Reclaim The Night

Posted on April 9, 2024 by Content in Context

Before I get into this week’s topic, some background for context. A few weeks ago I was having coffee in my local cafe. I couldn’t help overhear two young women talking at the next table. One of them was expressing the level of fear she experiences whenever she is out alone for a run, a walk, or on her bike. She described the apprehension she feels that a man might randomly attack her. These attacks might be physical or verbal, actual or threatened, explicit or implied. Her natural reaction is to be extra vigilant about her personal safety, but there was also a sense of dread and exhaustion at having to navigate this constant threat, and in turn raises a risk of not pursuing her daily activities. It was a depressing reminder that women must feel the same way, every day, and the recent events in Ballarat were surely a prompt for this discussion.

In October 1980, I became a student at Leeds University. Newly arrived in the city from London, where I grew up, I think I was only vaguely aware of the infamous Yorkshire Ripper case. But soon after my first term started, a student was murdered not far from the University campus, and in an area where many students lived. Jacqueline Hill was deemed to be Peter Sutcliffe’s last victim (but probably not for the want of trying on his part, given his violent attacks on women are believed to have begun in the late 1960s). I was in the city centre on the night that the police confirmed that they had caught Sutcliffe, and the sense of public relief was palpable and understandable, if misplaced – because Sutcliffe was obviously a “maniac” and not like “normal” men.

During Sutcliffe’s campaign of violence and murderous attacks, women in Leeds had organised a series of marches known as Reclaim the Night, largely in response to police advice that women should not venture into public places alone at night. The marches were also designed to draw attention to issues of domestic violence, rape and other offences and injustices against women. They were part of the feminist debate around issues of the patriarchal society, misogyny, sexism and apparent double standards when it came to the police investigation into the Sutcliffe case.

I recall seeing some of the marches in Leeds, and there were even calls for a night-time curfew on men. A radical suggestion, and one I had some sympathy for, but it was obviously impractical and in some ways the wrong response. Calling for men to be off the streets is not so very different to cultures and religions demanding (and forcing) women to dress “modestly” in public in case they provoke men into a sexual or violent frenzy. Surely, men should be able to control themselves?

Sadly, it seems we still need to be constantly reminded of how vile, aggressive, threatening, intimidating and violent men are towards women, individually and collectively.

Next week: Sakamoto – Opus

State of the Music Industry…

Posted on April 2, 2024 by Content in Context

Depending on your perspective, the music industry is in fine health. 2023 saw a record year for sales (physical, digital and streaming), and touring artists are generating more income from ticket sales and merchandising than the GDPs of many countries. Even vinyl records, CDs and cassettes are achieving better sales than in recent years!

On the other hand, only a small number of musicians are making huge bucks from touring; while smaller venues are closing down, meaning fewer opportunities for artists to perform.

And despite the growth in streaming, relatively few musicians are minting it from these subscription-based services, that typically pay very little in royalties to the vast majority of artists. (In fact, some content can be zero-rated unless it achieves a minimum number of plays.)

Aside from the impact of streaming services, there are two other related challenges that exercise the music industry: the growing use of Artificial Intelligence, and the need for musicians to be recognised and compensated more fairly for their work and their Intellectual Property.

With AI, a key issue is whether the software developers are being sufficiently transparent about the content sources used to train their models, and whether the authors and rights owners are being fairly recompensed in return for the use of their IP. Then there are questions of artistic “creativity”, authorial ownership, authenticity, fakes and passing-off when we are presented with AI-generated music. Generative music software has been around for some time, and anyone with a smart phone or laptop can access millions of tools and samples to compose, assemble and record their own music – and many people do just that, given the thousands of new songs that are being uploaded every day. Now, with the likes of Suno, it’s possible to “create” a 2-minute song (complete with lyrics) from just a short text prompt. Rolling Stone magazine recently did just that, and the result was both astonishing and dispiriting.

I played around with Suno myself (using the free version), and the brief prompt I submitted returned these two tracks, called “Midnight Shadows”:

Version 1

Version 2

The output is OK, not terrible, but displays very little in the way of compositional depth, melodic development, or harmonic structure. Both tracks sound as if a set of ready-made loops and samples had simply been cobbled together in the same key and tempo, and left to run for 2 minutes. Suno also generated two quite different compositions with lyrics, voiced by a male and a female singer/bot respectively. The lyrics were nonsensical attempts to verbally riff on the text prompt. The vocals sounded both disembodied (synthetic, auto-tuned and one-dimensional), and also exactly the sort of vocal stylings favoured by so many contemporary pop singers, and featured on karaoke talent shows like The Voice and Idol. As for Suno’s attempt to remix the tracks at my further prompting, the less said the better.

