Report on the Music Industry in Canada + Radiohead

Here’s an interesting report from Shelley Stein-Sacks on the future of the Canadian Music Industry. Like all such reports, it relies too heavily on technology as a causal factor (it’s not) and doesn’t cite sources for some of its important claims (ie, don’t expect an academic paper), but the report is based on a bunch of interviews with people in the industry, and it has a lot of interesting food for thought. Most impressive and important was the idea that granting agencies ought to require a digital deliverable from funded artists, and not just a finished CD. Its assessment of the declining importance of music sales to the music industry was also interesting.

In other news, in a silent gesture of defiance, I downloaded the new Radiohead album via BitTorrent this week. Whatever price I want to pay, right? And don’t get me started on the whining about “low quality” audio files. . . .

Hypothesis on the Histories of Communication Studies in the U.S. and Canada

File this under “probably not news to lots of people up here.”

This past week in proseminar we discussed competing historical accounts of the field of Communication Studies (recognizing that even what counts as “in” and “out” of that field is debatable). Naturally, one of the questions that arose concerned the differences between the field as practiced in Canada and as practiced in the U.S., especially since there are more and more detailed scholarly histories of the field in the U.S. This is especially vexing because it is a myth that Innis and McLuhan remain towering figures up here influencing Canadian communication studies on the whole. Sure, they’re taught and discussed, both I would not place the work of either person as continuing to guide or structure central questions in the field (indeed, I have always found McLuhan overrated, but I’ve said more about that elsewhere).

The answer that I came up with, and that I’m feeling satisfied with, is economically deterministic and borrowed in part from Gertrude Robinson’s history of the field in Canada (the whole issue is worth a look). In it, she’s got a long table listing royal commissions and the various policy initiatives, regulatory agencies and crown corporations to come out of the commissions. If you want to know why, to generalize excessively, Canadian Communication Studies has a proportionally larger “critical” strain than in the U.S., where numerically, social science and applied approaches dominate the field nationwide, funding has a lot to do with it. While corporate and military money (along with some other federal grants tied to various US policy initiatives) helped shape the careers of early practitioners and centers in the U.S., the concern here was for promoting Canadian culture, and so a great deal of money has gone in that direction instead.

Of course, my alma mater, the Institute of Communications Research, started its life as a psychological warfare outfit before transforming into a much more cultural studies-oriented place, but I think the generalization still holds. Numerically, cultural studies is still a vastly “minority” practice within U.S. communication studies. The money that shaped the fields in the U.S. and Canada came from radically different sources and toward radically different ends.

Denounced by the Lawyer for Rush

Now that doesn’t happen every day.

Yesterday I was part of a panel on sampling and copyright called “Cramping My Sampling” at the Pop and Policy Conference. The panel was set up for each person to give a 5-7 minute spiel and then the panelists talked with one another, after which the floor was opened to questions. It’s not a traditional academic conference in that it mixed industry people with academics, which means that the normal modes of discourse (for academics, for industry people), get mixed up.

So the panel goes like this: The musicians were the stars and the rest of us were, well, the opening act even though we went afterward. Buck65 and Scratch Bastid begin and discuss their forthcoming album. Essentially, they delivered a record full of sampled material, it became clear that it would be prohibitively expensive to clear all the samples, and so they hired musicians to either replay the samples note for note or to create snippets of music with the feel of the samples but just different enough. They played the results, which were quite interesting. Needless to say, they criticized the way in which copyright law forced them to remake the album (or pay out huge sums of money), though Buck65 said that in some cases, it also afforded them new creative opportunities.

Next up was Owen Chapman who talked about his doctoral dissertation, which involved discussing sampling with a group of local artists, and then collaborating with them to produce a CD based on a small set of samples, some of which were uncleared recorded material and some of which were field recordings. After him was Susan Abramovitch, a lawyer at Gowllings, and she did a great job of explaining the legalities (and the ambiguities) of sampling law.

Then there was my turn. I cannot objectively relate my presentation, and indeed it may have been less clear than what I am about to type, but there were two basic points:

1. It’s fine to talk about “the rights of the artists” or “the right of the artist to be compensated” but often, the owner of the copyright is not that artist. In those cases, when we are talking about ethics, rather than legality, it is useful to distinguish artists from others who hold copyrights, most notably, corporations and conglomerates who are not usually particularly interested in music, and often are simply interested in extracting the maximum possible profit for themselves.

