The New Analog by Damon Krukowski - Book Review

Damon Krukowski is a musician, poet, and publisher who has written a book exploring the ways that the move from analog recording and distribution of music to digital has effected the way in which music is experienced. In The New Analog:Listening and Reconnecting in a Digital World (The New Press, 2017, 224 pages, $24.95/15.48) he examines, in some detail, the history and development of transmitting both print and recorded versions of sound to make it available to those wishing to reproduce and hear it. From printed notation to player piano rolls, wax cylinders, records, CDs, to broadcast from radio signals to streaming digital, he examines copyright issues as well as the complex nature of sound and its reproduction. Along the way, he discusses copyright issues as they affect those wishing to make a living from recording (musicians, writers, engineers, recording companies, sound distribution) providing the most cogent explanation of “mechanical royalties” I've ever read.

I'm not a techie. I haven't understood what's meant when my more knowledgeable friends talk about the compression or lifelessness of CD's as compared with earlier vinyl recordings. I've even suggested double blind listening tests to determine whether even highly sensitive listeners can actually tell the difference, but I've never read or heard of any being conducted. Krukowski, almost talking in two languages, techno speak and fan, makes these issues clearer for me. He writes about context, signal, and noise in ways that make sense to me. Krukowski is able to make most technical issues clear, only loosing me a few times. Written with an eye to clarifying certain issues in recording and hearing the distribution of those sounds, The New Analog helped me to understand much of what I have been missing, in trying to understand this revolution.

According to Krukowski, human beings hear in stereo sound. Having two ears allows us to make the minute mental distinctions placing us in space and providing context for the world around us. He describes a woman bike rider falling down while riding a bike with earbuds because, focused on the sounds being delivered to her ears, she was unable to integrate other cues. Our stereo hearing is remarkably accurate at providing context for what we hear while our brains separate signal from noise.

Signal is the foregrounded sound we are supposed to concentrate on...the music. Noise is the supposedly unnecessary sound that interferes with our being able to focus on signal. The role of the technology in separating signal from noise gives us the purer sound that comes to us through digital transmission, eliminating noise. But is music without noise what we really wish to hear?

The studio itself becomes a character in this dichotomy. A wooden studio provides a warm, wood-like sound. But a completely baffled and sound-dead studio, for a listener inside it, is still filled with sound, as one's internal functioning – respiration, heartbeat, blood flowing in the veins – can be heard. There is no silence. But the digital studio seeks to eliminate noise, while increasing and layering signal. The work of the studio technician is to take a series of signals, layer and sequence them, and create a larger complex work that turns out to be all signal with no differentiation about what to foreground or background – no sense of context. Loudness has become a substitute for subtlety.

Along with the changes in sound have come a change in the delivery system of those sounds. The invention of file sharing, though Napster, while only lasting for two years, spelled the end of record stores and will soon sound the death knell of the compact disk as a means of distributing music. All our music will be downloaded to digital devices to be heard through ear-buds simulating stereo sound, but actually have no separation and providing no contextual cues. Furthermore, those features record lovers, and even CD purchasers no longer have available the kind of information once provided by liner notes. Planned noise has been substituted for by social media, a very noisy place. However, the algorithms of FB, Twitter, Snap Chat, Goodreads, etc) quickly limit exposure to only the noise you wish to hear, increasing isolation and tribalism. We are not fully exposed to the range of noise that once took place in the record store, or other gathering places where people discussed and debated the values of content. However, the algorithms of FB, Twitter, Snap Chat, Goodreads, etc) quickly limit exposure to only the noise you wish to hear, increasing isolation and tribalism. Older mail lists, for instance, were relatively unfiltered, providing more choices of what to consider for the receiver. Who decides what the noise surrounding the signal will be?

Damon Krukowski

Damon Krukowski is the editor/publisher of Exact Change, an independent publishing house, along with Naomi Yang, with whom he performed as David & Naomi. He has been a member of rock band Galaxie 500, a 1980's and early nineties indie band, as well. He attended Harvard University and lives in Boston. He blogs at International Sad Hits.

