tag:theconversation.com,2011:/africa/topics/musicians-20329/articlesMusicians – The Conversation2024-03-18T12:32:12Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2234152024-03-18T12:32:12Z2024-03-18T12:32:12ZAs the US government and record labels go after TikTok, musicians get the squeeze<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582257/original/file-20240315-16-a1ogtt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C24%2C8243%2C5462&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Thomas Raggi of the band Måneskin performs a concert that streamed live on TikTok in 2021.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/thomas-raggi-of-the-band-maneskin-performs-at-a-live-news-photo/1233487624?adppopup=true">Fabian Sommer/Picture Alliance via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>For much of the year, TikTok has been on the defensive. </p>
<p>On March 13, 2024, the House of Representatives <a href="https://apnews.com/article/tiktok-ban-house-vote-china-national-security-8fa7258fae1a4902d344c9d978d58a37">voted to approve a bill</a> that would force the short-form video app to be sold off from its Chinese parent company to non-Chinese owners or face a ban in the U.S. The Senate will still have to vote on the legislation, which received broad bipartisan support due to beliefs that TikTok creates risks to national security.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Universal Music Group, one of the biggest record labels in the world, <a href="https://www.universalmusic.com/an-open-letter-to-the-artist-and-songwriter-community-why-we-must-call-time-out-on-tiktok/">stopped licensing its music to TikTok</a> at the end of January 2024. Since then, songs by Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish and scores of other artists can no longer be used on the platform, while millions of TikTok videos that had incorporated tracks from Universal artists were muted.</p>
<p>Universal Music Group has an estimated <a href="https://seekingalpha.com/article/4580695-universal-music-group-buy-the-leader-of-the-music-industry-ahead-of-earnings">37.5% market share</a> in the music industry, so its songs likely make up a significant portion of the clips used on TikTok prior to the ban.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/tiktok-begins-removing-universal-music-publishing-songs-expanding-roya-rcna140713">The record label claims</a> its artists account for a majority of songs on the platform, and therefore, Universal artists should be better compensated and have guardrails against the harmful effects of artificial intelligence. TikTok, in its response, has said that it has come to amicable agreements with other record labels and that Universal is being unreasonable to the detriment of the artists it seeks to protect.</p>
<p>In the end, both companies simply want to have a larger piece of the pie.</p>
<p>But each of their interests, I believe, should be secondary to the creators that sustain them. Over the past two decades, as the internet and streaming have disrupted the music industry, wage gains for music professionals have been far more pronounced at the top of the income ladder. However, most composers and performers have seen their income and employment prospects dwindle.</p>
<p>TikTok has become a beacon in an otherwise dismal digital streaming landscape, and while musicians increasingly need TikTok, TikTok also needs music. </p>
<h2>Gains have gone to the top</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.proquest.com/openview/bc01f8f80efe2e8d006b26520064d146">My research explores the impact of technology</a> on music professionals in the internet era.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/91040797/what-the-digital-streaming-revolution-of-the-2000s-can-teach-us-about-the-ai-revolution-today-according-to-a-former-musician">Technology was supposed to democratize the music industry</a>, allowing more artists to more easily gain access to new markets.</p>
<p>Artists no longer needed a record deal to record their music and get it out to the world. They can record music cheaply using their computers, upload it to YouTube, Spotify, BandCamp, SoundCloud, Tidal or any number of platforms for music distribution, then promote their work on social media to build their audience.</p>
<p>But this didn’t lead to more music professionals making a living off their work.</p>
<p>That’s the conclusion I came to by analyzing data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which includes two categories of music professionals: performers, who record songs and put on live shows, and composers, which includes musicians who conduct performances or create original works of music but do not necessarily perform that music. A performer would be someone like Dua Lipa, whereas a composer might be someone who is credited for writing a track on Dua Lipa’s album. </p>
<p>From 1999 to 2022, composers saw a strong 85.3% boost in employment, reflecting a gain of 5,380 jobs. This alone suggests that technology has helped music professionals gain employment.</p>
<p>However, when we look at performers – whose employment numbers shrank by 14,690, or 31.6% – it tells a different story. </p>
<p>Put together, the total number of music professionals fell by 9,310 people from 1999 to 2022, reflecting a 17.6% drop. All the free promotion of social media and the lowered barriers to entry that the internet provided were not enough to sustain artists’ livelihoods.</p>
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<p>Wages tell a more complex story. </p>
<p>While more people have earned a living from composing music since 1999, their wage gains paled in comparison to that of performers. In short, there are fewer people working as performers now, but those who can cut it are making more money. </p>
<p>This would seem to show that technology has helped most working music professionals.</p>
<p>However, there were outsize gains among the top 10% of music professionals – so the bulk of the rewards from technological advancement went to those at the top. The average wage gain for music professions rises as you climb the income ladder.</p>
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<h2>Artists first, or artists last?</h2>
<p>Artists, then, are having an increasingly difficult time making a living, especially independent artists who comprise the lower income brackets. </p>
<p>The promises of technology <a href="https://hbr.org/2024/01/is-genais-impact-on-productivity-overblown">are often overblown</a>; in the case of music, the winners and losers have ended up mirroring <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/rising-inequality-a-major-issue-of-our-time/">broader societal inequalities</a>.</p>
<p>Even as technology hasn’t deliver what it promised to artists, artists are increasingly reliant on technology to make a living. </p>
<p>They’ve increasingly turned to TikTok to do so.</p>
<p>TikTok, with <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/">more than a billion active users</a> worldwide, has revolutionized music promotion and discovery. Unlike traditional social media, TikTok’s unique format, algorithm-driven content discovery and collaborative features supposedly democratize fame. </p>
<p>Lesser-known artists can go viral, shaping the Billboard charts and propelling songs into the mainstream. Lil Nas X <a href="https://www.grammy.com/news/lil-nas-xs-no-1-run-began-tiktok-now-music-industry-taking-notice">rose to fame on TikTok</a> with “Old Town Road” and promptly signed on to Columbia Records. Oliver Anthony, the creator of the populist hit “Rich Men North Of Richmond,” <a href="https://www.billboard.com/music/chart-beat/oliver-anthony-music-rich-men-north-of-richmond-number-one-debut-hot-100-1235396681/">went viral</a> in summer 2023, eventually reaching the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100.</p>
<p>In this era of virality, TikTok has become an essential promotional tool for musicians and record labels alike, transcending the boundaries of conventional social platforms.</p>
<p>By cutting ties with TikTok, Universal Music Group is not only depriving its artists of these opportunities, but it’s also alienating a large and loyal fan base who use TikTok to interact with their favorite artists and their songs. </p>
<p>TikTok also loses in this situation, since music is such a critical part of its audiovisual experience. <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-22/tiktok-lost-customers-when-it-took-away-music-in-australia">In a 2023 test conducted by TikTok</a>, the platform limited the music that some users in Australia could use in posts. For three straight weeks, the number of users, along with the time users spent on the app, declined. </p>
<p>Both parties say they want to protect the artists, <a href="https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/tiktok-statement-in-response-to-universal-music-group">with TikTok arguing</a> that it has reached “artist-first agreements with every other label” and that “Universal’s self-serving actions are not in the best interests of artists, songwriters, and fans.”</p>
<p>TikTok is banking on the perception that platforms provide opportunities for cultural producers by saying that the power of the platform lies in it being “a free promotional and discovery vehicle” for artists. Some members of Congress who opposed the TikTok ban cited the platform’s <a href="https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/tiktok-bill-ban-house-vote-af4d0800?mod=hp_lead_pos1">utility for maintaining creators’ livelihoods</a>, so this is a common refrain.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Woman holds sign reading 'I'm 1 of 170 million Americans on TikTok.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582253/original/file-20240315-28-ytsbjo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582253/original/file-20240315-28-ytsbjo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582253/original/file-20240315-28-ytsbjo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582253/original/file-20240315-28-ytsbjo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582253/original/file-20240315-28-ytsbjo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582253/original/file-20240315-28-ytsbjo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582253/original/file-20240315-28-ytsbjo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A protester holds a sign in support of TikTok at a news conference outside the U.S. Capitol on March 12, 2024.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/participants-hold-signs-in-support-of-tiktok-at-a-news-news-photo/2079160123?adppopup=true">Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In response, Universal Music Group has declared that TikTok has an “outdated view” of the modern music business due to the app’s insistence that it provides exposure for artists – and that this exposure is good enough. As my research shows, this free promotion has not grown the ranks of artists who can make a living off music.</p>
<p>TikTok still holds out hope that it can reach “<a href="https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/umpg-update-february-28-2024">an equitable agreement with Universal Music Group</a>,” but the record label hasn’t budged.</p>
<p>The two media companies say they want to protect artists. But I believe the artists are the ones who will end up hurt the most in a divorce.</p>
<p>In other words, TikTok and Universal need to stay together for the kids.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223415/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ediz Ozelkan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>For some musical artists, TikTok has become a beacon in an otherwise dismal digital streaming landscape.Ediz Ozelkan, Lecturer of Media Studies, University of Colorado BoulderLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2229472024-02-20T15:58:18Z2024-02-20T15:58:18ZLearning music the informal way some popular musicians do could inspire more school students<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576588/original/file-20240219-30-ij8n11.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=11%2C0%2C7337%2C4902&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/african-american-boy-playing-acustic-guitar-660567223">LightField Studios/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Music is a school subject <a href="https://www.ism.org/music-in-peril/">facing difficult times</a>. In England, fewer students are taking the subject <a href="https://www.musicteachermagazine.co.uk/news/article/sharp-decline-of-gcse-music-entries-labelled-a-great-concern-by-ism?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1658310885">at GCSE</a>, not enough people are training to become <a href="https://www.musicteachermagazine.co.uk/features/article/the-state-of-music-teacher-training">secondary music teachers</a>, and the subject is suffering from a <a href="https://musiciansunion.org.uk/news/mu-challenges-government-on-music-education-funding-shortfall">lack of funding</a>.</p>
<p>One problem may be that the way music is taught in school has become increasingly formal. The current <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-curriculum-in-england-music-programmes-of-study/national-curriculum-in-england-music-programmes-of-study">music national curriculum</a>, introduced in 2014, includes using <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/staff">staff notation</a>, learning music history, and listening to the music of “great composers and musicians”. This was a shift in comparison to the previous, more child-centred national curriculum. </p>
<p>Wider education policy on how future teachers should be trained places emphasis on <a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6061eb9cd3bf7f5cde260984/ITT_core_content_framework_.pdf">teacher control and well-structured lessons</a> – again, perpetuating more formal, traditional approaches.</p>
<p>But this isn’t how many popular musicians – the artists students may be listening to on their way into school – learn how to <a href="https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/research-projects/2022/jan/adapting-popular-musicians-practices-classroom">play music</a>. Their approach is often more informal. Many learn to <a href="https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/famous-musicians-who-cant-read-music/">play by ear</a>, hearing a piece of music and figuring it out on an instrument. </p>
<p>Bringing this approach into the classroom to a greater extent could help both students and the subject of music itself. </p>
<h2>Freedom to play</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4r8zoHT4ExY">Informal learning</a> can look and sound haphazard at times, but has close ties with more natural ways of engaging with music. In one example of the approach, pioneered by the professor of music education Lucy Green, students begin <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/14613808.2022.2074383">“in at the deep end”</a> – tasked with copying a song of their choice, by ear, working together in groups. They are required to work out the various parts of the song, often building up to a performance.</p>
<p>This kind of learning gives students more freedom and independence in the classroom, and a more equal power balance with the teacher is encouraged. The role of the teacher is to set the task, then let the students choose how they approach it and help only when needed. The students can decide on their own pace of learning and the level of difficulty of the part they play within their group.</p>
<p>This can lead to increased student confidence in the music classroom. Although the teacher is still in control by default, this approach can prompt them to trust in the musical activity their students are engaging in, resisting the temptation to step in too soon. </p>
<p>Informal learning is linked with increased numbers of students choosing the <a href="https://www.musicalfutures.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Musical_Futures_2nd_Edition_Teacher_Resource_Pack.pdf">subject at GCSE</a>. This suggests it has the potential to capture the interest of some students who might have previously become disengaged with music lessons. </p>
<h2>Learn what you love</h2>
<p>Students are motivated by being able to choose what music they will play with their friends – often selecting popular music. By welcoming student choice of music into the classroom, increased links are forged between in- and out-of-school music. Students are engaging in a learning practice that exists beyond the confines of the classroom, and which has relevance to their musical interests and passions. </p>
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<img alt="Children singing together" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576591/original/file-20240219-20-ybdu9d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576591/original/file-20240219-20-ybdu9d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576591/original/file-20240219-20-ybdu9d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576591/original/file-20240219-20-ybdu9d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576591/original/file-20240219-20-ybdu9d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576591/original/file-20240219-20-ybdu9d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576591/original/file-20240219-20-ybdu9d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Music at school is often formal and structured.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/group-school-children-singing-choir-268247162">SpeedKingz/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>Also, this does not mean that informal learning cannot extend beyond popular music. While students often choose to bring popular music into the classroom, the underpinning research shows once they are motivated and engaged, the teacher can move beyond this genre and draw upon aspects of the approach to introduce <a href="https://www.musicalfutures.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Musical_Futures_2nd_Edition_Teacher_Resource_Pack.pdf">other types of music</a> into the classroom in later stages. </p>
<p>The non-profit <a href="https://www.musicalfutures.org/">Musical Futures</a> has contributed towards the development of informal learning and <a href="https://www.musicalfutures.org/our-approach/">continues to advocate and promote its ethos</a>. And although the approach is largely aimed at secondary school students, primary students can benefit from <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-music-education/article/exploring-the-potential-of-informal-music-learning-in-a-perceived-age-of-pedagogical-traditionalism-for-student-teachers-in-primary-music-education/1D1BD0C865372CE7D5BD11A1A5856C29#article">adapted versions</a> of informal learning.</p>
<p>Facilitating informal learning might feel risky for some teachers. They face a variety of pressures and requirements, and may feel this kind of learning does not align with wider education policy and the expectations of their role. </p>
<p>Informal music learning is not always easy to assess, either. And embracing learning that is informal and “haphazard” might lead to a fear of judgment – that the teacher lacks control of pupil behaviour.</p>
<p>However, informal learning offers a way to challenge thinking about how music is taught, and to consider alternative possibilities to enable the subject to flourish in school.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222947/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anna Mariguddi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Informal learning is linked with increased numbers of students choosing music at GCSE.Anna Mariguddi, Lecturer in Education (music specialist), Edge Hill UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2168592024-01-22T13:29:39Z2024-01-22T13:29:39ZWhy do people have different tastes in music? A music education expert explains why some songs are universally liked, while others aren’t<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566074/original/file-20231215-21-eo0769.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=19%2C0%2C2121%2C1409&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The types of music you listen to can reflect your personality traits. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/group-of-young-friends-listening-to-music-with-royalty-free-image/1156897122?phrase=listening+to+music&adppopup=true">Smile/Stone via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/281719/original/file-20190628-76743-26slbc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/curious-kids-us-74795">Curious Kids</a> is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to <a href="mailto:curiouskidsus@theconversation.com">curiouskidsus@theconversation.com</a>.</em></p>
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<blockquote>
<p><strong>Why do we have a certain taste in music, different than others? – Shirya R., age 11</strong></p>
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<hr>
<p>When you turn on the radio, you might hear songs you like and other songs you just skip past. But even the songs you don’t like usually have some fans. Maybe you don’t like older music, but your parents or grandparents might love it <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-do-old-people-hate-new-music-123834">because they grew up</a> with it. It’s familiar and comfortable. When you’re older, you’ll likely return to music you love too.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=QXuOzQIAAAAJ&hl=en">music education professor</a> who teaches music psychology, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about music preferences and how music weaves its way through people’s brains.</p>
<p>Some composers produce music with <a href="https://theconversation.com/burt-bacharach-mastered-the-art-of-the-perfect-pop-song-and-that-aint-easy-199660">cross-generational appeal</a>. Look at the song “True Colors,” which artists have remade time and time again. It was originally released in 1986 by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPn0KFlbqX8">Cyndi Lauper</a>.</p>
<p>Ten years later, Disney World’s Epcot used it as part of a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUm22pobGU4">pre-show video</a>. Ten years after that, it made its way to our ears again as part of the “Trolls” movie. Now, if you scour the internet, you’ll find lots of covers of this song.</p>
<p>How can this one song appeal to many different people over time, while other songs do not? Why do some people have wildly different tastes in music, even while certain songs can unite people from a variety of backgrounds and generations? </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">‘True Colors’ from the movie ‘Trolls,’ starring Justin Timberlake and Anna Kendrick.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Researchers have looked at <a href="https://www.ucf.edu/pegasus/your-brain-on-music/">how music works in the brain</a>. They suggest people like music with unexpected twists and turns, which sometimes cause <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-do-only-some-people-get-skin-orgasms-from-listening-to-music-59719">pleasurable physical reactions</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2020.565815">or chills</a>. This finding suggests that humans have created and listened to music over time <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsw009">because it is pleasurable or rewarding</a>.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">When you listen to music, you might get chills.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Emotions and personality</h2>
<p>Some researchers suggest people experience emotions through music, or that they choose music based on what they want to feel. A <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/a0022406">2011 study</a> suggests musical preference may reflect the emotions people feel when listening to music, regardless of the music’s style.</p>
<p>Some people respond to mellow and relaxing music. Others’ emotions are triggered by classical-style music. Still others emotionally react to singer-songwriter music like country, folk and some pop music. Preferences for certain types or styles of music might come from the time and place they’re first heard, or it may simply be specific to each person, regardless of what’s going on around them. </p>
<p>Though people might like certain music at one point in their lives, their music preferences change over time based on their lived experiences. When you’re struggling through a tough time, you might choose music that reflects what you wish was happening and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10824-022-09454-7">search for happy songs</a>. On the flip side, sometimes people <a href="https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2015.00404">gravitate toward sad songs</a>. People want to move through grief, so they may search for songs that help them make sense of their emotions.</p>
<p>However, people’s choices don’t account for the whole picture. Musical taste goes <a href="https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1062146">deeper than the music type or genre</a>. People who like pop or rock music don’t all like the same pop or rock music. </p>
<p>Studies on <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797618761659">personality and social media interaction</a> suggest your musical tastes can tell others what kind of personality you have. If someone knows what kind of music you like, that might tell them something about your personality. </p>
<p>Other <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000397">research suggests</a> your music preferences mirror your unique personality. So, people who already know you may be able to suggest music that you would like to hear.</p>
<p>For example, those who are more open might prefer mellow, sophisticated music like Billie Eilish’s “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cW8VLC9nnTo">What Was I Made For?</a>” or intense music like Imagine Dragons’ “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5M2WZiAy6k">Natural</a>.”</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000397">The research found</a> extroverts may lean toward contemporary music. Agreeable people prefer unpretentious music, like Garrett Kato & Elina’s “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgxNu8fBrgw">Never Alone</a>.” Conscientious people lean toward <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0o5NTQMzNPo">unpretentious music</a> or intense music like Marshmello’s “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYfejxVZ7lg">Power</a>.” People who are more anxious might prefer many different types of music.</p>
<p>People may like music by artists they like, rather than how the music sounds. Some prefer music from <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000293">artists who are like them</a>, especially when they can view their profiles on <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797618761659">social media</a>.</p>
<p>Why does knowing what music others like matter? Knowing about different people’s musical preferences and personalities <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evVRxrOo5iw">can bridge gaps between people</a> with different personalities and identities. </p>
<h2>The music people stream</h2>
<p>A <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-018-0508-z">study of 765 million songs streamed</a> by people worldwide revealed several reasons people listen to music. People’s preferences tended to change based on the time of day, their age and particular styles of music. Most people listened to more relaxing music at night but more intense music during the day. </p>
<p>Music streamed in Latin America often produced quicker physical and emotional reactions. Music streamed in Asia was usually relaxing. People who stay up later at night listened to less intense music. Depending on where participants lived, the length of the day also played a part in their music listening habits. In short, people’s environments and their individual moods shaped their preferences.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TOhANADfR04?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Harmony in the Brain: Unraveling the Neuroscience of Music.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>So, why do we have different tastes in music? People have complex personalities, and the music they like may be related to this. People’s brains work in unique ways as they process music. Some may have a physical reaction to certain music, while others may not. People may like music because a musician’s views might be like their own views. That said, some songs surprise, intrigue and entertain a wide variety of listeners, which makes them universally liked.</p>
<p>The bottom line? Each person is unique in many ways, and their musical tastes reflect that uniqueness.</p>
<hr>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jane Kuehne does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Lots of factors can influence your music taste, from your age and where you’re from to the personality traits you have.Jane Kuehne, Associate Professor of Music Education, Auburn UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2175872023-11-15T12:14:15Z2023-11-15T12:14:15ZStranger in My Own Skin: Pete Doherty documentary reviewed by a mental health and addiction expert<p><a href="https://www.dohertyincinema.com/">Stranger in My Own Skin</a> is a documentary about the life of musician Pete Doherty, who is as well known for his drug use and spells in prison as he is for forming The Libertines and later Babyshambles. From recreational beginnings, through first realising he had a drug problem, Doherty finally ended up consumed by full-blown addiction. As he explains it: “Hard drugs entered my life and slowly, slowly, quickly took control.”</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The trailer for Stranger In My Own Skin.</span></figcaption>
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<p>In the film, Doherty’s life seems to play out many of the characteristics experts know <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3749318/">increases vulnerability for drug use</a>. He had an authoritarian childhood growing up on army bases, surrounded by metaphorical and actual barbed wire. He experienced feelings of <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4070144/">not belonging</a>, unless at one with a football crowd. He was a young adult in a subculture where drug use was not only part of the escape, it was also accepted, normalised – <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/16066350500053497">even expected</a>.</p>
<p>However, this film captures something else. Doherty was, and still is, superstar famous – The Libertines were once feted as the coolest band on the planet. Yet he has never hidden his heroin use. </p>
<p>As his relationship with heroin develops from habit to dependence, it’s accompanied by the erratic behaviour and chaotic surroundings that are <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/00914509231189934">often seen in addiction</a>. Doherty embraces the “havoc”. When he’s not careering about or agitated about something, he’s flat out on his back, seemingly only finding stillness in heroin. </p>
<p>Alongside this, the camera reveals his physical disintegration from a beautiful young man into someone with scabs, poor personal hygiene and a stumbling gait.</p>
<p>Doherty’s havoc is coupled with a romantic notion of opium and laudanum use. He smokes heroin expecting revelatory dreams, looking to writers like <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Oscar-Wilde">Oscar Wilde</a>, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/James-Joyce">James Joyce</a> and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Fyodor-Dostoyevsky">Fyodor Dostoyevsky</a> for inspiration.</p>
