At 11:52 PM -0500 3/5/08, Kim Patrick Clow wrote:
While the special was lengthy, and it covered a lot of turf in 2 hours, it
was essentially showing how the notion of
democratization in our daily lives are now because of the Internet. I've
written about this before, and I'm curious
about any opinions and thoughts about this process.
Hi, Kim. I can easily see both sides of the equation. At some point
in the process of creativity and distribution (or perhaps better of
availability), it's necessary for SOMEONE to exercise good judgement.
Pre-internet, that decision-making was in the hands of a few, who
were essentially working full time or on contract for large
corporations. In the recording industry it was record company
executives, A & R people, and recording producers. In the publishing
industry it was again company executives, plus editorial staffs and
individual editors. In the entertainment industry it was a shared
responsibility among producer/promoters, booking agents, and personal
managers. And part of the result was the recording and movie
industries' creative bookkeeping, which guaranteed that the artists
doing the work saw very little of the money their work generated.
"Democratization" bypasses that layer of decision making, and also
bypasses the maintaining of high quality professional standards that
those decision makers could enforce. Anyone with adequate
creativity, cybersmarts, and several thousand dollars worth of
equipment and software can now put forward their personal product,
either following high standards or totally unaware that such things
exist and, so to speak, "run it up the flagpole to see if anybody
salutes." Through the Internet we are not only ALLOWED to make our
own decisions about what we find attractive and worthwhile, we are
REQUIRED to do so. We have met the enemy, and he is us!
And Sturgeon's Law has never been repealed: "90% of everything is crap."
I find it amazing that
anyone with a computer, music notation program
can essentially publish music at will, and give the "big boys" a run for
their money. For my part, I safely assume none of the main
publishers would have *any* interest in my editions. That's not to say there
is a lack of interest, I get a lot of inquires about
what I'm working on-- but like most huge media moguls, they're not
interested in anything that doesn't reach a certain level of money.
At this point I think we're talking about a niche industry, a cottage
industry in which people with the time and skill are doing work for
the love of it rather than as a business. On the other hand when I
broke into the entertainment business back in the '60s there was a
niche industry creating, hand-copying, and making amonia-smelling
copies of arrangements for live shows, concerts, and recording
sessions, not one note of which was ever handled or sold by any major
publishers, and it was a very profitable niche industry for those
involved in it.
I think it's very exciting to be able to do all this, and while I'm not sure
where the dust will settle on all this (distribution seems to be
a big issue still for independent publishers), I'm very curious for other
thoughts on this entire process.
Distribution is no longer a problem, with the advent of .pdf files
and instant communications (although bandwidth can get in the way).
Certainly some refinement is needed, first in the matter of arranging
for secure payment, and also in such details as reconciling the
difference between U.S. letter size pages and European A4 size pages
(which has yet to be done). And the quality of individual editors
will come to be judged exactly as the quality of different publishers
is judged, in terms of excellent and readable page layout, good page
turns, clear cues, intelligent placement of bar numbers and rehearsal
markings, etc. Folks on this list and others have laughed at and
disparaged the "standards" put forward by MOLA, but it is so easy to
shrink the size of notes and staves in Finale that too many
self-publishers have done so "to get more music on the page," up to
and including a major publisher like Hal Leonard.
No, distribution is no longer a major problem. Promotion is!
Cutting through the background noise of everything now freely (or
reasonably) available isn't easy, and advertising and promotion is
perhaps the single most important thing that traditional publishers
did for their clients. Just another corollary to democratization:
We have to become our own publicists and business managers instead of
putting that time and energy into creativity.
And 90% of everything is STILL crap!
The answer, at this point in time, is to discover or develop
selective mailing lists where the product you happen to produce will
be of interest. There is an OrchestraList, on which composers who
are receiving performances and commissions can mention those
successes and conductors giving those performances can comment; a
Community Music List (mostly community bands) where information on
suitable old and new works is shared; and a ChoraList where new works
can be announced. We have to develop personal databases of people
who might actually be interested in our work, and figure out clever
ways to expand them. We have to become public relations experts and
marketing experts. THAT'S what democratization is doing to us, for
better or for worse. And you're right, Kim, it's very exciting to be
living at this particular time in history, at least for those with
the flexibility to adapt and innovate.
Here endeth the Lesson.
John
--
John R. Howell
Virginia Tech Department of Music
College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences
Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A 24061-0240
Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034
(mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED])
http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html
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