The New Analog:Listening and Reconnecting in a Digital World (The New Press, 2017, 224 pages, $24.95/15.48) by Damon Krukowski examines the physiology, acoustic science, and effect of the changes from analog to digital sound in the rapidly changing media environment. By placing our audio experience of recorded music into a larger context of how human beings interact with the world, he offers a more nuanced view than many who decry the emergence of digital music as it's experienced through devices like head phones and iPods. He recognizes that digital delivery of music has been responsible for the loss of community represented by the teeming record store where people could hang out and discuss the music, as well as the quickly developing death of the CD as a means of delivering music. He calls for the re-introduction of the noisy environment once surrounding music, which would lessen the isolation with which people now experience it. While he sometimes gets caught up in the tangled weeds of detailed technology and psycho-physiology, he nevertheless delivers a thoughtful and readable examination at how rapid technological change leads to unanticipated social disruption. I received the book at an Advanced Reviewers Copy from the publisher through Edelweiss. I read it on my Kindle app.

Some Thoughts on Publicity: Facebook & Radio - Essay

A week or so ago I posted a video on my YouTube channel of the Lonesome River Band singing a song called Bonnie Brown at the Dumplin Valley Bluegrass Festival in Tennessee back in early October. Two days later I posted an instrumental video by another very popular performer. A week later I noticed that the LRB song had been viewed over 550 times while the succeeding video only had 114 hits. I asked myself, “What could have happened to boost the LRB song so high, so fast?” As I dug around, I found that my video had been posted on LRB's Facebook page as well as in their Twitter feed and their publicist's Twitter page. This incident has encouraged me to try to put some elements together about how musicians use the potential of publicity to build and develop their careers, and the effect of social and electronic media on them.

The era of social media has evolved such that it requires a new set of skills for people functioning in the public to learn and master. Entertainers, at every level of the music industry find themselves competing for attention with a bewildering range and number of possibilities for the public's scarce entertainment dollar. Meanwhile, these new technologies have derailed traditional means of gaining the attention of fans and encouraging them to allocate resources in the desired direction. Changes in the recording and music distribution industry are huge. Techniques for garnering and effectively exploiting attention are bewildering and continuing to change. The balance of traditional streams of income (sales of recordings, performance, merchandise, film, television, and so-on) has been upset by streaming audio and now video, changes in how royalties are distributed, and a continually changing entertainment environment. One thing is certain for bluegrass musicians...it's not all about the music.

Several years ago, when Facebook was roughly half the size it is now, and those of us who are of “a certain age” were still new to the world it opened to us, I noticed that the Gibson Brothers had little or no presence on that platform, which was becoming important to me. I wrote to Eric about it, and he virtually told me to mind my own business. However, characteristically, he thought about what had been said, apologized, and then, based on his own analysis of the possibilities, started to become active as a personality on Facebook. Eric Gibson is, generally speaking, a private person functioning in a very public setting. He also thinks deeply about what affects the fortunes of the Gibson Brothers band and helps them progress. He proceeded to become a master at using Facebook to make himself available to the band's fans.

Eric, on his Facebook page, observes the world around him and writes about his interests: family, music, baseball, and nature, among other things. He soon noticed that he needed to strike a balance between posts about the progress of the Gibson Brothers, the pleasure he finds in sports, his love of hard work and the outdoors, and the need to provide privacy for his family, and himself, as well disclosing those elements that would be of genuine interest to others. In so doing, he helped build the band through the authenticity of his posts, without being unnecessarily self-disclosing where to do so might compromise the privacy he so values. Eventually, the struggle his son Kelley has been having with autism emerged, because Kelley wished to share it. That part of the story is ongoing.

What Eric has accomplished is a neat trick. I see many bands who post about where their next performance will be or that they've added a musician, or that so-and-so has left (always for personal reasons) but that all is fine and everyone is happy. Such materials almost always either bore people, or is so patently false it fools no one. Perhaps part of the problem lies in allowing publicists or record labels to manage Facebook pages, because the artists don't like the task or think it's not central to their effort. Facebook is a uniquely personal platform requiring the individual to manage how he or she is presented. It's important to learn to be a character in your own story while still getting out the crucial information at the right time. Although I haven't studied her Facebook page, or her music, I gather that Taylor Swift is the very best entertainer using Facebook to help herself. Facebook itself just announced its monthly user-ship as exceeding1.5 billion. Even your own little corner has enormous potential for effective publicity, and it takes only a little time each day to cultivate. Remember Eric Gibson's post about seeing an albino squirrel.

