p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:- Earlier today I ran Beat-to-Bit Part I, an online translation of an opinion piece by Russian musician Dmitry Silnitsky.

It’s fascinating, but somewhat long, so I decided to split it into three parts.

The original article is a blog post in Russian and, A translation job was started on the community site, said V for Vendetta in a reader’s Write.

It is almost finished, only proofreading in English is required,” he said.

“If anyone has time and can help finish it, just join translated.by and contribute.

http://translated.by/you/beat-to-bit/into-en/trans/

For now, here’s Beat-to-Bit, Parts II & III combined »»»

Freedom of expression was good in theory but in practice has lead to the situation, in which even for people who master technologies rather well (and I am among them, frankly speaking) it is practically impossible to find anything valuable on the net. The noise has already surpassed all reasonable levels.

Illusion of censorship.

Previously, censors were recording companies. While they were young and managed by creative personalities – they were good filters. They have done great things, saving us, the audience, from swimming in the sea of shit.

Yes, they sometimes made mistakes and did not always recognize talent, but in general, these firms left us at least a few artists of calibre and great potential. If it were not for these filters, we would not hear about them ever.

As these corporations were absorbed by gangs of accountants-lawyers through transnational media groups, filters became worse and worse. Eventually, they became so crappy that, indeed, it would be better without them. But, as it turns out, the problem is not in the filters, but in their quality.

So, here is what we get.

Musicians and the industry have got everything that they could have imagined. All of the most advanced technologies are in their hands.

Virtual studios create almost for free.

Distribution system is simply free.

Marketing opportunities are enormous on the net, given a creative marketing approach.

Everything’s just excellent, except one thing. Most people do not want to buy most of the new music at all. They don’t have fear, these bastards, neither of the laws, nor of permanent ‘harassment’. Musicians and the industry got everything they always wanted, yet people don’t buy most of their product.

Or rather their new product.

Because The Beatles, Queen, Pink Floyd, ABBA, etc. still sell in unthinkable numbers of copies. In mp3, on CD, on vinyl – whatever you like. Musicians are all retired, but their records are still sold, without any special marketing efforts.

At this point it would be appropriate to accuse me of fear of novelty, but it is not necessary.

First, I don’t give a damn.

Second, I know that when a new band that can be really loved appears, I love it.

Similarly to how I fell in love with Air, Zero 7, or a reincarnation of Future Sound Of London. I already had their mp3 totally free, and then went and bought everything on CD, and then on vinyl.

Crazy?

But this is an exception to the rule. Alas, there is very little to fall in love with among the new music.

Almost nothing

Everyone knows a superb music site Last.fm. This site is a great tool to understand what most people ‘love’. As everyone knows, Last.fm gathers statistics on what real people are actually listening to on their computers. It’s much more honest information than all paid-for charts in the world. Even if not paid-for, charts are reflecting purchases, but not real love. You can buy without thinking too much, or under influence of the media. But no one will force you to listen to it every day.

So, as long as existed Last.Fm, I do not remember that those same Beatles dropped below the third rank. Forty years after their last song.

And the rest of the Top 20 are real artists and bright personalities.

And, by the way, elderly are not the only people who use Last.fm.

“Isn’t this a sign of creative impotence? Is it that no one is able to compose new materials, relating to those that we did before? Of course, I am proud, happy, flattered and all that, but how can it happen that the greatest success is enjoyed by stuff that was done twenty years ago and that in a cover version? Something is not right. This should not occur.”

Benny Andersson (ABBA)

He meets a Russian classic.

- Maybe it is time to have something changed in the conservatory? (Zhvanetsky)

And almost in a literal sense…

Energy

So, there are artists who were selling, and are still selling their music for real money.

They are not many, but who said that there have to be millions of them?

Maybe their sales numbers are now lower, but who said that every inhabitant of the planet must buy music product?

This delusion is only in the heads of marketing of transnational music companies.

References to past industry performance (especially in the seventies of the last century), are only making me laugh.

In those days, people had no other home entertainment except music. VCRs did not exist, neither did computer games nor gaming consoles. No gadgets at all. Books and vinyl records were the only entertainment in our homes. That’s the first explanation. Today, buyers’ attention has spread among all the new media and arts, while their available income remained pretty much the same. Music gets less attention. The attitude to it became simpler … in general. Music became nothing but a background.

When talking about energy, it is good to start with what was long pointed by the sayings:

“What we get cheaply, we value it little”

Or do not value at all.

This applies to music in the sense that the process has become too cheap and mechanical. Creators now invest less of their own energy. However, listeners feel this through some special sense and perfectly understand it.

