There's the old myth that if you toss a frog into a pot of boiling water, he'll immediately leap out – but if you put a frog in a pot of tepid water and gradually increase the heat, the frog will cook before he even realizes the temperature has changed.
Politicians sometimes use this image to justify slow, incremental change. Maybe you can't eliminate the Ministry of the Environment in one fell swoop, for example, but you can erode its effectiveness slowly over time until it becomes irrelevant and industry can exploit the land with impunity. By the time enough people wake up to the changes, they're cowed by the enormity of problem, or they've grown complacent. 'That's just the way it is and I can't change it now'. Voters would react with outrage to a large, sweeping motion, but go to sleep with seemingly small, insignificant changes.
Just recently, you probably heard about the little nudge on the stove-knob by the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC is actually their real corporate name now...kinda like KFC, only in this case, they're likely interested in playing down the 'Canadian' aspect rather than 'Fried'). The bank had attempted to fire over forty workers and replace them with temporary foreign workers provided by an Indian outsourcing company called iGate. These workers would be paid approximately half of what their Canadian counterparts would receive; they would then take the expertise acquired in Canada back with them to India so that they could continue to do the same job in their native land. RBC – Canada's biggest, and most massively profitable bank – would save a few bucks in wages and benefits. Unfortunately for RBC management, the fired employees blew the whistle, CBC picked up the news story, and everything got rather public. Royal's CEO has since apologized and promised the fired workers that jobs would be found for them in the Bank.
The story brought to light the fact that outsourcing has been going on since the mid-80's (the award-winning documentary movie 'Roger and Me' by Michael Moore, about General Motors moving a profitable operation from Michigan to Mexico in order to save on labour costs, is a stark illustrator of the practice). I suspect that the reason the RBC story made waves is because a) it's a simple, unambiguous story that transcends ideology – 'foreign workers steal Canadian jobs', b) the CBC is not yet under Corporate Canada's thumb (unlike the Canadian Government) and is still widely heard, and c) there had been similar 'wake-up' stories recently in the press, such as the BC Chinese mine-workers debacle brought to us by HD Mining. The groundwork was laid for people to understand what was going on and to perceive it as an insidious trend rather than an isolated anomaly.
So here we have a particular livelihood in danger of having its wages severely eroded because (a) there are a lot of as-yet untrained people willing to do it cheaper, and (b) management hoped consumers could not tell the difference – or at least, wouldn't care enough to do anything about it, and (c) the wage-eroding practice has been slow and gradual. Up until now, little attention has been paid.
Which brings us (at last) to the music industry.
I understand supply and demand. There's a massive supply of people who'd love to play music for a living, many of whom would work dirt-cheap to do it (at least in their early years, when they're still living with their parents...or later, when they've had a day job for decades and would like the musical weekend warrior option). My generation grew up watching music videos, which tended to make playing music look a hell of a lot more fun than, say, selling insurance...or just about anything else, for that matter. You get onstage, you look cool, you're showered in adulation, and you get rich. It's almost a miracle that the whole generation didn't turn to music as a vocation. Certainly, many tried. Still, no matter how flooded a labour pool might be, there is not justification for exploitation, sub-standard wages or ignoring such factors as expertise.
To add to the pinch, technology has probably worked more against musicians than for them. Although the costs of recording music at a professional level have plummeted over the last three decades, live bands have been replaced in many venues with DJs (as music playback and lighting equipment as developed), and of course, digital recording has eviscerated the recorded medium as a source of income. To add a little more misery to the mix, disposable income for all generations after the Baby Boomers has crashed, which knocks down available funds for music, be it live (with accompanying liquor sales) or recorded. Less income means less time, so people have turned to 'fast-food' and 'wallpaper' music in droves; quick, shallow gratification, or a soothing background, to be discarded and forgotten in an instant. Who's got time or attention to sit through (as an ironic example) Amused to Death? Bring on the DJ...