I don't know how many people broadcast bluegrass music on terrestrial, Internet, or satellite radio or how many people listen to their bluegrass music in this way. The range is huge, though. Small college radio stations often have several hours a week devoted to bluegrass broadcasts hosted mostly by volunteer broadcasters. Small market AM and FM stations still exist, and their reach has been widened by the ease of access to Internet streaming and its relatively low cost. (For an interesting overview of this area check out the Prometheus Radio Project) Sirius/Xm radio holds its data and ratings very close to the vest, but its importance, at least in bluegrass, appears to be huge. The future and strength of the platform, however, may ride on whether Howard Stern renews his contract next month. Here's a recently published article exploring sirius/xm in the new Internet environment that includes Spotify, Pandora, Apple radio, and other streaming services.

Musicians can only benefit by appearing as guests on these radio programs. But merely appearing isn't enough. They need to do several things to increase the effectiveness of their appearances. Particularly in the case of terrestrial radio, they need to inform themselves about bluegrass broadcasters who can be heard within a reasonable travel range of local radio stations near where they're appearing. Having done this, musicians must reach out in timely fashion to these people to arrange appearances on their radio shows. They must then inform their fans that they will be making a radio appearance. Finally, they need to publicly thank the deejay or emcee who gave them broadcast space. In others words, radio appearances don't represent a one way street to greater recognition.

Musicians, like all of us, appreciate receiving positive publicity that helps forward their efforts. In order to do so, their presence on various media, social, broadcast, print and more, are essential for bolstering their careers and, ultimately, their incomes. However, getting and keeping such publicity is never a one way street. It requires a perspective that includes recognizing, publicly and privately, the giver of that publicity. To do so effectively requires some effort, which can be assisted, but not completely carried, by a professional publicist. Nothing substitutes for personal effort or direct contact. The important concept here is to emphasize the need for a win/win perspective in which attention received yields attention given. Even recognizing individual plays as seen on playlists counts. In this world of vigorous competition for attention in the media world, nothing substitutes for personal effort and attention. No, it's not “all about the music.”

The Fixer: The Notorious Life of a Front-Page Bail Bondsman by Ira Judelson with Daniel Paisner

The Fixer: The Notorious Life of a Front-Page Bail Bondsman by Ira Judelson with Daniel Paisner (Touchstone, June 2014, 273 pages, $26.00/$11.89) is an (almost) tell-all book which tells the story of a street-smart middle class hustler who, after years of drifting, falls into the opportunity of a lifetime when he discovers, at age 30, that the largest bail bondsman in the New York metropolitan area is his uncle who is willing to back him as he learns the ropes in the bail bond business. Bail bondsmen occupy a unique position in the criminal justice system, as they are the people who provide the money that insures the court appearance of people accused of crimes within the criminal justice system. Because of their importance in this process, they appear to be nearly untouchable by the hosts of people who rely on their efforts to get them out of jail while they await trial. Thus, Judelson has numerous stories to tell about the famous, the notorious, the guilty, and the innocent. He carefully names names in those cases that have become part of the public record and (wisely) protects the identities of those who might have the will and ability to hurt him should he bandy their names about. Judelson emerges as a smart, careful, shrewd judge of character who can juggle the conflicting demands of an often misunderstood and potentially dangerous profession with the multiple demands of suburban family life in contemporary America. All this makes Ira Jedelson an interesting character and The Fixer a good read. In the end, however, the nagging question of his reliability as a narrator remains.

