8Sided Blog

thoughts about music’s place in the 21st century

Shane Carruth and the Constraint of Frustration

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Shane Carruth on the Set of Upstream Color

Primer and Upstream Color are divisive love-them-or-hate-them movies (full disclosure: I love them both), but filmmaker Shane Carruth should inspire everyone. Artistically, he’s taken ‘control freak’ to new levels by assuming each crucial filmmaking role — writer, director, ‘star,’ cinematographer, editor, music composer, distributor, and others — to maintain a challenging vision and cut costs. We can also apply ‘control freak’ to how his direct authority over these aspects gives him ownership of the end product. If Upstream Color were an album1Actually, the soundtrack album is available, it’s fantastic, and you should listen to it., we’d say that Carruth owns his masters and publishing.

When a creator wishes to do projects on a large scale, full control over rights is the most problematic element to sustain. The funding for big projects is usually traded for a loss of intellectual property rights. That might explain Carruth’s apparent frustration in an interview for The Hot Corn:

“I’ve got a massive thing that I’m doing, and after that I’m gonna get out of this, I’m gonna get out of film after this. I’ve got another half of my life to live and I want to think about charities and finding a way to help people, not doing this bullshit, caring about box office, distribution and all this.”

It’s no wonder that our most independent artists are feeling discouraged as capitalism spirals out of control. On the musician’s side, succumbing to a dependency on corporate platforms like Facebook and Spotify is stifling. It’s artistically dispiriting to rely on partners who care little about the craft that goes into a perennial work.

That’s why artists should create their own models. If we work in a niche and desire an impactful statement of our design, then we need to accept that the tech-giants aren’t on our side. There will be compromises to these new models — we probably won’t be able to fund ambitious projects like The Modern Ocean — but constraints help make great art. We need to prepare ourselves because the large, investor-driven platforms we rely on are going to leave music behind. They’ve already started. And we prepare by forming networks, our own distribution outlets, and doubling down on our niches and existing audiences. This route is possible when we use the powerful tools of the internet for our benefit, not to add additional value to a corporate interest through our content and access to our fanbases.

I imagine the interviewer caught Shane Carruth on a bad day. The filmmaker has already embraced progressive release models and knows what they offer. After all, he self-distributed Upstream Color from a website the same day as its limited theatrical launch. That feat was bold and forward-thinking at the time, and it would be both those things today. Hopefully, Carruth will combine a need to help people with his talent for innovative story-telling and develop many meaningful films. It’s doubtful he’ll match the preferred scale of the abandoned projects that inspire his frustration. But I don’t doubt any new work will prove impactful because of Carruth’s insistence on total independence as a guiding artistic constraint.

🔗→ Shane Carruth on The Dead Center and why he’s quitting film for good
🔗→ Your Daily Reminder That Gigantic Media Corporations Are Bad and Cinema is Suffering

How Songwriters Got Thrown Into a Minefield

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I’d like to highlight a couple of informative and disconcerting articles about the state of infringement litigation in the wake of the “Blurred Lines” decision. Both pieces are worth a full read.

In The New York Times, Jon Caramanica writes that It’s Got a Great Beat, and You Can File a Lawsuit to It:

Originality is a con: Pop music history is the history of near overlap. Ideas rarely emerge in complete isolation. In studios around the world, performers, producers and songwriters are all trying to innovate just one step beyond where music currently is, working from the same component parts. It shouldn’t be a surprise when some of what they come up with sounds similar — and also like what came before.

The idea that this might be actionable is the new twist. Every song benefits from what preceded it, whether it’s a melodic idea, a lyrical motif, a sung rhythm, a drum texture. A forensic analysis of any song would find all sorts of pre-existing DNA. […]

What’s left in its wake is a climate of fear. In some recent cases, you can sense pre-emptive gamesmanship, as when Taylor Swift gave a writing credit to Right Said Fred for a cadence on “Look What You Made Me Do” that recalled “I’m Too Sexy.” Or the rapid settlement Sam Smith reached with Tom Petty for perceived similarities between “Stay With Me” and “I Won’t Back Down.” Whether there was a direct borrowing didn’t seem to matter; the potential for the perception of theft was enough to instigate an arrangement.

A few years ago, I worked with a songwriter who unexpectedly received a writer’s credit on a previously unheard new song. No one contacted this songwriter beforehand — the credit just suddenly appeared on publishing statements. It turns out the ‘hook’ for the new song was similar to the chorus in a well-known composition the songwriter penned in the ’70s. My songwriter friend didn’t mind and probably wouldn’t have litigated, but was happy with the outcome — the new song ended up a worldwide #1, resulting in a nice payout.