<p>He’s obsessed with Paris and uses a fountain pen and a typewriter. He creates a romanticised interpretation of his roots, adopting the Union Jack as a backdrop in his homes as well as on stage. He longs for some mythical Albion, his <a href="https://i.pinimg.com/originals/8d/bf/59/8dbf596f6d8ae9a215e9e388688b6f1f.jpg">trademark red military frock coats</a> perhaps mocking his army upbringing while revealing an inability to break free from it. </p>
<p>Then there’s his relationship with <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/mar/26/carl-barat-the-libertines-guiltiest-pleasure-love-island">Carl Barât</a>, co-founder of The Libertines. Barât plays a small supporting role in the film, but the little he says is revealing, describing their relationship as “two one-legged men strapped to each other to learn to walk”. Ricocheting between intense love and deep antagonism, Doherty <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/sep/09/arts.artsnews">burgled Barât’s flat</a>, was arrested for it and ended up in prison.</p>
<h2>Seeking rehab</h2>
<p>Fast forward through the Babyshambles years, and finally Doherty accepts that he has to quit, if only to stay alive. There’s no great epiphany, more a dawning realisation. To <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13603108.2015.1101999">paraphrase writer Samuel Johnson’s</a> words on habits, the chains of addiction are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken. There is plenty of evidence that addiction does indeed develop over a period of time and may sneak up unawares, but some drugs are known to be more habit forming than others, heroin being one of the most addictive. </p>
<p>Doherty is ambivalent. “I want to make it to the other side, I do, I do”, he says, before shooting up. Doherty is in the rare position that he can afford residential treatment, even if he has to sell some of his possessions to fund it. Only <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/substance-misuse-treatment-for-adults-statistics-2021-to-2022/adult-substance-misuse-treatment-statistics-2021-to-2022-report#treatment-interventions">one in 100</a> people dependent on heroin in the UK have this option. </p>
<p>After a couple of false starts, musing about hiding heroin in his dressing gown cord, he heads to Thailand for detox and rehab. This part of the film is more familiar, we’ve seen portrayals of rehab and recovery before.</p>
<p>Memory is a constant theme in the documentary – what happened, what is remembered and what is not. The film amplifies this uncertainty as it flits in and out of archive footage of Doherty’s musings. There is a ghost which doesn’t appear – <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/sep/25/pete-doherty-who-killed-my-son-review-a-shocking-look-at-a-terribly-bungled-case">Mark Blanco</a>. His tragic death at a party attended by Doherty and Doherty’s reaction (he was <a href="https://metro.co.uk/2023/09/26/pete-doherty-mark-blanco-murder-body-cctv-19557878/">filmed running past</a> Blanco’s body), have never been satisfactorily explained. Why didn’t that feature?</p>
<p>Perhaps the answer lies with the filmmaker. The documentary makes use of a decade of off-camera interviews by Katia DeVidas. Spoiler alert: reader, she married him. This perhaps explains some of the film’s extraordinary intimacy, but also why some questions aren’t asked and answered in the film. DeVidas did not reply to requests for comment by the time of publication.</p>
<p>A wealth of pre-existing footage, coupled with DeVidas’ access, goes beyond tabloid portrayals and moralising judgments and bears witness to the paradoxes in a life which is both real and performative, visceral and intellectual. </p>
<p>Towards the end, Doherty says he’s interested in working with people in the thick of addiction, but he seems always to have a bottle of Jim Beam in his hand, acknowledging that clean refers to heroin, not alcohol.</p>
<p>He’s making music again, with DeVidas now in the band, and it is his music and the centrality of creativity to his existence which underpin the whole film. “The talent is the man, not the drugs”, he explains. “In spite of being a drug addict or in spite of being clean, I will create”.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sally Marlow currently receives funding from the ESRC, the AHRC and NIHR and in the past has received funding from the Society for the Study of Addiction, the British Council and the Nuffield Foundation. </span></em></p>Doherty’s life features many of the characteristics experts know increases vulnerability for drug use.Sally Marlow, Addictions Researcher, King's College LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2134412023-09-26T12:24:42Z2023-09-26T12:24:42ZMicrophone check − 5 ways that music education is changing<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549135/original/file-20230919-21-zc8txi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=244%2C38%2C1873%2C1336&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Music education has evolved and now includes more popular music genres, such as hip-hop.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.ca/detail/photo/woman-adjusting-microphone-while-rappers-standing-royalty-free-image/1419800443?phrase=hip+hop+artists+students&adppopup=true">Maskot, Maskot Bildbyrå AB/Maskot via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Music education – which traditionally has been <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/002743210709400209">heavily reliant on large ensembles and classical music</a> – is changing with the times. Not since the introduction of the <a href="https://windbandhistory.neocities.org/rhodeswindband_09_americanschoolband">school wind ensemble in the 1920s</a> or the growth of <a href="https://www.savethemusic.org/blog/marching-band-music/">marching band in the 1950s</a> has music education undergone such a transformation.</p>
<p>The changes occurring now have been developed to bring more students into school and community music classes at all levels of education, from kindergarten to college.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=WFwL1aMAAAAJ&hl=en">music education professor</a> – and as one who is <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/music-teacher-as-music-producer-9780197519462?lang=en&cc=us">conducting research on how to create new classes</a> that go above and beyond the traditional band, choir and orchestra offerings – I believe this is one of the most exciting times in the world of music education. Here are five ways that music education is changing in America’s schools:</p>
<h2>1. Students are making their own songs</h2>
<p>In 2021, Florida became the first state to offer an <a href="https://fmea.org/programs/all-state/popular-music-collective/">All-State Popular Music Collective</a> for students in high school. As members of the collective, the state’s best student pop singers, drummers, guitarists, DJs, bassists and keyboardists perform their original music in an auditioned group. They perform music from hip-hop to pop and rock.</p>
<p>In 2023, Missouri started <a href="https://sites.google.com/truman.edu/2022-2023-mmea-collective/the-set-list">The Collective</a> – its version of the Florida offering. Students send in an audition video. If selected, they become a member of a band of around 15 people who write songs together and perform at the state conference, along with the best concert band, concert choir and orchestra students in the state.</p>
<p>As of now, <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1v2HuuR4tGvOM3OzGPcOT322eJvIZ30VWiXmCA2QgExo/edit">15 states are offering a similar type of experience</a> for their students. </p>
<p>There are a growing number of opportunities for students to study <a href="https://www.billboard.com/pro/music-genre-market-share-midyear-us-2023-report/">hip-hop</a> at the collegiate level. Schools like the <a href="https://catalog.usf.edu/preview_program.php?catoid=19&poid=10161">University of South Florida</a>, where I teach, have joined established programs at the <a href="https://music.usc.edu/departments/popular-music/">University of Southern California</a>, the <a href="https://musicindustry.frost.miami.edu/degrees/bachelor-of-music-in-music-industry/index.html">University of Miami</a> and <a href="https://www.belmont.edu/academics/majors-programs/commercial-music/index.html">Belmont University</a> as places where you can learn how to make hip-hop as well as pop, rock and country, among other styles.</p>
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<img alt="Student singer and music producer record a song in professional music recording studio." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549134/original/file-20230919-23-nurfjh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549134/original/file-20230919-23-nurfjh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549134/original/file-20230919-23-nurfjh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549134/original/file-20230919-23-nurfjh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549134/original/file-20230919-23-nurfjh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549134/original/file-20230919-23-nurfjh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549134/original/file-20230919-23-nurfjh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">More high schools offer opportunities for students to make and record hip-hop and rock.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.ca/detail/photo/hipster-rock-music-singer-and-music-producer-royalty-free-image/1269878521?phrase=futuristic+recording+studio+high+school+students&adppopup=true">Witthaya Prasongsin/Moment via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>2. Smaller ensembles</h2>
<p>In the middle of the 20th century, school music focused on <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40215205">large ensembles</a> performing primarily classical music arrangements. Since the 1990s, offerings like <a href="https://wgi.org/percussion/">winter drumline</a> – with marching percussion and color guard – and <a href="https://www.dci.org/">complex theatrical marching band shows</a>, which incorporate contemporary instrumentation, have extended those offerings and broadened the spectrum of acceptable styles.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5ietaPZXlM">Modern bands</a> have popped up in schools all over <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-fUxcZPey8">North America</a>, featuring smaller, more <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XILnveLvuCs">contemporary instrumentation</a>, modern musical instruments and tools that sometimes includes <a href="https://cmslv.org/group-music-classes/modern-band/">turntables and effects processing</a>. They seek to look more like the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLTYCdn3wkM">world of music outside of the school</a>. </p>
<h2>3. Teaching that focuses more on the student</h2>
<p>For much of the past 100 years, music teachers have focused on being able to teach large numbers of students – that is, 100 or more. Instructors across the U.S. and Canada teach <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYA-9eYEMiM">marching bands</a> made up of 200-plus students. </p>
<p>Music instructors are some of the only teachers in the school who want more students in their classes. Pedagogical practice consists of managing large groups of students as efficiently as possible. But this approach tends to discourage individual voice and autonomy. That’s changing. With <a href="https://la2050.org/ideas/2021/modern-band-music-education">smaller ensembles</a> comes more room for <a href="https://mrshoevelmansmusicclass.com/what-is-modern-band/">multiple student creativities</a> and more <a href="https://la2050.org/ideas/2021/modern-band-music-education">flexible performances</a>. </p>
<h2>4. Technology driven performances</h2>
<p>Music education has become more and more technology driven, both in its <a href="https://www.billboard.com/lists/ways-ai-has-changed-music-industry-artificial-intelligence/">performance</a> and <a href="https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/music/streaming-is-changing-the-sound-of-music-182dc907">delivery</a>. In smaller ensembles and in pop music, it’s important to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pXqOrndWrY">understand how mixers, public announcement systems and all digital instruments work</a>. You do not have to know how to set up a mixing console to have a successful traditional concert band performance. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HaLwdHhUgI">Maschine</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcGUgp6yo_k">Push</a> are two instruments that have become popular for creating beats and multilayered ambient textures. They satisfy a desire among students to create music that they might hear on the radio but also maybe in a video game that they’re playing or in a movie that they’re watching. </p>
<p>Turntables have gone from being carried around by DJs – along with crates of records to scratch – to hardware devices. Musical effects that are triggered by the performer or someone offstage are <a href="https://mpetersonmusic.com/podcast/episode44">common practice in the professional world of music making</a>. These practices are <a href="http://music.arts.usf.edu/content/go/music-education/mjme/links/contemporary-music-making-in-australia-schools.asp">spilling over into music education</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A group of students work with a sound mixer." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548637/original/file-20230916-29-4fzzke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548637/original/file-20230916-29-4fzzke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548637/original/file-20230916-29-4fzzke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548637/original/file-20230916-29-4fzzke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548637/original/file-20230916-29-4fzzke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548637/original/file-20230916-29-4fzzke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/548637/original/file-20230916-29-4fzzke.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">More schools have recording studios for music students.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.ca/detail/photo/students-working-with-sound-mixer-royalty-free-image/102754730">Hill Street Studios/DigitalVision via Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<h2>5. Recording in addition to performing</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/06/06/the-record-effect">Ever since 1877</a>, people have been recording musical sounds. Over that time, individuals have been honing their abilities to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N82hCwrggsI">record other musicians</a>. It has become an art in its own right.</p>
<p>The life of a musician is made up of two primary focuses: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xnt-c5i5prM&t=40s">performing and recording</a>. While performing is a part of school music education, recording has been almost entirely ignored as something that students do, until now.</p>
<p>Teachers have been able to easily record students’ music only via <a href="https://blog.native-instruments.com/what-is-a-daw-in-music-digital-audio-workstations-explained/">digital audio workstations</a> over the past 20 years.</p>
<p>We are in a new era when school recording studios are more the norm and <a href="https://catalog.usf.edu/preview_program.php?catoid=19&poid=10161">contemporary and commercial music have entered schools of music</a>.</p>
<p>About <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/26974517?casa_token=d0XwHg_mDmYAAAAA%3AZUuBg8HxINHD14Nw4yJrcTEuD7yALogydkk_YcVQTkBWGzGAw-bEGzHc7l2Ea3WlLChvWocVfG2LHrME4JuRNz-NsKJXCM9eRDTxrhZOsemxegyJ6hDs">1 in 5 students in high school are part of a music program</a>, largely through traditional bands, choirs and orchestras. But that number could shift as music education continues to evolve to become more about the students and the music that’s dear to them, not just the classics and traditions of old.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213441/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Clint Randles does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Modern music education is giving students more and more opportunities to create their own tracks.Clint Randles, Professor of Music Education, University of South FloridaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2087142023-09-19T18:52:20Z2023-09-19T18:52:20Z‘Time In A Bottle’: Jim Croce’s music continues to inspire 50 years after his life was cut short<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/548910/original/file-20230918-34002-7li252.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4652%2C3598&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jim Croce went from struggling folk musician to chart-topping singer-songwriter.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/photo-of-jim-croce-performing-live-onstage-news-photo/84912691">Charlie Gillett Collection via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On Thursday, Sept. 20, 1973, <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/jim-croce-five-others-die-in-plane-crash-176662/">singer-songwriter Jim Croce died</a> when his chartered plane crashed shortly after takeoff in Natchitoches, Louisiana. He was 30 years old.</p>
<p>Croce was a chart-topping musician who had performed over 300 concerts in the previous year. He had been in Natchitoches to play that evening at Northwestern State University, making up for a concert canceled the previous spring because he had a sore throat. Croce had performed for an enthusiastic if small audience. Many people had stayed home to watch the televised broadcast of the “<a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Battle-of-the-Sexes-tennis">Battle of the Sexes</a>” tennis match between Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King.</p>
<p>In her 2012 book “<a href="https://www.dacapopress.com/titles/ingrid-croce/i-got-a-name/9780306821783/">I Got a Name: The Jim Croce Story</a>,” Croce’s wife, Ingrid, recounted that night: a pilot, Robert Elliott, with a heart condition helming a small Beechcraft E18S; a flight trajectory possibly not accounting for some tall pecan trees; a phone call bearing horrible news. </p>
<p>The crash also killed Croce’s performing partner Maury Muehleisen, comedian George Stevens, manager Kenneth Cortese and tour manager Dennis Rast.</p>
<p>Aircraft crashes have claimed the lives of other popular music acts before and after Croce: Glenn Miller, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, The Big Bopper, Patsy Cline, Cowboy Copas, Hawkshaw Hawkins, Jim Reeves, Otis Redding, The Bar-Kays, members of Lynyrd Skynyrd, Randy Rhoads, Ricky Nelson, Stevie Ray Vaughan, John Denver and Aaliyah. Croce, like all those musicians, left the world abruptly and far too early, yet his music endured, and fans grew to view him as having achieved a measure of immortality.</p>
<h2>From obscure folkie to national star</h2>
<p>Croce was an Italian American from Philadelphia and a participant in the 1960s <a href="https://www.si.edu/spotlight/american-folk-music/musicians">folk music revival</a>. In 1966, he recorded the solo album “<a href="https://crocesstore.bandcamp.com/album/jim-croce-facets">Facets</a>,” which revealed to the few people who heard it that Croce was a compelling singing storyteller who could personalize songs composed by others. In 1969, Jim and Ingrid Croce, who toured as a duo, made an album together for Capitol Records. That album, simply titled “<a href="https://www.allmusic.com/album/croce-mw0000050206">Croce</a>,” showcased both Croces as evocative songwriters.</p>
<p>Three years passed. Jim Croce worked various blue-collar jobs to support his family while trying to advance a solo music career. Eventually his management secured a recording deal, and Croce entered a New York City studio, the Hit Factory, to make his third album, “<a href="https://crocesstore.bandcamp.com/album/jim-croce-you-dont-mess-around-with-jim">You Don’t Mess Around With Jim</a>.” </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/IzH5_BXR1JM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Croce teamed up with guitarist Maury Muehleisen for his third and subsequent albums.</span></figcaption>
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<p>The album was released in April 1972 on the ABC label. It featured striking original songs – directly expressed, richly human lyrics matched to pitch-perfect musical structures – all performed by Croce with accompaniment from his new partner, master guitarist and harmony singer Muehleisen. The album yielded three hits: the <a href="https://youtu.be/hickVDiW8k0?si=8cS-icyuNdZ_eETF">title track</a>, “<a href="https://youtu.be/-qgnGH6Rg-E?si=hB41pKr-ItCADYdU">Operator (That’s Not the Way it Feels)</a>” and “<a href="https://youtu.be/wNBiH-H5kTw?si=63NkaVH_9vLH1qbM">Time in a Bottle</a>.” The album launched Croce on the national stage as a formidable artist who combined relatability and sincerity with remarkable artistic craftsmanship and an unmistakable voice. </p>
<p>The album “<a href="https://crocesstore.bandcamp.com/album/jim-croce-life-and-times">Life and Times</a>,” released in July 1973, sustained Croce’s trajectory, offering original songs that either explored love or celebrated charismatic characters. The album featured his breakthrough hit “<a href="https://youtu.be/JzYf6qskdfA?si=C7kXcnJxhIe_W-fJ">Bad, Bad Leroy Brown</a>,” which reached No. 1 on the Billboard singles chart and earned Croce two Grammy Award nominations.</p>
<p>By September 1973, with two albums reaching Gold status for selling 500,000 copies, Croce’s career was soaring. In August and early September 1973, he entered the studio to make new recordings for his next album. That album, “<a href="https://crocesstore.bandcamp.com/album/jim-croce-i-got-a-name">I Got a Name</a>,” was released posthumously on Dec. 1, 1973. It rose to No. 2 on the album chart in 1974 and featured three singles: the <a href="https://youtu.be/cadvn16N188?si=wvURbjVccsXdae9J">title track</a>, “<a href="https://youtu.be/E6Vn17S37_Y?si=Udh8as5EQ8vRtAdc">I’ll Have to Say I Love You in a Song</a>” and “<a href="https://youtu.be/1SULVCWbFUI?si=wkBIf8GdgjlSRlny">Workin’ at the Car Wash Blues</a>.”</p>
<p>“Time in a Bottle” was released as a single posthumously and became Croce’s second No. 1 hit.</p>
<iframe style="border-radius:12px" src="https://open.spotify.com/embed/playlist/52nnrnlPw10RBRhda9qy2u?utm_source=generator" width="100%" height="352" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" allow="autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture" loading="lazy"></iframe>
<h2>A who’s who performing Croce songs</h2>
<p>During the 1970s, some music critics accused the singer-songwriter of <a href="https://catalog.loc.gov/vwebv/search?searchCode=ISBL&searchArg=0394721071&searchType=1">wallowing in</a> <a href="https://www.robertchristgau.com/get_artist.php?id=2721">nostalgic sentimentality</a>. This line of criticism, though, didn’t account for such Croce songs as “<a href="https://youtu.be/l011c9rWT4I?si=09LwxdZj6jEnFqwp">Next Time, This Time</a>” and “<a href="https://youtu.be/didAIcrjsl4?si=MNF_xkdtVpSs4UDC">Lover’s Cross</a>” – falling-out-of-love songs as emotionally harrowing as any by other songwriters of that era. Certain Croce songs that did project nostalgia, such as “<a href="https://youtu.be/kIJabiKOtCU?si=1yOR0237cV9ku4HX">Walkin’ Back to Georgia</a>” and “<a href="https://youtu.be/mO0hMFYpTzU?si=cEKeIK3y7ly2Amja">Alabama Rain</a>,” inspired generations of country music songwriters.</p>
<p>Fans and fellow musicians did not seem to share the critics’ views of the man and his music. Shortly after his death and for years afterward, Croce was memorialized in popular culture. In 1974, The Righteous Brothers referenced him in a No. 3 single “Rock and Roll Heaven,” while Queen recorded an album track entitled “Bring Back That Leroy Brown.” That same year, The Ventures recorded <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwFUxRDX3wXyHv65VGS9UjUuaIQf29EE1">an album of instrumental interpretations of Croce songs</a>.</p>
<p>Various pop vocalists got into the act. Frank Sinatra, Andy Williams, Bobby Vinton, Lena Horne and Roger Whittaker covered Croce songs. In 1980, Jerry Reed recorded an album of Croce songs, while 1997 saw the release of the album “<a href="https://youtu.be/SZ3d4HG6rPg?si=ogopqkn74cD9tpj9">Jim Croce: A Nashville Tribute</a>.” Over the years, Croce songs have been recorded by country artists including Glen Campbell, Crystal Gayle, Clint Black and Garth Brooks, and by musicians associated with other genres, including Henry Mancini, Shirley Scott, Diana Krall, The Drifters, Babyface and Dale Ann Bradley.</p>
<p>Jim Croce has been commemorated in other ways as well. In 1990, he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 2022, a Pennsylvania state historical marker was erected at the site of the house where Jim, Ingrid and son A.J. Croce, who became a widely respected singer-songwriter in his own right, lived at the time of his commercial breakthrough. </p>
<p>Ingrid Croce created her own tribute to her former partner, opening a restaurant in San Diego named <a href="https://www.sandiegomagazine.com/food-drink/the-feed/goodnight-croces/article_75556784-00fa-55a2-8486-e93176ec0fab.html">Croce’s Restaurant and Jazz Club</a>, located on the corner of 5th Avenue and F Street – the site where, in 1973, one week before the fatal plane crash, Jim and Ingrid had talked of establishing a music performance venue. For 30 years, before closing after a lease dispute, the popular restaurant was a place where fans could celebrate Jim Croce and his music. </p>
<p>To honor its namesake, the restaurant hosted live music, and Croce’s gold records were mounted on the wall. Prominently displayed in the restaurant was a rendering of the singer-songwriter, mustachioed and – to quote from his song “Workin’ at the Car Wash Blues” – “smoking on a big cigar.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/208714/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ted Olson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Jim Croce’s brief time in the national spotlight was enough to put a bevy of songs in heavy rotation on radio stations – and on stage in the hands of a lengthy A-list of fellow musicians.Ted Olson, Professor of Appalachian Studies and Bluegrass, Old-Time and Roots Music Studies, East Tennessee State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2105402023-07-28T12:22:18Z2023-07-28T12:22:18ZSinead O'Connor was once seen as a sacrilegious rebel, but her music and life were deeply infused with spiritual seeking<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539848/original/file-20230727-29-d7q6fm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1%2C4%2C1020%2C677&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Irish singer Sinead O'Connor performs at Paradiso in Amsterdam in March 1988.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/irish-singer-sinead-oconnor-performs-at-paradiso-amsterdam-news-photo/997813120?adppopup=true">Paul Bergen/Redferns via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When news broke July 26, 2023, that the gifted Irish singer <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-66318626">Sinead O’Connor had died</a>, stories of her most famous performance circulated amid the grief and shock.</p>
<p>Thirty-one years ago, after a haunting rendition of Bob Marley’s song “War,” O’Connor ripped up a photograph of Pope John Paul II on live television. “Fight the real enemy,” she said – a reference to <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-catholic-church-sex-abuse-crisis-4-essential-reads-169442">clerical sex abuse</a>. For months afterward, she was banned, <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/sinead-o-connor-booed-pope-bob-dylan-concert-1176338/">booed and mocked</a>, dismissed as a crazy rebel beyond the pale.</p>
<p>Commemorations following her death, however, cast the protest in a very different light. Her “Saturday Night Live” performance is now seen as “invigorating,” <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/26/arts/music/sinead-oconnor-snl-pope.html">the New York Times’ pop critic wrote</a>, and “a call to arms for the dispossessed.”</p>
<p>Attitudes toward Catholicism, sex and power are far different today than in 1992, whether in New York or O’Connor’s native Dublin. In many people’s eyes, the moral credibility of the Catholic Church around the world <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/245858/catholics-faith-clergy-shaken.aspx">has crumbled</a>, and trust in faith institutions of any sort is <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/1597/confidence-institutions.aspx">at an all-time low</a>. Sexual abuse, once discussed only in whispers, is now beginning to be talked about openly. </p>
<p>I join the chorus of voices today who say O’Connor was decades ahead of her time. But leaving it just at that, we miss something profound about the complexity and depth of her religious imagination. Sinead O’Connor was arguably one of the most spiritually sensitive artists of our time. </p>
<p>I am <a href="https://www.fordham.edu/academics/departments/theology/faculty/brenna-moore/">a scholar of Catholicism in the modern era</a> and have long been interested in those figures – the poets, artists, seekers – who wander <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/K/bo90478851.html">the margins of their religious tradition</a>. These men and women are dissatisfied with the mainstream centers of religious power but nonetheless compelled by something indelibly religious that feeds the wellsprings of their artistic imagination.</p>
<p>Throughout her life, O’Connor defied religious labels, exploring multiple faiths. The exquisite freedom in her music cannot be disentangled from <a href="https://www.americamagazine.org/arts-culture/2021/09/16/sinead-oconnor-rememberings-memoir-moore-241369">that something transcendent</a> that she was always after.</p>
<h2>‘Rescuing God from religion’</h2>
<p>Religion is often thought about as discrete traditions: institutions that someone is either inside or outside. But on the ground, it is rarely that simple.</p>
<p>The Catholic Church had a strong hold on Irish society as O’Connor was growing up – a “theocracy,” she called it <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/sep/10/sinead-oconnor-pope-visit">in interviews</a> and <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/authors/126006/sinead-oconnor">her memoir, “Rememberings</a>” – and for many years she <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-oconnor/singer-sinead-oconnor-demands-pope-steps-down-idUSTRE5BA39Y20091211">called for more accountability</a> for the clerical abuse crisis. But she was also open in her love of other aspects of the faith, albeit often in unorthodox ways. She had a tattoo of Jesus on her chest and continued to critique the church while appearing on television with a priest’s collar.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539864/original/file-20230727-27-jtkhdm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman in a purple dress with a shaved head and large, colorful tattoo stands embracing a blonde woman." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539864/original/file-20230727-27-jtkhdm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539864/original/file-20230727-27-jtkhdm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539864/original/file-20230727-27-jtkhdm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539864/original/file-20230727-27-jtkhdm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539864/original/file-20230727-27-jtkhdm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539864/original/file-20230727-27-jtkhdm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539864/original/file-20230727-27-jtkhdm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Sinead O'Connor, with her tattoo of Jesus, embraces singer Deborah Harry at the 2011 amfAR Inspiration Gala in Los Angeles.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/singers-sinead-oconnor-and-deborah-harry-attend-the-the-news-photo/130660855?adppopup=true">Jeff Vespa/Getty Images for amfAR</a></span>