2. Current copyright law is actually damaging to projects of cultural heritage. This point is essentially taken from a talk given by Mark Katz. The argument is this: an artform like mashup would normally be the thing documented and catalogued by cultural institutions (like the libarary of congress, for instance). However, because of its dubious legality, it exists mostly online, and will probably not be preserved. This is a Bad Thing because we are privileging commerce over culture.

Simple points, and anyway, I was put on the panel to raise big picture issues. So I did. The lawyers, whom I did not particularly think I was attacking, were not at all happy.

Susan said I was totally off base because most of her clients are individuals, like Randy Bachman, who own the rights to their own music, and the power of the labels has been in decline for a few years. She suggested that my anticorporate position was “quaint and old fashioned.” While I don’t dispute either statement, I would be interested to know whether a) most of the world’s music copyrights are now held by individuals and b) whether most of the music that’s sampled is owned by individuals. I don’t know, but I would be awfully surprised if that was the case.

After some more discussion, a man toward the back begins to speak. He starts out by saying that he finds it “offensive that someone would say that artists shouldn’t be compensated for their work.” Which nobody on the panel said. He then goes on to announce that he represents Rush — “Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson and Neal Peart” [1] and that Rush doesn’t like it when people try to sample their work and they should be able to refuse all comers if they don’t like the use to which the work is put. He also really didn’t like the anticorporate stuff, which he called a “rant” — if companies own the work, or people are “stupid” (his word, not mine, after the panel) and sign away their rights, the owner of the rights should be entitled to full compensation, to the full extent of the law, whatever the case, for whatever reason — since they put up the money — full stop.

I think it’s fair to say that we disagree on basic principles. If you applied his rule of full compensation, no matter what, and (worse) full control over all future uses of a copyrighted work across the arts, literature, music, poetry and philosophy, you could basically wipe out most of the interesting Western culture of the 20th century. I also don’t think commerce and economic interest trump all other rights or the common good.

In the end, it’s a pretty clichéd and routine argument that’s been had thousands of times before in other places. Neither he nor I said anything original.

But I don’t get the opportunity to be denounced by a man claiming to represent the band Rush every day. I’ll be sure to think about the damage sampling might wreak upon Rush next time I spin By-Tor and the Snow Dog on my record player.

Also check out this excellent commentary on the conference.

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[1] One weird thing to this academic at the conference was the propensity of people (okay, almost entirely men) to begin their comments by reciting their credentials, which usually involve album credits or associations with other famous people. Then again, to begin my talk by saying “I’m one of the world’s recognized experts on the ear phonautograph” isn’t as fun, is it? So maybe there’s a reason.

The Crisis of the Humanities; also, I’m entering “annoying Canadian” territory

Most of the time when I return to the U.S. and attend a conference, a thread emerges some point about “the crisis of the humanities.” Sometimes it’s about Republicans defunding higher education, sometimes it’s about changing attitudes among undergraduates or university administrators, sometimes it’s about the publishing industry, sometimes it’s about curriculum, and sometimes it’s about changing standards for tenure or some combination of the above. Bottom line is that as long as I’ve been around universities (since 1989, if you’re counting), the humanities have been in crisis, at least according to the humanists.

This isn’t to diminish any of the issues — which are real — only to note that maybe we’re dealing with structural problems and less with something so acute as a crisis.

I didn’t really realize how pervasive the rhetoric was until I left three years ago. Sure, Canadians have lots to protest as well, from certain provinces’ wanton negligence in opening PhD programs right and left to increase revenue to the Harper government’s cuts to progressive programs to SSHRC’s proposals to start more actively steering academic agendas. But it’s a fundamentally different situation when many humanities professors are walking around with grants with 10s of thousands of dollars (or more) and our programs are expanding, at least in some areas.