I’m sure this decision — as is the case with most of these preemptive moves — was made by the label’s legal team. I imagine a group of on-staff musicologists pouring over every potential hit song looking for the vaguest of similarities. The lawyers are alerted of any resemblance and the original writers are proactively paid off with a credit and publishing share. I find this risky as it informs the original writer of the similarity. Even with the credit, I don’t think anything is stopping a writer from claiming copyright infringement, that it’s an unauthorized derivative work. A court might see the publicly acknowledged credit as admission. But of course, payment for essentially doing nothing is appreciated, so why bother with the hassle of going legal, right?

A Close-Up of Piano Keys

In Rolling Stone, Amy X. Wang explains How Music Copyright Lawsuits Are Scaring Away New Hits:

While copyright laws used to protect only lyrics and melodies (a prime example is the Chiffons’ successful suit against George Harrison in 1976 for the strong compositional similarities between his “My Sweet Lord” and their “He’s So Fine”), the “Blurred Lines” case raised the stakes by suggesting that the far more abstract qualities of rhythm, tempo, and even the general feel of a song are also eligible for protection — and thus that a song can be sued for feeling like an earlier one. […] “They’re trying to own basic building blocks of music, the alphabet of music that should be available to everyone,” [Katy] Perry’s lawyer Christine Lepera warned in the case’s closing arguments. […]

The popularity of cheap music-production software, which offers the same features to every user, has added another layer of risk. “Music is now more similar than it is different, for the first time,” [prodcuer and songwriter Ross]Golan says. “People are using the same sample packs, the same plug-ins, because it’s efficient.”

Instrument plug-ins, to be intuitive and easy to use, tend to push users in creative directions. Certain built-in sounds rise to the top, as do sequences and arpeggiations included in the presets. Though these are sounds and one can’t necessarily be sued for a sound (though it has happened!), the inspiration provided by the built-in options potentially send producers to common destinations. A similar five-note motif using a shared patch or a melodic run from an embedded sequence pattern opens up an incentive to take action. Based on what we’ve seen, it’s uncertain a jury would understand the nuance.

And there are potential problems with services like Splice that offer samples and construction kits used by multiple producers. More than one song can easily feature the same melodic building block, and some sample pack offerings from Splice and other services even include lyrics. If a song based on a Splice melodic loop becomes a hit, what happens to the other songs using the same hook?

With copyright protectors like Content ID, it’s who-gets-there-first when it comes to commercially available sample packs. If there’s more than one song using a sample pack melody, the first applying for Content ID stakes the claim. Other songs using that melody might get flagged. This issue has happened in the past with Apple Loops, as producers discovered if they used specific melodic loops included with Logic Pro, the songs would get blocked by YouTube for infringing an earlier song using the same loop.

Even if a sample isn’t used in its blatant form, or is obscured or twisted in the mix, it likely provides the same inspiration as other producers hearing the same sample. It’s not unrealistic to think similar ideas, melodies, or compositional seeds will result from a shared inspirational foundation. Unless there’s future legal clarification — or the courts decide to rely on experts rather than juries in infringement cases1Manager Lucas Keller says in the Rolling Stone article: “In British court, they’d just ask a musicologist to decide. In American court, we bring in 10 random people.” — paying out ‘damages’ and carving out writing shares will be an expected ritual for composers of hit songs.

Looking Back to Go Forward

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Predicting is a slippery business. We can spot trends and have a general idea where things are going, but how can we accurately predict? Is it worth the effort? Alvin Toffler said that “No serious futurist deals in prediction,” while Warren Ellis stays out of the game as “it’s a quick way to look like an idiot.”

For example, in the ’90s, there were plenty of yearly predictions, but few that foresaw the approaching tsunami of the internet, soon to wipe away the music industry. Some accurate predictions, or at least ones that the powers-that-be would listen to, would have been helpful. Instead, there were a lot of ‘idiots.’1I didn’t see the tsunami coming, either.

David Bowie was known for his prescience, and he wasn’t afraid to casually lay down a prediction or two. After all, it’s the seasoned player — but one open to changing possibilities rather than in resistance or denial — who has great insight on the future. The young are often seduced by the new, while nostalgia binds the oldsters. But some are like Bowie, using tradition and history as lenses for viewing technological disruption.

Here’s what David Bowie told the New York Times in 2002:

“Music itself is going to become like running water or electricity … So it’s like, just take advantage of these last few years because none of this is ever going to happen again. You’d better be prepared for doing a lot of touring because that’s really the only unique situation that’s going to be left. It’s terribly exciting. But on the other hand it doesn’t matter if you think it’s exciting or not; it’s what’s going to happen.”