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<p>Ten years after her SNL performance, O'Connor took courses at a seminary in Dublin with a Catholic Dominican priest, Rev. Wilfred Harrington. Together, they read the prophets of the Hebrew Bible and the Psalms: sacred scriptures in which God’s voice comes through in darker, moodier, more human forms. </p>
<p>Inspired by her teacher, she made the gorgeous album “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xncY5WP12BQ">Theology</a>,” dedicated to him. The album is a mix of some of her own songs inspired by the Hebrew Bible – like “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/wat,h?v=Kf24-rgyOeI">If You Had a Vineyard</a>,” inspired by the Book of Isaiah; and “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jh7s5BKphw8">Watcher of Men</a>,” which draws from the biblical story of Job – and other tracks that essentially are sung versions of her favorite Psalms. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://wfuv.org/content/sinead-oconnor-words-and-music-2007">a 2007 interview</a> with Fordham University’s WFUV radio station, O'Connor said that she was hoping the album could show God to people when religion itself had blocked their access to God. It was a kind of “rescuing God from religion,” to “lift God out of religion.” Rather than preaching or writing, “music is the little way that I do that,” she said, adding, “I say that as someone who has a lot of love for religion.”</p>
<h2>Reading the prophets</h2>
<p>In doing so, she stood in the long line of the prophetic tradition itself. </p>
<p>The great Jewish thinker <a href="https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/abraham-joshua-heschel-a-prophets-prophet/">Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s</a> book “<a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-prophets-abraham-j-heschel?variant=40970012721186">The Prophets</a>” begins with this sentence: “This book is about some of the most disturbing people who have ever lived.” Over and over, the Bible shows the prophets – the prophets who inspired “Theology” – mounting bracing assaults on hypocrisies and insincerities in their own religious communities, and not politely or calmly.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539863/original/file-20230727-21-4u2iz1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A handful of people hold red, white and black protest signs in front of a building, with a large photo of a woman ripping up a photograph in front of them." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539863/original/file-20230727-21-4u2iz1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539863/original/file-20230727-21-4u2iz1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539863/original/file-20230727-21-4u2iz1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539863/original/file-20230727-21-4u2iz1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539863/original/file-20230727-21-4u2iz1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539863/original/file-20230727-21-4u2iz1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539863/original/file-20230727-21-4u2iz1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A photo of Sinead O'Connor ripping the photograph of Pope John Paul II stands in front of a protest in Krakow, Poland, in 2023, accusing church hierarchy of covering up sexual abuse.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/banners-are-seen-during-a-protest-next-to-the-bishops-news-photo/1248867957?adppopup=true">Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>To many horrified Catholics, O’Connor’s SNL appearance and her many other criticisms of the church were blasphemous – or, at best, just throwing stones from outside the church for attention. Other fans, however, saw it as prophetic condemnation. It was not just a critique of child abuse but of church officials’ professed compassion for children – sanctimonious pieties <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/nov/26/catholic-church-ireland-child-abuse">as they covered up the abuse</a>.</p>
<p>In calling this out and so much more, O’Connor was often seen as disturbing: not just the photo-of-the-pope incident, but her androgyny, her shaved head, her openness around her own struggles with mental illness. But for many admirers, as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VLy1A4En4U">the documentary “Nothing Compares</a>” makes clear, all this showed that she was free, and like the prophets of old, unashamed and unafraid to provoke.</p>
<h2>Rasta to Islam</h2>
<p>At the same time, O’Connor’s religious imagination was so much more than a complex relationship with Catholicism. Religion around O’Connor was eclectic and intense. </p>
<p>She was deeply influenced by <a href="https://theconversation.com/reggaes-sacred-roots-and-call-to-protest-injustice-99069">Rastafarian traditions</a> of Jamaica, <a href="https://wfuv.org/content/sinead-oconnor-words-and-music-2007">which she described</a> as “an anti-religious but massively pro-God spiritual movement.” She considered Sam Cooke’s early album with the Soul Stirrers the best gospel album ever made. She counted among her spiritual heroes Muhammad Ali – and <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-45987127">converted to Islam in 2018</a>, changing her name to Shuhada’ Sadaqat.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539862/original/file-20230727-21-olv2cm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman in a checked robe and headdress sings passionately in front of purple lights." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539862/original/file-20230727-21-olv2cm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539862/original/file-20230727-21-olv2cm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539862/original/file-20230727-21-olv2cm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539862/original/file-20230727-21-olv2cm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539862/original/file-20230727-21-olv2cm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539862/original/file-20230727-21-olv2cm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539862/original/file-20230727-21-olv2cm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">O'Connor performs during a concert at the Admiralspalast in Berlin in December 2019, after her conversion to Islam.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/irish-singer-sinead-oconnor-aka-shuhada-sadaqat-performs-news-photo/1187273491?adppopup=true">Frank Hoensch/Redferns via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Yet O’Connor’s vision was not fragmented, as if she were constantly chasing after bits and pieces. The miracle of Sinead O’Connor is that it all coheres, somehow, in the words of an artist who refuses to lie, to hide or not say what she thinks. </p>
<p>When asked about spirituality, O’Connor once said that she preferred to sing about it, not talk about it – as she does in so many songs, from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkP-0rnr_Gw">her luminous singing of the antiphon</a>, a Marian hymn sung at Easter services, to her Rasta-inspired album, “<a href="https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/5945-throw-down-your-arms/">Throw Down Your Arms</a>.”</p>
<p>In “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haYbyQIEgQk">Something Beautiful</a>,” a track from the “Theology” album, O’Connor speaks both to God and the listener: “I wanna make/ Something beautiful/ For you and from you/ To show you/ I adore you.”</p>
<p>Indeed she did. To be moved by her art is to sense a transcendence, a peek into radiance.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210540/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brenna Moore does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A professor of modern Catholicism looks back at the ways the iconic Irish singer steeped herself in religion, even as she criticized its institutions.Brenna Moore, Professor of Theology, Fordham UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1973872023-02-28T19:18:28Z2023-02-28T19:18:28ZDoc Watson at 100: The virtuoso guitarist brought Appalachian music to a worldwide audience and influenced generations of musicians<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/512586/original/file-20230228-20-g95ir3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C7%2C5273%2C3457&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Doc Watson was the finest guitar picker of his time.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/portrait-of-guitarist-doc-watson-chicago-illinois-april-20-news-photo/531409355">Paul Natkin/Archive Photos via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Arthel Lane “Doc” Watson was born on March 3, 1923, in Stony Fork, North Carolina, in the Blue Ridge Mountains, but his music <a href="https://docat100.com/">is as influential now</a> – more than a decade after <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/30/arts/music/doc-watson-folk-musician-dies-at-89.html">his 2012 death</a> – as at any time during his long career. During that time he was arguably America’s most beloved folk musician. Today, Watson is viewed by artists and fans as one of the greatest guitarists of American roots music.</p>
<p>Making music came naturally to Watson, who grew up in a large <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/30/arts/music/doc-watson-folk-musician-dies-at-89.html">music-loving family</a>. Recordings made in people’s homes by folklorists during the early 1960s documented music gatherings featuring various Watsons alongside neighbors and friends, collectively celebrating their community’s musical culture – a shared repertoire of Appalachian ballads, songs and tunes. </p>
<p>Watson is widely credited with <a href="https://www.flatpick.com/category_s/2221.htm">popularizing the guitar style known as flatpicking</a>, a rapid-fire approach to playing notes and chords on guitar strings by use of a plectrum, or guitar pick. Virtually all guitar players who have used a pick over the past six decades have labeled Watson a pioneer of that style. These include roots music masters like <a href="https://www.bluegrasshall.org/inductees/clarence-white/">Clarence White</a>, <a href="https://thebluegrasssituation.com/read/end-of-the-road-a-conversation-with-norman-blake/">Norman Blake</a> and <a href="https://www.nodepression.com/iconic-bluegrass-guitarist-tony-rice-dies-at-age-69/">Tony Rice</a>; newer bluegrass stars like <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/mar/24/i-was-running-away-from-poverty-the-remarkable-rise-of-bluegrass-virtuoso-billy-strings">Billy Strings</a> and <a href="https://variety.com/2023/music/news/molly-tuttle-interview-best-new-artist-grammy-nomination-bluegrass-1235513365/#!">Molly Tuttle</a>; and guitarists in other genres, like <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Bob-Dylan-American-musician">Bob Dylan</a>, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/05/03/606072797/first-listen-ry-cooder-the-prodigal-son">Ry Cooder</a> and <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/stephen-stills-mn0000021744/biography">Stephen Stills</a>.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Doc Watson inspired generations of guitarists.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Watson was also an accomplished practitioner of <a href="https://guitaralliance.org/2013/10/15/history-fingerstyle-guitar/">fingerpicking</a>, a guitar style involving plucking strings with the thumb and one or more fingertips using fingerpicks or fingernails. Watson’s agile and rhythmically intricate <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCl1emxubWM">two-finger approach with fingerpicks</a> is widely considered to be the apogee of the style.</p>
<h2>From Appalachia to the folk revival circuit</h2>
<p>Though remembered as a guitarist, Watson initially played other instruments. </p>
<p>The harmonica preoccupied Watson until he was 11, when his father made a maplewood fretless banjo for him and taught him basic techniques. Two years later, Watson’s father bought him a US$12 Stella guitar. Watson loved the instrument and practiced constantly. He eventually <a href="https://www.npr.org/2012/05/30/153704132/fresh-air-remembers-traditional-music-legend-doc-watson">purchased a Martin</a> guitar on a payment plan and took to playing on the streets of Boone, North Carolina – a town about 10 miles away from the Watson home – to pay for it. </p>
<p>Traveling to Boone and, in subsequent years, to more distant locales was no easy feat for Watson because an eye infection in infancy had left him <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/30/arts/music/doc-watson-folk-musician-dies-at-89.html">permanently blind</a>. But Watson did not allow blindness to limit him. During the Great Depression, Watson’s father encouraged him to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/30/arts/music/doc-watson-folk-musician-dies-at-89.html">do his share of household chores</a>, including cutting firewood.</p>
<p>At the age of 23, Watson married his neighbor Rosa Lee Carlton, the daughter of fiddler Gaither Carlton, and the union brought two children, Eddy Merle Watson and Nancy Ellen Watson. To support his family, Watson did odd jobs including tuning pianos and played music on the street. In the early 1950s he joined a Johnson City, Tennessee-based country band, which required that he play an electric guitar. When this band played at square dances, Watson would play fiddle tunes on his Gibson Les Paul Goldtop with a flatpick. </p>
<iframe style="border-radius:12px" src="https://open.spotify.com/embed/playlist/0Il5QC8xLVb0TnkULuE9uS?utm_source=generator" width="100%" height="352" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" allow="autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture" loading="lazy"></iframe>
<p>This blind musician with a strictly local reputation might never have entered the national folk music spotlight without serendipitous intervention. In September 1960, musician and folklorist <a href="https://folklife.si.edu/legacy-honorees/ralph-rinzler/smithsonian">Ralph Rinzler</a> arrived in the Blue Ridge from New York City to document old-time music in informal recording sessions. These sessions were led by <a href="https://wilkesheritagemuseum.com/hall-of-fame/previous-years/2010/clarence-tom-ashley">Clarence “Tom” Ashley</a>, a journeyman country musician known for “The Coo-Coo Bird,” his 1929 recording made in Johnson City and incorporated onto Folkways Records’ influential 1952 multi-LP set “<a href="https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-recording-preservation-board/documents/AnthologyOfAmericanFolkMusic.pdf">Anthology of American Folk Music</a>.” When Rinzler asked about nearby musicians to include in the sessions, Ashley recommended Watson. </p>
<p>Upon meeting Watson, Rinzler was baffled because Watson brought his electric guitar to an acoustic jam session. Watson had been playing electric guitar and didn’t own an acoustic guitar at the time. He had to borrow an acoustic guitar for the session. Rinzler’s recordings were released on a 1961 Folkways album, and Watson was soon recognized as a generational talent. Playing acoustic guitars exclusively, Watson toured the folk revival circuit, publicly showcasing his broad and deep repertoire and his unparalleled instrumental technique and tone.</p>
<h2>‘Traditional plus’</h2>
<p>Watson initially toured the U.S. as part of old-time ensembles headlined by Ashley, but it was Watson who received the lion’s share of the attention. He wowed audiences with his musical skills as a vocalist as well as an instrumentalist and delivered entertaining anecdotes, reflections and good-natured quips. Before long, his management booked gigs nationally for Watson as a solo act, including an <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2012/may/30/doc-watson">appearance at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival</a>. </p>
<p>While Watson had previously played a broad range of music – commercial country, blues, rockabilly, pop, jazz and Broadway – his management initially encouraged him to perform music associated with the rural culture of Appalachia. But as Watson expanded his on-stage repertoire in defiance of the perception that folk revival audiences only wanted to hear “authentic” folk music, no one complained. Indeed, <a href="https://misterguitar.us/bios/watsonbio.html">his fan base steadily increased</a>.</p>
<p>Watson recognized that any sustained success he might achieve as a full-time professional musician would depend on appealing to younger people. After touring alone and recording his eponymous debut album solo for Vanguard, Watson decided in 1964 to invite a musician half his age to be part of his act – someone who could help him reach younger fans and guide him from gig to gig. That someone was his son Merle, then 15, whose slide and fingerstyle guitar would complement his father’s vocal and instrumental work.</p>
<p>The father-son duo became a top concert draw and recorded a string of beloved albums for United Artists and independent labels Vanguard, Poppy, Flying Fish and Sugar Hill. In 1972 Doc Watson contributed memorably to the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s legendary collaborative album “<a href="https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-recording-preservation-board/documents/WTCBU%20essay.pdf">Will the Circle Be Unbroken</a>,” and that recognition dramatically expanded interest in Doc and Merle Watson.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">President Jimmy Carter hosted a performance by Doc Watson at the White House on Aug. 7, 1980.</span></figcaption>
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<p>While they knew countless traditional tunes, songs and ballads, Doc and Merle were equally devoted to interpreting newer material. Doc began to refer to the repertoire the duo performed, which drew from several genres of American music, as “traditional plus.” After <a href="https://www.upi.com/Archives/1985/10/23/Country-musician-Merle-Watson-who-teamed-with-his-father/3414498888000/">Merle’s tragic death</a> in a tractor accident in 1985, Watson continued to perform a “traditional plus” repertoire in collaboration with other musicians, including bassist T. Michael Coleman, guitarist Jack Lawrence, multi-instrumentalist David Holt and guitarist Richard Watson, Merle Watson’s son and Doc Watson’s grandson.</p>
<h2>‘Just one of the people’</h2>
<p>Watson said that his blindness had allowed him to <a href="https://www.npr.org/2012/05/30/153704132/fresh-air-remembers-traditional-music-legend-doc-watson">focus on honing his musical talents</a>. As Coleman said in my interview with him for the notes I wrote for the Doc Watson album “<a href="https://craftrecordings.com/products/doc-watson-life-s-work-a-retrospective-4-cd-box-set">Life’s Work, A Retrospective</a>”: “Doc told me that, being blind, he was not afraid to be anywhere or to do anything.” Certainly, Watson was fearless in many of the things he did throughout his life: cutting firewood, climbing a ladder to repair an upper-story window, constructing a utility building, hitchhiking to nearby towns to play music on the street, traveling by bus to perform in faraway cities and appearing on stages before thousands of people.</p>
<p>Fearlessness also infused his live performances and recordings. Whether playing fiddle tunes on his guitar at lightning speed with a flatpick or singing traditional and contemporary songs to fingerstyle accompaniment, he was a daring improviser.</p>
<p>Watson received numerous honors during his lifetime, including the <a href="https://www.arts.gov/honors/heritage/arthel-doc-watson">National Heritage Fellowship in 1988</a>, the <a href="https://www.cnn.com/videos/showbiz/2012/05/30/von-doc-watson-national-medal-of-arts.pool">National Medal of Arts in 1997</a>, the <a href="https://www.bluegrasshall.org/inductees/arthel-doc-watson/">International Bluegrass Music Hall of Honor in 2000</a> and the <a href="https://www.grammy.com/awards/lifetime-achievement-awards">Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004</a>. But fame did not matter much to Watson. He considered himself “<a href="https://outsider.com/entertainment/music/just-one-people-remembering-doc-watson/">just one of the people</a>.” Watson committed himself to a life in music because he loved entertaining others and because he was <a href="https://youtu.be/i5mZlriOogU?start=398">proud to make a living for his family</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197387/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ted Olson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Doc Watson’s popularity and influence came from his virtuosic guitar playing, powerful voice, broad musical taste, folksy storytelling and lack of pretense.Ted Olson, Professor of Appalachian Studies and Bluegrass, Old-Time and Roots Music Studies, East Tennessee State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1989362023-02-01T15:41:03Z2023-02-01T15:41:03ZJustin Bieber sells his back catalogue – an expert explains why artists give up rights to their music<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507382/original/file-20230131-11270-wacbvj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4128%2C2726&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Justin Bieber performing on stage.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/justin-bieber-performs-pittsburgh-wednesday-july-486723634">Jack Fordyce</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://theconversation.com/pop-with-purpose-in-defence-of-justin-bieber-73860">Justin Bieber</a> is the latest artist in a growing list of musicians who have sold the rights to their music. </p>
<p>This move is typically made by more seasoned artists such as <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/15/arts/music/bruce-springsteen-sells-music-catalog.html">Bruce Springsteen</a>, who reportedly received US$500m (£406m) for the sale of his life’s work in 2021, or <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/news/stevie-nicks-fleetwood-mac-catalog-primary-wave-1098850/">Stevie Nicks</a> who sold a share of her publishing for US$100m in 2020.</p>
<p>Bieber, at the age of 28, has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/15/arts/music/bruce-springsteen-sells-music-catalog.html">sold his rights</a> to all the music he released before 2022 for a reported US$200m. Merck Mercuriadis, founder and chief executive officer of Hipgnosis Song Management, who bought the rights, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/justin-bieber-sells-music-rights-to-blackstone-backed-fund-hipgnosis-11674585814">said</a>: “This acquisition ranks among the biggest deals ever made for an artist under the age of 70.”</p>
<h2>What does it mean when an artist sells rights to their songs?</h2>
<p>Songs are protected by something called <a href="https://theconversation.com/even-famous-musicians-struggle-to-make-a-living-from-streaming-heres-how-to-change-that-151969">copyright</a>. This is a legal right that the creators can sell or licence in order to make money from their music.</p>
<p>Artists with deals sign over some, or most, of these rights to publishers and record labels. In fact, songs have more than one right attached to them. </p>
<p>There is a right for the composition which can be owned by a publisher, one for the recording which can be owned by the record label and there are also rights in the performance of a song. All this means is that when a song is bought, or performed (e.g. played on the radio, in a film or on TV) the money is divided between all those that have a stake in the music rights.</p>
<p>Justin Bieber has a record deal with Universal Music Group and a publishing deal with Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG). So, he owned a percentage of his rights. </p>
<p>He shares these rights with his publisher, which owns a percentage of his composition copyright and his record label, which owns a share of his rights attached to the recording of the songs, sometimes referred to as the master recordings.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/even-famous-musicians-struggle-to-make-a-living-from-streaming-heres-how-to-change-that-151969">Even famous musicians struggle to make a living from streaming – here’s how to change that</a>
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<p>Bieber sold 100% of his share of his publishing copyright and performance rights, master recordings and neighbouring rights (the performance within the recording) for his entire back catalogue – which includes over 290 tracks – to investment company <a href="https://www.hipgnosissongs.com/">Hipgnosis Songs Capital</a>. Hipgnosis buys catalogues of music and then manages the rights to make an income from the royalty payments. </p>
<p>This means that when his songs are bought or performed, the share of the income that would have previously been a royalty payment to Bieber, now goes to Hipgnosis. The company is hoping that over time these royalties will exceed the upfront payment it made to Bieber and so it will profit from this investment.</p>
<p>Copyright in the musical composition lasts for 70 years after the death of the creator, so the owner of the copyright can keep receiving royalties for a long time. However, the songs need to be used in order to make an income, so it is a risk.</p>
<p>When artists tour, they can make money from ticket and merchandise sales, but they also receive a royalty when their music is performed. This sounds great, but <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/oct/18/risks-rising-costs-and-relentless-demands-why-so-many-musicians-are-cancelling-their-tours">the cost of touring is huge</a> and continues to increase, so it doesn’t always turn a profit. </p>
<p>Bieber doesn’t own his back catalogue anymore, so he won’t receive that royalty when he performs those songs. This is unlikely to affect his motivations to tour because it forms a smaller part of the income.</p>
<h2>Why artists are selling their music rights</h2>
<p>So why would Bieber and other artists want to sell their rights, when they could keep this income for themselves? </p>
<p>For artists who are thinking about retirement, it’s a way to enjoy the fruits of their labour and create a pension for themselves. It could be that, because of the pandemic, artists have sold their catalogue to compensate for loss of revenue while venues and other income streams were lost.</p>
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<p>Copyright is an asset that can be left in a will, so for the 70 years that copyright survives the creator, their royalties can go to their heirs. However, copyright must be managed and so it may be more attractive for some to cash-out and leave the administration to the purchaser.</p>
<p>Bieber can still make royalty income on music that he creates from January 2022 onwards, so perhaps he has plans to release new music and in the meantime wanted to increase his current income. The singer had to take time off and postpone tour dates because of difficulties with Ramsay Hunt syndrome, a rare virus that in his case caused facial paralysis, which may have contributed to his decision.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/justin-bieber-what-is-ramsay-hunt-syndrome-the-condition-affecting-the-singer-184935">Justin Bieber: what is Ramsay Hunt syndrome, the condition affecting the singer?</a>
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<h2>Is there a risk when artists sell their music rights?</h2>
<p>The risk for Bieber is that, in the long term, he could have made more money from keeping his rights and receiving royalty payments than from the lump-sum payment. To make any more money from music, Bieber will now need to release new songs.</p>
<p>In general, it is essential for artists to retain their rights so that they can continue to benefit from their music over time. There has been <a href="https://ivorsacademy.com/campaign/composers-against-buyouts/">push back from the music industry</a> on similar deals where catalogues are being collated by investment businesses buying out creator copyright.</p>
<p>while it can seem very attractive to receive upfront cash, playing the long game can often be more beneficial for artists.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/198936/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hayleigh Bosher does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Justin Bieber will no longer own the rights to music he created before 2022 – a legal expert explains why he made the decision, and why he may go on to regret it.Hayleigh Bosher, Senior Lecturer in Intellectual Property Law, Brunel University LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1978402023-01-13T16:17:12Z2023-01-13T16:17:12ZJeff Beck: the unorthodox techniques that made him such a unique guitarist<p>The praise <a href="https://theconversation.com/jeff-beck-dies-of-bacterial-meningitis-what-you-need-to-know-about-the-disease-197721">Jeff Beck</a>, who has <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-64228780">died aged 78</a>, received from indebted musicians during his lifetime already read like unbridled eulogies. Eric Clapton had called him “the most unique guitarist”, Steve Lukather (Toto) “God’s guitarist”, and Joe Satriani “just a genius”. </p>
<p>Jazz great John McLaughlin described Beck as “the best guitarist alive”, Steve Vai as “unique in the most superlative use of the word”, and Noel Redding (Jimi Hendrix Experience) as his “personal favourite”. Queen’s Brian May said Beck “radically changed” his view of the guitar.</p>
<p>Beck’s fame was not drawn from a catalogue of hit songs (though there was, of course, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhpgepbvIhY">Hi Ho Silver Lining</a>), nor from a cushy decades-long residency in a mega-band (though there were many <a href="https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/breakingnews/breakingnews_entertainment/no-stones-regrets-for-jeff-beck-28527059.html">supposed offers</a>). Instead, he was a guitarist’s guitarist who seemed to be the humble protagonist at the centre of a plethora of seminal moments in pop history.</p>
<p>Those moments included the <a href="https://www.routledge.com/How-Britain-Got-the-Blues-The-Transmission-and-Reception-of-American-Blues/Schwartz/p/book/9781138259355">1960s UK blues invasion</a>, the pop-jazz movement of Stevie Wonder, 1970s funk fusion and “world fusion”, and <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Popular-Music-The-Key-Concepts/Shuker/p/book/9781138680937">millennial rock, pop and film music</a>. He drew upon styles including jazz, reggae, Bulgarian folk, western and Indian classical music, and influenced artists in an even wider circle of styles.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Jeff Beck performing at Ronnie Scott’s.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Beck’s only tool was the electric guitar and its ecosystem of pedals and amp. Despite evolutions and augmentations, this toolkit has largely stayed the same for guitarists over the past 60 years. Beck’s standard-tuned Stratocaster – with fuzz, distortion and echo pedals through Fender and Marshall amps – is, with just a little customisation to preserve tuning amid his vigorous string bending, about as classic and established as it gets. </p>
<p>So how did Beck use this common instrument to create such stylistic range, personality and depth of expression?</p>
