Digital Music, Piracy, and the Flood of Files

That’s right, music piracy. Truly, I dance upon the cutting edge of blogging.

I think we can all agree that in modern society music has become a commodity. To a large degree the music business has become one of the strongest promoters of consumerism. The music video in particular has played an obvious role in shaping the connection between the creation of music and the marketing of other commodities. To be sure, a music video promotes buying a CD or a track on an online music store. In most circumstances however, you can only sell one copy of the song to any given person. What’s more, if several music videos are made for songs on the same album, the videos may be redundant in terms of direct marketing. The real commercial value of a music video is in promoting an image or a lifestyle, reinforcing the sign-values associated with our commodities. The Beyonce “Upgrade You” video is one obvious example.

From the prevalence of music marketing, we might be led to believe that the music industry is doing well, when in fact the opposite is true. What is the cause of the industry’s ill fortunes? Well, if you ask them the answer is music piracy. The music companies may be decrepit dinosaurs struggling to deal with new circumstances, and I see no reason to be sympathetic for their failed business models, but it can hardly be denied that music piracy has had a profound impact on the way we consume music.

In the “old days” we bought music in a package. This package was physical: a plastic box covered in plastic wrap, and some incredibly annoying stickers. The box contained a round plastic disc and a small booklet containing such things as copyright information, lyrics, and artwork. The music itself though was also packaged immaterially in the format of the Album. When you bought music you bought a medium containing x songs in a particular grouping and order. Older generations of music media such as the vinyl record and the cassette tape made listening to a particular song in isolation even harder. Now we buy files, an abstract series of 1’s and 0’s that we can replicate, alter, and transmit with the greatest of ease. Transferring music recordings, with or without the legal right to do so, is so easy that quite literally a child could do it.

Strangely, the ease of acquiring music makes us both more and less connected to the music we listen to. We are more connected because we have more freedom of choice in selecting what songs we choose to hear. We don’t need to get 12 songs in a package if we just want 2. We are freed from the arbitrary bundling of the album (although with this freedom we may sacrifice a cohesive artistic vision in some cases). Through online discussion and distribution of music we are more easily exposed to interesting artists without major mainstream backing, and we are able to acquire hard-to-find music from anywhere that’s connected to the internet. We become more active consumers of music than previous listeners who were more beholden to the tastemakers and corporate interests that control the airwaves. On the other hand, the ridiculous ease of accumulating music can also make us uninvolved in our music selection. It is not uncommon for people to have downloaded tens of thousands of songs, often hundreds at a time in bulk downloads, with little to no familiarity with what they’ve acquired. This may be a daring or radical way to sample lots of music, but a personal music library is at risk of becoming a massive spreadsheet of extremely thorough but rarely heard music sitting as idle data on an infinite number of hard drives.

Technology has advanced to the point where we are capable of engaging with the wide world of music in ways never before seen. Yet, we find ourselves still downloading the hit single, the Soulja Boy’s of the world, just as the marketers tell us to. But even while we conform to these wishes, we ironically follow the market-driven urge to consume by denying the market our capital. Unrestrained by economics, but compelled forwards by our consumption-based perception of culture, we consume music more and more ravenously, with no barrier to prevent us from ripping one more track, one more album, one more Torrent of an entire discography. The internet has blown the door of the selective process off its hinges, and we take the opportunity by renouncing selection and consuming all that we can.

Warning: Hypperreality, Virtual Reality, and Other Crazy Stuff Ahead

Whenever I think about how the rise of consumerism has reshaped society I think about how we could potentially reshape it again to achieve a pre- or post-consumerist society, and whether or not this is in fact desirable. I'm aware of several active non-consumerist movements, such as religious asceticism. I've always been skeptical however, of philosophies that require eschewing all the goods we've accumulated for the simple fact that attachment to material possessions is too far ingrained in the social psyche to reverse course. So I wonder, could a revolutionary new good somehow break our entrapment in the spiral of endless consumption?

