past, I don't know Ǡ100 years by now, since Edison invented the phonograph, people have started to associate music more with the recordings than with the performance of it. I think people have come to recognize the 'commoditized' model of music as being something distinctly different from music the art form and music, you know, the sacrament."
In other words, music is not a CD, not a record album. When it's ripped from a CD and sent flying off into cyberspace, it enters the realm of bird songs or people singing in church, Rundgren said.
"So there is a sacramental aspect about music that requires it to sort of belong to everyone, and we're always coming up against this thing, this cartel, the RIAA and its members, trying to constantly control music -- where it goes and who can hear it."
Music floating about on the Internet represents "all these futuristic elements that put this dream back within our grasp, which is that music could exist on a sacramental level as opposed to a purely commercial level.
"The record industry wants to convince you that that's somehow wrong. ... A sacrament is something you share ... but the whole idea of people just willy-nilly handing it about and having other people hearing it and enjoying it, that's somehow a crime."
Doesn't somebody have to get paid for making the music?
"Yes, but like when I first realized that music was important to me, you don't start calculating in your head exactly how much your career as a musician is going to return to you," Rundgren said. "The first thing that you feel is you want to create this joy, this communication or something. Before you could ever consider getting paid for it, you had to perform in front of people who had a response: 'Mmm, that was nice, I liked that.'"
Rundgren imagines a new movement in music in which artists make enough money by playing live. "But when it comes to recorded music, we're just going to give it away, and that's it," he said.
Music should be a service, not a product, Rundgren said. This is where PatroNet comes in, where people can subscribe and get all the Todd Rundgren music they want. PatroNet will be relaunching later this month and will feature The Interociter, software that, like KaZaA or the old Napster, will let users get into a network. But it's a controlled, private network, Rundgren said, without the usual messy anarchy of the Internet.
"It's been a challenge," he said of the past few years. Aside from the recession of the Internet boom, there's the "waiting for the gold rush to happen," he said. That would happen when enough homes have high-speed Internet service, necessary for frustration-free downloads of large media files.
We're very close to the time, he said, "when the penetration of high-speed Internet into homes not only in this country but internationally has achieved a critical mass so that you can now say, 'Hmm, maybe I don't need a record label to distribute my music, maybe I can distribute it directly to people.