<h2>A common instrument for an uncommon sound</h2>
<p>It’s useful to consider not only what differentiates but what is shared by all these styles. In its most reductive form, music can be seen as the manipulation of the fundamental dimensions of rhythm (where musical objects are placed in time), pitch (individual notes and harmony) and timbre (the identifying quality or tone of a sound – its attack, volume, grittiness etc).</p>
<p>These are all open to all degrees of precision, rigidity and creative freedom. Rhythms can be precise but simple, or extremely nuanced and <a href="https://digitalcommons.du.edu/sbs/vol6/iss1/5/">off-grid</a>. Pitch can be treated as exact steps or a smooth continuum, and a musician can opt for an unchanged timbre or manipulate it extensively.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/504461/original/file-20230113-20-dfl0ll.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A white Stratocaster guitar." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/504461/original/file-20230113-20-dfl0ll.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/504461/original/file-20230113-20-dfl0ll.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1067&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/504461/original/file-20230113-20-dfl0ll.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1067&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/504461/original/file-20230113-20-dfl0ll.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1067&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/504461/original/file-20230113-20-dfl0ll.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1340&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/504461/original/file-20230113-20-dfl0ll.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1340&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/504461/original/file-20230113-20-dfl0ll.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1340&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A white Stratocaster was Beck’s instrument of choice.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/electric-guitar-fender-stratocaster-white-2209274263">Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>Various skills can be seen as intersections between these dimensions, such as phrasing (pitch and rhythm), rhythm guitar (harmony and rhythm), articulation (timbre and melody), gesture (rhythm and timbre) and so on.</p>
<p>Diverse styles explore these dimensions in differing ways. Blues tends to have a simple (but not easy) harmonic and scalar context, allowing high sophistication of articulation, pitch inflection, timbre and phrasing. Funk’s cyclical rhythmic and sometimes-only-one-chord context invites a deep connection with subtle rhythmic shifts. Pop requires ruthless commitment to melodic accessibility. Indian classical music has a drone and no harmony, allowing expressive engagement with a single pitch melody.</p>
<p>In general, music theory and tuition tends to see these dimensions in exact grids (<a href="https://www.routledge.com/On-Sonic-Art/Wishart-Emmerson/p/book/9783718658473?gclid=Cj0KCQiAn4SeBhCwARIsANeF9DLfc5hXmtIlZp2bNTJEG8_1UdAbhNjAwnPo4pBy44dxgxXWKQSi3sYaAv4MEALw_wcB">a lattice</a> of even rhythms, pitches and simple timbral markers), ignoring the vast expression between the cracks. Beck, however, engaged deeply with all of these dimensions, using their fullest range and internal nuance. His unorthodox technique was sculpted in an ego-less service to their creative expression. </p>
<p>He had an intuitive musical ear and technical control for sophisticated jazz harmonies, pitch inflection and melody, as well as a wide timbral finesse – from a barely audible fragile touch to a wall of dense noise. He interacted with amp feedback to turn the guitar’s usual “pluckiness” into anything from mechanical growls to uncannily vocal timbres, to other-worldly sustained flute sounds.</p>
<h2>An idiosyncratic technique</h2>
<p>Beck’s commitment to these dimensions manifested in his idiosyncratic technique. He abandoned a plectrum for direct contact with the strings, ensuring that every note was distinct, different and mattered.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Jeff Beck playing his signature instrument at Ronnie Scott’s.</span></figcaption>
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<p>He would simultaneously control the whammy bar, volume and tone control of the guitar which – with the combination of harmonics, off-fret slide and <a href="https://youtu.be/b7wpq075ecM">left-hand inflection</a> – explored an orchestral range of sonic possibilities. Always pushing and never complacent, each record <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/21st-century-guitar-9781501373299/">explored new territory</a> and musical affordances.</p>
<p>Beck’s innovations in lead guitar tone with <a href="http://www.theyardbirds.com">the Yardbirds</a> inspired a generation, but fans could never predict what his next album or group would sound like.</p>
<p>One thing remained constant, however – his unique touch shined through every note. Beck’s diffident, vegetarian, ever-curious and youthful demeanour belied a deep musical wisdom, reminding us that musical creativity and individuality comes from a desire not to impress others, but to express ourselves.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197840/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Two guitar experts break down the techniques and creative expression that led Beck to be known as the ‘guitarist’s guitarist’.Milton Mermikides, Associate Professor in Music, MMus Programme Director and Deputy Director of the International Guitar Research Centre, University of SurreyJohn McGrath, Senior Lecturer in Music, Deputy Director of the International Guitar Research Centre (IGRC), University of SurreyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1935692022-10-31T14:34:00Z2022-10-31T14:34:00ZJerry Lee Lewis: fiery performances were inseparable from his reckless behaviour and dark personal life<p>When Jerry Lee Lewis – pianist, singer and rock-and-roll pioneer – released his best-selling album of duets in 2006, he called it <a href="https://www.discogs.com/release/12265270-Jerry-Lee-Lewis-Last-Man-Standing">Last Man Standing</a>. In this, at least, he was correct. </p>
<p>The title referred specifically to Lewis’s status among the alumni of the legendary <a href="https://www.recordproduction.com/studios/sun-studios">Sun Studios</a> record label in Memphis. It was there that producer Sam Phillips nurtured the careers of seminal country, rockabilly and rock-and-roll artists including Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison and Lewis himself. But Lewis, who died at 87 years old on October 28 2022, eventually outlasted the whole cohort of rock and roll’s first wave of stars – including <a href="https://theconversation.com/chuck-berry-one-of-the-only-musicians-with-a-genuine-claim-to-be-the-founder-of-a-genre-74861">Chuck Berry</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/little-richards-scream-kicked-off-rocknroll-and-still-echoes-today-138266">Little Richard</a>.</p>
<p>The presence on Last Man Standing of luminaries from the worlds of blues, rock and country music – including B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Ringo Starr, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Bruce Springsteen, Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson – was testament to the wide-ranging esteem in which Lewis was held as a musician. </p>
<p>Indeed, it was also an indicator of his flexibility as both pianist and singer across popular genres. As well as being honoured at the inauguration of the <a href="https://www.rockhall.com/inductees/jerry-lee-lewis">Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986</a>, he was also recently inducted into the <a href="https://www.countrymusichalloffame.org/hall-of-fame/induction-ceremony#:%7E:text=Medallion%20Ceremony%3A%20October%2016%2C%202022,Fame%20on%20Sunday%2C%20October%2016.">Country Music Hall of Fame</a>.</p>
<p>His place in the pantheon is assured by his piano style which, along with Little Richard – and as Chuck Berry had done on guitar – set the rock-and-roll template for the instrument for generations to come. Hit makers and session players like <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/sep/01/elton-john-soundtrack-my-life">Elton John</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2008/oct/11/piano-chas-hodges">Chas Hodges</a> (latterly of Chas and Dave, who backed Lewis in the early 1960s) testified to his influence as a musician and as a performer. </p>
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<p>It was the combination of these that propelled his initial rise to the top. He fused an early passion for gospel music with boogie-woogie, having been expelled from Bible school in Texas for playing a boogie version of the hymn My God is Real. Early hits in 1957 like Whole Lot of Shakin’ Going On and, most significantly, Great Balls of Fire displayed a novel mixture of virtuosity and explosive showmanship. This pushed the boundaries of what had previously been seen in the mainstream. </p>
<p>His onstage antics also belied his technical facility and musical invention: a propulsive, repetitive left hand supporting rapid runs and glissandos on the right to provide momentum at the same time as range. This shifted the stylistic vocabulary of boogie-woogie piano into the higher-octane end of rock and roll. </p>
<p>Elvis brought cross-over sex appeal to a white audience. Chuck Berry delivered suaveness and wit and some harmonic sophistication imported from jazz. And Little Richard introduced a feeling of urgency. But Lewis added a sense of danger to the performative repertoire of early rock and roll.</p>
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<h2>The dark side of ‘The Killer’</h2>
<p>Lewis’s skill as an interpreter of others’ material came to the fore in his late 1960s move into country music, which produced country chart hits like What’s Made Milwaukee Famous (Has Made a Loser Out of Me) and There Must Be More to Love Than This. But the pivot from the rock and roll of his formative hits was not driven by versatility alone. </p>
<p>Prodigious musical talent is not the sole preserve of laudable people and Lewis’s incendiary showmanship was also a factor of his darker side as a man. His robustness may have stemmed from his hardscrabble upbringing in smalltown Louisiana, where his parents had to mortgage their farm to get him his first piano. Certainly this contributed to his longevity as an artist. </p>
<p>Along the way, though, his career was checked with scandal and mishap, often self-generated. His first flush of fame imploded on a 1958 UK tour when it was revealed that his companion and wife Myra was his cousin and only 13 years old (not 15, as Lewis claimed). The tour collapsed after three dates amidst empty halls and heckles of “cradle snatcher”. </p>
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<p>His reputation was further sullied on returning to the US when it was further revealed that his divorce from his previous marriage was not yet final – the second time, even at 22 years old, he had been in a <a href="https://www.beat-magazine.co.uk/2016/a-whole-lotta-shakin-goin-on/">bigamous marriage</a>. His uneven personality was also informed by a longstanding tension between his stated devotion to the church in which he had been brought up – scandal-ridden televangelist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Swaggart">Jimmy Swaggart</a> was another cousin – and his more atavistic inclinations. </p>
<p>His impulsive behaviour and wild temperament contributed to the enduring myth of the “rebel rocker” – his nickname, “The Killer”, was apt. Yet what is exciting on stage and fodder for media stories plays out differently for the people surrounding the “legend”. </p>
<p>Myra’s account of their marriage spoke of long periods where Lewis was absent on tour, punctuated by “<a href="https://medium.com/cuepoint/ballad-of-the-13-year-old-bride-f909cbe1c6b4">every type of physical and mental abuse imaginable</a>”. His other relationships – he was married a total of seven times – were <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/the-strange-and-mysterious-death-of-mrs-jerry-lee-lewis-179980/">scarcely more harmonious</a> and he was widowed twice via drug overdose and drowning.</p>
<p>That he survived for so long his predilections towards alcohol, drug abuse and gunplay – he accidentally shot a bass player and <a href="https://ultimateclassicrock.com/jerry-lee-lewis-shoot-elvis-presley/">was arrested</a> outside Elvis Presley’s Graceland mansion having crashed his car into the gates – were evidence of his resilience, obduracy even. </p>
<p>Likewise, his recovery from his 1950s career immolation was the mark of a flexible talent, if also of an industry with a forgiving tendency towards scandal in the face of sales. This was despite the fact bigamy, child marriage and tax evasion (he repeatedly fell foul of the <a href="https://apnews.com/article/b05007483a093ef19800b037f99abc6c">Internal Revenue Service</a>) were as illegal in earlier decades as they are now.</p>
<p>Lewis’s success and influence are hard to disentangle from his recklessness and malfeasance. His rebellion against the constrictions of post-war southern USA, and his embodiment of the tension between the “devil’s music” and the gospel and church traditions it drew on, laid down a marker for rock music performance practice. But it also revealed the fractious relationship between public persona and private behaviour that underpinned it. The last man standing, indeed, although it came at a price.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/193569/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adam Behr as received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British Academy </span></em></p>HIs outrageous talent was matched by a personal life marked by bigamy, violence, drugs, alcohol and his 1958 marriage to his 13-year-old cousin.Adam Behr, Senior Lecturer in Popular and Contemporary Music, Newcastle UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1866932022-08-16T12:29:15Z2022-08-16T12:29:15ZExcelling as a musician takes practice and requires opportunities – not just lucky genes<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478103/original/file-20220808-5096-txayq9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C4%2C3000%2C1976&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Branford, Wynton and Delfeayo Marsalis perform during a tribute to their father, Ellis Marsalis, in 2019.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/branford-marsalis-winton-marsalis-and-delfeayo-marsalis-news-photo/1145764073?adppopup=true">Tim Mosenfelder/WireImage via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>What makes talented musicians so good at what they do?</p>
<p>There’s plenty of evidence that people can be born that way. Research findings suggest that about <a href="https://doi.org/10.1136/jmg.2007.056366">half of musical ability is inherited</a>. Even if that’s true, it doesn’t mean you must have musical talent in your genes to excel on the bass, oboe or drums. </p>
<p>And even if you’re fortunate enough to belong to a family that includes musicians, you would still need to study, practice and get expert guidance to play well. </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=34DZlUIAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">music professor and conductor</a>, I’ve seen the role that practice and experience play in propelling musicians toward mastery and success. There are some factors that help a musician get started – and heredity could be one of them. But musical skill is ultimately a complex interplay between <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0022429416680096">lots of practice and high-quality instruction</a>. </p>
<h2>The role genes can play</h2>
<p>Of course many great musicians, including some who are world famous, are related to other musical stars.</p>
<p>Liza Minnelli, the famed actress, singer and dancer, is one of the late entertainer <a href="https://hollywoodlife.com/feature/judy-garland-kids-4728886/">Judy Garland’s three children</a>. <a href="https://people.com/music/jon-batiste-everything-to-know">Jon Batiste</a> – “The Late Show” bandleader, pianist and composer who has won Emmy, Oscar and Golden Globe awards – has at least 25 musicians in his family. Saxophonist Branford, trumpeter Wynton, trombonist Delfeayo and drummer Jason Marsalis are the <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/02/825717204/ellis-marsalis-patriarch-of-new-orleans-most-famous-musical-family-has-died">sons of pianist Ellis Marsalis</a>.</p>
<p>Singer and pianist <a href="https://www.notablebiographies.com/news/Ge-La/Jones-Norah.html">Norah Jones</a> is the daughter of Indian sitar player <a href="https://www.vogue.in/culture-and-living/content/norah-jones-on-her-relationship-with-pandit-ravi-shankar-september-2020-cover-interview-hope">Ravi Shankar</a>, though Jones had little contact with her renowned father while growing up.</p>
<p>Absolute pitch, also known as perfect pitch, is the ability to recognize and name any note you hear anywhere. Researchers have found that it <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/301704">may be hereditary</a>. But do you need it to be a great musician? Not really.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Judy Garland and Liza Minelli, mother and daughter, singing together.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Most people are born with some musical ability</h2>
<p>I define musical ability as the possession of talent or potential – the means to achieve something musical.</p>
<p>Then there’s skill, which I define as what you attain by working at it.</p>
<p>You need at least some basic musical ability to acquire musical skills. Unless you can hear and discern pitches and rhythms, you can’t reproduce them.</p>
<p>But people may overestimate the role of genetics because, with very rare exceptions, <a href="https://www.apa.org/monitor/feb05/absolute">almost everyone can perceive pitches</a> and rhythms.</p>
<p>My research regarding children’s musicality suggests measures of singing skills are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0022429416666054">normally distributed</a> in the population. That is, pitch ability follows a <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/bell-curve.asp">bell curve</a>: Most people are average singers. Not many are way below average or excellent. </p>
<p>My team’s most recent research suggests that this distribution is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/00224294211032160">true for rhythm</a> in addition to pitch. </p>
<p>Not surprisingly, some musical skills are correlated.</p>
<p>The more training you have on specific musical skills, the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/00224294211011962">better you’ll test on certain others</a>. This is probably because musical experience enhances other musical abilities.</p>
<p>To sum it up, an emerging body of research indicates that practice doesn’t make perfect. But for most people, it helps a lot. </p>
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<img alt="Violin teacher teaching young student" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478786/original/file-20220811-21-rts2uv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478786/original/file-20220811-21-rts2uv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478786/original/file-20220811-21-rts2uv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478786/original/file-20220811-21-rts2uv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478786/original/file-20220811-21-rts2uv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478786/original/file-20220811-21-rts2uv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478786/original/file-20220811-21-rts2uv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Violin teacher Ellen Kim says jelly beans make a great motivational tool for her students.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/st-paul-mn-5-7-2002-suzuki-violin-teacher-ellen-kim-news-photo/1154202191?adppopup=true">Stormi Greener/Star Tribune via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Lessons and practice are essential</h2>
<p>What about people who say they they can’t keep a beat? It turns out that they almost always can track a steady beat to music. They just haven’t done it enough.</p>
<p>Indeed, the last time I gave a nonbeliever our lab’s test for rhythm perception, she performed excellently. For that and for singing, some people just need <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/21/magazine/how-to-sing-in-tune.html">a little help</a> to move past assumptions they lack talent: You can’t say you’re incapable of something if you haven’t spent time trying. </p>
<p>Some researchers and <a href="https://strategiesforinfluence.com/malcolm-gladwell-10000-hour-rule/">journalists have promoted</a> the idea it takes <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.100.3.363">10,000 hours of practice or training to master</a> a new skill. </p>
<p>Innate ability puts people at different starting lines toward musical mastery. But once you’ve started to study an instrument or singing style, skill development depends on many other factors. Getting lessons, practicing often and being in a musical family may make those more likely.</p>
<p>For example, Lizzo, a hip-hop superstar and classically trained flute player, had the luck to <a href="https://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/lizzo-44986.php">grow up in family of music lovers</a>. They all had their own taste in music. Her success is a microcosm of why a well-rounded musical education for young people matters.</p>
<p>The singers in the choir I lead at Penn State have a range of experience, from a little to a lot. Yet soon after they join it, they develop the ability to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/87551233211040726">pick a good key and starting pitch</a> as they get to know their own voices. </p>
<p>Practicing more doesn’t change your baseline potential, it just changes what you can presently do. That is, if you practice a specific song over and over again, eventually you’re going to get better at it.</p>
<p>Jonathon Heyward, the Baltimore Symphony’s new conductor, who has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/21/arts/music/jonathon-heyward-baltimore-symphony-orchestra.html">no musicians in his family</a>, has worked really hard to excel. He started taking cello lessons at age 10 and hasn’t stopped since, playing and practicing and studying.</p>
<h2>Privilege can play a role</h2>
<p>Socioeconomic factors can also enter the equation. While conducting research, I’ve seen high-income college students from high-income families, with more years of musical experience, perform better than their classmates who have lower-income backgrounds and had fewer opportunities.</p>
<p>Genes can give someone a head start. At the same time, having a quiet space where you can practice on an acoustic instrument or a digital workstation might make a more decisive difference for the musical prospects of most children. The same goes for having money for private lessons or access to free classes.</p>
<p>Even so, many of the best musicians, including jazz greats <a href="https://www.louisarmstronghouse.org/biography/">Louis Armstrong</a> and <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/billie-holiday-about-the-singer/68/">Billie Holiday</a>, grew up facing many hardships.</p>
<p>With the right conditions for practice and gaining experience, who knows where the next Liza or Lizzo will come from.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/186693/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bryan Nichols does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Access to instruments and instruction, along with encouragement at home and at school during childhood and early adulthood, can make gaining musical experience possible.Bryan Nichols, Associate Professor of Music, Penn StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1831942022-06-06T12:50:23Z2022-06-06T12:50:23ZRussian artists grapple with the same dilemma as their Soviet forebears – to stay or to go?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466433/original/file-20220531-24-eijwk8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=419%2C5%2C3450%2C2616&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Yuri Shevchuk of the band DDT performs in 1987. In May 2022 Shevchuk was charged with a misdemeanor for insulting Russian President Vladimir Putin during a concert. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/musician-yuri-chevchuk-ddt-concert-leningrad-1987-news-photo/1168682760?adppopup=true">Joanna Stingray/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-ddt-shevchuk-criticism-ukraine-war/31858449.html">With few exceptions</a>, most Russian artists who oppose the war have been relegated to releasing songs, posting artwork or publishing articles on social media.</p>
<p><a href="https://juliabarton.com/post/3791728051/lost-in-translation#:%7E:text=Starting%20with%201991's%20Russian%20Album,wolves%2C%20stars%2C%20and%20horses">Boris Grebenshchikov</a> is one artist who took to social media in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. </p>
<p>On April 16, 2022, Grebenshchikov <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSbvOwxgv0M">posted a song</a> on the messaging app Telegram – and later on YouTube, Instagram and Facebook – with the unsettling line: “But none of us will get out of here alive.” A few days later, his feed went silent. People started to worry about his safety.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/02/10/1079958276/amid-crackdown-on-free-speech-russians-and-russian-americans-speak-out-against-w">A clampdown on free speech</a> has made life riskier for dissident artists who criticize Vladimir Putin and the war.</p>
<p>It’s forced many of them to flee or consider fleeing the country altogether – no easy call, because Russians traditionally haven’t looked kindly upon artists who fled during times of crisis.</p>
<h2>The struggle against Stalin</h2>
<p>During the Soviet era, many talented authors, poets and musicians cultivated an underground culture of opposition to resist government repression.</p>
<p>Different movements emerged, each with its own style and purpose. </p>
<p>One of them, <a href="https://poets.org/text/brief-guide-acmeism">the Acmeist movement</a>, included poets <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/anna-akhmatova">Anna Akhmatova</a>, <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/nikolai-gumilev">Nikolai Gumilev</a> and <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/osip-mandelstam">Osip Mandelstam</a>. The three spoke out against Joseph Stalin’s brutality at a time when <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/sovietmind_chapter.pdf">he attempted to silence</a> any artist who didn’t echo his propaganda or support his political program.</p>
<p>In “<a href="https://poets.org/poem/stalin-epigram">The Stalin Epigram</a>,” a satirical poem written in 1933, Mandelstam wrote of the climate of terror under Stalin: </p>
<pre class="highlight plaintext"><code> Ringed with a scum of chicken-necked bosses
he toys with the tributes of half-men.
One whistles, another meows, a third snivels.
He pokes out his finger and he alone goes boom.
He forges decrees in a line like horseshoes,
One for the groin, one the forehead, temple, eye.
He rolls the executions on his tongue like berries.
He wishes he could hug them like big friends from home.
</code></pre>
<p>These poets – along with many others – <a href="https://www.faena.com/aleph/russian-acmeist-poetry-the-lyrical-warriors-of-reality">became targets of the regime</a>: Gumilev was shot, Akhmatova ostracized until 1940 and Mandelstam shipped to the gulag, where he died.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Side profile and front profile of man wearing a jacket." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466436/original/file-20220531-16-eaoc05.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466436/original/file-20220531-16-eaoc05.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466436/original/file-20220531-16-eaoc05.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466436/original/file-20220531-16-eaoc05.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466436/original/file-20220531-16-eaoc05.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466436/original/file-20220531-16-eaoc05.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466436/original/file-20220531-16-eaoc05.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=545&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A mugshot of Osip Mandelstam taken by the Soviet secret police after his arrest.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NKVD_Mandelstam.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Meanwhile, Stalin demanded that composers write music that was optimistic and triumphant. But for Russian composer <a href="https://www.sfcv.org/learn/composer-gallery/dmitri-shostakovich">Dmitri Shostakovich</a>, there was little to celebrate. During <a href="https://soviethistory.msu.edu/1936-2/the-great-terror/">the Great Purge</a> – when Stalin executed or imprisoned millions of people suspected of opposing the Communist Party – his friends kept disappearing. Family members were shot. </p>
<p>To evade persecution, Shostakovich wrote his Fifth Symphony to end on what appeared to be a positive note, using the same key as Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” But importantly, <a href="https://medium.com/@beethovennow/how-shostakovich-survived-to-protest-stalins-anti-semitism-e5abf04727fd">the music contains instructions to be performed at half the expected speed</a>.</p>
<p>The result, Shostakovich <a href="https://medium.com/@beethovennow/how-shostakovich-survived-to-protest-stalins-anti-semitism-e5abf04727fd">later explained</a>, is a sound of rejoicing that feels “forced, created under threat. It’s as if someone were beating you with a stick, saying ‘Your business is rejoicing, your business is rejoicing.’”</p>
<p>The subtle dig didn’t register with Stalin, who interpreted the piece as a paean to his rule.</p>
<h2>Soviet rockers long for freedom</h2>
<p>Though there was a period of <a href="https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Khrushchev_Thaw">political thawing</a> under Stalin’s successor, Nikita Khrushchev, who eased repression and freed millions of people from the gulag labor camps, artists who spoke out against the regime still faced considerable risk. </p>
<p>Beginning in the mid-1960s, after Leonid Brezhnev assumed the Soviet premiership, rock music flourished underground, offering an expressive outlet for a generation that longed for a definitive end to censorship, oppression and persecution. These musicians were the heroes of Russian youth, <a href="https://sunypress.edu/Books/N/Notes-from-Underground2">and they risked their lives</a> by performing in hidden venues with well-planned escape routes. </p>
<p>While state-sponsored bands such as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zemlyane">Zemlyane</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poyushchiye_Gitary">Poyushchiye Gitary</a> appeared on television to play syrupy love ballads and sing about the country’s prosperity, dissident singers and rockers like <a href="https://soviethistory.msu.edu/1961-2/bulat-okudzhava/">Bulat Okudzhava</a> and <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-53846403">Victor Tsoi</a> were performing in dingy basements and cramped apartments. </p>
<p>Songs like Victor Tsoi’s “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyJUjNYeelo">Changes</a>” spoke to the longing and frustration of the younger generation: </p>
<pre class="highlight plaintext"><code> Our hearts demand changes!