Years ago I stumbled across some madness on the internet that I took quite a liking to due to its sheer audacity and apparent insanity. It is an online version of a book entitled The Hedonistic Imperative (Table Of Contents) The book posits that the use of nanotechnology, psychoactive drugs, genetic engineering, and virtual reality software could produce a post-consumerist utopian world. While at first reading this tract is like wandering through the head of a madman, if the bizarre rhetoric is stripped it reveals a cohesive (but rather implausible) vision for a post-consumerist world. The basic premise is that through use of drugs, we can permanently feel physically ecstatic, while virtual reality software would permit the complete democratization of experience.

The following is an excerpt from a "Hedonistic" critique of Brave New World (link. scroll to the "Consumerist" heading)

At present, society is based on the assumption that goods and services - and the good experiences they can generate - are a finite scarce resource. But ubiquitous VR [Virtual Reality] can generate (in effect) infinite abundance. An IT [Information Technology] society supersedes the old zero-sum paradigm and Fordist mass-manufacture. It rewrites the orthodox laws of market economics. The ability of immersive multi-modal VR to make one - depending on the software title one opts for - Lord Of Creation, Casanova The Insatiable etc puts an entire universe at one's disposal. This can involve owning "trillions of dollars", heaps of "status-goods", and unlimited wealth and resources - in today's archaic terminology. In fact one will be able to have all the material goods one wants, and any virtual world one wants - and it can all seem as "unvirtual" as one desires. A few centuries hence, we may rapidly take [im]material opulence for granted. And this virtual cornucopia won't be the prerogative of a tiny elite. Information isn't like that. Nor will it depend on masses of toiling workers. Information isn't like that either. If we want it, nanotechnology promises old-fashioned abundance all round, both inside and outside synthetic VR.

That right there, that is bold. The author provides numerous defenses for the inevitable criticisms, but they are far too tiresome to bother reading in full. Instead I will provide some quick defenses of my own and then add my own critique. Now, clearly, this technocentric vision exposes itself to many obstacles in implementation and feasibility. Suffice to say, the provision of minimal material goods at a sustainable level is to be accomplished through more super-awesome future sciencey-stuff like population regulation, robotics, and a wild-eyed vision of modifying the genetic urge to procreation.

Of course, the problem here is that this vision is in fact blatant consumerism with the added twist of using false realities to create utopian abundance. Would we not be merely transferring the postmodernist hyperreality and sign-values from the physical world into a virtual reality? Some would argue that this is the logical conclusion of consumerist hyperreality's subversion of physical reality. I however, argue that this is faulty, as the redistribution (or rather, infinite distribution) or experiential wealth would fundamentally alter the meaning of sign-value. How can we relate to the world and each other through sign-values if our worlds become our own creations? Through infinite consumption of sign-values we may eliminate the relative enjoyment of commodities and the concept of luxury. Commodities then would offer us nothing besides a use-value, and even a use-value becomes meaningless when immersed in a virtual world!

Far be it from me to imagine what human desires would then encompass if commodities no longer held meaning. I suppose there would be the pre-consumerist 'basic needs' of humans, but if we are to follow the full program of these weird futuro-hedonists even these will be eliminated by genetic engineering and a worldwide distributive mechanism.

Perhaps this is why their vision hinges upon mankind consuming massive amounts of psychoactive drugs.

The Best Summary Of Marx, Ever

Let's take a break from posting incessantly about consumer electronics to talk some philosophy and political economy. Marx is actually not so bad to read once you try to write it yourself in English like a sensible person, so here goes...

Marx’s theories of political economy revolve largely around commodities, which are any objects that satisfy some human desire. Commodities have a dual nature as use-values and exchange-values. Use-value is the commodity’s direct ability to satisfy such desires via its application or consumption. Exchange-value is the commodity’s relative worth as compared to commodities of other kinds. This exchange-value is manifested in its monetary price. The exchange-value, being dependent on markets rather than pure usefulness, is unrelated to its worth as a use-value. A commodity exists in either of these forms and can be transformed from one to the other by the act of buying and selling. So long as it circulates among sellers, it remains an exchange-value, but when it is put to fulfill its natural function, it is then a use-value.

The main problem with capitalism according to Marx is that it estranges the worker from his labor. This is done in a number of ways. First of all, as the worker does not own the goods he produces, he is contributing more and more objects to a world that does not belong to him. Each object he creates which is not his expands the relative strength of the unattainable world in comparison to the world that is his.