I'm not usually a great fan of autobiographical collaborations, however, in The Fixer co-writer Daniel Paisner keeps the book pointed in the right direction, turning this ghost written project into a masterpiece of the genre. He captures Judelson's voice and maintains it throughout the text, making the language street-sounding enough to seem authentic while maintaining focus, drive, and interest in this narrative – no mean feat considering that Judelson describes himself as ADHD in the beginning of the book, an academic and professional mediocrity without any real thought of obtaining steady, gainful employment until Uncle Phil falls in his lap, he sees the possibilities for both gain and excitement, and embarks on a career leading to plenty of adrenaline and more money than he ever imagined. He moves from being a pretty small-time hustler to serving as the go-to person for getting people out of jail in the convoluted world of New York's business, celebrity, and criminal communities. The stories of people arrested and in need of immediate bail is inter-related with Judelson's home-life, where he sees himself as a devoted father and husband who must hustle every moment to keep bread on the table. This conflict, so familiar to career oriented people, dominates the book and keeps it interesting. The other element keeping the reader driving forward through this breezy narrative is the high level of interest in the stories Judelson tells and the potential for danger always hanging in the background. The famous names always popping up also work to keep the people who read The Post, The Daily News, and People Magazine interested and involved.

Ira Judelson

Along the way, Judelson does a useful and interesting description of the nature of the bail-bond business, its risks and rewards, as well as some very good advice for innocent people arrested and finding themselves in need of bail by providing some very good advice about what to say, who to call, and how to avoid making situations worse. He also admits, nearly glories in, his addiction to seeking press for his clients and himself, to being a celebrity bail bondsman. While doing this, he emerges as a stalwart advocate for the rights of the accused to receive bail until they have been convicted in order to give them and their families a chance at keeping their lives together while the wheels of justice grind slowly forward. He also seeks to portray himself as a dedicated husband and family man who wants nothing more than to provide for his family. While resolving this conflict is never easy, in Judelson's case it appears to have been seriously considered as the basis of a syndicated television show. All this raises the question of whether the book serves more to allow Judelson to tell an interesting story or to promote his upcoming television show, of which he and his wife Blake will serve as executive producers.

Co-Author Daniel Paisner

Co-author Daniel Paisner is one of the busiest collaborators in publishing. He's written over fifty books, on topics ranging from business and sports, to politics and popular culture, including eleven New York Times best-sellers. The term “ghost-writer” is often applied in a pejorative fashion, but this book displays huge skill in capturing the putative author, Ira Judelson's voice and personality in a consistent way throughout the book. I've never before read a book that led me to want to read others by the collaborator to examine and study his writing skill.

The Fixer: The Notorious Life of a Front Page Bail Bondsman by Ira Judelson with Daniel Paisner (Touchstone, June 2014, 273 pages, $26.00/$11.89) presents the life and adventures of a new character on the horizon of true crime stories – the suburban bail bondsman always acting on the edges of the mob, drug dealers, and miscreant celebrities in important effort to assure they remain free until they are either convicted or acquitted. Often such proceedings take years to resolve, and (sadly) are much more available to those with sufficient funds to make paying for a bond feasible. The poor often are forced to accept a plea to get out of jail. The Fixer is light reading concerned largely with celebrities. It's a very good summer read. The Fixer was provided to me as an electronic galley by the publisher through Edelweiss. I read it on my Kindle.

What to Look for in 2014 – Part 2 – Changes and Stages

Look at this post as pure speculation based on what I think I see as possible trends. These predictions are NOT necessarily what I wish to see, and should be treated as possibilities in the near or not-so-near future. It might be interesting to look back on this post with an analytical eye a year from now, or even five, to see whether there's any further movement in these directions.

Continued Consolidation and splintering in Bands will continue. Some top and near the top bands will pick up highly skilled players to fill in spots that open up, because they can provide steady work and some small amount of security for sidemen. Meanwhile, talented young gunslingers will always believe that they're ready to break off and give it a try on their own.

Most of the new bands will fail, largely because their front men continue to believe “it's all about the music,” thus neglecting the all-important business side of the bluegrass effort. Poor business planning and execution kills more bands than poor or indifferent musicianship, partly because more opportunity exists now than ever before for finding innovative ways to grow. This is particularly true of taking the time to develop and maintain an online presence, especially in social media. This is not a job a recording company, booking agent, publicity agent, or manager can accomplish for bands successfully.

More underfunded festivals to emerge, and fail. Just as a high proportion of new restaurants fail shortly after opening, so do most new bluegrass festivals. This appears to be due largely to weak planning and underfunding. Promoting a bluegrass festival is an extraordinarily complex effort for a nascent promoter to undertake just because they love the music and wish to share it with their communities. While the new electronic opportunities open the way further than ever before to finding and delivering an audience, they also make the effort that much more complex. Also, audiences are increasingly eager to be provided with comfort while spending a lesser amount due to the decreasing value of the dollar.