Our eyes demand changes!
In our laughter, in our tears,
And in the pulsing of our veins
We are waiting for change.
</code></pre>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Three young men pose." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466431/original/file-20220531-26-an4ahh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/466431/original/file-20220531-26-an4ahh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466431/original/file-20220531-26-an4ahh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466431/original/file-20220531-26-an4ahh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466431/original/file-20220531-26-an4ahh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466431/original/file-20220531-26-an4ahh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/466431/original/file-20220531-26-an4ahh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A 1986 photograph of Victor Tsoi, left, and bandmates Gustav Gurianov and Andrei Krisanov.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/musicians-victor-tsoi-gustav-gurianov-andrei-krisanov-from-news-photo/1168682772?adppopup=true">Joanna Stingray/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The dilemma of fleeing</h2>
<p>As Putin, like Stalin, threatens to persecute those who speak out against him, Russian artists face an age-old dilemma of suffering with their people or leaving for places where they’ll be freer to pursue their work.</p>
<p>Under Stalin, the poet Anna Akhmatova famously stayed put, despite the fact that some of her peers chose to leave. <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40243154">She was heralded for her heroism</a>, and in 1922 she criticized those who fled with <a href="https://americanliterature.com/author/anna-akhmatova/poem/im-not-one-of-those-who-left-their-land">a poem</a> titled “I’m not one of those who left their land.”</p>
<p><a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Russia_s_Abandoned_Children.html?id=bQby48u0wU0C">As an anthropologist studying contemporary Russian culture and society</a>, I’ve found that Russians tend to question the allegiance of artists who left of their own accord, or didn’t come back after being exiled and given the option to return. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1970/solzhenitsyn/biographical/">Alexander Solzhenitsyn</a>, who won the Nobel Prize in literature, was sent to a labor camp in 1945, where he was imprisoned for eight years. In 1973, he was stripped of his Soviet citizenship and expelled from the country after publishing “<a href="https://www.solzhenitsyncenter.org/his-writings/large-work-and-novels/the-gulag-archipelago">The Gulag Archipelago</a>,” which detailed life in Soviet forced labor camps.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1994-05-27-1994147073-story.html">Yet there were mixed feelings</a> after Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia in 1994. Many Russians felt that, even though he had been exiled, he should have come back the instant he had been permitted to – in 1990 – and experienced the post-Soviet tumult and hardships alongside his countrymen.</p>
<h2>Social media as a tool for resistance</h2>
<p>While many Russians have swallowed the messages fed to them through <a href="https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/putins-generation-z-kremlin-pro-war-propaganda-targets-young-russians/">Putin’s propaganda machine</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/03/red-is-dead-russian-anti-war-protesters-fly-a-new-flag-for-peace">many have not</a>. Citizens who feel scared and disillusioned thrive on the hope they glean from artists who speak out against the war.</p>
<p>In a recent conversation with a friend in Russia, I asked if and how current events are discussed. </p>
<p>“Very carefully,” she replied. “Often by discussing the creations of our beloved artists.”</p>
<p>Yet acts of public defiance are becoming increasingly difficult to pull off.</p>
<p>Alexandra Skochilenko, a 31-year-old performance artist, <a href="https://www.artshelp.net/alexandra-skochilenko/">faces up to 10 years in prison</a> for disseminating “knowingly false information” after she replaced price tags in a grocery store with news reports about the war in Ukraine. Yuri Shevchuk and his band, DDT, stopped performing after Shevchuk <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-ddt-shevchuk-criticism-ukraine-war/31858449.html">was charged with a misdemeanor in May 2022</a> for insulting Putin during a show. Maria Alyokhina, the leader of the punk band Pussy Riot, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/10/world/europe/pussy-riot-russia-escape.html">recently fled Russia</a> before she could be arrested. In order to escape, she left her cellphone behind to avoid being traced.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1514912763860205571"}"></div></p>
<p>However, artists today have access to something their Soviet forebears didn’t: social media.</p>
<p>With the internet as a powerful and valuable tool for professing opposition to Putin, Russian artists are rethinking whether there’s any value in staying – and whether they might be able to more effectively resist Putin from abroad as “<a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/04/27/ukraine-war-internet-metaverse-cyber-cryptocurrency/">netizens</a>.”</p>
<p>Grebenshchikov, the artist whose feed went silent in April, reappeared almost two weeks later, posting videos on Instagram, Facebook and Telegram in which he performs against a backdrop of a blue sky. It isn’t clear where he is, but with concerts scheduled internationally, it likely isn’t Russia; he’s written about his plans to perform in Cyprus, Israel and the Netherlands in the coming months.</p>
<p>Yes, the mass departure of artists portends the loss of in-person artistic culture in Russia. But on the other hand, online posts can, at the very least, sustain Russia’s endangered dissident cultures.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/183194/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The views expressed here are solely those of the author in their private capacity and do not in any way represent the views of the U.S. Naval Academy, U.S. Navy or the Department of Defense.</span></em></p>Can social media posts sustain Russia’s endangered dissident cultures?Clementine Fujimura, Professor of Anthropology, Area Studies and Russian, United States Naval AcademyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1812222022-04-14T13:13:08Z2022-04-14T13:13:08ZAbba and Tupac in the metaverse: how digital avatars could be the bankable future of band touring<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457944/original/file-20220413-22-y990i8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=3%2C0%2C1132%2C523&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABBA_Voyage#/media/File:Abba_at_the_West_Ham_United_Olympic_Stadium.jpg">Matt Brown/Wikipedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It was a technological feat that made history, wowed audiences and brought a dead rapper back to life. In April 2012 at the Coachella festival in California, <a href="https://www.biography.com/musician/tupac-shakur">Tupac Shakur</a> took to the stage with Snoop Dogg and Dr Dre. He’d been dead for 16 years, killed in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas.</p>
<p>But this was Tupac <a href="https://www.livescience.com/34652-hologram.html">the hologram</a>, foul-mouthed and lifelike, performing before a “<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/crime/2012/04/18/rapper-tupac-shakurs-digital-resurrection-gets-mixed-reviews/">shocked and then amazed</a>” crowd.</p>
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<p>Since humans first delighted in the sound of music, advancements in technology have managed to make musical expression immortal. Throughout history, innovators have strived to create original, accessible and eternal performances.</p>
<p>As engineering knowledge developed, <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/inventing-musical-instruments-1992156">musical instrument design advanced</a>. Many classical composers introduced <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/instrumentation-music/The-Classical-period">pioneering instrumentations</a> into their scores, adding depth and colour that broadened the listening experience.</p>
<p>Accurate <a href="https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/how-music-notation-began/">systems for notation</a> matured, offering music an essence of immortality through printed manuscript. In 1853 Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville’s <a href="http://www.firstsounds.org/research/scott.php">phonautograph</a> pioneered an <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dbyIDTmHSM">audio recording technique</a>.</p>
<p>In 1912 WC Handy composed <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20769518">Memphis Blues</a>, a song that took the US by storm and influenced the development of popular music. Published on paper, it was wildly popular in the dance halls and soon every band in America was asked to play it. This public demand was recognised by an <a href="https://allabouttherock.co.uk/impact-technology-music-industry/">fledgling recording industry</a>, which soon flourished. </p>
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<h2>Technology = creativity</h2>
<p>A breakthrough in the quality of music capture came with the advent of <a href="https://hub.yamaha.com/audio/a-history/the-history-of-hi-fi/">hi-fi and stereo</a> introduced by Yamaha. Those who embraced the technology artistically could transport a lifelike performance experience into the homes of the masses. One of the biggest bands of the 1970s and 1980s, <a href="https://abbasite.com/story/">Swedish supergroup Abba</a>, embraced this technology pioneering recording techniques, which is still used as standard today.</p>
<p>Behind this technology was the creative genius that produced millions of record sales and performances dominating the 1970s and beyond. After the apparent demise of the group, Benny and Björn expanded into the theatrical genre, composing musicals. Along with their interest in emerging technology, this sowed the seeds to recapture and reinvent the Abba machine 40 years later.</p>
<p>May 2022 sees the latest technological advances in musical immortality when Abba return to the live stage after a 40-year absence. But this time they return as humanoids – the digital holgram “twins” of the original global phenomenon.</p>
<p>George Lucas’s <a href="https://www.ilm.com/about-us/">Industrial Light and Magic</a> has <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-gb/entertainment/music/dancing-screens-how-abba-struck-gold-with-the-digital-generation/ar-AAO4s5n">created holographic lookalikes</a> that interact with a live band in a specially designed purpose-built theatre in east London. Benny, Björn, Frida and Agnetha have provided the pre-recorded vocals and motion-captured movement which will then be reproduced by the digital avatars. </p>
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<p>The dopplegangers are more youthful in their appearance – around their 30s, when they were at the peak of their fame – raising an interesting conundrum concerning Abba’s human mortality against their new immortality in the metaverse.</p>
<p>Abba’s music is undoubtedly timeless; the simple tunes with incredibly complicated structures appeal to millions. The “Abbatars” are a reinvention for a new audience, but will they continue beyond the lives of their originals, with new creators pulling the strings?</p>
<p>Besides Abba and Tupac, there are other instances where “digital twinning” has been identified as a key money-making strategy. The digital band <a href="https://gorillaz.fandom.com/wiki/Gorillaz">Gorillaz’</a> 2006 <a href="https://youtu.be/h7OF3ADL2QU">Grammy performance</a> blended flawlessly with Madonna’s. And Richard Burton’s hologram <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3M5vCEjEC9s">performed</a> on a global tour of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-War-of-the-Worlds-novel-by-Wells">War of the Worlds</a> in another 2006 performance. </p>
<h2>Music in the metaverse</h2>
<p>Customising 3D avatars has become a unique way for artists to create virtual brands across several digital platforms. They can connect virtually with fans and increase loyalty and engagement, while fans can interact, express themselves and experience new things.</p>
<p>This is now achievable using AI software to make holograms, as researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) demonstrated <a href="https://www.photonics.com/Articles/AI_Aids_in_Real-Time_Generation_of_3D_Holograms/a66785#:%7E:text=A%2520method%2520for%2520generating%2520hologram,which%2520generates%2520holograms%2520almost%2520instantly">in an experiment</a> that created holograms fairly instantaneously.</p>
<p><a href="https://venturebeat.com/2022/01/24/unity-acquires-ziva-dynamics-and-its-character-tech/">Ziva Dynamics</a> a pioneer in simulation and real-time character creation, employs synthetic AI-powered avatars to create autonomous and complex movement simulations based on real muscle, fat, soft tissue and skin contact.</p>
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<p>In April 2021, in a project called <a href="https://mustangnews.net/the-lost-tapes-of-the-27-club-a-project-on-what-couldve-been/">Lost Tapes Of The 27 Club</a>, Google’s <a href="https://magenta.tensorflow.org/">Magenta AI</a> was even used to compose songs in the styles of musicians who notoriously died at the age of 27, including Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and Amy Winehouse. </p>
<p>These technologies have the potential to create realistic synthetic and AI holographic representations of departed artists, allowing them to continue creating, influencing and performing for future audiences. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.epicgames.com/site/en-US/home">Epic Games</a>, creators of the phenomenally successful Fortnite, <a href="https://www.metapunk.co.uk/metablog/7-2021-digital-twins-artificial-intelligence-and-the-metaverse">predicts that</a> digital twins will combine with <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/93bmyv/what-is-the-metaverse-internet-technology-vr">the metaverse</a>, an emerging network of fully immersive digital worlds.</p>
<h2>Disrupting the music business</h2>
<p>Whereas live tours are time-intensive and costly for new artists, a low-cost metaverse “tour” might be a new way for music lovers to see live performances. Virtual performances by <a href="https://youtu.be/UAhGvhvcoyY">Justin Bieber</a>, <a href="https://youtu.be/OB57zA5MB7o">DeadMau5</a> and <a href="https://youtu.be/uViueiV8fME">The Weeknd</a> have already become popular recently. </p>
<p>In this emerging branch of the music industry, record labels and marketing firms could be replaced by <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/cathyhackl/2021/06/01/what-are-daos-and-why-you-should-pay-attention/">decentralised autonomous organisations</a> (DAOs). DAOs are online organisations that operate like cooperatives, making all decisions jointly. </p>
<p>DAOs are already <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericmack/2021/10/21/a-dao-paid-4m-for-a-wu-tang-clan-cd-what-the-heck-is-a-dao/">disrupting the music business</a> – along with NFTs (non-fungible tokens), which are a way of transferring property between people online. In October 2021, PleasrDAO – a collective of <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/decentralized-finance-defi-5113835#:%7E:text=Decentralized%20finance%20(DeFi)%20is%20an,financial%20products%2C%20and%20financial%20services.">decentralised finance</a> (DeFi) leaders, early NFT collectors and digital artists – paid US$4 million (£3 million) for <a href="https://g.co/kgs/uWh4fe">Once Upon a Time in Shaolin</a> an album by New York hip-hop legends Wu-Tang Clan.</p>
<p>While the release of the album predates the rise of NFTs, PleasrDAO now owns the rights and has imposed strict restrictions on duplication, distribution or public exhibition. A music-focused DAO like Pleasr may acquire bulk concert tickets, finance and organise events and manage fan-owned record labels and marketing agencies to secure investable commodities like first-edition LPs, artwork and instruments. This has the potential to benefit fans, new music genres and artists alike. </p>
<p>This creates a new, decentralised route to the market for artists free of corporate interests or interests of individual producers, developing a fairer landscape for the future. With digital avatars likely to be at the centre of this new vanguard, it will be fascinating to see how it develops in the months and years to come – and whether it will be enough for music audiences.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/181222/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Creating holographic ‘digital twins’ will significantly reduce the stress, cost and logistical issues of touring – and means artists can live forever onstage.Theo Tzanidis, Senior Lecturer in Digital Marketing, University of the West of ScotlandStephen Langston, Programme Leader for Performance, University of the West of ScotlandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1765262022-02-21T12:19:14Z2022-02-21T12:19:14ZArtists’ Spotify criticisms point to larger ways musicians lose with streaming — here’s 3 changes to help in Canada<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446368/original/file-20220214-135932-32g9n0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=95%2C132%2C4382%2C2685&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Neil Young isn't the first artist to speak out about musicians' relationships with large streaming servies. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP, Invision - Amy Harris</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Recently, Neil Young and Joni Mitchell removed their music <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/28/arts/music/joni-mitchell-neil-young-spotify.html">from Spotify to protest the COVID-19 misinformation on Joe Rogan’s podcast</a>. Many artists expressed <a href="https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2022-02-01/what-weve-learned-from-spotifys-joe-rogan-response">desire to join the protest, but didn’t have the rights to their own music</a>.</p>
<p>This is the latest scandal in a long history of dissatisfaction with the platform, something academics have examined in the context <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443720919376">of the rise of</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/17510694.2015.1096618">streaming services alongside changes in the recording industry</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755211019974">musical cultures</a> in the digital age. </p>
<p>At the end of 2021, the <a href="https://www.unionofmusicians.org/">Union of Musicians and Allied Workers</a> garnered 30,000 musicians’ signatures on a petition <a href="https://www.unionofmusicians.org/news/justiceatspotify-a-year-in-review">calling on Spotify to fairly compensate, credit and respect</a> musicians.</p>
<p>Our <a href="http://cultcap.org/">research group</a> interviewed 17 musicians in Edmonton and Winnipeg in late 2019. We also examined data on market consolidation — how companies have grown, merged and suppressed competition in ways that reward the most profitable companies and artists — to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/03007766.2021.2010028">study the effect that big players like Spotify</a> are having on musicians. We learned how the broader ecosystem of music needs to change.</p>
<h2>Independent musicians</h2>
<p>The streaming age has been hard on independent musicians. In 2020, analytics company Alpha Data examined data based on 1.6 million artists who released music to streaming services and found <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/news/top-1-percent-streaming-1055005">90 per cent of plays were generated by one per cent of artists</a>.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Artist Colleen Brown’s pandemic-inspired ‘Isolation Stimulation.’ Brown was one musician interviewed in the study.</span></figcaption>
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<p>There was a <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/564519/rockonomics-by-alan-b-krueger">clear drop in most musicians’ income based on live music</a> between the early ‘80s and recent years — even before the pandemic interrupted touring. In 1982, the bottom 95 per cent of musicians earning income from live music had 38 per cent of the live music market. By 2017, their market share dwindled to 15 per cent. Conversely, by the same time, the top five per cent of live music earners had increased their market share. </p>
<p>Our analysis <a href="https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/billboard-charts-add-youtube-views-1549766/">of top charting songs in Canada</a> found a significant decline in the total number of chart entries by Canadian musicians. We also found that the top three musicians have commanded a higher percentage of entries in recent years.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446021/original/file-20220211-27-5ei4hx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Bar graph shows distribution of top charting songs" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446021/original/file-20220211-27-5ei4hx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446021/original/file-20220211-27-5ei4hx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446021/original/file-20220211-27-5ei4hx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446021/original/file-20220211-27-5ei4hx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446021/original/file-20220211-27-5ei4hx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446021/original/file-20220211-27-5ei4hx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/446021/original/file-20220211-27-5ei4hx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Figure 1: Canadian Songs on Top 100 Singles Charts in Canada: 1990-1999 & 2009-2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Data: RPM Magazine (1990-1999); Billboard Canadian Hot 100 (2009-2018); full data available at cultcap.org/data.</span></span>
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<p>This inequality isn’t just happening at the artist level. While Spotify attracts its fair share of the blame, due to tiny payouts to smaller artists and <a href="https://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/jbtl/vol16/iss2/9">algorithms that promote superstars</a>, consolidation is everywhere. </p>
<p>Platforms like Apple Music and Amazon use the <a href="https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/the-streaming-music-industry-must-switch-to-a-fair-and-logical-payout-model-there-is-no-time-to-lose">same payment system</a> that favours big labels and their extensive catalogues of artists and rights.</p>
<p>The “Big Three” labels (Sony, Warner, Universal) have bought out smaller ones, <a href="https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/6722597/q3-soundscan-2015-taylor-swift-bruno-mars-streaming-surge">increasing market share</a> and reducing competition. Live concerts are <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-big-music-needs-to-be-broken-up-to-save-the-industry/">dominated by LiveNation/Ticketmaster</a>, and a handful of companies dominate radio. Meanwhile, predatory hedge funds are turning <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/25/your-money/musicians-investors-royalties.html">song rights into speculative assets</a>. As a result of this consolidation and vertical integration, Canada has one of the smallest shares of independent labels in the world.</p>
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<span class="caption">Figure 2: Market Share of Major and Independent Record Labels Globally.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Data: WINTEL Worldwide Independent Market Report 2018; full data available at cultcap.org/data.</span></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>This consolidation has been great for corporations and superstar musicians, but devastating for average musicians. A report from Hill Strategies Research, a company specializing in arts and culture research, notes that in 2016 <a href="https://hillstrategies.com/resource/statistical-profile-of-artists-in-canada-in-2016">the median income of Canadian musician and singers was just $17,900</a>, and there are racialized and gendered inequities in artists’ incomes.</p>
<p>Based on our interviews and data, we recommend the following three priority areas for reform:</p>
<h2>1. Introduce policy to bolster independent music</h2>
<p>One inspiration is how some current structures do bolster independent artists. The non-profit campus-community radio sector is regulated to program local and varied music. And, under the <a href="https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/general/ccdparties.htm">Canadian Content Development model</a>, larger-revenue earning stations must allocate some radio revenue towards supporting grant <a href="https://www.factor.ca/">programs from FACTOR</a> (a non-profit organization that provides assistance towards growing and developing the Canadian music industry) and the Community Radio Fund of Canada. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">FACTOR video about strengthening the Canadian music industry.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Large entertainment venues could similarly contribute to funds that support smaller non-profit music venues — particularly if a large complex has received public funds.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/is-the-new-calgary-event-centre-in-the-public-interest-no-one-knows-121208">Is the new Calgary event centre in the public interest? No one knows</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<p>Right now, streaming platforms like Spotify promote playlists which generate more plays for artists. It’s increasingly important for artists to be included on playlists if they are to generate high streaming numbers.</p>
<p>We suggest regulations that mandate a wider variety of Canadian artists on playlists for major streaming companies operating in Canada. There is <a href="https://openmedia.org/press/item/bill-C10-replacement-online-streaming-act-could-worsen-streaming-for-canadians-leaves-out-small-content-creators">much debate</a> as to how this can play out. Nevertheless, algorithmic bias towards mostly corporate content already exists. It’s time to consider how to effectively implement local, regional and diversity mandates.</p>
<h2>2. Sustained funding for artists</h2>
<p>As multinational companies dominate the industry, government support through grant money is vital. </p>
<p>Some interviewees described how provincial music organizations, like <a href="https://www.albertamusic.org/">Alberta Music</a> and <a href="https://www.manitobamusic.com/">Manitoba Music</a> help artists navigate their careers or find funding.</p>
<p>But some barriers were noted. One Indigenous artist (who wished to be anonymous) described how they perceived important changes with funding streams supporting Indigenous artists, but noted that provincial bodies were slow to take up specific supports accessible to Indigenous people.</p>
<p>We encourage increased funding at the municipal, provincial and federal levels, and increased attentiveness to how Indigenous and marginalized artists can access this. The metrics used to determine how artists qualify for grants, and submission requirements, should be continually restructured to allow for a wider diversity of artists to receive support.</p>
<p>Musicians shared ideas about how to reform the granting process, like having more grants that cover living expenses. Even bolder, this patchwork of government funding initiatives could be replaced with <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ireland-basic-income-program-artists-entertainers-ubi-coronavirus-nightlife-2022-1?op=1">a universal basic income (UBI) for working musicians</a>.</p>
<h2>3. Shift toward a community-based, care-informed model</h2>
<p>Many interviewees felt the profit-based culture of music increasingly stifled creativity. Many artists highlighted a desire to prioritize creating a community of care and vibrant musical cultures — despite the fact that funding stuctures don’t necessarily value this. </p>
<p>Winnipeg singer-songwriter <a href="http://gregmacpherson.com/">Greg MacPherson</a>, co-owner of indie <a href="http://www.disintegration.ca/">record label Disintegration Records</a>, suggested that Canada needs to “step back from the notion that commercial viability is the best way to achieve our collective goals” of supporting vibrant musical cultures.</p>
<p>Hip hop artist Arlo Maverick reflected on being an advocate for mentorship to ensure younger or emerging artists gain knowledge about opportunities to grow their careers.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">National Music Centre spotlight on Arlo Maverick.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Public, non-profit alternative approaches to streaming should be considered. One example by <a href="https://capitalcityrecords.ca/">Capital City Records</a>, a <a href="https://edmontonjournal.com/entertainment/music/edmonton-public-library-to-offer-free-downloads-of-local-music">digital music collection hosted and managed by the Edmonton Public Library</a>, provides local artists with an honorarium if their album is selected as part of a growing curated collection. Artists retain their rights. Music can be downloaded by members with a library card, or anyone can stream online. </p>
<p>Why not imagine what could happen <a href="https://musicat.co/libraries">if more libraries</a> in Canada provided similar local streaming services?</p>
<p>As we heard from <a href="http://johnksamson.com/about">Winnipeg songwriter John K. Samson</a> of <a href="https://theweakerthans.bandcamp.com/">The Weakerthans</a> and <a href="https://propagandhi.bandcamp.com/">Propagandhi</a>, unless something emerges to challenge the status quo, it’s reasonable to expect even more narrowing of who can create a living as a musician.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/176526/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Authors are listed alphabetically to signal equal authorship. Andrew deWaard is Assistant Professor of Media and Popular Culture at the University of California, San Diego. Brian Fauteux is Associate Professor of Popular Music and Media Studies at the University of Alberta. Brianne Selman is the Scholarly Communications and Copyright Librarian at the University of Winnipeg.