The second kind of alienation relates to the motivation behind his labors. Under capitalism, the only motive for a worker to produce is his own survival, the challenges to which are forced upon him by external forces. Since he has no choice but to produce, his labor is essentially coerced and therefore does not belong to him but to the coercing forces. Rather than gaining things from his efforts, he gives his efforts to another and they are lost to him.

Another kind of alienation is loss of the worker’s human identity, or ‘species-being’. Marx says that man’s identity is completely tied to using the immaterial (labor) to convert ‘nature’ into objects. He makes the (somewhat dubious) claim that this transformation is man’s sole purpose in life. Since a man is alienated from his labor, he is subsequently alienated from his human identity.

The fourth kind of alienation Marx describes is the alienation between human beings. Because the worker loses his labors and his identity to an external master, who is necessarily another human being, he is naturally alienated from this master that takes so much from him.

Ultimately, the problem with alienation is not that it deprives men of goods and economic well-being (although this is important), but that it deprives a man of his humanity. A working man is essentially rendered a machine, devoid of the few things that can be said to truly belong to a person. The capitalist system forces a man to surrender his free will and his life activities, effectively enslaving him, with the important difference that at least slaves can claim to have a purpose and identity that belongs to them. Because of these deprivations, he argues, capitalism is the greatest form of exploitation.


This exploitation should be evident, he says, but it is obscured by a capitalist preoccupation he refers to as fetishism. Marx’s fetishism is the obsessive behavior by which members of a capitalist society measure everything in terms of money. Under capitalism, the cycles of life are understood by market forces that motivate the flow of capital and commodities, the most notable property of any object being its price on the market. Marx says that this outlook on economics and society is a fetish because it distracts from the true nature of the goods society depends on, namely the goods’ nature being the product of labor which is exploitative and alienating to the worker. This fetish allows the structure of the capitalist system to dictate the course of people’s lives.


Word.

The Semiotics of Blenders

You may be familiar with the popular internet video series “Will It Blend?” This series, an advertising campaign for Blendtec blenders, serves as a demonstration of the remarkable shredding power of these blenders. Dozens of these videos have been produced. Some of the items destroyed for the viewing pleasure of the internet public have included broomsticks, marbles, and even hockey pucks. There is no doubt that this company produces formidable blenders, and evidence of their prowess is available here.

Of course, their website is much more than a mere product demonstration. If that were the case, the destruction of a few sturdy objects would be quite enough to convince the audience of the blender’s technical merits. The real purpose for the prolific destructive acts of Blendtec founder Tom Dickson is to enhance their brand’s notoriety and increase sales. According to the unimpeachable information on the series’ Wikipedia page, the campaign was a resounding success resulting in a dramatic upturn in sales and even spawning a line of themed merchandise.

But I am not here to discuss blenders, I am here to talk about what gets blended. I was struck by Mr. Dickson’s choice of…victims? Tom Dickson is a man with his finger on the pulse of modern consumer society, as demonstrated not only by his success with viral video marketing , but also by the products which he destroys for maximum memorable effect. The footage from an episode in which he reduces a set of credit cards to dust could be seen as a biting comment on consumerism if it were put to other ends. In one episode he destroys a Guitar Hero controller, ostensibly because there were no Beach Boys songs in the game, but almost certainly because of the Guitar Hero series’ explosion to becoming a national entertainment phenomenon. He also destroys a copy of the video game Grand Theft Auto IV, rather pointless in terms of demonstrating a blender, because as we know all too well, disc-based media are ridiculously easy to break. Once again, the whole point was the destruction not of an object, but of a hyped object.

We could go on at length about Mr. Dickson’s expanding portfolio of differently colored powders, but instead I let’s look at one example and what it tells us about consumerism in the contemporary world. In one the most popular of all the episodes, our buddy Tom reduces the vaunted iPhone into a smoking cup of dust. The iPhone represents not merely an advance in telephony, but is also arguably the pinnacle of popular gadgetry (I risk here contradicting my previous blog post saying the same thing about the iPod.). At the time, a retail iPhone cost about $500. The blackened ashes of the iPhone that emerged from that blender sold for $901 on Ebay. A foul, essentially worthless mess of raw materials sold for more than the product of an extremely fine-tuned device crafted from a considerable investment of research and labor. Dickson may as well have just blended a copy of Karl Marx’s Capital and been done with it.

