Parental Advisory; this post may contain academic content!
To try and understand the changes that affect artists in the music industry, I’ll try and see the streaming era in the context of one particular concept, deterritorialization.
The French, not post-rock but post-structuralist, duo Deleuze and Guattari define deterritorialization as the movement by which something escapes or departs from a given territory. Inspired by Marx, Capitalism’s relentless drive to expand and disrupt existing social and economic structures is seen as a prime example of deterritorialization.
It’s important to note that it is not a negative concept, it’s a neutral process in which something is shaken loose from its territory and set a drift on a sea of definitions and cultural practices. The thing I’m relating to here is sound. Sound as art, more precisely a song.
From Art To Content
“Today, with the cost of creating content being close to zero, people can share an incredible amount of content. (my italics)« Daniel Ek, Spotify, on Twitter.
I’m sure Daniel Ek sees this as a positive effect, sound having deterritorialized into content, but if you care about art and artists getting paid, it is not a cause for celebration. While Digital Audio Workstations offer the possibility of producing music at a professional level at a much lower cost, it is extremely reductive to conclude that the price of the artefact (the «album», the file, the code etc.) should cost next to nothing.
The whole value chain is naturally affected by this status change, songwriters, musicians, studio technicians, audio engineers etc,etc. One effect is the closing of traditional sound studios. The tragedy of legendary studios closing down is not only the loss of a living, breathing cultural history but also losing another possibility in sound.
Even though software replicates historical spaces in reverb plug-ins etc., there’s no substitute for the energy and reverberations of musicians playing live in a uniquely designed acoustic space.
Under the new paradigm, we’re losing artists, and we’re losing sounds. Artists have shown amazing creativity with DAWs and even rudimentary apps when creating music, a testament to the fact that creativity always finds a way. However, an ecosystem that doesn’t sustain the full variety of «species», will wither away.
So, how did we get here, and why this academic exercise of deterritorialization? Why not simply talk about a redefinition? Well, anyone can redefine, a deterritorialization is much more all-encompassing than that.
Reterritorialization and Industry Inertia
I’d argue that deterritorialization started with Napster and the M3 Revolution. When Napster and its ilk (Limewire etc.) took advantage of peer-to-peer technology and opened the door to mp3 files on individual users’ hard discs for sharing, the process of deterritorialization took flight.
Music fans quickly got used to experiencing their favorites as a digital file instead of a CD and vinyl. That the music industry exclusively tried to shoot down the sites and the technology was the strategy blunder that became an «engine» in deterritorialization as it allowed tech companies to take the reigns and turn the artefact into «pure content» via Spotify, Tidal etc.
This stage is what I’d refer to as Reterritorialization. This involves the establishment of new codes, norms, identities, and power relations. It is the process of giving form and structure to the flows of desire and energy set loose through deterritorialization.
Form and structure in this context can be tied to the streaming of music as digital files and power relations have certainly been deconstructed in the industry with tech companies a the new overlords. Reterritorialization slipped through the hands of the music industry, and so did the opportunity to give the artefact another identity than «content». And, what’s the problem with that?
As Daniel Ek helpfully pointed out, with music as content, its only value is volume. Content creators’ main challenge is to stay relevant, and as a songwriter, waiting for the muse becomes waiting for Godot, an existentially futile exercise. You need to constantly feed the «content machine». And, the nature of the content is secondary in the commercial exchange.
Content creators accumulate a volume of content, earn money on sponsorships and promotions, and are obligated to create content with commercial payback as the main impulse. Artists as content creators lead to a homogenization of music and another loss of heterogeneity in the process.
The motive for examining the value of sound art in the context of Deterritorialization and its non-identical twin, Reterritorialization is to point out how «easily» new technology can pry loose power structures in an industry and form new territories where the right cultural and industrial conditions are in bloom.
If only the record company executives had read more French post-structuralism!