This article results from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada funded Cultural Capital Project. Thanks also to William Northlich, Anna Dundas-Richter, Maria Khaner, and Daniel Colussi, who provided research assistance and insights into the project. Thanks to all of the artists who generously gave their time to be interviewed but especially Kelly Fraser, beloved Inuk singer, who was gracious and giving, and will be sadly missed.
</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew deWaard receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brianne Selman receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. </span></em></p>A Spotify boycott wouldn’t fix the working conditions of most musicians. Fostering a more equitable, community-based music culture requires changing how we listen to music and support its production.Brian Fauteux, Associate Professor Popular Music and Media Studies, University of AlbertaAndrew deWaard, Assistant Professor, Media and Popular Culture, Department of Communications, University of California, San DiegoBrianne Selman, Scholarly Communications & Copyright Librarian, University of WinnipegLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1552622021-05-17T12:27:12Z2021-05-17T12:27:12Z‘What’s Going On’ at 50 – Marvin Gaye’s Motown classic is as relevant today as it was in 1971<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/400839/original/file-20210514-15-33ihg9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3188%2C2366&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'What's Going On' was a turning point in Marvin Gaye's career.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/soul-singer-marvin-gaye-plays-piano-as-he-records-in-a-news-photo/76016439?adppopup=true">Jim Britt/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Motown wasn’t really known for its politically conscious music. Then came “What’s Going On.”</p>
<p>Released on May 21, 1971, at the height of the Vietnam War, Marvin Gaye’s album became a monster, spawning three hit singles on its way to becoming Motown’s best-selling album to date. The album also marked a turning point for Motown and for Marvin Gaye as an artist.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://history.arizona.edu/people/tyina-steptoe">scholar of race and culture in the U.S.</a> and the host of the weekly radio show “<a href="https://kxci.org/programs/soul-stories/">Soul Stories</a>,” I am struck by how many of the themes Gaye explores remain as relevant today as they were when he first wrote about them 50 years ago.</p>
<h2>Gaye’s evolution</h2>
<p>Some of the songs on the album speak directly to the state of the world in the early 1970s.</p>
<p>The title track, with its timeless lyric “war is not the answer, for only love can conquer hate,” condemned the nation’s involvement in Vietnam. But the song provides an insight into the evolution of Gaye’s music to encompass overtly political themes.</p>
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<p>“What’s Going On” contrasts with his earlier work from the Vietnam War era that presents a different perspective. For example, “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45z3vf4_b2o">Soldier’s Plea</a>,” the first single from Gaye’s second album, “That Stubborn Kinda Fellow” in 1962, offers a decidedly romantic view of war:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>While I’m away, darling how often do you think of me?<br>
Remember, I’m over here, fighting to keep us free<br>
Just be my little girl and always be true<br>
And I’ll be a faithful soldier boy to you</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>“Soldier’s Plea” fits neatly into Motown’s early business model. Both <a href="https://www.motownmuseum.org/legacy/berry-gordy/">Berry Gordy</a> – who founded Tamla Records in 1959 and then incorporated it as the Motown Record Co. a year later – and the songwriters he brought in mostly avoided political content.</p>
<p>Motown singers such as Mary Wells, The Supremes and The Temptations were to be, as the label liked to say, the “Sound of Young America,” not political activists. Gordy <a href="https://time.com/5783939/mlk-jr-dream-speech-motown/">told Time magazine in 2020</a>, “I never wanted Motown to be a mouthpiece for civil rights.”</p>
<p>While song lyrics did not explicitly mention the ongoing civil rights protests emerging across the nation in the 1960s, Motown didn’t entirely ignore racial politics. The label released the spoken-word album “<a href="https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/motown-martin-luther-king-i-have-a-dream-speech/">The Great March to Freedom</a>” on the same day as the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/march-on-washington">March on Washington</a> – Aug. 28, 1963. The release commemorated the <a href="https://www.michiganradio.org/post/i-have-dream-there-was-great-walk-freedom-detroit">Walk to Freedom</a>, a Detroit mass march from earlier that summer, and featured a speech by Martin Luther King Jr. </p>
<p>Motown also created the <a href="https://variety.com/2021/music/news/motown-black-forum-martin-luther-king-1234901927/">Black Forum label</a>, which released other political speeches by King, such as his 1967 “Why I Oppose the War in Vietnam,” and Stokely Carmichael’s song “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLB6dq2uioc">Free Huey!</a>” pleading for the release of fellow Black Power leader Huey Newton in 1970. The label also released albums of poetry by <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/amiri-baraka">Amiri Baraka</a>, <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/eyesontheprize-woman-black-panther/">Elaine Brown</a>, <a href="https://poets.org/poet/langston-hughes">Langston Hughes</a> and <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/margaret-danner">Margaret Danner</a>. </p>
<p>By and large, though, early releases on the Motown label were restricted to the apolitical.</p>
<p>But the world had changed by 1971. The freedom struggle had taken a more radical turn with the emergence of the Black Power movement, the Chicano Movement, the Young Lords and the American Indian Movement. The first <a href="https://www.epa.gov/history/epa-history-earth-day#:%7E:text=The%20First%20Earth%20Day%20in%20April%201970&text=Because%20there%20was%20no%20EPA,issue%20onto%20the%20national%20agenda.">Earth Day, April 22, 1970</a>, focused attention on the emerging U.S. environmental movement. Meanwhile, anti-war activists protested the draft, escalating violence, and the sight of body bags returning from Vietnam. </p>
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<p>The U.S. musical soundscape shifted alongside these political, social and economic transformations. Art and politics merged through 1969’s Woodstock festival. Meanwhile, Black Power-driven messages started to emanate from the soul and gospel music distributed by the <a href="https://staxrecords.com/">Stax label</a> in Memphis and a host of other musicians who offered searing critiques of U.S. imperialism such as <a href="https://lithub.com/young-gifted-and-black-on-the-politicization-of-nina-simone/">Nina Simone</a>, <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/nation-now/2018/02/22/black-history-curtis-mayfield-voice-civil-rights/1005396001/">Curtis Mayfield</a> and <a href="https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/gil-scott-heron-guide-six-best-songs/">Gil Scott-Heron</a>. </p>
<h2>Hollering love across the nation</h2>
<p>Alongside this political shift came internal pressure in Motown to give artists more agency over their own output. As Motown performers matured artistically, some felt stifled by Gordy’s model and demanded more artistic control.</p>
<p>Gaye produced “What’s Going On” himself – a revolutionary act at Motown. The result is a painfully beautiful protest album from first track to last.</p>
<p>The opening lines of the album are sung softly, yet urgently: “Mother, mother, there’s far too many of you crying/ Brother, brother, brother, there’s far too many of you dying.” </p>
<p>Lyrics grapple with the effects of the war on families and the lives of young men sent overseas. The next song follows one of those young men home to a nation grappling with an <a href="https://www.thebalance.com/unemployment-rate-by-year-3305506">unemployment rate of 6%</a>. “Can’t find no work, can’t find no job, my friend,” Gaye laments on “What’s Happening Brother.” </p>
<p>The album’s final track conveys frustration: “Makes me wanna holler how they do my life … this ain’t living, this ain’t living.”</p>
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<p>In between, we have everything from an exploration of faith to the environmentalist anthem “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)” concluding with the refrain “How much more abuse from man can she [the earth] stand?” </p>
<p>Yet “What’s Going On” expresses hope. Gaye repeats the affirmation “right on” – a phrase distinctly grounded in black urban vernacular – throughout the album and on a song bearing that name. We first hear this phrase on the title track, “What’s Going On.” Gaye affirms “Right on, brother” to men who respond in kind at different points in the song. The call and response communicates a sense of shared concern, shared struggle, and shared redemption – an ethos Gaye took from the gospel tradition that informs his musicality. </p>
<p>This call and response is repeated in “Wholy Holy,” with Gaye utilizing a multitracking technique to layer two versions of his own vocals: </p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>We can conquer (yes we can) hate forever (oh Lord)<br>
Wholy (wholy holy, wholy holy)<br>
We can rock the world’s foundation<br>
Everybody together, together in wholy (wholy holy)<br>
We’ll holler love, love, love across the nation</em></p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Still a hit</h2>
<p>Gordy was initially <a href="http://abcnewsradioonline.com/music-news/2016/11/18/berry-gordy-says-marvin-gaye-had-to-convince-him-to-release.html">reluctant to embrace Gaye’s new direction</a>. But Motown could not ignore the album’s success. The title track reached the top spot on Billboard’s R&B chart and peaked at No. 2 on the Hot 100. The album remained on the charts for 58 weeks. </p>
<p>[<em>Over 100,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletter to understand the world.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=100Ksignup">Sign up today</a>.]</p>
<p>Gaye’s classic album still resonates with audiences on its 50th anniversary. The environmental messages of “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)” are just as germane today as 1971, as are the powerful statements on race, war and poverty on other tracks.</p>
<p>As someone who teaches courses on the history of music in the United States, I’ve noticed that most of my students immediately recognize songs from “What’s Going On” – an album released decades before they were born. In a nation where people continue to protest <a href="https://time.com/5949926/black-asian-solidarity-white-supremacy/">white supremacy</a>, <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/world/endless-war-afghanistan/">endless wars</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/22/us/politics/climate-protests-go-virtual-on-earth-day-but-still-have-a-voice.html">environmental damage</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/06/police-violence-protests-us-george-floyd">police brutality</a> <a href="https://www.poorpeoplescampaign.org/">and poverty</a>, “What’s Going On” remains as relevant as ever.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/155262/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tyina Steptoe does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Released at the height of the Vietnam War, Marvin Gaye’s hit-heavy album explored themes of race, environmentalism and conflict. It also marked a new direction for the Motown record label..Tyina Steptoe, Associate Professor of History, University of ArizonaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1569262021-03-26T15:02:44Z2021-03-26T15:02:44ZMusic streaming: listening to playlists drives down the revenue of smaller artists<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391682/original/file-20210325-19-1vp2h0n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C10%2C6960%2C4209&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Playlists curated by major music streaming platforms tend to reduce the revenue of smaller artists.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/portland-usa-mar-13-2021-assorted-1935354940">Tada Images/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When music fans listen to their favourite album, there’s a certain satisfaction derived from knowing that they paid for the music they love – they’re giving back to the artists who made it.</p>
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<p>That’s not the case on <a href="https://www.wired.co.uk/article/music-streaming-ucps-spotify">music streaming platforms</a>, where artists aren’t paid a fixed fee when you stream their songs or albums. Instead, your subscription fee enters a big pot which is then split between every artist on the platform based on their share of overall streams. You can think of the payment pot as a pie chart: the size of an artist’s slice of revenue is determined by how many streams they get compared with their fellow artists.</p>
<p>This might seem a fair way to distribute music streaming revenue. If Rihanna gets 1% of all streams on Spotify, it’s fair that she is paid 1% of the subscription revenue. But this system, called the pro rata payment model, begins to look unfair when the effects of curated playlists are taken into account.</p>
<p>Popular playlists are streamed repeatedly by millions of people, constituting <a href="https://www.goodwatercap.com/thesis/understanding-spotify">around a third</a> of all streams on platforms like Spotify – a third of the pro rata pie. Because the third of the streaming pie represented by playlists mostly features the world’s most prominent musicians, the effect of playlists is to enlarge the slices enjoyed by the biggest artists at the expense of smaller artists, who see their tiny slices shrink further. </p>
<p>This uneven playing field was the subject of our <a href="https://www.competitionpolicyinternational.com/music-streaming-is-it-a-level-playing-field/">recent investigation into playlists</a> on Spotify, conducted with royalty-pricing expert Daniel Antal. We found that playlists don’t just benefit top artists, but the curators of these playlists may unfairly favour such artists, influenced by the negotiating power of the major music labels that manage them.</p>
<h2>On demand</h2>
<p>Over the last few years, music streaming has become the dominant form of music distribution around the world. Today, streaming makes up <a href="https://www.ifpi.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Global_Music_Report-the_Industry_%20in_2019-en.pdf">over half</a> of global revenue from the selling of recorded music.</p>
<p>Globally, almost <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/653926/music-streaming-service-subscriber-share/">four in five</a> listeners use Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, Tencent or YouTube. Some of the music that listeners on these platforms come across is the result of a targeted search for a specific artist or an album, but many people choose to simply defer to a playlist of some sort to throw together their musical diet.</p>
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<img alt="A phone showing Spotify playlists against a green blackground" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391680/original/file-20210325-19-11scyi7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391680/original/file-20210325-19-11scyi7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391680/original/file-20210325-19-11scyi7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391680/original/file-20210325-19-11scyi7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391680/original/file-20210325-19-11scyi7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391680/original/file-20210325-19-11scyi7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391680/original/file-20210325-19-11scyi7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Independent label artists do not get their fair share of access to the most popular Spotify playlists.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/london-uk-march-2021-spotify-music-1932694550">Ink Drop/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>The biggest playlists on Spotify are curated by the platform’s editors, attracting <a href="https://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2020/11/20-most-popular-playlists-on-spotify.html">several million</a> regular listeners. As an artist, featuring in a top playlist is like hitting the jackpot: your streams will rocket, and your slice of the pie will increase. </p>
<p>There are over 4 billion playlists on Spotify, but those that make up the top 100 attract a quarter of all playlist followers. Our study found that 81% of the songs in these top 100 Spotify playlists are recordings by major music labels. <a href="https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w24713/w24713.pdf">A 2018 study</a> found inclusion in a top playlist with 18.5 million followers raises an artist’s streams by almost 20 million, and results in a payout of at least US$116,000 (£84,500).</p>
<h2>Getting listed</h2>
<p>Naturally, artists, record labels and their distribution partners are all interested in maximising the streams their songs receive and consequently the revenue they can pocket. Getting into the top playlists is a smart way of achieving this, but with around <a href="https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/over-60000-tracks-are-now-uploaded-to-spotify-daily-thats-nearly-one-per-second/">60,000 new songs</a> uploaded each day on Spotify alone, this is not a trivial task.</p>
<p>Major record labels, with their enormous catalogue of current and past music as a bargaining chip, are in a strong position to negotiate preferential playlist access. Their bargaining power is further enhanced by the <a href="https://musically.com/2021/01/19/major-labels-gave-evidence-to-the-uks-music-streaming-economics-inquiry-so-what-did-we-learn/">minimum payment guarantees</a> they include in their contracts with streaming platforms, and the <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/news/who-really-owns-spotify-955388/">equity stakes</a> they hold in some of them. The major labels also have their own large playlists, such as <a href="https://filtr.com/ro/spotify">Filtr</a> and <a href="https://topsify.com/GB">Topsify</a>, which further enhances playlist access for their artists.</p>
<p>As a result, our analysis of Spotify data suggests that independent label artists are getting less than their fair share of access to the most popular playlists. And under the pro rata system, that means smaller artists are seeing their streaming revenues further depleted – especially by heavy users, such as pubs and cafes, who are constantly playing popular playlists throughout the day.</p>
<h2>User centrism</h2>
<p>Earlier this month, musicians held a series of <a href="https://www.nme.com/news/music/musicians-protest-outside-spotify-offices-worldwide-for-justice-at-spotify-campaign-2901582">worldwide protests</a> outside Spotify’s offices. One of their demands was for Spotify to move towards a “user-centric” payment model.</p>
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<p>It’s a system we’d urgently recommend, as it would see the royalties generated by your subscription split simply between the artists you choose to listen to. The available evidence suggests that a move to user-centric payments would benefit local and national artists that cater for more niche tastes, redistributing this cash from the more international and mainstream stars.</p>
<p>In the UK, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport has formed a committee to investigate whether the <a href="https://committees.parliament.uk/work/646/economics-of-music-streaming/">economics of music streaming</a> is fair to all artists. Our study is one of the <a href="https://committees.parliament.uk/work/646/economics-of-music-streaming/publications/">submissions</a> to help the committee plan the way forward for music streaming in the UK.</p>
<p>In a pandemic hit world, where live music is almost completely (although hopefully only temporarily) eradicated, music streaming is an important source of income for musicians. But if independent labels and artists are left without a sufficient slice of the pie, it threatens the wonderful diversity of music we currently have on-demand access to, wherever we are in the world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/156926/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amelia Fletcher is a small-scale performing artist, with music available on the streaming platforms. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Ormosi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Most of your Spotify subscription fee goes to pop stars in curated playlists – even if you never listen to them.Peter Ormosi, Associate Professor of Competition Economics, University of East AngliaAmelia Fletcher, Professor of Competition Policy, University of East AngliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1570972021-03-19T14:08:22Z2021-03-19T14:08:22ZAudio cassettes: despite being ‘a bit rubbish’, sales have doubled during the pandemic – here’s why<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390418/original/file-20210318-23-s3jvbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4223%2C2786&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">It's not just old cassettes that are selling: the current crop of pop musicians are shifting their music on tapes, too.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/vilnius-lithuania-september-19-2020-large-1818353072">BOOCYS/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Described by some as “<a href="https://www.theverge.com/2015/9/2/9248209/ifa-2015-the-best-of-europes-biggest-tech-show">Europe’s biggest tech show</a>”, the Berlin Radio Show has long been famous for exhibiting the next big thing in consumer electronics. In 1963, that was the compact audio cassette, introduced at the time by its creator, the late Dutch engineer Lou Ottens, <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/lou-ottens-cassette-tape-inventor-b1815501.html">who died</a> in early March. </p>
<p>Over the course of Ottens’ lifetime, cassette tapes came to redefine listening habits, which until then had been limited to the much more unwieldy vinyl record. Car stereos and the iconic Sony Walkman suddenly made <a href="https://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/cassette-revolution/">individual listening experiences</a> possible outside of the home. The re-recordable nature of the format, meanwhile, helped music fans collate and circulate their own mixtapes. At its peak in 1989, the cassette tape was shifting <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4099904.stm">83 million units per year</a> in the UK alone.</p>
<p>Despite having been superseded in functionality first by the compact disc (CD) and then the digital file (mp3 and mp4), the audio cassette retains a special place in the history of audio technology, with mixtapes a precursor to playlists, and the Walkman the precursor to the iPod.</p>
<p>And, despite being considered aesthetically and materially inferior to the vinyl record that came before it, the audio cassette is actually experiencing something of a resurgence – partly for sentimental reasons, but also because, with gigs cancelled, it’s a smart way for smaller artists to monetise their work.</p>
<h2>Hit rewind</h2>
<p>Against a backdrop of a pandemic that has done huge <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/05/this-is-how-covid-19-is-affecting-the-music-industry/">damage to the music industry</a>, 2020 could justifiably be called the year of the cassette. According to British Phonographic Industry figures, <a href="https://www.bpi.co.uk/news-analysis/fans-turn-to-music-to-get-through-2020-as-a-new-wave-of-artists-fuels-streaming-growth/">156,542 cassettes</a> were sold in the UK last year, the highest figure since 2003 and an increase of 94.7% on 2019 sales. Seemingly out of the blue, global pop icons such as Lady Gaga, the 1975, and <a href="https://musicstore.dualipa.com/uk/future-nostalgia-gold-cassette.html">Dua Lipa</a> have started rushing out their new releases on cassette – and they’re selling out.</p>
<p>For those of us who are old enough to remember the cassette tape as a common format of music consumption, their resurgence is somewhat puzzling. After all, even in their heyday, cassettes were <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/music/news/cassette-tapes-dire-way-listen-music-earth-still-buying/">always a bit rubbish</a>. </p>
<p>They lacked the aesthetic appeal and the romance of the vinyl LP and its gatefold sleeve. Subsequently, they lacked the usability, flashiness and sonic fidelity of the CD. And there is not a music fan alive over the age of 35 who doesn’t have a horror story to tell about a favourite album or mixtape being chewed up by a malicious car stereo or portable boombox.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A silver boombox with a cassette tape holder in the middle" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390352/original/file-20210318-15-1ftti2t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390352/original/file-20210318-15-1ftti2t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390352/original/file-20210318-15-1ftti2t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390352/original/file-20210318-15-1ftti2t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390352/original/file-20210318-15-1ftti2t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390352/original/file-20210318-15-1ftti2t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390352/original/file-20210318-15-1ftti2t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The boombox may now appear fashionably retro – but that won’t stop it chewing up the occasional tape.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/retro-ghetto-blaster-isolated-on-white-248920240">Valentin Valkov/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Ottens himself was dismissive of the “nonsense” of a cassette revival, telling Dutch newspaper <a href="https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2018/02/15/het-cassettebandje-is-helemaal-terug-a1592250">NRC Handelsblad</a> that “nothing can match the sound” of the CD, the development of which he also played a key part in. For Ottens, the ultimate goal of any music format was clarity and precision of sound, though, in a nod to nostalgic listeners, he also conceded: “I think people mainly hear what they want to hear.”</p>
<h2>Feeling it</h2>
<p>As a scholar of <a href="https://journals.equinoxpub.com/PMH/article/view/39614">popular music and material culture</a>, I can’t help but wonder if Ottens’ strict utilitarian perspective misses a deeper point about the cassette tape and its recent resurgence as a medium in popular culture. </p>
<p>After all, the cultural enjoyment of music goes far beyond narrow debates about sound quality. Our enjoyment of music, and the cultural rituals surrounding that enjoyment, is a complex and <a href="https://journals.equinoxpub.com/index.php/PMH/article/view/41832">deeply social thing</a> that engages more than just our ears.</p>
<p>The ongoing revival of the record, for instance, is sometimes explained as a turn back to vinyl’s superior sound. But it’s just as often regarded as a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10253866.2016.1212709">cultural turn</a> back to an iconic medium, steeped in musical history, that people can feel, handle, and experience together – unlike a digital file. Though they may be less iconic, cassettes also represent cultural moments of cherished significance to music fans.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A hand feels a cassette tape into a stereo" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390416/original/file-20210318-19-19yeqj2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390416/original/file-20210318-19-19yeqj2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390416/original/file-20210318-19-19yeqj2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390416/original/file-20210318-19-19yeqj2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390416/original/file-20210318-19-19yeqj2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390416/original/file-20210318-19-19yeqj2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390416/original/file-20210318-19-19yeqj2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Many music fans appreciate the tactile nature of old analogue formats like the audio cassette.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/close-hand-pick-tape-cassette-playervintage-633010601">arrowsmith2/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the mid 2010s, I investigated the first signs of this resurgence of cassettes within Glasgow’s indie and punk scenes as part of my <a href="https://www.academia.edu/26807403/From_Analogue_to_Digital_From_Pragmatism_to_Symbolism_The_Cassette_Tape_as_a_Hybrid_Artefact_in_Contemporary_Popular_Music">PhD</a>, talking to musicians, labels and fans about the resurgence of cassette tapes. In these conversations, the materiality of these objects – their physical, tangible presence – was often highlighted as a motivating factor. </p>
