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"Jazz has remained a very accessible art form partly because fans are educated by their own music collections. Albums employed text, photographs and graphic design to illustrate how a network of artists created a musical language together. Without the physical album, online music stores will play a much larger role in teaching new listeners about jazz. While institutions, educators and preservationists will soon face the same challenges, music stores will be the first to use digital interfaces to educate the listening public about jazz. The digital music era should offer listeners more information about jazz, not less. The stakes are high. If jazz fragments into millions of digital files, future generations could be left with a maddening cultural jigsaw puzzle. This music could quickly become one of the mysterious art forms that is translated to the public by a small group of experts."
This outstanding article focuses on jazz, but the issued raised are applicable to all genres of music. Tagging standards for digital files don’t exist and there is no formal body attempting to put such standards in place. Digital music tags are currently the responsibility of the online store (where they are generally not in the hands of genre experts) or the individual consumer. The danger of revisionist history (or simply incorrect information) creating a false or incomplete legacy of a piece of music is a growing problem. The likelihood of a formal music industry solution is small….this would be an ideal open source project for the right collection of techies and musicologists. Read on…
1 response so far ↓
1 Kevin Brunkhorst // Dec 2, 2004 at 10:05 am
I teach jazz at a univeristy in Nova Scotia. A student asked me if I had any Dave Douglas CDs. I copied 120GB of my favorite tunes onto a spare hard drive before I moved to Canada for this academic year, and there are about 4 hours worth of Douglas in there. He wanted me to dub him a CD.
If I do, Dave Douglas loses a potential sale. Like most, this student doesn’t have a lot of disposable income. And if he doesn’t get it from me, he’ll get it somewhere, eventually.
If I don’t, this student will lose or delay the opportunity to listen and learn about arguably one of the best practitioners of jazz today. Many students here have had little or no access to jazz. I can pick jazz students out of the hallway and find you one that has never heard Keith Jarrett.
The industry, with the full backing of the artists they present, should make provision for the educational use of some of their music. With the artists’ blessing, university libraries should receive some music gratis, especially in areas where this music will not be commonly available. (Canada is one such cultural desert, but the industry has made much of America the same way. Check out the jazz or classical selection at your local Wal/Best/Circuit/Sams.)
They should not give away the most popular products - there is no reason that students should get free U2 CD’s.
Weigh the cost in dollars of mailing out 50 or 100 promos versus the cost in knowledge of students not having heard them.
Why do this? Because cultural elitism is the enemy. Because without access to it, certain art forms will continue to die.
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