In my scenario, there will be no major record labels. Long ago, they lost control over copyrighted material. This will have some effects.
The artist or musician can choose any number of agencies, distributors, promoters, manufacturers they want. No company will have exclusive rights. As a result, unofficial products will be produced out of control of the musician. The consumers will get more control over the production (although relying on commercially available technology) by knocking off records, scores, videos, apparel, lyrics, costumes, posters and everything that comes with music culture and identity. Today, the unofficial products are in general considered as low quality and flawed forms of production. This will gradually change as people learn the tools better and the critical mass for a decent peer reviewing is reached.
These activities will probably change our perception of music as part of our culture and daily lives. When being able to see through the powers that try to control the culture and information, there will be fewer and fewer who are motivated to support the intellectual property rights that support the music industry.
As it is today I can identify three standpoints: over-adapting, adapting and realizing. The over-adapting can see the powers that control information as something natural and desireable, and try to defend it. The adapting can be aware that there are powers which are not really helping the cultural production. However, they do not see how it effects their own lives and neither how it be changed by any reasonable effort. The realizing can see how everybody is participating in making a culture of their own, and knows that makes them more self-councious. In ten years, the adapting group will not have a chance not to see that their lives are effected. This will also increase the likeliness of having them sliding over to the realizing group.
The music itself will also sound different from what we know today. The networked information economy creates a greater space for critical evaluation of cultural materials and tools (Benkler 2006 p275). So when the musicians are treated with the richer response from the audience, they will be able to reflect over their own production in new ways.
Different habits will appear depending on context. This will also be efficient ways of unglorifying and blackmailing the musician before his/her audience. In some places/genres of the world, the musician might need to make efforts to be popular and anonymous simultaneously. Others might be perfectly safe to share their life and identity by help of loyal and dedicated fans, companies and musician fellows.
Which activites that are profitable for a musician will also depend on the context. It's about whether they will produce new material or performing live or doing both. Their choice also relates to the greater space for critical evaluation, but it is also my point that even enforced intellectual property rights (IPRED), in the end can not control the development. In ten years there might also be other, graver problems for the industrial economy to deal with.
1 comment:
A nice prolific glance on the future by Fredrick, I am agree with him on major points of discussion with some reservation on minor issues. In many countries with weak or no pricy laws, unofficial unleash production of music records is being practiced for last many decades in one or other form and artists related to music industry usually depend on the concerts or TV programmes for their bread and butter.
As concerned to new market space as mentioned above, who will find and pave the ways to reflect the productive creations? Fredrick suggests that musicians would reflect their own production in new ways but I believe that users which will be controlling the information and cultural means would also control and find new ways while musicians would just follow those lines to present their original work to the audience. In result, users/audience would act as marketer, critic, consumer, distributor and sometimes producer too.
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