<p>As one fan remarked to me: “I just like having things. They’re all kind of becoming a bit defunct now, but I just like having something. That’s my hobby, music is my hobby, and that’s how I spend my money.”</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/music-collectors-seek-out-rare-albums-not-available-on-streaming-126488">Music collectors seek out rare albums not available on streaming</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<p>There’s also an economic component to the cassette resurgence. With <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17510694.2015.1096618?scroll=top&needAccess=true">debates raging</a> about how music streaming services should reimburse artists, independent musicians have, for some time, been looking to the sale of <a href="https://www.prescient.digital/blog/2020/3/24/streaming-vs-merchandising-the-real-money-maker-for-musicians">physical products and merchandise</a> as a means of generating income.</p>
<p>For Glasgow’s indie and punk bands, as with today’s independent artists, cassettes actually represented a <a href="https://www.nme.com/blogs/nme-blogs/cassettes-resurgence-103-percent-increase-2711548">cost-effective</a> means of providing a physical product, far cheaper than pressing a vinyl record and printing sleeves and packaging. As one label owner put it, “we tend to release on tape because it’s cheap to manufacture, it’s easy to recoup, and it leaves money left over for the bands to get something”.</p>
<p>While the practices of these small, independent artists may feel quite far removed from the recent embrace of cassette tapes by mainstream pop stars, each arguably has their roots in a desire for <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/03007766.2015.1061339">analogue products we can touch</a> in an increasingly digital world mediated via screens.</p>
<p>Many people have reported feelings of <a href="https://theconversation.com/lockdown-quarantine-and-self-isolation-how-different-covid-restrictions-affect-our-mental-health-153595">digital detachment and alienation</a> during the pandemic. It doesn’t seem unreasonable to suggest that a desire for something we can actually feel, embellished with a <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56252465">nostalgic glow</a> from a COVID-free past, may also explain the resurgence of the audio cassette, nearly 60 years since its Berlin debut.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/157097/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Iain Taylor does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Cassette tapes are in again – and this time, it’s smaller artists who look likely to gain.Iain Taylor, Lecturer in Music Industries, Birmingham City UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1541642021-02-03T13:11:59Z2021-02-03T13:11:59ZWhat The Weeknd’s changing face says about our sick celebrity culture<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381792/original/file-20210201-17-1r6aoeu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=103%2C1%2C1101%2C716&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Weeknd performs at the 2020 American Music Awards on Nov. 22 in Los Angeles.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/in-this-screengrab-released-on-november-22-the-weeknd-news-photo/1287129877?adppopup=true">AMA2020 via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>You might have seen The Weeknd’s altered face on the internet lately – either bloodied and covered in bandages or transformed by faux plastic surgery. With the 30-year-old singer <a href="https://www.nfl.com/super-bowl/halftime-show">set to perform at the Super Bowl LV halftime show</a> on Feb. 7, it’ll be interesting to see whether he continues the act before hundreds of millions of viewers.</p>
<p>The changes to The Weeknd’s face didn’t simply appear overnight. </p>
<p>Rather, they surfaced as a slow crescendo, as notes in a larger arrangement.</p>
<p>Initially, there were facial bruises at the end of his “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NRXx6U8ABQ">Blinding Lights</a>” music video, in which an all-night bender ends in a car accident. He sported a bandaged nose for performances on “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJYpyC1SNPc">Jimmy Kimmel Live</a>” in January 2020 and “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17GxpgE-Fwo">Saturday Night Live</a>” in March 2020. Later that March, the bloodied nose and lips appeared <a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c1/The_Weeknd_-_After_Hours.png">on the cover</a> of “After Hours,” his most recent album.</p>
<p>He took the performance a step further at the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-g_SHNv5NI">2020 American Music Awards</a>, showing up with his whole head covered in bandages, which <a href="https://www.the-sun.com/entertainment/1843099/the-weeknd-face-mask-bandages-amas-2020/">worried some fans</a> who assumed the they were real. When those bandages came off for the “Save Your Tears” <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXYlFuWEuKI">music video</a>, a face disfigured by excessive plastic surgery was revealed – a carefully constructed visage created using makeup and prostheses that made him nearly unrecognizable.</p>
<p>As an anthropologist who has been analyzing <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520293885/the-biopolitics-of-beauty">the societal implications of plastic surgery</a> for over 15 years, I was struck by The Weeknd’s use of this medical practice.</p>
<p>What, I wondered, was he trying to say?</p>
<p>Initially, I’d assumed the bruises and bandages were a metaphor for The Weeknd’s struggle with drug addiction, <a href="https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/pop-shop/6663161/weeknd-lana-del-rey-songs-about-drugs-pop-radio-analysis">a topic he has long explored in his music</a>. He’s noted that, when scripting his music videos for “After Hours,” <a href="https://www.crfashionbook.com/mens/a34877992/the-weeknd-change-outfit/">he was inspired</a> by the film “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” in which writer Hunter S. Thompson, played by Johnny Depp, often hallucinates or spirals out of control. </p>
<p>However, another key emerges in the videos from the “After Hours” album. In all the videos, people are constantly watching him, whether it’s the crowd of stiff, masked fans in the “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXYlFuWEuKI">Save Your Tears</a>” music video or the frantic crowd reaching out to grab him as he tries to escape at the end of “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i58MNnk6BhY">Until I Bleed Out</a>.” </p>
<p>In both cases, he seems to be comparing fandom to an unsettling loss of privacy, one where his very safety is at stake. It’s not that he fears his fans will hurt him. It’s more a commentary on how his celebrity status makes him vulnerable to a prying gaze at all times.</p>
<p>In his most violent music video to date – for the song “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wh8DT09QCHI">Too Late</a>” – the themes of plastic surgery and fandom collide. Two wealthy white women with bandaged heads find his severed head and swoon over it, before deciding to murder a Black male stripper so they can attach The Weeknd’s head onto that muscular body. </p>
<p>The racial dynamics of the video are hard to miss: The women seem to exoticize Blackness and reduce the body parts of two Black men to objects that give them pleasure.</p>
<p>People love musical performances – or art, more generally – because it’s pleasurable to soak in the talented work of other people. </p>
<p>In the celebrity culture of <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/05/late-capitalism/524943/">late capitalism</a>, however, artists are finding it more and more difficult to separate themselves from their art: The show continues after the work has been published or the performance has concluded. Fans feel entitled to access all aspects of their personal lives – even their bodies.</p>
<p>Communication scholar P. David Marshall <a href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/celebrity-and-power">has written about</a> the ways in which the public assumes celebrities are automatically open to – or deserving of – scrutiny thanks to their fame. When their privacy is invaded, it’s simply shrugged off as coming with the territory.</p>
<p>Some celebrities, like the Kardashians, <a href="https://www.instyle.com/celebrity/kim-kardashian-makes-more-money-on-instagram-than-kuwtk">lean into it</a>. They’re willing to expose themselves in increasingly invasive ways – whether it’s through social media or reality television – because they want to exploit the symbiotic relationship between media exposure, wealth and power. </p>
<p>But other celebrities, like <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/09/lady-gaga-hated-being-famous">Lady Gaga</a>, have been forthright about the ways in which fame has harmed their mental health. Musicians like <a href="https://www.npr.org/2014/07/08/329500971/a-reluctant-star-sia-deals-with-fame-on-her-own-terms">Sia</a> and <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/why-daft-punk-wear-helmets-182716/">Daft Punk</a> have gone to great lengths to hide their faces and protect their privacy, making it part of their act. </p>
<p>By using bandages and prostheses to hide his face, perhaps The Weeknd is also telling us that parts of his life are off limits – and should stay that way.</p>
<p>The Weeknd also seems to be acknowledging the immense pressures that celebrities feel to conform to unrealistic beauty standards. Celebrity journalism can be particularly cruel when famous people fail to measure up, with the <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/04/shooting-britney/306735/">paparazzi making a fortune off pictures that demonstrate celebrities as vulnerable or imperfect</a>.</p>
<p>[<em>Insight, in your inbox each day.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=insight">Get The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>Feminist and literary scholar Virginia Blum <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520244733/flesh-wounds">has written about</a> how celebrities are admired for their ability to transform and beautify themselves, and yet they also become canvases for harsh critique when it seems they’ve gone too far with plastic surgery or have aged ungracefully. </p>
<p>For celebrities, it can sometimes seem that there’s no pleasing anyone. By making those concerns with superficial beauty part of his art, The Weeknd seems to throw that mirror back at his listeners, asking them to reflect on the irrelevance of his appearance to his craft.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/154164/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alvaro Jarrin's research on plastic surgery was funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies.</span></em></p>Over the past year, the singer has carefully constructed a visage that has made him nearly unrecognizable.Carmen Alvaro Jarrin, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, College of the Holy CrossLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1514792021-01-04T19:11:08Z2021-01-04T19:11:08ZStream weavers: the musicians’ dilemma in Spotify’s pay-to-play plan<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374970/original/file-20201214-19-1yyaqfk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C82%2C5000%2C2971&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Spotify offered the promise that, in the age of digital downloads, all artists would get paid for their music, and some would get paid a lot. </p>
<p>Lorde and Billie Eilish showed what was possible. </p>
<p>Lorde was just 16 when, in 2012, she uploaded her debut EP to SoundCloud. A few months later, Sean Parker (of Napster and Facebook fame) put her first single — “Royals” — on his popular Spotify Hipster International <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenbertoni/2013/11/26/how-spotify-made-lorde-a-pop-superstar/?sh=33c6b50d76b4">playlist</a>. The song has sold more than 10 million copies.</p>
<p>Eilish’s rags-to-riches story is a little murkier. But <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/alessadominguez/is-billie-eilish-really-that-weird">the approved narrative</a> begins in 2015, when the 13-year-old uploaded “Ocean Eyes” (a song written by her older brother) to SoundCloud. She was “discovered”. Spotify enthusiastically promoted “Ocean Eyes” on its Today’s Top Hits playlist. She is now the youngest artist with a billion streams to her name, and Spotify’s most-streamed female artist for <a href="https://newsroom.spotify.com/2020-12-01/the-trends-that-shaped-streaming-in-2020/">the past two years</a> </p>
<h2>The new hit squad</h2>
<p>Streaming now accounts for more than half of <a href="https://www.ifpi.org/ifpi-issues-annual-global-music-report">recorded music revenue</a>. Spotify has about a <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/653926/music-streaming-service-subscriber-share/">third of the subscribers paying for music streaming</a>. Playlists overtook albums as the preferred way of listening to sequences of songs <a href="https://pitchfork.com/features/article/9686-up-next-how-playlists-are-curating-the-future-of-music/">about five years ago</a>.</p>
<p>Appearing on a prominent Spotify playlist is therefore a big deal. </p>
<p>Economists <a href="https://www.nber.org/papers/w24713">Luis Aguiar and Joel Waldfogel</a> calculated (in 2018) that a song appearing on Today’s Top Hits was worth about 20 million extra streams and US$116,000 to US$163,000 in royalty payments. That was when Today’s Top Hits had about 18.5 million subscribers. It now has <a href="https://www.businessofapps.com/data/spotify-statistics/">more than 26 million</a>. </p>
<p>With so much power, what will Spotify do next?</p>
<p>The answer, apparently, is to run a pay-to-play “<a href="https://newsroom.spotify.com/2020-11-02/amplifying-artist-input-in-your-personalized-recommendations/">experiment</a>”, dropping Spotify’s “<a href="https://artists.spotify.com/blog/share-new-music-for-playlist-consideration">crystal clear</a>” commitment in 2018 that “no one can pay to be added to one of Spotify’s editorial playlists”. But now there’s this:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In this new experiment, artists and labels can identify music that’s a priority for them, and our system will add that signal to the algorithm that determines personalised listening sessions.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The catch is musicians must accept a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/nov/03/spotify-artists-promote-music-exchange-cut-royalty-rates-payola-algorithm">lower payment</a> — a “promotional recording royalty rate” — on any song streamed as a result.</p>
<h2>The prisoner’s dilemma</h2>
<p>Spotify presents music uploaders with a conundrum known to economists as the “prisoner’s dilemma” — a classic paradox of game theory. </p>
<p>This is where an article typically references the 2001 biopic “A Beautiful Mind”, about mathematical genius John Nash, who won a <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/1994/nash/facts/">Nobel economics prize</a> for his contributions to game theory. In the movie Nash (played by Russell Crowe) talks about the <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-349-20181-5_23">prisoner’s dilemma</a> in the context of chatting up women.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Obligatory image of John Nash (played by Russell Crowe) discussing game theory in the 2001 biographical picture 'A Beautiful Mind'." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375093/original/file-20201215-17-czuhk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375093/original/file-20201215-17-czuhk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375093/original/file-20201215-17-czuhk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375093/original/file-20201215-17-czuhk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375093/original/file-20201215-17-czuhk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375093/original/file-20201215-17-czuhk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375093/original/file-20201215-17-czuhk7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">John Nash (played by Russell Crowe) discusses game theory at the pub in the 2001 biographical picture ‘A Beautiful Mind’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Imagine Entertainment</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>One formulation of the prisoner’s dilemma involves two individuals arrested together for possessing stolen items. A conviction for possession carries a six-month jail term. The police suspect the pair might have stolen the items. Burglary carries a five-year sentence. Without evidence, however, to secure a burglary conviction needs one or both prisoners confessing and implicating the other.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/sure-interest-rates-are-negative-but-so-are-some-prices-and-when-you-look-around-theyre-everywhere-152081">Sure, interest rates are negative, but so are some prices, and when you look around, they're everywhere</a>
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<p>The prisoners are separated. Each is offered a deal: immunity from prosecution on any charge if they confess and that confession leads to the other’s conviction on both charges. </p>
<p>Each prisoner understands they are better off collectively to both stay silent. But neither can be sure the other will.</p>
<ul>
<li><p>if both stay silent, both get six months for possession</p></li>
<li><p>if only one confesses, they go free while the other gets five years</p></li>
<li><p>if both confess, both get five years.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>The most predictable outcome is that both decide to confess. This is the celebrated “Nash equilibrium”, in which both players, neither wanting to be the sucker, make uncooperative decisions leading to the worse outcome for both. </p>
<h2>The musician’s dilemma</h2>
<p>The musician’s dilemma is that the best cooperative outcome is all artists refusing Spotify’s offer. No one gains, but no one loses either. </p>
<p>But who’s going to organise that, given the understandable fear of repercussions <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/dec/01/mps-warn-music-streaming-platforms-against-interference-in-inquiry?CMP=twt_a-culture_b-gdnculture">for going against Spotify</a>? </p>
<p>Best placed to resist are Spotify’s superstars — the likes of Eilish, Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, Ed Sheeran, Drake and Bad Bunny, with billions of streams between them. They have diversified marketing and revenue sources, and are cash cows Spotify doesn’t want to lose. </p>
<p>The most likely outcome is many or most musicians accepting lower song payments from Spotify, putting the squeeze on struggling musicians who refuse while making little difference to the prominence super streamers get from Spotify’s algorithms. </p>
<h2>Looking beyond Spotify</h2>
<p>Spotify’s deal has no attraction for Melbourne guitarist Sheldon King. He has decided to quit Spotify. </p>
<p>Originally from the UK and an accomplished live performer, the classically trained guitarist split his time in 2020 between session work, teaching and writing and recording. He released his album <a href="https://sheldonking.bandcamp.com/album/navigating-by-the-stars">Navigating by the Stars</a> in November on BandCamp.</p>
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<p>“I am removing most of my music from Spotify,” King says. He cites all the small costs of getting songs onto streaming sites — paying a distribution service such as Tunecore, for example. “They don’t seem like much, but they can add up. With Spotify’s already laughably small royalty per stream, it’s easy to spend more money than you make.”</p>
<h2>Power imbalance</h2>
<p>After the most difficult year for many working musicians in memory, Spotify’s new strategy has been compared, imperfectly, to the days of <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/28b08913-b746-4a47-b817-2f2aeef32b89">radio stations and presenters</a> seeking bribes from record companies to play their songs.</p>
<p>There’s a key difference. Now Spotify is the most influential radio programmer on Earth, deciding the new songs millions of listeners hear in any minute. </p>
<p>And instead of a handful of record companies, every aspiring musician is now able to record and upload a song. Spotify gets about <a href="https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/nearly-40000-tracks-are-now-being-added-to-spotify-every-single-day/">40,000 new uploads</a> a day.</p>
<p>Spotify says it paid more than <a href="https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/9474976/daniel-ek-spotify-price-increase-rights-holder-quarterly-payouts#:%7E:text=Watch%20Now-,Daniel%20Ek%20Floats%20Price%20Hike%2C%20Says%20Spotify%20Has%20Paid%20Out,to%20Rights%20Holders%20Each%20Quarter&text=Daniel%20Ek%20speaks%20onstage%20during,2018%20in%20New%20York%20City">US$3.5 billion</a> to rights holders in the first nine months of 2019. But surveys of musicians suggest very few can make a living from streaming. A <a href="https://ivorsacademy.com/news/8-out-of-10-music-creators-earn-less-than-200-a-year-from-streaming-finds-survey-ahead-of-songwriters-and-artists-giving-evidence-to-a-select-committee-of-mps/">British survey</a> has found eight in 10 musicians earned less than £200 (A$355) a year from streaming, with 90% saying streaming accounted for less than 5% of their earnings. </p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/even-famous-musicians-struggle-to-make-a-living-from-streaming-heres-how-to-change-that-151969">Even famous musicians struggle to make a living from streaming – here’s how to change that</a>
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<hr>
<p>Music streaming has created a market power imbalance between corporate leviathans such as Spotify, Apple, Amazon and Tencent and the millions of individual performing artists. It is a challenge to shift the balance of power a bit towards the artists, without losing the benefits to the listening public of access to a wider range of music with far greater convenience than ever imaginable before.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/151479/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Spotify is offering to boost artists’ position on its playlists in return for paying them lower royalties. Can struggling musicians afford to say no?John Hawkins, Senior Lecturer, Canberra School of Politics, Economics and Society, University of CanberraBen Freyens, Associate Professor, University of CanberraMichael James Walsh, Associate Professor, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1519692020-12-16T16:00:18Z2020-12-16T16:00:18ZEven famous musicians struggle to make a living from streaming – here’s how to change that<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375111/original/file-20201215-15-10laej2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=44%2C62%2C5946%2C3916&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/rostovondon-russia-july-8-2019-screen-1445277104">nikkimeel/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>If you’re a music lover, chances are you’ll have used streaming services of some kind. Music streaming accounts for more than half of the global music industry’s revenue in the UK, bringing in more than £1 billion in the last year. </p>
<p>But while the three major labels – Sony, Universal and Warner – are reporting <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/news/musics-big-three-labels-19-million-a-day-from-streaming-798749/">record high profits</a>, a poll by <a href="https://ivorsacademy.com/news/8-out-of-10-music-creators-earn-less-than-200-a-year-from-streaming-finds-survey-ahead-of-songwriters-and-artists-giving-evidence-to-a-select-committee-of-mps/">The Ivors Academy and Musicians’ Union</a> found that eight out of ten music creators earn less than £200 a year from streaming. According to <a href="https://www.nme.com/news/music/new-figures-show-how-many-streams-artists-need-to-earn-minimum-wage-2649715#:%7E:text=With%20an%20average%20payout%20of,average%20rate%20of%20%C2%A30.0012.">one report</a>, artists earn on average only £0.009 per stream.</p>
<p>The UK government is now carrying out an <a href="https://committees.parliament.uk/work/646/economics-of-music-streaming/">inquiry</a> into music streaming, looking at how to make it fairer and if there’s a way musicians and songwriters can get a greater cut. Artists who have given evidence include Ed O'Brien from Radiohead, Elbow’s Guy Garvey and disco legend Nile Rodgers, while Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin also <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CIllodOjqvU/">published a letter of support</a>.</p>
<p>Singer-songwriter <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/nov/24/nadine-shah-i-cant-pay-the-rent-on-unfair-music-streaming-revenues">Nadine Shah</a> also gave evidence at the inquiry, saying artists and songwriters are struggling to pay their rent. And the inquiry heard how Fiona Bevan, who has written songs for One Direction and Lewis Capaldi, only received £100 in royalties for co-writing a track on Kylie Minogue’s number one album, Disco. </p>
<p>But there could be a way to make streaming work for musicians - if it was more like how they already earn money from their songs being played on the radio. </p>
<h2>So how did we get here?</h2>
<p>The music industry has always made more money for record labels than it has artists. And now that streaming is the main way that many of us consume music, there’s even less money left for musicians. </p>
<p>Streaming services such as Apple Music and Spotify make money from subscription fees and advertising. They make deals with record labels to get access to songs. Platforms keep about 30% of the revenue from streaming, 15% goes to what’s known as a music publisher - who represent songwriters – while the record label gets 55%. And the label then pays a percentage of this to the artists – after they’ve paid back the label’s investment in them. </p>
<p>But while artists get money whenever their songs are played on radio, streaming does not work in the same way. This is because radio is considered a “passive” broadcast, meaning you don’t select the music. Whereas streaming is seen to be an online “transmission”, with people choosing songs and listening at their leisure. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Woman holding phone looking at spotify" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375112/original/file-20201215-21-48n3ld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375112/original/file-20201215-21-48n3ld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375112/original/file-20201215-21-48n3ld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375112/original/file-20201215-21-48n3ld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375112/original/file-20201215-21-48n3ld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375112/original/file-20201215-21-48n3ld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375112/original/file-20201215-21-48n3ld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Thank you for the music, but who gets the money?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/penang-malaysia-29-aug-2018-close-1773091049">TYLIM/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But a big part of streaming platforms are the playlists, which people listen to in the same way as they do radio. This issue is complicated by the fact that some people actually <a href="https://medium.com/@jessicafrech/this-is-how-you-get-added-to-spotifys-curated-playlists-7f01f2f6b891">earn money</a> for creating playlists. But, neither the users or the artists are told about the deals made to get music onto these playlists. </p>
<p>As part of the evidence I’ve given to the goverment’s inquiry, I recommend playlisters should be considered influencers. And so they should be regulated by the UK Advertising Standards Agency – much in the same way as <a href="https://theconversation.com/instagram-influencers-no-having-30-000-followers-does-not-make-you-a-celebrity-120686">promotional social media posts</a> are. </p>
<h2>A possible solution</h2>
<p>As I explain in my book, <a href="https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/gbp/copyright-in-the-music-industry-9781839101281.html">Copyright in the Music Industry</a>, copyright law is supposed to ensure that creators get paid for their work, which enables them to continue to create and disseminate that creativity – benefiting society as a whole. </p>
<p>While the music industry and streaming services are being very well rewarded for their dissemination of music, copyright is failing artists and songwriters. But luckily, copyright is not set in stone and where it’s not working, the law can be changed – it’s always updated to adapt to new technologies and now it needs to adjust to music streaming. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Musician Nadine Shah singing into microphone." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375108/original/file-20201215-17-bu0t2w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375108/original/file-20201215-17-bu0t2w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375108/original/file-20201215-17-bu0t2w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375108/original/file-20201215-17-bu0t2w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375108/original/file-20201215-17-bu0t2w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375108/original/file-20201215-17-bu0t2w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375108/original/file-20201215-17-bu0t2w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nadine Shah makes so little money from streaming that she’s struggling to pay her rent.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/bbc-6-music-festival-march-8th-1668422911">CJS Media/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One solution that could help struggling musicians would be “equitable remuneration” for streaming. This is where a third party collecting society takes a royalty from the label and gives it to the artist for the streaming of their music – just like what already happens when a song is played on the radio.
