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February 3, 2012

Jeremiah Tucker: SOPA raises real question of what music should be worth

By Jeremiah Tucker Globe Columnist

JOPLIN, Mo. — Based on the online reaction I followed among friends and peers, I got the sense everyone interpreted the massive and successful campaign to stop federal legislation aimed at protecting copyright as a victory for the little guy.

In fact, I think it was more a victory for one massive corporate behemoth (Google and the rest of the Internet-based tech community) over another corporate behemoth (Hollywood and old media).

I agree it was deeply flawed legislation, but it was one of the first steps toward figuring out how copyright will work in the Internet age -- something I think needs to be addressed if we want a future where artists get paid for their recorded output.

But while I think legal protections are important, I sincerely doubt if online piracy can be stopped without burning down the forest to save the trees. A coherent, sustainable business strategy for the music industry going forward is more important than new laws in Congress.

I think the real question everyone should be asking is how much music is worth.

The major labels are in free fall because they were built on an unsustainable business model of selling $20 plastic discs. Those kind of profits are never coming back, and the quicker both labels and artists accept that, the better.

The downside, for appreciators of spectacle such as myself, is we’ll likely never have artists as big as Michael Jackson or U2 again, and the entire mythology around the rags-to-opulence lifestyle of popular music will likely become a thing of the past.

On the bright side, the singles industry and independent music has flourished over the last decade even as overall albums sales and revenue have plummeted. Maybe with the right online price point, a balance between free-and-pay releases and a broader mix of revenue streams, such as commercial licensing, touring and merchandise, more artists then ever could earn a middle-class living making and playing music.

Free universal healthcare would help, too. It's hard to venture a career in the arts when one trip to the hospital means certain financial ruin.



Lana Del Rey

Last week I touched briefly upon Lana Del Rey and how the debate raging around her made me briefly consider ignoring new music all together. Well, with the release of her debut album “Born to Die” this week, that debate rages on, and I’ve resolved to not follow it too closely.

But I wanted to point out that in his review of the album in The New Yorker, Sasha Frere Jones nailed what’s so irritating about this particular discussion: Why is pop music the only art form that still inspires such arrantly stupid discussion?

The debates that surround authenticity have no relationship to popular music as it’s been practiced for more than a century. Artists write material, alone or with assistance, revise it and then present a final work created with the help of professionals who are trained for specific and relevant production tasks.

This makes popular music similar to film, television, visual art, books, dance and related areas such as food and fashion. And yet no movie review begins, “Meryl Streep, despite not being a Prime Minister, is reasonably convincing in ‘The Iron Lady.’”

Exactly. I doubt I’ll listen to “Born to Die” anytime soon, but as far as my everyday life, this sums up most of the arguments I find myself in with people when I defend the state of popular music as not being quite the apocalyptic wasteland these regular guardians of “good music” make it out to be.

That said, I can’t figure out who is upset about Lana Del Rey, born Lizzy Grant, for possibly having fake lips and inventing this self-styled persona of a “gangsta Nancy Sinatra”?

It is pointed out ad nauseum that this “in-authenticity” is a charge she can’t escape, and while I know there were a lot of anonymous comments and low-rent blog posts saying dumb things along these lines, I can’t find a venerable patient zero for the million think pieces responding to this criticism. I suppose if the Internet had been around 40 years ago more magazines would’ve responded to all the people outraged to find that Ziggy Stardust was really David Bowie who was really David Jones and that none of them knew any spiders from Mars.

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