Week 9 – on The Future of the Music Business, chapters 14 – 16

Following on the practical applicability of the preceding few chapters, Gordon’s book shifts back to considerations of legal practicality and licensing for music distribution and copying through chapters 14 and 15, (especially 15 with the exploration of Creative Commons licensing).  One of the few specific points I found most compelling within this section of Gordon’s book was the follow-up interview with John Buckman about Magnatune, in which Buckman noted that although the site had surged in popularity it had maintained flat sales since2005. This obviously leads into speculation that within a world based on a new distribution model for music, perhaps the margin is actually smaller (than in the previous ultra-manufactured music industry model).  That doesn’t mean that the potential profit margin for artists is smaller—as Gordon sufficiently demonstrates, a shortened and better-controlled supply chain from musician to fan means more likelihood of increased profit from music distributed through digital channels for the actual musicians; it does suggest, though, that much of the unnecessary infrastructure centered on old tangible distribution is a thing of the past, (despite how stridently each link in that chain defends an outmoded production and profit-making model). Similarly, Gordon makes an excellent point about the potential of Creative Commons licensing – through his interview with Lawrence Lessig as well as the blog posts that follow – and how it doesn’t actually pose a challenge to copyright but rather functions as a supplement to traditional copyright’s ‘all rights reserved’ restrictions. Referring back for a second to tangible distribution models, Gordon’s interview with Derek Sivers (founder of CD Baby) does suggest that tangible distribution with altered and shortened channels for distribution may still be profitable (or at least not outmoded) – although, again, the bloated models of the past seem to no longer generate enough revenue to produce ample profits for every link in the supply chain.

Week 9 – on 10 sites taken from the Harvard College Library Online Resources for Music Scholars

http://hcl.harvard.edu/research/guides/onmusic/

1. Alan Lomax archive, http://www.culturalequity.org/ – This is a tremendous resource for accessing not only Alan Lomax’s field recordings, but also his (and other ethnomusicologist) commentary of the recordings. These sorts of primary sources are still widely unavailable on the commercial market, making the efforts at digitizing and sharing the content (for free) worthy of celebration. The content, delivered mainly in audio, is indexed and searchable by a number of data elements, (keyword, geographic location, culture, instrument, artist, song title, collection, and even original tape number). This is truly a digital treasure.
2. California Gold: Northern California Folk Music from the Thirties, http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/afccchtml/cowhome.html – Although very specific in its focus, this collection within the Library of Congress’ American Folklife Collection provides a tremendous variety of digitized primary source material dealing with a specific moment and location significant in American history. This collection is noteworthy because it properly represents the cultural variety rarely recognized, (in this case, the variety of immigrant communities that made up the residents of northern California, most notably the Portuguese), and presents this variety (and commentary) across a variety of media.
3. Fiddle Tunes of the Old Frontier – The Henry Reed Collection, http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/reed/ – Also part of the Library of Congress’ curated collections is this, the Henry Reed fiddle music collection. The collection encapsulates Appalachia of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, (despite the music recording dates of 1966-1967), represented in the fiddle playing of Henry Reed. This impressive online collection includes many audio files as well as field notes and tune-transcription images.
4. Now What a Time: Blues, Gospel, and the Fort Valley Music Festivals, 1938-1943, http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ftvhtml/ftvhome.html – Yet another Library of Congress collection of audio files and supporting documentation, this particular collection specifically relates to music from the Fort Valley State College folk festivals of the late 1930s and early 1940s. While many of the recordings are of traditional blues and gospel songs, the Library of Congress editorial content on the page mentions the particular significance of rewording some of these songs (within the recordings) to represent ‘wartime concerns of the performers.’ As with all of these collections, the content within the Fort Valley Music Festivals recordings is densely packed with meaning – in terms of race, class, geography, and specific moment in time.
5. Southern Mosaic: The John and Ruby Lomax 1939 Southern States Recording Trip, http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/lohtml/lohome.html – Another Lomax archive, this one capturing a trip through a wide swath of southern America with his wife, captures all manner of folk songs (from cowboy songs of Texas through folk music through Appalachia and beyond) in field recordings made during a lengthy trip in 1939. As with the other Lomax recordings, these resources are of inestimable value in capturing a place and a moment in American history, (and musical history).
6. Yiddish Sheet Music (part of Brown University’s collections in the John Hay Library), http://dl.lib.brown.edu/sheetmusic/yiddish/about.html – This is a particularly well-done digitization effort from the Center for Digital Initiatives at Brown University Libraries, partnering with the John Hay Library at Brown. This sheet music content is freely accessible and provides high resolution scans, both browsable by creator and/or title, and searchable by keyword (with title, creator, and publication fields as the indexes the keyword search runs against). This collection is substantial, totaling about 2000 items.
7. Kurt Weill Newsletter, http://www.kwf.org/publications/kurt-weill-newsletter.html – A link to a newsletter published by the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music about things related to the famous theater composer’s work.
8. Louisiana State Museum Jazz Collection, http://louisdl.louislibraries.org/cdm4/index_JAZ.php?CISOROOT=%2FJAZ – Similar in approach to the Library of Congress collections, this digital collection maintained by the Louisiana Digital Library focuses primarily on New Orleans jazz as represented across audio recordings and photographs. This collection is still under development, (digitization is in progress according to the site).
9. Medieval Music Database, http://www.lib.latrobe.edu.au/MMDB/index.htm – Although this site has not been updated since 2004, (and the Music Department associated with maintaining this database at La Trobe University closed in 1998), the metadata records in the database are still accessible, but it seems that many of the links are not currently working. Some are, though, such as those accessible through the Liturgical Feast link. One hopes that the intention to update and maintain this database (proposed for 2008, though not updated) is eventually carried out.
10. Traditions: Research Guide for Folklore and Folklorists, http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k25081 – This research guide produced by the Harvard’s Widener Library provides substantial links to Library resources within different categories, including Stories, Dance, Craft and Art, Ethnography, Ethnomusicology, as well as guides to specific courses.