Open source software and new consumer versions of professional tools has turned small home studios, into viable record labels. I’m not totally sure that this is exactly what we want as artists, musicians and music lovers. Live shows and live recordings are becoming more and more of a novelty for the highest paid entertainers of our time. We don’t expect most mainstream artists to perform without a back-track or other pre-recorded assistance. So here’s my question…Have we lost any of the craftmanship involved in making music? Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for using the new bells and whistles of music software to allow more people to make quality music. I just hope that our new music doesn’t lose integrity.

My brother and some of his friends from college recently put together an alternative rap album. He emailed it to me and I was blown away with what they were able to put together. He named it, Godfrey’s Journal: Struggle and Grandeur. I have no idea how they plan to get it into people’s iPods, but they certainly have plenty of options. Companies like CD baby make selling music through iTunes a reality for just about anyone. It’s amazing. Things have changed so much on one hand, but on the other hand, a lot has stayed the same. Just because your music is available digitally, doesn’t mean that people know about it. Major record labels still have control over millions of advertising dollars and radio airtime. You have to not only master digital production you have to master viral distribution as well. It’s a lot of work, but the tools are available. I guess determination, intelligence and luck will decide what digital dreams will come true.

Musicians and lyricists in olden days were able to keep ownership of their material due to the lack of printed copies of their work. Access was also limited because of rampant illiteracy and poverty. But this is the twenty-first century. Digital media and the Internet have not only made it possible to make a seemingly unlimited number of copies of lyrics, notes and performances, but to distribute it across the world in an instant as well. Here, within Rifflet’s online community, the creative commons licensing system helps people maintain ownership of material they post while still affording them the benefits of sharing ideas in a vast online community.

Problem solved, right? Well what about the people who find their work on the internet without their permission? Anyone can take audio or video of someone with a smartphone and post it to the net on the spot. Many venues have now banned the use of camera phones and digital cameras for certain performances to control the distribution of media.

In some cases, giving permission for one entity to use your intellectual property does not prevent it from being picked up by someone else. One American Idol audition by a General Platt has become an overnight Internet meme sensation with numerous remixes. Jimmy Fallon performed and posted a version of General Platt’s song within a day of the original song airing. So who owns the song? And who has the right to make money off of performing it? I’m pretty sure that General Platt signed away the rights to his original performance when he auditioned for American Idol. Does Simon own ‘Pants on the Ground’ now? Does General Platt deserve royalties? These are the questions that concern me with music and ownership these days.

Historically, minority cultures have found themselves robbed of valuable cultural material. Dominant societal forces such as white artists and corporations appropriate other peoples’ work and commercialize it for their own monetary gain. This can’t be right. How do we call people out on this and make sure that everyone receives their proper recognition and compensation for their own artwork, especially in an ever expanding and hungry global ‘marketplace’?

I don’t have the answer right now, but I suggest we start by adopting the Creative Commons perspective for all media across all channels. If we always allow people to decide what others can and can’t do with their intellectual property, we’ll always have respected the rights of ownership, making our long revered modern, western concept safe for everyone to enjoy. (If that’s what we want.)

Even if I started studying today and worked on a PhD in music history or whatever it is that the conservatories are offering these days, there would always be some corner of the world where a new type of music was being born without my knowledge. It’s presumptuous and foolish to think that one person can know all the world’s music. Usually, people categorize music by placing works in groups that share the same “basic musical language.” But event that simple rule can be hard to follow because of subject matter, style preferences and marketing tactics. Genres give way to sub-genres, styles and forms of sound collide and splinter off into sub-subgenres. It can be very confusing.

I’m not even going to get into the huge international list of music genres that I dug up on Wikipedia. So how do we / I go on knowing that there is a whole language and descriptive narrative that I’m not privy to when listening to different and new forms of music. The simple answer is…nothing. You don’t have to know the name or history of a piece of art to enjoy it. Pinpointing origins, names, dates and people can even get in the way of just listening to something and either liking it or not liking it. So many lines get drawn in the sand around ethnicity, ownership, sub-culture and commercialism when it comes to music taste. Who needs that? My opinion: Dig as deep or as shallow as you like when it comes to your pastimes. That’s what helps to make music such a universal element of the human experience. It speaks to people whether they know what they’re hearing or not.

Image courtesy carolyn.will