Those iPhone ashes sold at $901 both because of what they are and what they were. What they were, as I have said before, once a unit of a prized achievement of consumer society. Were he alive hundreds of years ago (and with a blender), Mr. Dickson would have blended tulip bulbs and Chinese porcelain.

What the ashes are now is an item of memorabilia, gaining this status from being the remains of the iPhone destroyed in front of millions. You could blend your own iPhone at home, and I assure you it will not increase in value. There can be only one “Will It Blend?” iPhone. In a culture where we partake of massively shared cultural experiences, possessing the physical manifestation of these memories is akin to owning a modern-day relic.

Quick Note

Heads up, if anybody is reading this, let it be known that publishing these posts is an arcane and mysterious art and I hereby renounce attempting to get the formatting right.

iPod Uber Alles

Apple’s iPod line of portable mp3 players is one of the most successful branding efforts of the decade. To many people, the terms “iPod” and “mp3 player” are synonymous. About a year ago I walked into a retirement home carrying a small new digital alarm clock for my grandmother. Along the way, my mother introduced me to numerous of my grandmother’s elderly friends, all of whom invariably asked if the clock I was holding was some kind of iPod. The iPod has in many ways become the epitome of technological consumerism.

The iPod’s dominance of the portable music player lexicon is unsurprising, as it stands almost unchallenged as the player of choice for today’s tech-savvy trend-followers. Searching through both retail stores such as Best Buy and Circuit City, as well as online vendors such as Amazon.com, reveals that there is in fact almost no competition to Apple’s ubiquitous product. Other companies do manufacture portable music players but none of these stand directly in competition with the iPod. These players are typically low-budget models with limited storage capacity and features. The fact that I have heard of none of these brands probably means they have little to no effective marketing, and are instead focusing on undercutting Apple through sales to shoppers who cannot afford or do not see the point in paying for Apple’s high-end models. In Apple’s field of high-priced, high-capacity, trendy music players, the only real competition is Microsoft’s Zune, a failing effort surviving on the strength of its mother company. Some would argue that this is a natural result of capitalism, namely the triumph of a superior product in a particular sector of the market. Perhaps this is the case, but I find it more interesting as a result of consumer capitalism and the triumph of the superior brand.

What are the three most notable characteristics of the iPod? I asked a number of my friends this question, and was amazed to find that all gave the same answers. First of all, they all said, it is a music player. True enough. It is interesting to note though that at least part of the perceived quality of the product is in its explicit functionality. Secondly, they said it was white, a remarkable claim considering that the iPod is now available in a whole rainbow of colors including black, blue, and pink. One of these friends owns a non-white iPod. This show’s the effectiveness of Apple’s long association with the color white, starting with their breakthrough styling on the iMac computer. Maybe also my friends were calling to mind years of advertising in which the iPod was depicted as a white shape strking out against black human silhouettes, the dynamic but faceless bodies that implied the energy of the device could be anybody’s. Finally, they all said that the iPod is “simple”. The simplicity they refer to is of course the iPod’s iconic control wheel, a single plastic wheel that can be both turned and pressed. While I would argue that the lack of differentiated controls is in fact confusing, I cannot avoid acknowledging the sleekness of the interface and the degree to which operating the iPod is like second nature to those that own it, while watching them struggle with my old non-Apple brick is quite amusing. Perhaps branding has even penetrated deep into our muscle memories?


The iPod has become its own industry, with literally hundreds of accessories designed for it by dozens of companies, iPod-specific docks appearing on a wide range of home electronics, and even direct iPod-specific connections being built into some automobiles. These products aren't made merely to facilitate the integration of portable music players with other devices, they are dependent on the success of the iPod and only the iPod. That a company and a product can be successful as the result of branding is nothing new to us, but the power of a brand to create an entire industry based on itself while preventing competing products from gaining any meaningful share of the market is a truly astounding feat of marketing.