While content attribution can be addressed through IP rights and commercial licensing, the issue of “likeness” is harder to enforce. Artists can usually protect their image (and merchandising) against passing off, but can they protect the tone and timbre of their voice? A new law in Tennessee attempts to do just that, by protecting a singer’s a vocal likeness from unauthorised use. (I’m curious to know if this protection is going to be extended to Jimmy Page’s guitar sound and playing style, or an electronic musician’s computer processing and programming techniques?)

I follow a number of industry commentators who, very broadly speaking, represent the positive (Rob Abelow), negative (Damon Krukowski) and neutral (Shawn Reynaldo) stances on streaming, AI and musicians’ livelihood. For every positive opportunity that new technology presents, there is an equal (and sometimes greater) threat or challenge that musicians face. I was particularly struck by Shawn Reynaldo’s recent article on Rolling Stone’s Suno piece, entitled “A Music Industry That Doesn’t Sell Music”. The dystopian vision he presents is millions of consumers spending $10 a month to access music AI tools, so they can “create” and upload their content to streaming services, in the hope of covering their subscription fees….. Sounds ghastly, if you ask me.

Add to the mix the demise of music publications (for which AI and streaming are also to blame…), and it’s easy to see how the landscape for discovering, exploring and engaging with music has become highly concentrated via streaming platforms and their recommender engines (plus marketing budgets spent on behalf of major artists). In the 1970s and 1980s, I would hear about new music from the radio (John Peel), TV (OGWT, The Tube, Revolver, So It Goes, Something Else), the print weeklies (NME, Sounds, Melody Maker), as well as word of mouth from friends, and by going to see live music and turning up early enough to watch the support acts. Now, most of my music information comes from the few remaining print magazines such as Mojo and Uncut (which largely focus on legacy acts), The Wire (but probably too esoteric for its own good), and Electronic Sound (mainly because that’s the genre that most interests me); plus Bandcamp, BBC Radio 6’s “Freak Zone”, Twitter, and newsletters from artists, labels and retailers. The overall consequence of streaming and up/downloading is that there is too much music to listen to (but how much of it is worth the effort?), and multiple invitations to “follow”, “like”, “subscribe” and “sign up” for direct content (but again, how much of it is worth the effort?). For better or worse, the music media at least provided an editorial filter to help address quality vs quantity (even if much of it ended up being quite tribal).

In the past, the music industry operated as a network of vertically integrated businesses: they sourced the musical talent, they managed the recording, manufacturing and distribution of the content (including the hardware on which to play it), and they ran publishing and licensing divisions. When done well, this meant careful curation, the exercise of quality control, and a willingness to invest in nurturing new artists for several albums and for the duration of their career. But at times, record companies have self-sabotaged, by engaging in format wars (e.g., over CD, DCC and MiniDisc standards), by denying the existence of on-line and streaming platforms (until Apple and Spotify came along), and by becoming so bloated that by the mid-1980s, the major labels had to merge and consolidate to survive – largely because they almost abandoned the sustainable development of new talent. They also ignored their lucrative back catalogues, until specialist and independent labels and curators showed them how to do it properly. Now, they risk overloading the reissue market, because they lack proper curation and quality control.

The music industry really only does three things:

1) A&R (sourcing and developing new talent)

2) Marketing (promotion, media and public relations)

3) Distribution & Licensing (commercialisation).

Now, #1 and #2 have largely been outsourced to social media platforms (and inevitably, to AI and recommender algorithms), and #3 is going to be outsourced to web3 (micro-payments for streaming subscriptions, distribution of NFTs, and licensing via smart contracts). Whether we like it or not, and taking their lead from Apple and Spotify, the music businesses of the future will increasingly resemble tech companies. The problem is, tech rarely understands content from the perspective of aesthetics – so expect to hear increasingly bland AI-generated music from avatars and bots that only exist in the metaverse.

Meanwhile, I go to as many live gigs as I can justify, and brace my wallet for the next edition of Record Store Day later this month…

Next week: Reclaim The Night

Triennial? Could try harder!