‘Beat’ way

There is a musical genre such as Ambient (in Russian just a set of noises or sounds that are usually passed with fervour as the concept). Many think that this is an entirely new music genre that has appeared not so long ago. However, similar to how the Beatles laid the foundation for the brit-pop with one of their song, invented the hard rock of seventies with another song and all of the contemporary psychedelic with the third one, the ambient genre in its contemporary form appeared on early Pink Floyd recordings together with that same psychedelic genre.

In those days, music creation was extremely difficult and costly. Synthesizers have just begun to appear and they felt out of the ark. There were no ready-to-use sound samples. To achieve the desired effect of the guitar echo, a musician needed to come down into an empty swimming pool, it was not possible to do it otherwise. So people had to be inventive in a variety of ways.

They played with the tape, cut it into pieces, glued it, or created some custom devices just for the sake of achieving that one effect. The great producer and sound engineer Alan Parsons went to a clock shop in order to record the chiming clock. And this was honest.

Honesty – this is the word that best shows how music was made at the time. There was no cover of technology behind which one could hide, and it is very clearly seen in music of that time.

And this still has value.

‘Bit’ way

Today, any teenager can instantly download from the net a lot of trendy sounds, samples, loops, and other «content», then launch a virtual studio program on his laptop and assemble something with it.

Depending on whether the noise is performed forward or backward, the final product may be called whatever you like.

But there is no meaning neither in the first version, nor in the second.

Smart-looking teenager, of course, will blow out his cheeks and begin to talk about the unique concept of his work, ideas that he put into it, and the pain of creative activity.

Music critics will operate the words “cult” (one should kill for this word), “cultural stratum”, and provide analogies of similar artists, whose names do not say anything to anybody except the critics themselves.

But all this does not work.

Music that was easily assembled from Lego blocks has no value. Musicians think in vain that ordinary listeners do not care. And the problem does not lie in computing, but rather in freebie.

This result, which was previously achieved by the tremendous creative effort, mental energy of the creator, is now achieved through few random mouse clicks in arbitrary fields of a software tool. And at a first glance, in both cases (for ambient music) we got the same set of sounds and noises. Some sound landscape.

There is only one problem In the first case, it sounds like a work of art, even forty years later, while the second looks like a piece that any idiot can make.

Is mental energy, like emotions, transmitted through the result of creative activity?

I brought only the most extreme example, but for anyone who can think, it is easy to see all this throughout the rest of contemporary music product.

In any case, this is the explanation to a catastrophic drop in interest in electronic music worldwide. Making it became not only non-profitable but also not prestigious and irrelevant.

One particular case

Every person, from time to time, asks herself the question of how should she personally relate to the consumption of music today, when the issue of copyright is literally hanging in the air?

On the one hand, I am sure that, at heart, almost everyone understands that the work of good writers, composers and other creators of intellectual property must to some degree be compensated.

Otherwise, its production would almost stop; and that, I am sure, no one would want.

On the other hand, when we begin to apply this issue to ourselves, we quickly realize that when we get the slightest opportunity not to pay for books, music and movies (and in fact, and for everything else), we are happy to seize it.

And it does not matter what the law says on this issue, because the influence of law on our Internet activity is greatly exaggerated. I guess the law will have less and less impact as the information technologies progress, despite the activities of copyright defenders and other regulators. In fact, it is steadily approaching zero.

A minority will not be able to tame an overwhelming majority, especially in high tech era.

It was shown and proven a million times, and if some still don’t get it, it is solely their problem.

The moral side of the story matters little to me as well. I am sure that truly free people will never be guided by principles of public morality, which they replaced long time ago with personal principles.

Taking into account the absolute subjectivity of such concepts as “good” and “evil”, others’ perceptions in this regard are of lowest priority too.

“Morality caresses the weak, but falls under the strong”. I fully share that beaten truth and would only add that strong in the new century are precisely those who master technologies. That is, the vast majority of young and smart people, but not a bunch of functionaries, who yesterday had a clear problem with e-mail.

Either way, just for myself, I tried to define the way that I am going to consume music, while being in harmony with myself, before everything else.

Earlier, I was practicing digital hoarding, like most other people. At some point, however, I understood the absolute stupidity of this activity.

And, incidentally, its extreme inefficiency with regard to the expansion of my personal development in the area of music culture, which I care about deeply.

I notice that 99% of all new music that I downloaded, I have listened to only once. Then it was either staying as a ballast inside my computer, or was immediately deleted. I wrote earlier on the causes of this phenomenon, but now I am concerned with the consequences.

You don’t need to think too long to realize that I consumed most of this music in radio mode, and not in home media center mode. Such music never reached my iPod. I kept downloading, deleting, downloading, deleting until I understood the futility of the process.

At this point all music in the world was divided for me into two classes music that is so good for me that I will listen to it for my whole life, and music, which is so “nothing”, that is was only worthy of brief one-time sampling.

Since then, I stopped downloading anything from the net.

All of my favourite albums have been bought long time ago on CD and on vinyl, and of course they were regulars on my iPod.

