couldn't agree more. it's all about bottom-up collaborative value creation and content filtering. big industry is convulsing in its death throes. quite rightly. and its attempts to survive via orwellian control implementations a la Sony will almost inevitably end in failure.

still, everyone should stay on their toes.

From my point of view, one of the things that's interesting about debates of this nature which focus on the future of the 'cultural industry' is that the aspect that tends to get ignored in favour of the technological debate is the actual economics of the model of digital music distribution and it's associated ideological impediments.

When compared to other sources of revenue, I don't actually know anyone who has made any significant amount of money out of digital music distribution (it accounted for 0.38% of my last royalty statement). It tends to be seen by musicians and independent record labels I've dealt with as a way of introducing people to the music, as a kind of addition to the radio etc. Selling real artifacts such as records and doing concerts is still the activity that actually generates the revenue that allows most musicians to continue what they do.

The current situation is also symptomatic of the relative ease with which it is possible to produce a recording nowadays, something which no longer entails, as used to be the case, a certain level of investment in music itself. In my experience, the associated changes to the recording process bought about by digital technology, far from aiding, focusing and capturing a 'definitive musical article', have had the opposite effect; the relativism and ubiquity of recordings has become a catalyst that leads to an increased entropy within the medium and hence a greater interest by audiences in other aspects the music/technology paradigm engenders. This in many cases has led to an increased interest in how music is presented live and what informs it's actual creation and production. In the case of electronic musicians in particular, this has not only lead to a demand for more performance related events (witness the myriad of electronic music festivals that now take place across the globe), but has also lead, on the part of the musicians themselves, to an in depth analysis of what constitutes musical discourse, how it is understood and in many cases at what point more traditional models break down.

The elaboration of the technology that created the music industry has re-aligned culture in a very different way from the model it originally proposed and yet the perceived new direction originates from within the original model. It effectively constitutes a type of hybrid evolution and I think from this point of view it starts to become clear that top down structures not only have a hand in proposing that evolution, but also exist to be evolved. For example, it is clear to me that electronic musicians are not seeking to destroy music itself, but are seeking to evolve our inherited concepts of what actually constitutes music. This proposes the point that there is always going to be a stage at which the broader social evolution of perception itself challenges the engendered notion of hierarchical classification as a result of the fact that it is inherently dynamic. The difficult part is in actually understanding and confirming what constitutes a 'beneficial' evolution and equally recognising the part played in that evolution by the existing hierarchical structures it seeks to change.

Even though in certain cases such as music, hierarchies and models are in practice being blurred, are broken down or remain visibly hidden, thematically, they almost always still exist or are latent in some modified form in even the most self-declared radical of works. In most cases, it is a relationship to economics that necessitates certain hierarchical structures irrespective of implied changes to their value. If a debate about cultural industry is to go beyond the rhetoric of simply affirming these changing values, it needs to engender some kind of sustainable economic model that helps these values survive and this in my mind still requires a broader social responsibility engendered by certain top down models.

Sam:

Thanks for your attention and thanks for your comments.

This is a point i haven't really seen well articulated before:

the associated changes to the recording process bought about by digital technology, far from aiding, focusing and capturing a 'definitive musical article', have had the opposite effect; the relativism and ubiquity of recordings has become a catalyst that leads to an increased entropy within the medium and hence a greater interest by audiences in other aspects the music/technology paradigm engenders.

Well put.

On the subject of hierachical structures,

it starts to become clear that top down structures not only have a hand in proposing that evolution, but also exist to be evolved. For example, it is clear to me that electronic musicians are not seeking to destroy music itself, but are seeking to evolve our inherited concepts of what actually constitutes music. This proposes the point that there is always going to be a stage at which the broader social evolution of perception itself challenges the engendered notion of hierarchical classification as a result of the fact that it is inherently dynamic. The difficult part is in actually understanding and confirming what constitutes a 'beneficial' evolution and equally recognising the part played in that evolution by the existing hierarchical structures it seeks to change.

Obviously the notion of a 'beneficial' evolution is arguable. It's a big philosophical discussion, one which i'm ill equipped to undertake, because i never specialized as a philosopher. I'm told this is the profession which deals with questions such as these - dutifully writing down their highly technical answers for other philosophers to approach following years of study.

Perhaps i can forward you on to our philosophy department. Please hold.

Ethics and evolution don't seem very compatible to me.

Redhat's recent "Truth Happens" campaign articulates one way of looking at it.

On this point i really do think hierarchical institutions that deal in content creation in any medium are under a very real threat, and that the "hybrid evolution" requires a full on mutation.

Institutions aren't biological entities. They don't look towards nature for inspiration. This in itself is a weakness of contemporary institutions such as the Company. They are first and foremost legal entities. They don't mutate with much ease. This means existing media institutions are in a bit of a crisis.

In terms of hierarchical classification, well, it's a different issue, but Shirky articulates my position pretty well.

I agree that it's easy to point out that root structures will be replaced with rhizomes across the board, and far harder to pinpoint how contemporary structures might evolve. Again, i think this is a philosophical undertaking.

With respect to this point,

If debate about cultural industry is to go beyond the rhetoric of simply affirming these changing values, it needs to engender some kind of sustainable economic model that helps these values survive and this in my mind still requires a broader social responsibility engendered by certain top down models.

I don't agree that top-down models engender social responsibility in any way. I would argue the opposite. Society engenders its own sense of responsibility.

The last point on my list talks about a new economic model. Syndication + embedded, trackable advertising is what seems to be happening. Content ownership as revenue-stream is out in the long term. The goal of content creators will suddenly shift to allowing as many people as possible to share their content for free, in order to reap advertising revenue. This is a position that's diametrically opposed to DRM.

I'm not interested in joining the debate beyond a description of what i perceive as these new models. My approach comes from close contact with the underlying technology, so my communication on these issues is in the spirit of, "this is happening. You can ignore it if you wish. But it's already happening of it's own accord, and it's working, both commercially and non-commercially."

I implicitly approve of a lot of it, sure, because i choose to spend my time working in related areas.

Broadly speaking I believe in generating wealth for society, and i believe many features of the new model , which i attempt to outline whenever possible, result in more cultural wealth than the old model.

hi a.
you really couldn't be more right.
in my opinion.
gerv