French economist Jacques Attali, in his 1977 book
Noise, has written about how the social status and power of music has changed with the rise of recording technologies and their commodification. This is a stage in the history of (Western) music he has termed "Repeating".
Music is now, pretty much, completely bound up with the recording industry and its value tied to the number of commodity units it can shift. Each unit has much the same economic value: 5 minutes of "Axel F/Crazy Frog" is equivalent to 5 minutes of Bach's "Brandenburg Concerto No.5" or 5 minutes of the Beatles' "Hey Jude". In this scenario, popularity is the key to success since everything costs the same, and repetition becomes the logic of production.
On one hand this sounds great as it is all about the democratization of taste. But this means aesthetic repetition as well, so if one hit is successful then that will become a formula for stylistic copies hoping to replicate sales. We could argue that the whole process is about producing the perfect commodity not about producing something of social value, which is the same opinion as Lomas's in the opening post.
Interestingly, Attali also points to technology as a way to usher in a new stage of music/society called "Composing". He envisages that we will all have the potential to become composers rather than consumers and that music-making can become part of everyday life.
I like this last point. I think we should value musical education more, perhaps on the same level as language literacy, and technology can help us compose and collaborate in ways that were undreamt of in previous centuries. I know that the shooting-fish-in-a-barrell approach of compiling sample loops seems like a cheap way out, but there is potential for sophisticated musical expression with some of these tools. And dare I say, potential for great expressions of spirit?