I switched to using the radio almost exclusively.

By radio, I certainly do not mean that mediocrity that is present on the FM dial in Russia (and not only there). I am talking about real radio, the one that Internet is giving me in the form of thousands of stations from all over the world, in quality that is acceptable for one-time music.

I am talking about the radio that lets me listen to the music that is in my soul at the moment, even if it is something very rare.

Without the fear that at some moment it will spit in my face something like kirkorov or lepse. [insert here spears or any other "commercial" crap, if you want Translator]

Soon I discovered practical benefits of this kind of music listening.

Unlike their prehistoric “colleagues” on the FM dial, real radio stations always tell me what they are playing at the moment. This leads to a huge number of musical discoveries, which I could only dream of before. Often, I get to real masterpieces, which I would never get to know through visits to countless music websites, with millions of bands whose names don’t tell me much.

And when I get to know them, I get an opportunity to explore band’s creativity and perhaps to buy their CD. Or download…

But it depends on the degree of the genius of the album and its ability to stand on a shelf next to ‘Queen: The Night at the Opera’ or ‘Air: Moon Safari’.

Music industry now has one and only chance to sell something to me: to show me something that I can strongly fall in love with. Love it so much that I will willingly want to buy it and put on my shelf. I think that it has no other way now, and won’t have it ever again.

From now on, only super-rarities will be sold for money. Masterpieces that are impossible to pass by. And whether music industry will offer me such, it is, honestly, its own problem.

But I do not rule out another scenario; furthermore, I feel it would be ideal.

When music business almost ceases to generate income (and this will happen, inevitably), all those involved in music just for money will leave it.

The few that remain will be creating only because they have real spiritual needs.

And, as is customary in such cases, all that is done with soul will be so good that we will want to buy it again.

There can’t be too much of good music…

Music industry in the state to which it arrived, does not like their customers. It does not like artists either. The music industry loves only itself. And this is the reason why the energy it spends does not come back to it in any form.

I started this article with a quote from King Crimson, and will finish it with the last line of the last song of the last vinyl by The Beatles.

This message has a strong meaning and is the quintessence of what the band wanted to say to the world. It shows their true attitude to people and creativity, and that is why records of this band sell and will always sell.

If the music industry can apply these words to itself even a little, then it has a chance.

- and in the end the love you take

is equal to the love you make (The Beatles)

PS. Some will get insulted or have their feelings hurt by this article, and I understand it.

Some will get mad, and I will be glad!

Some will not understand its main idea, but will try nitpicking on individual examples, names and other details.

But some will understand the essence of it, and perhaps make their own conclusion.

And, if this is just one person, I did not waste my time. [same for me the Translator]

Dmitry Silnitsky

www.silnitsky.com

April 2009

Additions to the Beat-to-Bit article

To complement my article, I would like to give you some quotes on the topic from great people.

About creativity, reward and value…

Understand, Felix Alexandrovitch, your internal struggles, or your mental confusion, or your, forgive me, narcissism, are not of my business. The only thing that interests me is your blue folder, that novel of yours, written and finished. As for how you do it, and at what price – I’m no literary expert and not your biographer, really, I’m not interested. Of course, people tend to expect a reward for their work and their pain, and in general this is fair, but there are exceptions: there is not and can not be a reward for creative pain. Pain itself embodies a reward. [translation is approximate - the Translator]

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. “Limping Fate”

———

A writer can only put together a bit of money by chance, although, in the end result, good books always generate income. As they get richer, our writers are beginning to live in a big way – and here they get caught. Now they have to write to maintain their lifestyles, to support their wives, and other, and other – and the result is waste paper. This is done not deliberately, but because they are in a hurry. Because they write when they have nothing to say, when the water in the well dried up. Because their ambition began to speak out in them. Betraying themselves only once, they try to justify this betrayal, and we get another batch of waste paper. [translating from Russian to English because I could not find a free source to cite this from on the web - the Translator]

Ernest Hemingway. “Green Hills of Africa”

If you want to greatly humiliate your spouse, but you do not have enough guts to develop bias towards homosexuality in yourself, you can at least devote yourself to art. This time I’m not kidding. It won’t pay for your life. It’s just a typical human way to make life more bearable. Art elevates the soul and boosts self-awareness. Your actual achievements in a chosen area of competence do not have any significance. Sing in the shower. Turn on the radio and dance. Tell jokes. Write a poem to a friend. Even the most obscene one. But do it as best as you can. And you will be rewarded handsomely. You and creativity will have fellowhip in each other. [translating from Russian to English because I could not find a free source to cite this from on the web - the Translator]

Kurt Vonnegut. “A Man Without a Country”

Big Music `Beat-to-Bit` – I

Jon Newton – p2pnet

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August, 2009

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 26th, 2009 at 11:35 am and is filed under Freedom, P2P. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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