September 2024
The recording revolution transformed music from a fleeting, live experience into a permanent, repeatable artifact, fundamentally altering how we create, listen to, and value music. From the invention of sound recording in the 19th century to the rise of streaming platforms, music has merged with its medium, blurring the line between performance and product. This shift has both enriched and constrained artistic expression, challenging legal frameworks and pushing artists to balance creativity with commerce. As listeners, we must reconnect with the depth and spontaneity that live performances offer, resisting the passive consumption of recorded sound.
Since the early 20th century, audio recording, particularly the recording of music, has solidified its place as the primary way we consume music. This shift, arguably one of the most profound transformations in modern musical culture, changed not just how we listen to music but also how music is created, distributed, and valued. Before the advent of recording technology, music was an ephemeral art form, tied to the moment of performance, existing only in live spaces and then vanishing. With the ability to record, music became a permanent artifact, shifting cultural perceptions of what music is. The act of listening, once an active, time-bound experience, became passive and repeatable, transforming the relationship between artist and listener. What are the effects of this shift? What can we do to better adapt to this change?
During the 19th century, a remarkable upheaval took place in Western music, heralding the birth of recorded sound. Engineers like Edouard-Léon Scott de Martainville and Thomas Edison developed devices that could capture and replay sound, a feat that seemed almost magical at the time. Initially, these devices were employed to record the human voice, but they quickly evolved to capture the sounds of musical instruments. For musicians and composers of that era, this innovation was nothing short of revolutionary. Imagine the contrast: before, a concert was a one-shot experience, but then, performances could be preserved, replayed, and analyzed repeatedly. This repeatability not only changed the role of performers but also altered how music was taught, learned, and consumed.
But let's not forget, this wasn't the first revolution to rattle the music world. The progressive fixation of musical notation in the West, a few centuries earlier, had already redefined how music was transmitted and remembered, gradually pushing improvisation and oral traditions into the background (for a great part of the musicians; of course, there remained great improvisers). Notation allowed music to transcend geographical boundaries, and the introduction of recording technology did much the same for musical performances. However, recording also froze aspects of the performance: dynamics, phrasing, tone, ... into a fixed form, much like notation had frozen the melody and harmony. The change was abrupt, altering how music was perceived and performed.
More recently, as the recording industry has grown and as the Internet and streaming services have taken over, we've witnessed another huge transformation: the merging of music with its recorded form. Today, when someone says "I'm listening to the latest song of this artist", they aren't distinguishing between the composition and its recording; they're referring to them as one entity (otherwise, it would be common to say "I'm listening to the latest recording of this song"). This seemingly minor shift in language holds deep implications for the music industry, as it blurs the line between musical productions and recorded material. Legally, this impacts how rights are distributed and monetized, while artistically, it challenges our understanding of what constitutes a production.
This particular line of thought began after a conversation I had about how long intellectual property protections should last. In the case of art, this intellectual property is encompassed by the notion of copyright: artistic works can't be used without the creator's permission. In Belgium, after 70 years, though, a work enters the public domain, meaning anyone can use it freely. A question arises: should we differentiate between how we treat copyright for different media forms, such as music, software, or literature? I believe that the definition of copyright encapsulates too broad notions and narrows down the artistic possibilities, and I argue that this is due to the amalgamation of music and recording.
Indeed, what's interesting is that the law doesn't clearly distinguish between two very different things: rebroadcasting (playing an existing recording publicly) and covering (creating a new performance of a piece). Before recordings existed, rebroadcasting wasn't even possible, while reinterpreting a song was perfectly normal, if not encouraged. People performed music publicly without needing anyone's permission. However, distributing sheet music without permission was considered theft. This historical separation between the performance of music and the written score underscores how intellectual property laws evolved in response to technological advances, shaping, or shaped by, the way we conceive music.
When we step outside the legal realm, we see that the production of music itself has shifted. It's common now for compositions to be created through the process of recording, without a clear distinction between the written work, the performed work, and the recorded work. The rise of playback and live performances that sound nearly identical to studio recordings are undeniable signs of a growing fusion between these concepts. Concerts, once a space for spontaneity and reinterpretation, are now often meticulously planned, and recordings are sometimes even designed with the live show in mind. This transformation in performance culture raises questions about the artistic value of live performances. If concerts are engineered to mimic studio recordings, are they losing their distinctiveness as a live experience? I argue that this trend is a reflection of a consumer-driven culture where the audience is encouraged to seek predictability and familiarity.
The desire for a consistent listening experience has likely contributed to the homogenization of public taste, training listeners to hear the same version of a song again and again. As a result, novelty and variety have been sidelined, while the audience, in a consumer-driven, materialistic world, increasingly rejects the strange, the unfamiliar, and the subtle. This trend isn't new, but the union of music with its recording medium has certainly created fertile ground for this to flourish.
What can we take from all this?
It depends on where you stand. From a legal perspective, we need to find ways to separate music from its medium, allowing intellectual property to be protected without stifling creativity. Music, like many other forms of art, straddles the line between expression and commodification. When intellectual property laws are applied, they often fail to account for the nuances of artistic creation. This is especially problematic when digital media blurs the boundaries between creation, reproduction, and distribution. The challenge lies in devising frameworks that recognize music as a form of expression distinct from the physical or digital mediums that carry it. An example of this could be distinguishing between the copyright of a song itself and the rights associated with various recordings or interpretations of that song. This separation could enable more flexible rights management, promoting both access to creative works and fair compensation to artists.
From the artist's viewpoint, there's value in resisting the pressures of commerce and public demand, even though that's no easy task. Artists need to take risks, create new things, and push boundaries, but they often operate within a system that prioritizes profit over innovation. This tension between creativity and commerce is longstanding, but it's especially pronounced today, when streaming music platforms quantify success through metrics such as streams, likes, and shares, and where success is considered equivalent to quality. There is probably a need for musicians to find new ways to define their production, other than recordings, and to rediscover the pleasure of doing and allowing reinterpretation.
Finally, for listeners, there is a need to rethink how music consumption is approached, just as it is done with food, fashion, politics, ... The ways in which we consume music often reduce it to a background soundtrack for daily activities, missing the deeper experience it can offer. Streaming platforms, with their vast libraries and instant accessibility, may encourage passive consumption rather than active engagement. Yet, music, like other forms of culture, deserves a mindful interaction. For instance, in classical or jazz traditions, live performances and improvisations provide a unique experience that recordings will, to me, never be able to fully capture. Recorded music is only one small, imperfect piece of the musical puzzle. There's a whole world of sound to be explored, and we shouldn't let the medium dominate our experience of music, lest we rob ourselves of all the richness and diversity it has to offer.