A response to some recent criticism
After last week’s Forbes article on MusicSpoke, a blogger wrote a critical post about MusicSpoke. I’m never bothered by criticism because it allows me to discover places where I’m wrong. When it doesn’t do that, it gives me the opportunity to articulate my own position more clearly. For various reasons, the blog post has been taken down, but I still wanted to respond to a few of the ideas put forth without it becoming a personal attack on the blogger. The blogger began by claiming that he was a “traditionalist” when it came to music publishing.
Claiming to be a “traditionalist” is a way to afford your argument some vague historical weight without having to confront the actual facts of the record. The specifics of history are much too complex. Appeals to “tradition” are seldom more than an arbitrary segmentation of a diversity of practices. So, when this blogger claimed to be a “traditionalist,” he’s probably not thinking of the “traditional” houses that emerged from the incunabula like Petrucci or Attaignant. Whatever else Petrucci was doing, his bread and butter came from frottola printing. Frottolas can hardly be considered high art, and he eventually shut down his publishing house to run a paper mill instead. Attaignant was cranking out lute tab arrangements of popular songs like the Guitar Center of of 16th century Paris. He’s not thinking of the subscription based “traditional publishers” like the Playfords in 17th and 18th century England who only printed music after they received enough payment from patrons in advance. He’s not thinking of “traditional publishers” like John Walsh who were churning out reams of penny broadsides of every sort of quality just to see which one sold. That’s the “flood the market with everything and see what sticks” kind of “traditional publisher.” He’s not thinking of “traditional publishers” of the sort that published the Clavierübing or the Musicalisches Opfer which were really almost vanity presses printing music for posterity which was never intended for wide distribution or sales.
He might be thinking of something more like the first big international hit with Artaria publishing the Haydn string quartets, but that seems like a different model. In that model, the composer is paid a (usually miserable) one-time flat fee up front for a bundle of works and no royalties on any sales. (That incidentally is a “traditional publisher” model that lasted well into the 20th century. You can read about Irving Berlin selling songs to publishers for pocket change in his youth.) He’s not talking about Beethoven’s publishers constantly nagging him to write more music for common people. (For example, to make more string quartet arrangements of his piano sonatas(!) so that they would be more marketable, or using the one-time flat nominal fee for a large work with specific permission for house arrangers to make popular piano arrangements of tunes.) He’s not talking about the ubiquitous mass market four-hand piano arrangements of popular opera tunes and symphonies that were the bread and butter of 19th century publication. All those young ladies needed to be made more attractive to potential suitors, and providing entertainment by playing popular arrangements and salon pieces on the piano was a great way to improve your marriage prospects.
When he talks about being a “traditionalist,” I expect what he actually means is a time when certain arbiters of quality decided who was in the club and who was out of the club. Out of the vast quantity of music being written, the cream was skimmed off the top. The “quality people” got in the club and were printed. The ones lacking in quality didn’t make it in and weren’t published. Of course, there isn’t an example of anything like this ever occurring now or historically. Publishers always needed to make some money which is why whatever “quality” material was being printed, they were and are always happy to publish things that sell well. We like to forget about all the pieces that didn’t sell or weren’t of higher quality in a publishing house’s catalogue.
We even do it with specific composers. Dalhaus, in discussing Beethoven reception theory in his 19th Century book, suggests that we have let the “cult of genius” myth gain such a hold that we forget that a “quality” composer like Beethoven produced music of lesser stature. His “first-period works, which largely drew on the divertimento tradition…has disappeared in its entirety” because it was written to be entertaining and serve a social function. The Beethoven that made his living writing popular music for expensive house parties isn’t the Beethoven we want to remember.
The question is: who gets to decide which composers get to be in the club? Here is where the blogger perceptively understands that MusicSpoke is about something different. For young composers in this changing world that are looking to establish a reputation through more traditional models, I strongly prefer that they look to new and innovative companies like Graphite and See-a-Dot. Those are companies that I support and believe in. They treat composers fairly. MusicSpoke isn’t trying to do what they are doing. We’ve pushed the line for entrance to a different place, and that comes with some risks. But before we get to those risks, let’s remember that the old system was full of its own sort of risks. It was essentially a system where white men chose and promoted the music of other white men and by-in-large excluded anyone that wasn’t in that club. Don’t get me wrong. I love that music. I have dedicated my life to it, but the whole system comes with its own set of problems, and those problems are exactly what we are fighting to fix. We are tearing that building down and putting up a new one.
MusicSpoke was created to place power in the hands of creative artists and democratize the distribution process. Our idea is that the artist themselves should have the power instead of a small group of arbiters. That is absolutely a shot across the bow of the older models, and it comes with hazards. Will we make some mistakes and draw the line too wide? You bet. Will we have issues with notation quality? It is something we are constantly talking about. It’s a problem, but it should also be observed that this isn’t anything unique to us. Notation issues were a problem for Attaignant, Breitkopf, and Artaria too. We are talking about ways to improve these problems in the platform, but the horse is already out of the barn on this issue. Every composer I know, some with little to no formal training, has a website where his/her music is available to the public.
Democracy is always frightening to royalists because it puts power in the hands of the people, and people often make mistakes. They elect terrible leaders and eat candy bars instead of fruits and vegetables. They have horrible taste in music and frightful prejudices. Amazingly enough, monarchies have the same issues. As GK Chesterton says somewhere, hereditary monarchism selected rulers at random without respect to their qualifications. So, if democracies and monarchies all provide us with horrible leaders, I’m going to err on the side of democracy in the hopes that the system can correct itself. If traditional publishers have always given us music of varying qualities, why not see what happens if the artists are in control? Will we continue to get music of varying quality? Yep. I would argue the same thing takes place in every “traditional” publisher’s catalogue. I would argue that the same thing takes place in every specific composer’s catalogue. If we are going to play the “quality” game, I can certainly point to pieces by Bach that are of lesser quality. Does that mean that they should be unavailable for performance?
And after all this time, when the publishing houses have been doling out scraps to the people that actually create the music, is it really that surprising that artists have risen up to say we deserve a fair share of the proceeds from our work? I remember when I crossed the “100,000 copies sold” mark, and was still just getting a check for about $1000 a year. There may have been a time when we needed the resources of the publishing houses to get our works out to the public, but since we have the internet now, we don’t need them any more.
MusicSpoke is committed to three basic ideas which are absolutely antithetical to “traditional” publishers. The composer should maintain copyright and control of his/her work. The composer should get a fair share of the profits from sales of his/her works. The composer should be able to find out who is purchasing and performing his/her music.
I, for one, am not willing to go back to the indentured servitude model. As long as MusicSpoke is here, we will fight to preserve the rights of composers and that specifically means composers of more than just the white male variety. It is really a commitment to the idea that everyone deserves to be heard. Everyone can have a seat at the table. It doesn’t mean that everyone will be equally successful, but it does mean we’re making the table bigger and inviting more and different kinds of people to sit down and eat.
Read more of Kurt’s thoughts at the link below.
