First, let’s discuss the decentralization of sound, which immediately brings to mind an idiom: ‘Each with their own horn, they blow their own tone.’ The horn serves two functions: it can be played as a musical instrument, and it can be used as a military signal. This represents the two purposes of sound: conveying messages and transmitting emotions. It also describes the two different aspects of sound: one is that sound needs to be transmitted, and the other is that it calls for the listener. In my previous curatorial project Sound Meridians (2020) at the Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei, a central theme was sound as a battlefield; where should listeners go to find the sound they desire? Sound is in a constant struggle for the rights of listening and speaking. Going back to what I mentioned earlier about everyone blowing their own horn, why would one desire a horn that everyone listens to? So, it’s a political issue. Sound is a battlefield.
Let’s focus on the role of music. In the era with no recording devices, where did people go to listen to music? It was always at a live music performance or show. In other words, the act of ‘listening to music’ in ancient times was rarely done in solitude; it inherently had a collective nature. Now, with recording technology, one can listen to music alone. This is a significant change, as it is no longer necessary to listen to music as a group. In ancient times, music was a commodity. It was not so much the buying and selling of this ‘thing’ called ‘music,’ but rather that of the labor of music performers. If there was something tangible to be bought and sold, it would probably be sheet music. In modern times, sound has detached itself from its original sound-producing entity through media and has become an independent and tradable ‘object’ like records and tapes. The fact that sound can be treated as an object has greatly changed people’s understandings and ideas about music.
Another significant change is that music has recently lost its characteristic as an ‘object,’ thus altering its value as a commodity. This change began around 2000 and reached its peak after 2010 with the rise of online streaming, which directly led to the collapse of the record industry. In the past, listening to music cost money, at least several times more expensive than a meal. An album used to cost around 300 dollars, the price of a CD, or 150 dollars for a cassette tape. Unconsciously, music became readily available, and almost for free via the internet with an abundance of options. Younger listeners have increasingly blurred the concept of an ‘album’ (a collection of an artist’s works over a particular creative period). The context of listening to songs now follows algorithm-based ‘recommendations’ provided by streaming platforms. The music suggested by algorithms exists in a flattened timeframe, and younger listeners gradually care less about the concept of ‘albums’ and the process of the artist’s creative development. This change in music dissemination has influenced the perception of music among a generation.
This, of course, directly affects the value of music and even influences the work itself. In an era where music can no longer present its value in the form of a ‘physical object,’ musicians no longer derive income from ‘selling records.’ So how do they receive value feedback from their creations? As far as I know, the income generated from streaming platforms is meager, especially for lesser-known creators. Regarding this issue, there are currently three possible directions: First, the experiential economy of live performances has become even more important for both artists and listeners compared to the past. Second, artists go vintage, produce and sell limited copies of vinyl records or cassette tapes, primarily for collectors—but not necessarily for listening purposes. Third, internet actors are attempting to reestablish the ‘ownership of music’ with scarcity through blockchain technology, such as NFTs, thereby creating another form of non-physical tradable item.
To discuss the ‘decentralization’ of sound, we must first talk about what it is being decentralized in relation to and how it can be decentralized. When I was young, around 1988, I subscribed to the Rocker Music Magazine which came with a cassette tape. The content featured DJs introducing underground music to listeners, songs that wouldn’t be played on mainstream radio. This cassette tape essentially turned the radio broadcast into a recorded format. We can say that this cassette tape represented the decentralization of traditional radio stations, as their radio waves were regulated, and only a few people could host radio programmes. With this cassette-style radio program, anyone who knew how to record could become their own DJ and have their own radio station. In this form of decentralization, the central object of the dialectic is the radio station. This kind of central versus decentral dialectic occurs in many fields. In the music industry, for example, the so-called ‘independent labels’ target the centralized system controlled by the five major record companies that handle production and marketing. Independent labels create their own production and distribution networks to break away from this system.
As of today, when discussing the decentralization of music, what is the dialectic object? Where is the center? If we focus solely on music distribution, I believe the current centers are Spotify, KKBOX, and YouTube. However, it is challenging to discuss ‘decentralization’ within this streaming platform-based music distribution system. While it is easy for musicians to release their music from a technical standpoint, with anyone’s voice being accessible, a closer look at the distribution of benefits within this system reveals a highly centralized structure.
