Change in popular music: cultural and commercial aspects

¶ … Popular Music

The New Face Book of Rock and Roll

An entirely new book (okay score) on the future of music and the place of rock and roll is being written, and yet we really can't even tell what the experience will be like, though it will most likely be a continued mix of country/folksy democracy. What we can tell is that it will come in the packaging of a self-published, self-directed, interactive collection (just like an ebook!), and that its messages of defiance will be such that the entire digital universe of followers will each think of themselves as their own Guitar Hero!

While many people believe that Guitar Hero brought rock and roll into the digital era, the case can be made that it did as much damage as good. It turned many people on to a sense of simulating the music of the leaders of rock and roll, electronically air-guitaring their own versions of what the music of the past was like, even as it laid the foundation for the "musak" of commercialism that all formats are struggling with -- turning whatever is happening makes someone more money.

In a great quote from a recent article in The Atlantic on the School of Rock: What does Guitar Hero's popularity mean for the future of rock and roll? James Parker (2009) quotes the company's VP of product development as he recollects on their early decisions: "We had this debate internally. Like, does anybody care about rock? And then we did Guitar Hero and discovered to our great relief that many people cared about rock, including a lot of people who didn't apparently know that they cared about it until they got exposed to the material. So did we create that? Or was it already happening?"

Clearly, it was both. The public was ready for something because there was an audience wanting to know what comes next. In linking their marketing success to the idea of consumers buying $2 copies of the songs they could digitally play, they were effectively getting the audience ready to buy into what has become the iTunes/YouTube phenomenon. And, why in some ways it was bad for rock and roll, it also was bringing rock and roll back home to the days of its origins in blues, folk and country connectivity. Rock and roll in its best days was really about (middle-class, white) people letting out their dissatisfaction with the system as they searched for some sense of liberation, including personal or sexual freedom. Which meant, of course, that the rock and roll of the past had won its challenge and now needed something else to do. Buying in to the corporate practices of the digital revolution was a solid sell-out but one that still allow its followers to get into their own jam session.

Of course, the entire phenomenon of YouTube grew this attack on rock and roll even more, giving the digital universe the chance to upload their access to sharing talent or sending a message of some sort. Then, in short order, the entire sector got slammed again with the invention of reality music TV. Who needed to be just a Guitar Hero when they could now be an American Idol. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Idol.) But this invitation to include everyone into the game of rock and roll surely meant that the messages would be more down-home, more personalized to the lives of many and less about challenges to whichever system.

But when this version of music and rock and roll is written, what it really sound like?

In the age of interactive digital participation, it's very difficult to tell. However, some people feel it will come in packaging that looks a lot like what is happening with the digital book industry. In a publication called Publishing in the Digital Era, consultants for the book publishing industry start by saying that their people should rest easily. For "At first glance, the publishing industry seems unlikely to suffer the same jolting upheaval as the music industry experienced when new technologies hit it." By which they mean that there will not be a fundamental shift. People will still be buying words to read. But then again, their details about the shape of that future seems different and is very similar to what is in store for music and rock and roll. At the same time, they predict that the future of books will be a combination, a hybrid, of various media. This may mean linking their substance to a wide range of means of being purchases, but it also means a different way that consumers use the product. And they particularly see interactive and social avenues where readers and writers will develop their own relationships.