It's been the expected rite of passage for the ageing generation to bitch about the music of the younger generation – but this time, it's not just age. The most widely-heard pop music of today really is a lot worse than that of previous generations, in part for the reasons I've mentioned above. It doesn't mean good music isn't being written or performed somewhere, it simply isn't widely-heard, fostered or supported significantly. Decades down the road, will middle-aged folks get misty-eyed when they hear 'Call Me Maybe'? Perhaps...but probably more due to embarrassment.
So where is this all leading?
My paternal grandfather grew up in a village in the Ukrainian corner of the old Austrian empire. Over a century ago, on the rare occasions he and his buddies found some spare time from the day's toils, they'd often pursue a most entertaining pastime that also fulfilled some small civic duty.
They'd run the musicians out of town.
Musicians were seen merely as vagrants with delusions of grandeur, after all. Might as well keep the streets clean.
Perhaps the surplus bank workers would be next.
A species with no natural predators eventually starts competing with itself for resources...and in our case, preying on itself. The stockholders at RBC like the idea of a bigger return on their investment, even if it means eroding the standard of living in Canada to third-world levels. Seems stupid not to save a buck where you can, right? The same way it seems stupid to pay for music when you can just as easily 'download it for free (a.k.a. 'steal it')'. The way it seems stupid to pay for a professional band for your reception when you can get your nephew's friends to play the gig for beer.
The way it seems stupid to be whistling 'Call Me Maybe' thirty years from now?
The crux of the problem is the belief that any slight advantage you might relinquish to someone else – pay a few more bucks for a CD, a service, a product, for example – is a net loss to you, end of story. As I've tried to illustrate, it doesn't quite work that way. Even if you want to keep your focus narrowed exclusively to self-interest, squeezing any goods- or service-provider to the last penny and cheapest alternative isn't good economics in the long-term. Save a few bucks on 'free' music today and enjoy a pathetic selection a decade from now...just as you can look forward to the total absence of middle-class society. The very rich and the vast population of the working poor will, according to pervading trends, be all that is left.
Put another way: would you rather invest in good music and quality products of the future, or cheap, offshore-manufactured junk and stolen music in great quantity now? As much as the popular assumption seems to be otherwise, we can't have both.
Politicians sometimes use this image to justify slow, incremental change. Maybe you can't eliminate the Ministry of the Environment in one fell swoop, for example, but you can erode its effectiveness slowly over time until it becomes irrelevant and industry can exploit the land with impunity. By the time enough people wake up to the changes, they're cowed by the enormity of problem, or they've grown complacent. 'That's just the way it is and I can't change it now'. Voters would react with outrage to a large, sweeping motion, but go to sleep with seemingly small, insignificant changes.
Just recently, you probably heard about the little nudge on the stove-knob by the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC is actually their real corporate name now...kinda like KFC, only in this case, they're likely interested in playing down the 'Canadian' aspect rather than 'Fried'). The bank had attempted to fire over forty workers and replace them with temporary foreign workers provided by an Indian outsourcing company called iGate. These workers would be paid approximately half of what their Canadian counterparts would receive; they would then take the expertise acquired in Canada back with them to India so that they could continue to do the same job in their native land. RBC – Canada's biggest, and most massively profitable bank – would save a few bucks in wages and benefits. Unfortunately for RBC management, the fired employees blew the whistle, CBC picked up the news story, and everything got rather public. Royal's CEO has since apologized and promised the fired workers that jobs would be found for them in the Bank.
The story brought to light the fact that outsourcing has been going on since the mid-80's (the award-winning documentary movie 'Roger and Me' by Michael Moore, about General Motors moving a profitable operation from Michigan to Mexico in order to save on labour costs, is a stark illustrator of the practice). I suspect that the reason the RBC story made waves is because a) it's a simple, unambiguous story that transcends ideology – 'foreign workers steal Canadian jobs', b) the CBC is not yet under Corporate Canada's thumb (unlike the Canadian Government) and is still widely heard, and c) there had been similar 'wake-up' stories recently in the press, such as the BC Chinese mine-workers debacle brought to us by HD Mining. The groundwork was laid for people to understand what was going on and to perceive it as an insidious trend rather than an isolated anomaly.
