Hola,
I have been thinking again about how the new world of WEB 2.0 is going to affect us all and I am a bit worried by the whole thing.
There are a few things about the way it all developing that are causing us real problems and I can only see it getting worse.
Web 2.0 is supposed to be the new way of the world and whilst I am no expert I have had a few discussions with people that make me wonder if anyone has the faintest idea of what is going to happen next.
For us at the label the web has been a bloody nightmare to deal with. Let's be honest for once. Peer to Peer is screwing every label on the planet and anyone who says different is a liar. The genie is out of the bag and now we face ruin. I mean it.. RUIN! It has become a better business idea to give away music and make money on the shirts. The same is about to happen to movies and TV and print and god only knows what else. Even retail is about to fall of a cliff when more of the high end purchasers move away from shops and online.
The thing with beig in business is that you are suposed to make a profit and if you don't it's all over. All that are left are amateurs and dreamers. Like the guys who repair steam engines for fun. Maybe 2 of them make aiving from it but it isn't an industry anymore. Music is like that, It is raidly becoming the preserve of the gifted amatuer and rock stars are a thing of the past. We had better get used to it. From global industry to cottage industry in 10 years. That is some change in the landscape I think you will agree.
Of course there are winners from this new dynamic and new models are emerging all the time but they only last a few months before being bettered. Look at Myspace - who seriously thinks that works any more? Or Money Supermarket or or friendsreunited or lastminute.com or Napster or any of another million sites. They come and go with abandon and all they leave behind are cached pages and memories. facebook will last until 208 before it become passe and goes the way of all others.
What will happen is that there will be a few local phenomena and maybe one or two big acts that break through the chaff and become household names but before the decade is out there won't be any bands just individual songs.
It's logical when you think about it. There are millions of tunes already out there and you can pick and choose whatever you want at will and for zero cost. Where is the upside in that?
Of course the "industry" is talking to itself and saying there is a future and all that but I woke up today with a feeling like its all over so I have no regrets in annoucing that we are no longer going to release CD's anymore. We will do digital for now but frankly I am looking for a new job. Who needs it? I don't want to be a sad lonely cyber individual bleating on about the death of my lable when I know in my guts that I have joined in too late and with too much optimism.
OK, you say, there is no brand loyalty anymore and who cares where you buy your stuff from so long as its cheap?
No one.
There.
What matters more these days is getting a bargain. Ok fair enough but where does that leave quality and service?
These issues are not irrelevant.
For music it means an ability to sort the good from the bad - talent from hacks and only experience and energy will figure that out, It also means that lots of people were inevitably consigned to dead end jobs in Wal Mart. But what if there is no Wal Mart any more?
What then?
The fact of the matter is that in our time the rules of life are changing so fast its unprecedented.
Expertise is worthless. Quality and innovation are devalued and intellectual gain is a by word for useless loser.
Plato said in THE REPUBLIC that there should be an elite who are tasked with governing the minnions. they should be selected on merit and not on birthrite and that they should be a class above the rest.
Our new version of democracy means that we have disbanded any pretence of having an elected elite who are able to make decisions based on rational self interest and instead we have reverted to the tyrany of the masses where the simplest things are open to debate and argument and that in itself is seen as a good thing.
IT IS NOT.
If we spend our entire lives arguing about everything then only the loudest voices get heard and being the pack animals that we are the loudest voice invariably belongs to the biggest biggot.
I am really worried that we are going to loose everything that makes our lives livable, The NSA will take over the internet and we who rely on the net so much will find ourselves in a murky world of half truths and lies. If you have the time and energy to promote a political agenda you will prevail and the search engine tyrany will mean that we come to rely on WIKIPEDIA or some other half wit resource rather than looking at the original material for ourselves. There is a value in the old paperbased systems - libraries I think we call them. The value is that they mean we are forced to physically look for information and copy and read and think about what we are seeing. Its much slower and harder work than googling but it means that the quality of research is better and more refined and it also means that it isn't open to falsification. (Red ink underlining is much harder to believe than a careful editon You Tube.)
The people are not always right. they don't have the information to be right. If they did we would never have bought the Birdy song and Concorde would still be flying. People power inevitably means the rise of the right and draconian repression. Communism bythe back door if you like.
If you take an average day in the life and wake up, get out of bed and drag a comb across your head you haven't much time to figure out if Melody 1.0 is better than melody 2.0. You want someone else to do that for you. But if you want to decide id a guy should hang for a crime you can make that call in 5 seconds flat and without the information or evidence. Thats how it works, Death is an easy judgement to make but choosing that video is much harder. That's what the new world will lead to.
Another thing that freaks me out is that there are only American values in place. America sees itself as the greatest nation on earth and its institutions as infallible. They arenot and they simply don't work anywhere else. You can't exort democracy to places where there is no tradition or demand for it. Thats why Iraq ia such a mess. No one wants the goods you are exporting and in a weird way its like trying to sell Trabants to Toledo. There is no demand and the whole thing is a bust. But what happens when some enterprisig despot gets hold of the web and manipulates it in his own image. We don't just loose bpower - we loose the whole civilisation . It is a dangerous game they are playing these designers.
We need to filter and refine our lives to make them better not open them up to more crap.
I for one will not trust anyone who hides behind a corporate screen and who pretends to have my best interests at heart. He doesn't know me and he doesn't care and in the great western tradition of recent times if I can screw him over I will. I expect nothing less from him. These are the real lessons America has taught me. Screw or be screwed.
And me a European socialist!
VIVA LA REPUBLIQUE!