Last weekend I attended a conference at the University of Utah on histories of new media. The conference was great, but as I said in the final session, I was really struck how the rhetoric of “crisis of the humanities” was replaced by talk of partnerships with business in one way or another. Tim Lenoir related his experience of turning to founding a company as a way around grant agencies’ reluctance to fund certain kinds of work; Henry Jenkins related his experience in founding and building Comparative Media Studies at MIT, where he was given a program but not much of a budget. Of course this has a lot to do with it being media studies (as opposed to classics) that we’re talking about, and of course some kinds of media studies research and teaching is more “interesting” to corporate funders than others. But the issue of funder interest isn’t new — we’ve been dealing with it with funding agencies, deans and administrators, and for that matter disagreements within departments for years. The issue, and I forget whether it was Jenkins or someone else who said it, is that humanities scholars are generally united by a hostility to practicality and utility; this is rooted in the idea that the humanities are basic research, devoid of any particular immediate application. And that fits nicely with the oppositional stance humanists like to cut.

As to the annoying Canadian thing, I’m pretty sure I said “in Canada” or “in Quebec” at least three times during discussions after panels. Guess I’ve had enough of whatever’s in the water. Or it’s harder and harder for me to imagine the U.S. except from outside it.

Hiatus

If figured if I declared a blog hiatus, I’d start writing posts, and so what’s the point, right?

My blogger self is going through a bit of an identity crisis because I find I can write about even less of my day-to-day life than before, as a surprising number of my chair dealings involve something confidential, or at least some aspect that prevents them from being the kind one blogs about under one’s own name on one’s professional website. Each day I learn something new or have some other intense experience by virtue of being in a new position. I don’t know if I’ve just said it to friends or whether it’s somewhere in the older posts, but becoming department chair feels a bit like the shift from grad student to prof. One’s relationship to the institution changes.

I’m also finding that keeping on top of chair stuff means a cascade of missed deadlines for my own work, as in one thing goes late, which means that each other thing must then be later. Which induces guilt, and so forth. Also, I’m ridiculously overscheduled.

So, I’m not officially on hiatus, but I am thinking things over. Really, it should just mean less personal stuff, right? There’s that’s easy.

In Effect in Villeray

Well, we made it. We are in the new place, more or less (it takes awhile to settle in, you know). The computers work, the DSL works, the stove works (though it is a real PITA to get a gas stove hooked up in Quebec; on the other hand, we have a gas stove again), the satellite TV works, our stuff is put away (though in some cases it’s still in bags or boxes — the studio isn’t happening right now, alas). Amazingly, the grill fits on the loggia (that’s a porch, dear readers, and the picture above is the view from the porch). We have a parking sticker for our car, our mail is being forwarded, the new residents of Chateau Frontenac are happily unpacking themselves, and we’ve even managed to explore the neighborhood a little. The stereo speakers are finally hooked up and we even listened to a record while cooking dinner tonight (U2: The Unforgettable Fire — the record collection needs some serious revitalization at this point but it’s good for 80s alternarock).

Our only mistake? We didn’t paint before moving in. That will have to happen with all our stuff here. Sooner rather than later, I hope, since there’s no point in putting pictures on the wall until there’s a fresh coat of paint.

The main thing, though, besides the fact that this is the nicest place we’ve ever lived, is that we’re in a more interesting neighborhood.

Things within walking distance of our new abode:

Cheap, good ethnic food: Salvadoran, sushi, Lebanese, tapas, Vietnamese, Haitian, Indian, a gazillion italian places and a bunch of meaty places I’ll never try
Groceries etc: a wonderful fruterie at the corner, several others nearby, an IGA , a bunch of latin American grocers, bakeries, and most importantly, the Marché Jean Talon (now we have to get one of those roll-y shopping baskets).
Services: metro Jarry, a cool video store, at least 2 coffee shops (1 with wireless, the other roasts its own), a luthier with amazing handmade basses on the wall (not like I need another bass right now), several drugstores, tailor, shoe repair, shoe store, a gazillion hair places for Carrie to choose from, doctors, dentists, at least one gym,
Other cool stuff nearby: the garment district (which is where I bought all the fabric for my vests a couple years back), Jarry park, the Boyer bike path (now all I need is a bike and to get in biking shape — maybe after the thaw).

Though we are further out, the commute to McGill is almost exactly the same as before given our proximity to the metro. Just so long as the green line doesn’t go down.

Tomorrow is the first day of school, though Wednesday is my first teaching day. As usual, I’m looking forward to it. I’ll have more to say about other things when I get the chance. But for now, I wanted to resurface.