So here we have a particular livelihood in danger of having its wages severely eroded because (a) there are a lot of as-yet untrained people willing to do it cheaper, and (b) management hoped consumers could not tell the difference – or at least, wouldn't care enough to do anything about it, and (c) the wage-eroding practice has been slow and gradual. Up until now, little attention has been paid.
Which brings us (at last) to the music industry.
I understand supply and demand. There's a massive supply of people who'd love to play music for a living, many of whom would work dirt-cheap to do it (at least in their early years, when they're still living with their parents...or later, when they've had a day job for decades and would like the musical weekend warrior option). My generation grew up watching music videos, which tended to make playing music look a hell of a lot more fun than, say, selling insurance...or just about anything else, for that matter. You get onstage, you look cool, you're showered in adulation, and you get rich. It's almost a miracle that the whole generation didn't turn to music as a vocation. Certainly, many tried. Still, no matter how flooded a labour pool might be, there is not justification for exploitation, sub-standard wages or ignoring such factors as expertise.
To add to the pinch, technology has probably worked more against musicians than for them. Although the costs of recording music at a professional level have plummeted over the last three decades, live bands have been replaced in many venues with DJs (as music playback and lighting equipment as developed), and of course, digital recording has eviscerated the recorded medium as a source of income. To add a little more misery to the mix, disposable income for all generations after the Baby Boomers has crashed, which knocks down available funds for music, be it live (with accompanying liquor sales) or recorded. Less income means less time, so people have turned to 'fast-food' and 'wallpaper' music in droves; quick, shallow gratification, or a soothing background, to be discarded and forgotten in an instant. Who's got time or attention to sit through (as an ironic example) Amused to Death? Bring on the DJ...
It's been the expected rite of passage for the ageing generation to bitch about the music of the younger generation – but this time, it's not just age. The most widely-heard pop music of today really is a lot worse than that of previous generations, in part for the reasons I've mentioned above. It doesn't mean good music isn't being written or performed somewhere, it simply isn't widely-heard, fostered or supported significantly. Decades down the road, will middle-aged folks get misty-eyed when they hear 'Call Me Maybe'? Perhaps...but probably more due to embarrassment.
So where is this all leading?
My paternal grandfather grew up in a village in the Ukrainian corner of the old Austrian empire. Over a century ago, on the rare occasions he and his buddies found some spare time from the day's toils, they'd often pursue a most entertaining pastime that also fulfilled some small civic duty.
They'd run the musicians out of town.
Musicians were seen merely as vagrants with delusions of grandeur, after all. Might as well keep the streets clean.
Perhaps the surplus bank workers would be next.
A species with no natural predators eventually starts competing with itself for resources...and in our case, preying on itself. The stockholders at RBC like the idea of a bigger return on their investment, even if it means eroding the standard of living in Canada to third-world levels. Seems stupid not to save a buck where you can, right? The same way it seems stupid to pay for music when you can just as easily 'download it for free (a.k.a. 'steal it')'. The way it seems stupid to pay for a professional band for your reception when you can get your nephew's friends to play the gig for beer.
The way it seems stupid to be whistling 'Call Me Maybe' thirty years from now?
The crux of the problem is the belief that any slight advantage you might relinquish to someone else – pay a few more bucks for a CD, a service, a product, for example – is a net loss to you, end of story. As I've tried to illustrate, it doesn't quite work that way. Even if you want to keep your focus narrowed exclusively to self-interest, squeezing any goods- or service-provider to the last penny and cheapest alternative isn't good economics in the long-term. Save a few bucks on 'free' music today and enjoy a pathetic selection a decade from now...just as you can look forward to the total absence of middle-class society. The very rich and the vast population of the working poor will, according to pervading trends, be all that is left.
Put another way: would you rather invest in good music and quality products of the future, or cheap, offshore-manufactured junk and stolen music in great quantity now? As much as the popular assumption seems to be otherwise, we can't have both.