The Future of the “Music Industry” II

I’d like to take a brief time out from hyperlinking, you-tubeing and podcasting to offer a short little essay on the release of In Rainbows. So please, bear with me as I indulge… or just skip the whole thing, if you wish.

Much has been made of Radiohead’s widely-publicized decision to let fans decide how much they would like to pay for the first versions of their new record, In Rainbows. I’d like to add to Stephen’s comments some of my thoughts on this.

First, they are offering the new songs in an MP3 format, which is universally recognized as being an inferior format. The advantage to MP3 is that it is incredibly accessible, more so than any other audio format before it. More so than vinyl records, than cassette tapes, than multi-track recordings, than video etc.

But the band is not relying solely on the MP3 format to sell its record. It is using this format as its lowest common denominator entry point, through which the majority of the public will purchase, hear, and forever file away this album.

This model suggests that different levels of purchasing platforms in the future could become common. The MP3 format could become the cheaper and more readily available format, while vinyl albums – with their superior sound quality and potential for visual art awesomeness – could be the more expensive, more fan-obsessive option. The third level between the medium-quality MP3 format and the high quality vinyl format could be superior-quality enhanced digital recordings, digital versions in high def formats or whatever other new technologies spin our way in the future.

Second, while most of the discussion has been around the pricing scheme of the new record, there is far less mention of the fact that the band is still seeking a major distribution deal for when the record does in fact come out as a CD. As well, there is the special $80 packaging of the album that contains a double vinyl LP, the enhanced version of the CD, additional art, and a digibox (whatever the *&!# that is!)

Are Radiohead’s practices altering the industry landscape significantly? I would say yes – the marketing practices of the band and its management have given new options to the larger labels and to other music marketing executives as to how to push records and music on the public. This is a significant industry shift. Better? Not sure. Different, yes.

The clever marketing of In Rainbows is placing a new premium on the customized shopping experience for consumers. Not to get too theoretical here, but it is true that we roam through a world that values individualization above anything else. The center of this society is consumerism. Therefore, to release ONE version of an album, at ONE price, is now impossible, what with all the choices out there, from ring tones to laptop colors, from shoe designs to Facebook profiles.

The different levels of release and the hundreds of different price points one could pay for In Rainbows are consistent with today’s consumer world. Writers, bloggers, executives and others are hailing this as a sea change to the music industry. It gives control completely to Radiohead and its management team.

The plan creates a new business model. This, I think, finally, is what is truly exciting people in the industry. Judging by the first week sales of 1.2 million copies and counting, you could also argue that fear is touching these people in much the same way.

Kara Walker at The Whitney

The art is not meant to be pretty; it’s there to make you think and to be horrified and even turned off. Kara Walker’s tragically seductive silhouettes in her exhibition at the Whitney American Museum of Art depict images of slavery, of desperation and fighting back. “It’s this lure to look at things that are hard to look at,” Walker said about her work. The show, My Compliment, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love, runs until Feb. 3, 2008 and features dozens of her sketches, three videos, and a large rooms with panorama scenes done in black cut-outs.

The first thing the visitor is confronted with is Gone, an Historical Romance of a Civil War as it Occurred Between the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart, if you think this lewd or over the top I suggest turning around and walking right out, because it doesn’t change. Most of Walker’s images force the viewer to be uncomfortable. Images of boys floating by the support of a blown up phallus, slave girls performing fellatio on white men, butchered bodies and even a dancing child spewing excrement, are seen in Walkers work. In Mistress Demand a Swift and Dramatic Empathetic Reaction Which We Obliged Her, a young black girl pushes a machete through the breast of a bound “mistress” while a slave stands to the left of her, his head contained in a strange cage type device and his arms shackles.

Walker does something that most modern artists fail to convey—feeling. Whether you are turned off, saddened, amused or educated, her silhouettes evoke some emotion. Even her loosely done Negress Notes, a series of 64 framed sketches, cause a stir. One shows a slave girl suspended between two men, performing fellatio on the father while his son sodimizes her. The simple watercolor and pen drawing induces disgust for the actions of the men but not tenderness for the girl. This example can also serve as an allegory to the American society’s repulsion at what happened to African slaves and the mild reactions we have today.

In a circular room Walker shows a young white boy wearing a soldier’s cap copulating with an older black girl with bouncing pigtails. The girl drops her watermelon slice and it falls toward a black man who watches as a baby is being born like a chick from a watermelon. Two white women peak at him through a keyhole in a door that blends into his body. On one part of the wall slaves try to escape through a wagon filled with straw, but on the other side they can’t. The circular room brings you around and around the issue, like Walker’s work, which takes slavery and human v. human to max extremes.

There are a lot of people who don’t like Kara Walker’s work. When she won the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Achievement Award she was criticized harshly and called “undeserving.” So, she responded by doing more art.

But, people also love Kara Walker’s work and this is a sign that something is moving. Despite the repetition of her theme, it is apparent that this woman has something to say and has done an amazing job telling it. The future for this artist is exciting and the direction of her creativity is unknown. And she wrote on one of the drawings, “And what does this imply? That ARTS function to Black people is to verify the TRUTH all the time and to express collective experience.” – L. Covington