Singaporean Arts with Musician Kevin Lester (Podcast)

We spend a lot of time talking about the pros and cons of technological disruption in the creative industries.  And each of us has our theories and predictions as to what the future might look like for a market like the United States.  And to be honest, the discussions often revolve around how we should or should not be responding to the fact that technological forces have been shrinking the industries we built through the 20th century.  In this context, I think it’s very interesting to watch what emerging artists are doing in countries where there has been no creative industry to date.

My guest in this podcast is Singapore musician Kevin Lester, an award-winning hip hop artist, writer, and producer. Personally, I think Singapore is a fascinating market to watch because artists like Kevin are really the first generation to want to build a homegrown creative industry from the ground up.  This tiny city-state only gained full independence from British colonial rule in 1965, and its robust economy has largely been built on shipping, financial services, and exports of electronics and pharmaceuticals.   Now, it is the children and grandchildren of that first generation of independent Singaporeans who want to make music and filmed entertainment and other artistic works.  And artists like Kevin are determined to see Singapore develop a sustainable industry out of what can presently be called a local scene.

Kevin has played multiple festivals around the world, and he has received numerous honors as an emerging artist.  Just last month, he released his latest EP, Put Your City On, which contains the hit song “Forever,” a piece all about Kevin’s determination as an artist and as an activist for promotion of the arts in Singapore.  After signing with the new Asian-focused label BMBX, founded by Apl.de.ap of the Black Eyed Peas, Kevin Lester rebranded himself as The Lion City Boy in honor of Singapore’s nickname The Lion City.

I spoke to Kevin at his home studio via Skype.

Learn more about The Lion City Boy at his website.

YouTube Squeeze on Indies Instructive

Tube, yes.  You, not so much.

If there has been one consistent theme in everything I’ve written since diving into the morass we call the digital age, it’s that the Internet is not ours despite all appearances to the contrary.  Like it or not, all the populist, free-speech rhetoric that’s been spoon-fed to the public by the chief propellorheads of the land is just a gateway drug meant to dull our senses so we don’t notice the monopolistic power grab that’s been taking place. No, the Internet is not ours so much as it belongs to a very small consortium of players, most especially Google, which controls nearly all search and nearly all advertising worldwide.

As I argued during the heated squabble over SOPA, these companies don’t really give a damn about free speech or about liberating creators and consumers of content from the media elite gatekeepers; they simply want to be the new media elite, and have the potential to be far more ruthless gatekeepers.  Instead of an oligopoly of studios, labels, and publishers we’re gleefully handing over absolute power to a couple of companies, not only calling it progress but even more shockingly calling it democratic.

If you’ve been paying attention to Amazon’s practice of making books disappear as a “negotiating” tactic with key publishers, let me turn your attention to a recently announced move by YouTube, where apparently more teenagers listen to music than from any other source.  The company has been working for some time on launching paid subscription services, and so has naturally been negotiating licensing deals with major music labels.  YouTube claims to have signed agreements for 90% of the music it sought to license, but the remaining 10% comprised of independent labels, representing artists like Adele and Jack White, were not satisfied with the terms being offered by Google, Inc. and so refused to sign licensing deals.  Taking a lesson perhaps from Amazon (or Al Capone), Google will begin removing the official videos of these unsigned artists from YouTube.  But because the company is all about you and all about free expression, of course, any unofficial videos that make use of these artists’ works as soundtracks will not be targeted for removal by Google.  You’ve got to love a company that can put the screws to an artist and exploit her at the same time while the “fans” applaud the whole stinking mess.  I mean that is some whack stupid evil genius shit right there.

In 2006, Time Magazine’s Person of the Year was You.  YouTube had grown so rapidly that it was viewed by many, including presumably the editors at Time, as the year when Everyman became the story.  And ever since then, YouTube, even after its billion-dollar acquisition by Google, has traded on this populist veneer. But nobody pays a billion dollars to maintain the worlds biggest library of home movies.  It’s always been about big business and popular entertainment, and YouTube has admittedly provided opportunity for artists and other entrepreneurs to build or cultivate a following and make real revenue through ad shares.  The flaw, of course, that remains shrouded by the smoke that still lingers from its populist beginnings is that YouTube is a monopoly.  And whether it’s an indie label like Domino Recordings or a YouTube-borne entrepreneur, Google Inc. dictates terms, can change those terms, and has no viable competitor.

It’s true that several big players, including Amazon and iTunes, are jumping into the subscription streaming business to compete with the likes of Spotify, but odds are, one dominant service will emerge because that’s how economics on the web work.  Once a site or service attains a certain marketshare and can then tie its service to app-supported devices (e.g. an Android app), it becomes generally unassailable by a would-be competitor.   And that’s why all this gibberish about “break old media models and follow new ones” can be very misleading.  In the moment, the promise sounds emancipating and possibly even lucrative for creators and entrepreneurs, but over time, as we see with Amazon and books, we find out we’ve made a deal with devil and let him kill off all the archangels.

Law Gives Websites Freedom to Exploit

As a follow-up to yesterday’s post regarding privacy, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals laid bare a flaw in the Communications Decency Act 0f 1996, granting websites immunity over liability for content uploaded by individual users. Apparently, it’s a license to exploit people. The case involves former Bengals cheerleader Sarah Jones and defamatory material uploaded to the gossip site thedirty.com.  Jones claimed mental anguish stemming from posts related to the sexual history of her and her ex-husband, sued owner/publisher of The Dirty, Nik Richie, and was awarded  $3338,000 by a federal court.  The appeals court overturned the ruling on the grounds that Jones should not have been abel to sue Richie in the first place owing to the protections afforded him by the Communications Decency Act.

Perhaps the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled appropriately according to the law, but with regard to the spirit of the law, we’ve lost our goddamn minds, and the law needs revision.  Given the number of news-format sites that crowd-source (i.e. nearly all of them), and the number of sites that trade on salacious garbage (i.e. way too many of them), and the fact that everybody is fair game, it is simply insane to provide blanket immunity to website owners who profit on the misery of others.  But then, Sarah Jones is an attractive cheerleader, so I guess she deserves it, right?

It’s a world gone mad.

See article on the case here.