The idea seems quaint now but, in 2002 — the age of Friendster! — Bowie’s words were a shot across the bow. The most radical part is his acceptance, a confidence that the genie is loose, and the bottle is rolling down a hill. Only a few in the industry felt this way. Instead, there was the grasping, the hanging on, the desire to extend the status quo of inflated compact disc profits.

Some more from Bowie:

“ I don’t even know why I would want to be on a label in a few years, because I don’t think it’s going to work by labels and by distribution systems in the same way,” he said. ”The absolute transformation of everything that we ever thought about music will take place within 10 years, and nothing is going to be able to stop it. I see absolutely no point in pretending that it’s not going to happen. I’m fully confident that copyright, for instance, will no longer exist in 10 years, and authorship and intellectual property is in for such a bashing.”

Again, crazy talk for 2002. Of course, copyright does still exist, but Bowie wasn’t too far off. The magnitude of user-generated content and YouTube’s use of ‘safe harbor’ under the DMCA was unforeseeable, from a copyright perspective, in 2002. It turns out Napster was the pre-show.

But this disruption isn’t total. That’s why it’s wise to listen to voices that can look back and understand how technological developments fit within longstanding traditions. We can change how we listen to music, but we’re still listening to music in the same way. We can change how we make music, but we’re still essentially making music in the same way. Our incentives remain untouched by the march of progress.

Looking forward is important for reasons of preparation and, as my friend Craig says, “going where the puck’s headed instead of simply chasing the puck.” But we should always remember why we’re here. Despite all the talk of AI and VR and which tech company is acquiring a different tech company, we want to love music. We want to get excited and tell our friends and exist in this music universe as social beings. David Bowie is right that changes are happening whether we like it or not. But the exciting part is working out how these changes bring us together as music fans. To lose sight of why we’re here is as misguided as chasing the genie’s bottle down that hill.

With that in mind, I participated in SynchTank’s Trends to Watch in 2020 (‘trends,’ not ‘predictions’), joined by three industry pundits of serious smartness. Bucking Ellis and his quote above, their predictions are wise and thought-out, and their proximity to my opinion certainly helps my case.

I’ve been thinking a lot about social media and an artist’s fealty to corporate platforms. My contribution to the Trends piece reflects this and combines prediction with a dose of wishful thinking:

Over the past decade, artists and labels — using technological tools — have become increasingly independent, capturing control and ownership of publishing, masters, and avenues of distribution. But independent marketing fell into the trojan horse of social media, with many artists exclusively relying on the likes of Facebook to get the message out. The keys to discoverability were firmly in the hands of a new crop of corporate gatekeepers.

Undesirable actions by these platforms — such as algorithmically cutting access to fans and unrepentant involvement in political and privacy scandals — started opening eyes to the pitfalls of this reliance. Displeasure continues to grow as these companies fight back by further segmenting audiences and requiring even larger ‘boosts’ to reach one’s fans. The 2020 election — a looming social media shit-show — will move this dissatisfaction even more into the mainstream.

Thus, independent artists are increasingly introducing homegrown strategies that are entirely within their control. We see this in the rising talk of reclaiming fandom, direct support of artists, and the importance of individual ‘stories.’ And we see new twists on old concepts. Email lists, creative artist sites, blogs, localized grassroots outreach — tactics that predated social media, now coming together with the latest technological innovations to form a new breed of DIY.

In the aftermath, social media will remain a tool, but merely a tool — downgraded but still handy. It’s a hammer, not a house. Independent artists will understand that, along with increased interest in owning masters and administering rights, control over how artists reach and interact with their audiences is just as vital.

The point stands: technological breakthroughs, especially those that promise too-easy solutions or purport to disrupt, should face the lens of tradition. We relied on these technologies — these shortcuts — to deliver our messages to fans. We believed online connections were authentic when, in fact, our fanbase was closer to commodity, inaccessible and exploited in our names. Instead, we should use technological tools to claim our rights, creative works, and fanbases, not to transfer these to others. That transfer is the easy route, and unfortunately, it’s what the technology was built to offer.

That’s why I’m looking back as I go forward. The future is filled with possibilities that are promising and, yes, others that are terrifying. But considering the roots of why we act like humans — how our intentions are evergreen — can keep us sober and grounded as technology continues to seduce and overwhelm. Our decisions and actions as artists and listeners should rely on our deepest fundamentals and a core understanding of what brought us here. So, TL;DR: In 2020, let your love of music be your guide.

🔗→ David Bowie, 21st-Century Entrepreneur
🔗→ Music Industry Analysts on the Trends to Watch in 2020