Category: Music

Whose Future Is It?

Compressorhead, the all-robot band that plays hits by AC/DC, Motorhead, and The Ramones, represents another step toward a technological future in which machines continue to perform tasks as well as (or better than?) humans.  Many a techno-utopian  envisions a world in which human labor, including creative and performing arts no longer represents economic or social value.  Naturally, the prospect of a robot that can unfailingly impersonate virtuoso musicians leads to the inevitable assumption that this technology will eventually converge with Artificial Intelligence and produce a robot that can compose as well as perform.  This then raises the philosophical question about the present and future role of the artist or performer in society.  After all, what is the experiential difference between listening to two identical-sounding guitar solos played either by man or machine?  Nothing except of course the entire purpose of art — and just maybe the entire purpose of living.

Much of the discussion about our technological future is predicated on the central theme as to how much autonomy we want to cede to our machines?  While it’s reasonable to accept that a doctor-supervised robot can perform a delicate surgical technique without the human fallibility that causes hands to shake, current research into the use of IBM’s Watson in the work of diagnosis and prognosis begs the question as to what the human doctors of the future might do.  Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch just launched a campaign against the use of autonomous weapons capable of making battlefield decisions to kill a human target. And as Google works with other technologists to develop the driverless car, I have my own doubts about the prospects of its reliability given the rate of failure of ordinary MP3 players. These and other stories, of course, imply a progression toward the technological singularity, and it’s hard to avoid the sense that we might cross that event horizon without making a conscious, collective choice to do so.

It’s true that we mortals are imperfect, born of imperfection itself by the miracle of chance, composed of detritus from exploded stars.  We are finite, fallible, and fragile; but through experiencing one form of expression or another, we seek exaltation, we connect to one another, and we continually redefine what it means to be human for as long as we’re here. I believe this is why it’s exciting to watch an Olympic athlete perform a feat impossible for most of us but still achievable by a being who is one of us.  If we could not sense the fragility of our own joints or know the blunt, unforgiving nature of gravity, the flight of the figure skater would be a mundane exercise in high-school physics. It may be true that the capacity to build a machine that might replicate the subtle and complex motions of a skater is a human triumph in itself, but the ultimate value of such an endeavor must be something other than the android athlete. Once the novelty of the shiny object wears off, we will be no more excited to watch this object do a quadruple Lutz than to watch a forklift load a truck.  So it is with art.

Art absent the human hand serves no particular purpose.  If this were not the case, the world wouldn’t need Rostropovich and Yo Yo Ma, let alone the range of compositions for cello that come from a diversity of human imperfections. While many popular works, particularly in film and music, are so formulaic, they could arguably be the products of an algorithm, even these works often contain within them component features of extraordinary human creativity (e.g. great design in an otherwise lame movie) and so remain safely on this side of the event horizon.  The future, however, in which the robot wakes to compose and then perform its own songs is a tipping point when art becomes the expression of the robot condition.  Thus do our machines become our masters as we see in so many sci-fi, cautionary tales.

I remember a radio interview with Pete Townsend at least 15 years ago, in which he described breaking his hand and said that he would likely never be able to play with the speed and agility he once had.  And I suppose, with a few keystrokes, the lead guitarist of Compresorhead, Fingers, can be programed to reproduce Townsend’s intro to “Pinball Wizard” just as Townsend played it as a young man.  Hell, Fingers could even be programmed to smash its guitar at the end of the song, creating a bit of android satire.  Of course, what Fingers doesn’t have is a grandmother who shouted at him as a teenager to stop playing that terrible rock-and-roll and so inspired the first smashing of his first guitar.  And in this act is a glimpse into the significance of the cultural revolution in the U.K., where a generation of fatherless kids grew up in the gray rubble left by WWII and burst forth in a profusion of color and sound, themes that reverberate throughout nearly all the music of The Who.  It isn’t just about the data and the mechanics that produce the sounds.

This week Senator Goodlatte announced the start of the months long process to overhaul the copyright laws of the United States, and in his statement, he refers to the ongoing need to update and revise copyright to adapt to changing technologies.  But nowhere does the senator even imply that the basis for intellectual property rights has lost a fraction of value.  It’s safe to say that technology will continue to evolve according to the acceleration predicted by Moore’s Law, but this does not mean that we must inevitably relinquish control to our machines.  Preserving the basis for copyright and intellectual property law is about keeping the human in the human condition.

Photo by: Zyabich

Why is it either/or? Amanda Palmer’s TED Talk

I watched this Amanda Palmer TED Talk “The Art of Asking” over the weekend and  found it both remarkable and inspiring.  Her frankness and humanity are unassailable.  Who can argue with an artist who says, “I put myself and my work out there, I ask to be embraced, and I am embraced”?  Kudos to her for doing it.  Kudos to her for talking about it.  But if we are meant to draw a conclusion that her experience is the new model, as some will claim, I think we’d do well to remember that there is more than one kind of artist and more than one medium; and I don’t know why the principle of creators’ rights is not seen as inclusive rather than exclusive in this regard.

