Since Thomas A. Edison recorded the human voice in 1877,
the music industry has grappled with the uncertainties
wrought by new technologies.
“The form changes, but the issues – who owns the music,
what rights pertain to artists, what rights pertain to the
companies – these are issues that go way back into the 19th
century,” said Larry Starr, professor of music history at
the University of Washington in Seattle and co-author of
“American Popular Music: From Minstrelsy to MTV” (Oxford
University Press, 2002).
The initial race to create a low-cost way to record and
play back sound resulted in a number of competing
companies. Many wound up merging forces around the turn of
the 20th century, forming a stronghold that for the most
part has been the locus of industry power for a hundred
years. The RCA Music Group, part of the BMG unit of
Bertelsmann; the EMI Group; and the Columbia Records unit
of Sony are among the current music companies that have
long, historic roots in the business.
“There has always been a tendency for several large
companies to dominate the actual production and
distribution, just because of how difficult it is,” said
Steven E. Schoenherr, professor of American history at the
University of San Diego. “It takes a huge capital
investment.”
Recorded music shifted the balance of power from sheet
music publishers, which dominated the early music business,
to record producers. But the reaction to technical
innovation – whether radio in the 1920′s, cassette
recorders in the 1960′s or MP3 players in the 1990′s – has
been consistent. “It’s nothing new to say the recording
companies are scared,” Professor Schoenherr said. “They’ve
always been scared.”
Now that the threat emanates from the computer and the
Internet, though, the fear has taken on a new proportion
for the recording companies, whose capital resources and
established production and distribution systems may give
them no particular advantages in the future.
> “The Web eliminates two-thirds of the cost factors,” said
Richard Kurin, director of folk life and cultural heritage
at the Smithsonian Institution. “You don’t have to produce
a hard product and you don’t have to pay a middleman. The
prospect is for greater dissemination, but also for greater
participation. The Net has tremendous implications. The big
industry question is, How do you handle those
implications?”
Though no one can predict precisely how the music industry
will evolve, many experts agree that a change in industry
structure seems inevitable.
“Whatever the industry is going to be, it has to take a
different form,” said Christopher Waterman, dean of the
school of arts and architecture at the University of
California at Los Angeles, and Professor Starr’s co-author.
“This is raising basic questions about property. Music has
been turned into information, and once it is physically
pulled away, not embedded in any material object, you’re in
a whole new world.”
A glimpse of the industry’s future might be seen in the
early success of iTunes Music Store, the online service
that Apple Computer introduced in April, Professor
Schoenherr said. “If they continue to innovate,” he said,
“they could make stars on their own.”
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