Posted on March 26, 2024 by Content in Context

The NGV 2023 Triennial is really perplexing. It promises a lot, but ends up delivering very little of substance. I came away with no lasting impression of any particular work, and given there are 100 “projects” on display, that’s a very low strike rate.

First, the positives: it’s free; it draws in the crowds (especially during Melbourne’s late summer heatwave); there are over 120 artists involved; they include local and international, established and emerging names; most forms of art practice are represented; there is a LOT to look at.

Now the negatives: the curation felt scatter-gun, with the lack of a clear narrative theme or contextual thread; BIG is interpreted as being GOOD; the juxtaposition of new works with the NGV permanent collection must have seemed like a good idea, but the joins are abrupt and the implied associations often make no sense at all; and despite the variety of media, it all felt very samey, and nothing cutting edge; in fact, it all felt rather safe.

Much of the work looked like it had come off a conveyor belt, or designed by a focus group. So it ended up feeling bland, anodyne, tokenistic, worthy, “shocking” for its own sake, and was like a production line of the “latest thing”.

Often, less is more. This felt bloated and over done.

A great shame, and a lost opportunity.

Next week: State of the Music Industry…

Unstructured Hours

Posted on March 19, 2024 by Content in Context

Since I left my last corporate role more than 10 years ago, I have not had a full-time, permanent job; instead, I have worked as a freelance, independent consultant and contractor, for a variety of organisations, and in multiple roles. I’ve not had a “regular” 9 to 5, Monday to Friday job, so it’s meant some adjustments and compromises: I don’t get a regular salary, or sick leave, or holiday pay, or employer pension contributions; but I have flexibility as to where/when/how I work, who I work for, and what projects I take on.

Talking to a business associate recently, who is in a similar position, he defined his current status as “unstructured hours”. I think this applies to my own situation, and it made me think that more and more people are in the same boat, but for different reasons.

First, the gig economy has flourished in the last 10 to 15 years (a trend that began well before ride share and food delivery services came along), with the growth of tech-based freelance work in the software industry and creative services, thanks to on-line market places and accessible productivity tools. So, people are less likely to have fixed hours.

Second, the pandemic and associated lock downs revealed a significant divide between those who are able to work from home (WFH), and those who can’t. For those employees who continue to WFH, the separation of work and non-working hours has become increasingly blurred, with the proliferation of remote working and accompanying tech that means we are “always on”. Add to this the global nature of remote working (and “work from anywhere” policies) it means that even different time zones are no longer a barrier to cross-border employment and collaboration.

On the other hand, WFH has meant that some employees have become more efficient and/or productive, especially when commuting time is reduced. More companies are experimenting with remote working, hybrid working (a mix of WFH and on-site), and even a shorter working week. Parkinson’s law states that a given task expands to fill the time available – something that can become pervasive with enforced on-site office hours, so if employees are effectively choosing the hours they work, they may be incentivised to work smarter, and free up their time for other pursuits.

Third, for employees who still need to attend their place of work to perform their duties in person (health care, hospitality, retail, logistics, manufacturing etc.) many of them work shifts, which in itself requires some significant restructuring of daily and weekly routines, albeit not totally “unstructured” hours. And given our voracious appetite for on-line shopping, all-day deliveries, and access to 24/7 services, shift workers are having to respond to employer demands for a flexible and on-demand workforce.

Fourth, the “always on” phenomena means that it’s easy to erode the boundaries between work and personal life, with the consequence that we are now seeing the introduction of “Right to Disconnect” legislation. This will require careful navigation. What about employees who are required to be on call, even if they are not on site? How will this legislation be reflected in client contracts and service level agreements, especially when there may be penalty clauses and similar provisions? Who determines what is “reasonable”?

When I was in corporate roles, there were always requirements for weekend and over night travel, early morning and late night conference calls, lengthy overseas business trips, and deadlines outside the 9 to 5 routine. Even early on in my career, working in the public sector, I was required to attend evening council meetings and public events. So perhaps I’ve always experienced an element of unstructured hours?

Achieving and maintaining a work-life balance means setting time-based boundaries, managing expectations with clients, and above all, prioritising tasks and projects. It also means establishing routines, so that when we are “off”, we don’t feel any guilt.

Finally, the notion of working within “unstructured hours” may become second nature as more and more people embark on portfolio careers. The ability to juggle multiple roles, as well as remaining flexible to changing demands on our time, will be a prerequisite for anyone working outside the “traditional” 38 hours a week schedule.

Next week: Triennial? Could try harder!