As much as I enjoyed Palmer’s talk, my immediate thought after watching it was about one of my favorite authors whose work is no less provocative in literary form than Palmer’s is in music and performance. John Irving still writes prodigiously in longhand, and his own descriptions of his work habits reflect an asceticism typical of most serious authors.  I don’t think Mr. Irving takes time to tweet let alone crowd-surf, and he is unlikely ever to strip down so that his fans can sign his naked body (at least let’s hope not). But jokes aside, we are blessed to have a society that produces both the Amanda Palmers and the John Irvings; and I don’t understand why anyone thinks we need to choose a system that would favor one over the other.  Believe it or not, the one unifying principle that supports these two artists, as well as all others, is copyright.

Copyright doesn’t say Amanda Palmer can’t mange her career as she sees fit; it says that it is her absolute right to do so.  Combine that right with the First Amendment, and she’s a force to reckon with.  But so is the comparatively reclusive novelist who may best be capable of “connecting with fans” only through his writing. Copyright gives that author the freedom to stay home, indulge in one of the most solitary activities imaginable, and accept publishing deals, if that’s what best serves the work.  And nothing about that model prevents the Amanda Palmers of the world from doing things in a completely opposite manner.

It’s hard enough to be an artist and to seek approval in the form of both praise and patronage, which Palmer makes abundantly clear in her talk.  But creators’ journeys are as varied and unpredictable as the work itself.  In his novel Until I Find You, Irving writes of his actor protagonist that there are two things that can’t be controlled — where your first break will come from, and where that break will lead.  Amanda Palmer is lucky to have found the harmony between her work, herself, and her approach to marketing; and I think there’s a reason we see musicians find this balance more readily than some artists in other media.  But why does Palmer’s success in this regard suggest that we would devalue other voices that speak loudest from very quiet places not shared with the entire world?

At its core, regardless of all the noise, copyright simply bestows the right of choice upon the individual.  So, while I applaud Ms. Palmer for her courage and for sharing her experiences, I also assert that the conclusion we draw from her insight should not be that the future of art is an either/or approach to the rights of the creator.

Pandora Isn’t Exactly Struggling

Yesterday, on Capitol Hill, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing to discuss the Internet Radio Fairness Act, a bill largely backed by Pandora Media, Inc. and opposed by a growing number of musicians and songwriters.  In fact, I recommend Chris Castle’s excellent synopsis of the message taken to The Hill by a handful of songwriters.  If you want legal context for understanding the IRFA, I’ll direct you to Terry Hart’s Brief History of Webcaster Royalties, but if that’s more nitty and gritty than you want to know, consider this:

In defense of Pandora’s position that internet radio services should pay lower license fees to musicians and songwriters in the interest of “fairness,” you’re likely to encounter the bullet point that “Pandora isn’t even profitable yet,” conjuring an image of some fledgling, innovative enterprise trying desperately to survive within an outdated system.  But as a guy who grew up around the motion picture industry, knowing something about the shenanigans of some producers, I know that literal profitability ain’t necessarily the same thing as everybody making buckets of money.

Keeping in mind that Pandora, like so many internet-based services, is basically a means by which software delivers a product that someone else has invested to produce, I had to wonder what kind of costs other than licensing Pandora has to cover while it is supposedly staggering toward profitability. Not surprisingly, according to the income statement on Yahoo Finance, the Operating Expenses shows two lines:  R&D at a mere $130k and Selling General and Administrative at just over $249 million.  This is from January 30, 2012 against revenue of just over $274 million.  Presumably, the cost of licensing music is part of this second line item along with basic overhead like rents, servers, etc.  But the rest is salaries and bonuses.  What else do they have to pay for?

Now, when an ordinary entrepreneur thinks of a business that isn’t profitable yet, he thinks in terms of continually reinvesting in his business, keeping his own and any other founders’ salaries in check while growing that business and pouring in a ton of sweat equity.  It just so happens that this is exactly what a songwriter, performer, or emerging new band does most of the time.  But web entrepreneurs have a history of making money while losing value.  Remember the Dot Com bubble?  There was plenty of loss, but plenty of start-up founders also made out like bandits in the process.  Failing with a few million in one’s pocket would be an artist’s dream because the nature of the work is so fickle, but I digress.

The top five executives at Pandora, not including founder Tim Westergren, earn combined salaries of just under $3 million, although CTO Thomas Conrad had exercised stock options of $5.9 million as of the January 30 report.  Mr. Westergren is worth an estimated $100 million.  According to Pandora’s own statements, it paid “50% of its revenue in fees” last year.  Assuming this is true, that’s $137 million, plus the $3 million in top executive salaries, plus some unknown number to Tim Westergren, but let’s estimate that there’s at least $100 million or so left for other expenses, including the salaries of 530 employees.  Divided evenly, which of course it is not, that would be annual salaries of over $180k per employee.

So, there is a world of difference between a company being profitable and those in the company making lots and lots and lots of money.  If Pandora fails because, as it claims, the licensing fees are unfair, then many people involved with the company will walk away having failed upward.  Meanwhile, it won’t take long for a new internet radio service to appear — one that can be profitable without exploiting the people and companies who make the real investments in the products that make radio function in the first place.