This puts money straight into the artist’s pocket. Something similar to this already exists in other countries such as Spain and the Netherlands.</p>
<p>This would allow artists to be fairly paid which is vitally important, because without a fair income, many artists will be unable to sustain themselves in music. Change is needed not only for artists, but for music to survive.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/151969/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hayleigh Bosher does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Musicians and songwriters are struggling to survive while record labels are reporting record profits – here’s why this is happening.Hayleigh Bosher, Senior Lecturer in Intellectual Property Law, Brunel University LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1521252020-12-16T15:55:54Z2020-12-16T15:55:54ZHow Greek musicians weathered an economic crisis could help UK performers handle COVID fall-out<p>On the evening of Sunday December 13 the president of the Greek Musicians’ Union stood in front of an empty auditorium at the Athens Music Hall, as thousands watched at home. Opening <a href="https://estage.gr/videos/gia-olou-tou-kosmou-to-psomi-to-fos-kai-to-tragoudi/">a virtual concert in support of music workers</a>, his words were emotional – but firm:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We want to make known that the music we love and keeps us company in our most difficult and most beautiful moments, is the result of a complex form of labour, which takes toil, sacrifice and dedication.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The idea that musicians are workers is self-evident – yet somehow often disregarded. As a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/dec/02/strictly-bbc-dropped-us-after-we-asked-to-be-paid-say-musicians">recent controversy involving the BBC</a> has brought to the fore once again, employers, organisations and the state frequently assume that musicians will <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/small-business-network/2017/may/18/all-work-and-no-pay-creative-industries-freelancers-are-exploited">perform unpaid</a>, merely for “exposure”.</p>
<p>My research on Greek musicians over the past 15 years has shown that work in artistic performance is as precarious as it is enjoyable. Musicians all over the world see creative opportunity in being “free” from permanent contractual employment, but these conditions often make them poorly paid, prone to exploitation, and insecure when it comes to work.</p>
<p>This is especially true in places that have suffered long periods of austerity, such as <a href="https://www-cdn.oxfam.org/s3fs-public/file_attachments/cs-true-cost-austerity-inequality-greece-120913-en_0.pdf">Greece</a> and the <a href="https://undocs.org/A/HRC/41/39/Add.1">UK</a>. Under COVID-19, the <a href="http://qpol.qub.ac.uk/performing-artists-in-the-age-of-covid-19/">precarious condition of performing workers</a> has reached such breaking point that <a href="https://encoremusicians.com/blog/musicians-leaving-music-industry/">many will be unable to continue</a> in their careers. Listening to musicians’ experiences could tell us a lot about how to defend the creative industries without leaving anyone behind.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Group of UK musicians protesting outside British parliament against shutdown of music industry due to Covid" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375411/original/file-20201216-13-tj2qqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375411/original/file-20201216-13-tj2qqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375411/original/file-20201216-13-tj2qqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375411/original/file-20201216-13-tj2qqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375411/original/file-20201216-13-tj2qqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375411/original/file-20201216-13-tj2qqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375411/original/file-20201216-13-tj2qqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">British musicians outside the UK parliament in October 2020 protesting the shutdown of their industry.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/londonunited-kingdom-october-18-2020-young-1835819113">Ilyas Tayfun Salci/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Is music work or play?</h2>
<p>When lockdown measures across Europe began, I was finishing a book on <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Musicians-in-Crisis-Working-and-Playing-in-the-Greek-Popular-Music-Industry/Tsioulakis/p/book/9781138615441">Musicians in Crisis</a>, based on research in Greece since 2005. As I witnessed venues closing and gigs being cancelled across the globe, the words of my research participants resonated more than ever.</p>
<p>Musicians were eager to tell me that “crisis” in their work was somehow both new and familiar. Even as the infamous <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-45245969">Greek financial crisis</a> became particularly devastating after 2010, musicians experienced it as an intensifying of the precarity they had dealt with their whole lives.</p>
<p>As before, they still had to balance several, often contradictory, engagements. They still had to confront exploitative employers or fight for their right to get paid and receive legal benefits and social insurance. Musicians have always been conditioned in job insecurity – long before austerity and crisis. But as cultural academic Angela McRobbie has <a href="https://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue41/amcrobbie41.pdf">shown in the UK</a>, these conditions of insecurity in the creative sector are “a way of laying the groundwork for the transformation of work, first for the few, then possibly for the many”. In other words, musicians may be a test-tube case for making other kinds of work more precarious.</p>
<p>As economic crisis intensified in Greece, these jobs became shorter term with lower pay, so musicians needed to work harder across more sectors. Gigs were scarcer, so they became more competitive, which made the idea of musician collectivism less appealing.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A group of musicians protesting against lack of support for struggling artists in Athens." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375391/original/file-20201216-19-c12x69.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375391/original/file-20201216-19-c12x69.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375391/original/file-20201216-19-c12x69.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375391/original/file-20201216-19-c12x69.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375391/original/file-20201216-19-c12x69.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375391/original/file-20201216-19-c12x69.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375391/original/file-20201216-19-c12x69.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Panhellenic Musicians’ Union in Athens get vocal about the plight of struggling artists in May 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Unionisation and campaigning was not much in evidence throughout that period. This is partly because musicians in Greece do not see themselves as a collective campaigning body and receive very little support from the state or arts organisations. There is also considerable mistrust – even fear – of those in power in the music industry, who are often seen as rogue and unregulated.</p>
<p>As a result, during the crisis musicians had to battle it out individually and in isolation, leading to personal moments of rupture and issues of mental health, as was also the case on other countries, including the <a href="https://www.helpmusicians.org.uk/news/latest-news/can-music-make-you-sick">UK</a>.</p>
<p>What worked for many of the musicians I interviewed was compartmentalising work and play. They emphasised that their work as hired performers needed to be properly compensated and safeguarded by hard-won labour rights. At the same time, they kept a portion of their activities separate in the realm of play, where they allowed themselves to indulge in creativity simply for their own pleasure.</p>
<p>Away from the precarious professional music industry, some joined groups where they could perform for enjoyment in smaller venues and for select audiences. These musical micro-cultures rarely generated much profit. Instead they were a way of resisting the commercialisation of the industry by finding expressive forms outside it. But division of work and play brings with it the danger of exploitation. The UK Musicians’ Union’s <a href="http://www.worknotplay.co.uk/about-the-campaign/">Work Not Play campaign</a> speaks directly to this issue by stressing that the pleasure of making music should not excuse practices of unpaid labour.</p>
<h2>Will Covid see the end of musicians?</h2>
<p>Research commissioned by musical and cultural initiative <a href="https://aptaliko.gr/">Aptaliko</a> – to be published in January 2021 – will show that the overwhelming majority of musicians in Greece have lost more than half of their earnings as a result of the pandemic. This mirrors recent findings in the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-54966060">UK</a>, <a href="https://www.apmusicales.com/informe-del-impacto-del-sector-de-la-musica-en-vivo-por-la-crisis-del-coronavirus-de-esmusica/">Spain</a>, and <a href="https://datasim.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/DATA-SIM-Research-Covid-19-Brazil.pdf">Brazil</a>.</p>
<p>Under these conditions, performing might become a luxury only for those who can afford it, while many musicians will <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/sep/22/one-third-british-musicians-may-quit-industry-covid-pandemic-dcms-treasury">abandon the profession altogether</a>. Apart from the devastation this will cause arts professionals, it is also worth considering the impact on music itself. What kind of performing arts will we have if what remains only reflects the experiences and the sensibilities of the privileged few?</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Nohbl4nI4DI?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<p>Thankfully, the pandemic crisis is also generating new solidarity and campaigns among performing workers. The <a href="https://musiciansunion.org.uk/campaigns/invest-in-musicians">UK Musicians’ Union</a> is <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/musicians-union-artist-support-arts-government-universal-basic-income-a9625511.html">campaigning for universal basic income</a>, and in Greece a new grassroots movement under the hashtag <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Support-ART-Workers-115572620137765/">#SupportArtWorkers</a> has been gathering momentum across sectors of creative professionals.</p>
<p>As many of these campaigns talk to one another and develop new demands, it is worth remembering that musicians and their colleagues in other creative industries have been in crisis for a long time. What they need in a post-Covid future is not a return to a perverse and unequal “normal”, but a radical rethinking of employment conditions that ensures fair pay and rights for all.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/152125/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ioannis Tsioulakis does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Greek musicians have shown that developing new solidarities and campaigning initiatives with other performers could be the way forward in responding to issues caused by COVID.Ioannis Tsioulakis, Senior Lecturer in Anthropology and Ethnomusicology, Queen's University BelfastLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1462062020-10-12T18:45:15Z2020-10-12T18:45:15ZHow toy pianos went from child’s play into classical concert halls<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/359751/original/file-20200924-22-11tzoet.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C29%2C4881%2C3224&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A child’s toy may seem like an unlikely candidate for the classical concert hall. Around the world, however, thousands of musicians gather every year for festivals, conferences and concerts dedicated to the toy piano. </p>
<p>Exploring its sound, range, and playing technique, these composers and performers congregate to talk about latest developments in toy piano music and perform new pieces.</p>
<p>Along with many festivals in the <a href="https://library.ucsd.edu/news-events/events/toy-piano-festival-2020/">US</a> and <a href="https://toypiano-weekend.de/en/out-of-this-world/">Germany</a>, <a href="https://music-as-play.wixsite.com/toypiano">Italy</a> and <a href="https://toymusic.modoo.at">Korea</a> have both held their first toy piano festival in recent years.</p>
<p>Pop artists such as <a href="https://www.facebook.com/schoenhut/photos/a.439767672722639/679368202095917/?type=1&theater">Bruno Mars</a> and groups such as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_exesnCA5Y&ab_channel=Coldplay">Coldplay</a> have brought a larger audience to what was once considered a niche and experimental use of the instrument. Search “toy piano” or “tiny piano” on Twitter or Facebook and you’ll find countless posts featuring performers and composers using or discussing the instrument. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/NLq8-7Mspb4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Old music can sound new on a toy piano.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/jamming-with-your-toddler-how-music-trumps-reading-for-childhood-development-49660">Jamming with your toddler: how music trumps reading for childhood development</a>
</strong>
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<hr>
<h2>Serious music with a playful spin</h2>
<p>Toy pianos, despite being designed and marketed to children and families, have been used for decades to write everything from concertos to pop songs.</p>
<p>French composer <a href="https://www.yanntiersen.com/">Yann Tiersen</a> used one prominently in his score to the 2001 film Amélie to represent the title character’s inner child.</p>
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<p>Neil Diamond’s song, Shilo, is one of the earliest pop songs to feature toy piano (you can hear it in the bridge at about the 2:28 mark <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cm85iAo05TQ&ab_channel=NeilDiamond-Topic&t=2m25s">here</a>).</p>
<p>And John Cage’s 1940s suite for toy piano, where he took all the seriousness of writing for the piano and put a playful spin on it, came at a crucial moment in the mid-20th century; hard borders of the musical arts, which reached a limit of seriousness in the 1920s and 1930s, had started to break down. </p>
<p>This mixing of traditional “high music” with artefacts that might be considered juvenile, populist, naff, or domestic, was becoming more common — and more exciting. </p>
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<h2>Play and experimentation</h2>
<p>Toy pianos typically have a range of 12-36 keys, roughly one quarter the range of a full piano (though there are smaller and larger examples, too). </p>
<p>These acoustic instruments are made from a wood or plastic frame. They produce a bell-like sound when a small hammer hits a tube or flat piece of metal inside. </p>
<p>Unlike a typical piano, toy pianos are rarely tuned to perfection and can sound a bit off to the ear but many can’t help but be charmed by their tiny size, variety of colours and quirky inconsistent plonking.</p>
<p>With its history and connection to ideas of childhood, this instrument is commonly used to musically convey a sense of innocence and nostalgia.</p>
<p>Traditionally, art music composition can be very prescriptive and confined. The traditional conservatorium or university composition class teaches the rules of writing — what you can and cannot do with an instrument — but something about the toy piano invites play and experimentation. </p>
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<h2>Every toy piano is different</h2>
<p>Unlike many instruments used for composing, the toy piano is not standardised around the world.</p>
<p>There are dozens of makers who use different techniques and different materials giving every toy piano a unique sound, range, and register. This makes writing music for the piano a bit random — but for many of us, therein lies the fun. </p>
<p>If you write a piece of music for the toy piano and if a performer in another part of the world has enough keys on their instrument, they can play your piece in their own special way. It’s like a singer using their own unique voice to cover a song. </p>
<p><audio preload="metadata" controls="controls" data-duration="11" data-image="" data-title="A melody played on three different toy pianos. Composed and performed by Paul Smith." data-size="452527" data-source="Paul Smith" data-source-url="" data-license="CC BY-NC" data-license-url="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">
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A melody played on three different toy pianos. Composed and performed by Paul Smith.
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<p>The composer gives up some control, which contrasts sharply with romantic and and modernist-era ideas that positioned the composer as a genius whose works should never be altered.</p>
<p>Many composers end up collecting toy pianos, which gives them a variety of sounds to play with. Australian composer Elena Kats-Chernin became known as the <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/music/from-a-low-key-start-plinking-marvellous-music-20090706-gdtmem.html">toy piano lady</a> at a Sydney toy store after buying eight in a row. I’m up to a modest five and am resisting buying my sixth. </p>
<p>Toy piano specialists are becoming more common as performers and <a href="https://open.spotify.com/album/6RbOvSLDvcZdSKES4XS8DF">composers</a> in demand. </p>
<p>Italian specialist <a href="http://antoniettaloffredo.com/">Antonietta Loffredo</a> has performed several times in Australia and released many recordings with the Australian art music label <a href="https://www.australiancomposers.com.au/">Wirripang</a>. You can hear her recordings of works by Australian composers on Spotify <a href="https://open.spotify.com/album/6RbOvSLDvcZdSKES4XS8DF">here</a>.</p>
<p>Margaret Leng Tan, a toy instrument virtuoso with many commissions and dedications to her name, was due to perform with toy piano at the Sydney Opera House this year but the concert was postponed due to COVID-19.</p>
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<p>As Margaret Leng Tan herself <a href="https://philipglass.com/recordings/toy_piano/">puts it</a>:</p>
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<p>I remain wholeheartedly intrigued by the toy piano’s magical overtones, hypnotic charm, and not least, its off-key poignancy. In the words of author John David Morley, “Sound combed from the keys of a stairway ascending faintly into sleep”. My composer-friends were similarly beguiled and driven to frenzied heights of creativity by this modest little instrument. </p>
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<h2>Escaping a rigid world</h2>
<p>Artists are always looking for new ways to challenge and surprise audiences. What is and isn’t accepted on the concert stage is constantly shifting and the rise of the toy piano suggests that we are ready to welcome new sounds and new instruments into the relatively closed world of classical music.</p>
<p>To many composers, the toy piano offers more than a symbolic representation of childhood — it provides an exciting escape from the strict and rigid world of formal contemporary art music. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-the-first-fleet-to-changi-australias-pianos-have-a-long-history-100320">From the First Fleet to Changi, Australia's pianos have a long history</a>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Smith is the co-artistic director of the group Blush Opera, which sometimes produces concerts and events featuring toy pianos.
</span></em></p>Toy pianos typically have a range of 12-36 keys, roughly one quarter the range of a full piano. But they are used by composers and music makers to write everything from concertos to pop songs.Paul Smith, Senior Lecturer in Music, University of New EnglandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1470972020-10-02T03:40:56Z2020-10-02T03:40:56ZOn the 50th anniversary of her death, Janis Joplin still ignites<p>Janis Joplin died 50 years ago this Sunday, aged just 27, but her songs reach beyond time. Her enduring influence and popularity can be attributed to her raw, unadulterated, fearless performances.</p>
<p>We respond to vocalists who can express emotions such as pain, angst and release. Joplin gave us all those in spades, delivered with a powerful, uninhibited raspy voice.</p>
<p>Influenced by artists like Bessie Smith, Otis Redding, Billie Holiday, Ray Charles, Tina Turner and Aretha Franklin, she possessed a command of blues styling, phraseology and melody. She was inducted into the <a href="https://library.rockhall.com/janis_joplin">Rock and Roll Hall of Fame</a> in 1995 and voted number 28 in Rolling Stone’s <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/100-greatest-singers-of-all-time-147019/janis-joplin-12-223493/">greatest singers of all time</a> in 2008.</p>
<p>But when we hear a vocalist such as Joplin, who stirs something deeply in us, what is actually happening? </p>
<h2>In command of her voice</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199660773.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199660773">origins of music</a> are rooted in the emotional expression of the human voice. Expressive musical performances have been shown to <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0013812">activate</a> the emotional centres of our brains.</p>
<p>Joplin had a powerful and commanding voice. In her live performances she was focused and uninhibited, showcasing a broad palette of distinctive vocal timbres coupled with a fast vibrato. With her three-octave range, she used raspy growls, wails and screams to express raw emotion.</p>
<p>Rock singing often uses a rich chest voice, requiring great physicality and energy. Blues and rock singers might also incorporate a constricted quality in their voices: tightening the larynx and manipulating the air pressure they sing with. </p>
<p>Joplin’s voice has been <a href="https://cvtresearch.com/effects/distortion/">described</a> as using a distortion and edge, a mixture of noise and tone.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-the-art-of-the-pinch-popular-music-and-appropriation-86919">Friday essay: the art of the pinch – popular music and appropriation</a>
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<p>This is perhaps best demonstrated in her 1968 song <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uG2gYE5KOs">Piece of my Heart</a>. This constricted sound directly conveys intensity — it is very exciting but also creates tension. This constriction comes to a climax on the line “you know you got it”: she improvises on the melody, changing the phrasing to include blues licks and then screams before the last chorus. </p>
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<p>This use of constriction in singing carries with it a variety of challenges and significant risks, impacting the singers’ control. But audiences are thrilled by risk-taking of high-wire artists. Here, Joplin’s technique is in service to the communication of emotion, simultaneously thrilling and devastating.</p>
<h2>The deepest of emotions</h2>
<p>In performance, Joplin was at once vulnerable and fearless, yearning to break free, pushing boundaries and willing to reveal her authentic self. She was unapologetic.</p>
<p>While Joplin wasn’t singing the protest songs of her contemporaries like <a href="https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/the-political-bob-dylan">Bob Dylan</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/mar/26/phil-ochs-the-doomed-folk-singer-who-woke-up-from-the-american-dream">Phil Ochs</a>, a sense of protest comes through in her expression, her choice of repertoire and the way she refused to sing in a “pretty” voice accepted of women at the time.</p>
<p>As her biographer Alice Echols <a href="https://www.npr.org/2010/06/07/127483124/janis-joplin-the-queen-of-rock">said</a>: </p>
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<p>Janis in some sense was the great unrecognized protest singer of the 1960s. No, Janis was not singing explicit protest songs. But in her voice, what people heard was somebody who was refusing the status quo.</p>
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<p>Joplin’s last recorded work, posthumously released as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_(Janis_Joplin_album)">Pearl</a>, demonstrates the ongoing evolution in her vocal use. Her voice has undergone a refinement, still featuring gutsy and raw moments, here it is more controlled, without any loss of expression.</p>
<p>The opening of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfGSd-tikH4">Cry Baby</a> features Joplin singing two notes at once in a constricted tone, then loudly belting out the chorus. She then reduces the volume and softly explains her betrayal in the verses. </p>
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<p>There are clear influences in her use of call and response from gospel music, and in particular the original recording and vocal stylings of <a href="https://www.billboard.com/music/garnet-mimms">Garnet Mimms</a>.</p>
<p>This refinement is also visible in one of her last filmed performances. On <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063957/">This is Tom Jones</a> in 1969, she transformed the touching jazz standard Little Girl Blue into a rhythm and blues epic. </p>
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<p>It is edifying to compare her performance with performances of the same song by some of her influences, Nina Simone and Nancy Wilson. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wT_Z-D31vbU">Simone’s delivery</a> on piano and voice are expressively delicate and highlight a refined musicianship with subtle embellishments of the melody. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUNGuG700_Q">Wilson’s version</a> features rhythmic precision coupled with lush orchestration.</p>
<p>In contrast, Joplin’s approach features a change of rhythm and tempo throughout the song, regularly extending phrases and singing long held notes highly ornamented with gravelly yearning calls and vocal twists, turns and tone colours. </p>
<p>Joplin stands out as a vocalist of great influence. She was willing to express the deepest of human emotions – emotions not easily allowed nor expressed in western society. She afforded her audience a vicarious understanding of her emotions, an understanding which still echoes today.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Leigh Carriage does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Joplin’s voice stirs something deep within us. What is it about her that still makes us listen?Leigh Carriage, Senior Lecturer in Music, Southern Cross UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1410772020-07-02T10:25:37Z2020-07-02T10:25:37ZHearing loss: early signs of damage in young adults who regularly attend loud clubs and concerts<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345258/original/file-20200702-111305-krgbvj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C11%2C3814%2C2529&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Noise-induced hearing loss is preventable.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/barcelona-jul-1-crowd-concert-vida-1143764150">Christian Bertrand/ Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/282032/music-concert-and-festival-attendance-in-the-uk-by-attendee-type/">Going to concerts or clubs</a> is a popular pastime for many young people, but they’re also potential causes of noise-induced hearing loss. In fact, <a href="https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/deafness-and-hearing-loss">more than a billion young people</a> worldwide are at risk of noise-induced hearing loss – though <a href="https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/noise-induced-hearing-loss#6">it can be prevented</a>.</p>
<p>While the link between <a href="https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/noise-induced-hearing-loss#:%7E:text=Sounds%20at%20or%20below%2070,takes%20for%20NIHL%20to%20happen.">noise exposure and hearing loss</a> is well known, it’s possible that the extent of hearing damage from noise exposure has been underestimated. This is because very subtle hearing damage can occur which is not detectable by <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/pure-tone-audiometry">pure-tone audiometry</a> – the most commonly used hearing test by audiologists. This test measures our ability to detect very quiet sounds in a quiet environment. </p>
<p>At the <a href="http://research.bmh.manchester.ac.uk/ManCAD/">Manchester Centre for Audiology and Deafness</a>, we are trying to get a better understanding of the effects of noise exposure on hearing. In particular, we have been focusing on musicians’ hearing, as they’re at <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.3109/14992020903202520?casa_token=I5qFd5AnFSoAAAAA%3AY4vTwCaELvrFwKRJRwYBVnhNKL9iTtt8cXVXTpPjVXK_tGfYG5Hzb5rausrm7fWgQD85t7qH7stY">higher risk of hearing damage</a> due to exposure to loud sounds on a daily basis.</p>
<p>In a <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378595520302926?via%3Dihub">recent study</a>, we completed a detailed assessment of 123 young adults’ hearing health, starting with the external part of the ear, all the way through to the nerves that <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/cochlear-nerve">send sound signals to the brain</a>. Our participant sample included musicians and non-musicians, aged 18-27. All participants provided a detailed account of the amount of noise exposure they’d experienced during their life, such as how often they attended clubs and concerts, and how loud they thought it was in these settings.</p>
<p>The permissible noise exposure limit in the UK is an average of 85 decibels based on an eight-hour working day. An example of sounds that are <a href="https://www.healthlinkbc.ca/health-topics/tf4173">around 85 decibels</a> include heavy traffic, a window air conditioner, or a lawn mower. The length of safe noise exposure is reduced by half for every three decibels increase. </p>
<p>To put this into perspective, most amplified concerts exceed 100 decibels – meaning we shouldn’t be exposed to this level of noise for more than 15 minutes in an eight-hour period without proper hearing protection. However, unlike work-related noise, there is no specific legislation <a href="https://www.hse.gov.uk/event-safety/noise.htm">setting noise limits for audience members</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378595520302926?via%3Dihub">Our study showed</a> that all participants had clinically normal hearing as measured by pure-tone audiometry. But those with the highest levels of noise exposure had poorer functioning of the <a href="http://www.cochlea.eu/en/hair-cells">minute hair cells in the inner-ear</a> which are integral to hearing. We also found that people with higher levels of noise exposure had poorer conduction of sound signals from the hearing nerve towards the brain, which could negatively affect how the brain processes sounds. </p>
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<span class="caption">There were no differences between musicians and non-musicians.</span>
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<p>A surprising finding was that we didn’t see any differences in the amount of noise exposure between musicians and non-musicians. This was because both participant groups had relatively high levels of recreational noise exposure, such as regularly attending nightclubs and concerts. Work-related activities, such as music rehearsals and performances for musicians, only contributed to a small fraction of total noise exposure.</p>
<h2>Preventing damage</h2>
<p>Although these early signs of hearing damage didn’t appear to affect the participants’ listening abilities, that doesn’t mean this damage isn’t a problem. It’s possible that the effects of noise damage become worse later in life, or may accumulate with regular exposure to loud noise. Hearing damage can manifest in a number of ways, such as tinnitus - <a href="https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/tinnitus/">a ringing or buzzing sound in the ears</a> - or being less able to follow a conversation in a busy room. In the current study, participants with high levels of noise exposure were more likely to report experiencing hyperacusis - <a href="https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/hyperacusis/">an overly heightened sensitivity to everyday sounds</a> - which could also be a sign of hearing damage. </p>
<p>This is especially important for musicians who will probably experience high levels of noise exposure throughout their careers whereas levels of noise exposure may begin to level-off for non-musicians as they tend to go clubbing less often as they get older. Indeed, hearing damage is a well-known problem for career musicians, with a growing list of <a href="https://www.hearingdirect.com/blog/musicians-with-hearing-loss-tinnitus.html">high-profile performers</a> who suffer from hearing problems.</p>
<p>But noise-induced hearing problems can be prevented. The best way is to avoid noisy situations altogether. We can also try to limit the amount of exposure we have by taking regular breaks, moving away from the sound source, or trying to reduce the volume at its source. However, it isn’t always possible to reduce the volume in musical settings.</p>
<p>Another problem is that people also enjoy the <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10641657/">feeling of loud sounds</a> as they vibrate through the body. This activates the pleasure centres of the brain and is one of the many reasons why clubbing and loud music is such an important part of youth culture. It may also be one reason people don’t want to take protective measures.</p>
<p>But without protective measures, damage is likely. Using earplugs may help dampen loud sounds and block them from entering the ears. The best type of earplugs to use are those designed for musicians, as they contain special filters that reduce the overall levels of sound entering the ear, but don’t ruin the quality of the music.</p>
<p>Crucially, what our research reveals is that all young adults who engage in noisy recreational activities without using hearing protection are at risk of hearing damage. It’s likely that without a change in our attitudes towards noise exposure and hearing protection, we will see many more people presenting with hearing problems later in life.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/141077/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Samuel Couth received funding from the Colt Foundation for this study. This work was conducted in collaboration with the Royal Northern College of Music.</span></em></p>Exposure to loud noise is the biggest preventable cause of hearing loss.Samuel Couth, Research Associate, Hearing Science, University of ManchesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.