Fewer name bands will be asked to carry more festivals. At present there are too few marquee bands being asked to headline events in order to draw crowds. Almost all festival goers can name all these bands and is likely to see them several times a year, if they travel. Fortunately, most festival goers do not travel very far. Take a look at the license plates in any festival parking area, and count the number of out of state license plates. Nevertheless, there aren't enough bands with high enough name recognition to attract sufficient audiences to many bluegrass festivals.

Higher prices and more attendance will be the rule in 2014. As the economy continues to improve, increasing numbers of people looking for reasonably priced entertainment will discover bluegrass in both festival and arts centers. Furthermore, as the boomer audience and younger continue to age, their appetite for extremely loud music will diminish. This makes bluegrass and string band music increasingly attractive to a gigantic audience. This audience looks a good deal different from the more traditional bluegrass audience, particularly at the younger end. More young, health conscious parents will become less willing to have their children's hearing assaulted by loud music, and they have more dispossable income than all but the retired seniors. This will be seen particularly in attendance at outdoor festivals during the summer months.

More All-Star Bluegrass Festivals → Fewer Opportunities for Newer Bands might seem to be a contradiction, but seems to me to be likely. During the now ending recession, people had to pull back on their entertainment expenditures. Bluegrass festivals had to upgrade the quality of the top of their lineups to attract audiences, and people became used to a heavy preponderance of bands they either knew and liked or had heard extensively on the air and on recording. This led to a number of events that emphasized high name recognition from top to bottom of the lineup and reduced the opportunity for lesser known and new bands to gain exposure. As all-star festivals proliferate, local and aspiring national bluegrass bands will have decreased opportunities to gain real performing experience, gain confidence, and develop a local and regional following at festivals. Festivals will continue to take less risk.

The Bluegrass market will continue to grow and move indoors. Part of the bluegrass audience continues to age while wishing to remain active fans of bluegrass. Younger people, with busy lives and active families, really can't afford the time to attend festivals. Fewer people seek the possible discomfort of rain and cold or searing heat, sometimes on the same day. While a three or four day bluegrass festival remains one of the great bargains in entertainment, fewer people can commit the amount of time required to attend one. Younger people are eager to hear their music delivered with good, reliable sound. All these factors suggest the growth of indoor bluegrass. The indoor bluegrass festival offers more comfort, flexible facilities for large and small performance, workshop, and jamming areas, as well as convenient hotel facilities at a discount. Such events open the bluegrass experience to people who don't seek to invest in RV's and don't wish the discomfort (for some) of tenting. Such events also make bluegrass more easily available for urban and suburban audiences, while lengthening the bluegrass season. As the population of rural America continues to shrink, the indoor event looks increasingly attractive.

Arts Centers Continue to Proliferate in nearly every small and medium sized town where there is an empty movie theater. Many of them are dilapidated art deco vaudeville and movie palaces from the early to mid-twentieth century, while others are even older opera houses or disused schools with large auditoriums. Such facilities can be purchased by the the local arts council and rehabilitated for subscription performance series in addition to arts and craft classes, community meeting rooms, and much more. Many of the arts centers program one or two bluegrass bands as part of an eight or ten concert series which often includes a symphony orchestra, a dance troupe, a Broadway musical, a pop or rock singer, and a bluegrass band. These series are pre-sold with a portion of the seats withheld for each special performance and provide a bounty for bluegrass bands which once depended upon fine weather. A corollary to this movement is that specialized bluegrass promoters will become less necessary, but arts centers do need bluegrass advisers.

Moderate to severe genre bending will continue and many will continue to call what they hear bluegrass, if it sounds like Bill Monroe or not. Whether it's plugged in string band music that sounds more like rock and roll than what we generally think of as bluegrass, or contemporary music calling on the sounds and songs that predate the bluegrass era, it can mix well with bluegrass in a variety of settings, continuing to attract older and more conservative listeners while introducing younger, rock-oriented fans to classic bluegrass and country. There also seems to be a longing for quieter, but equally up-tempo and emotionally pleasing music among maturing baby boomers and millenials which can be satisfied by this mixing of related musical styles.

Healthier Bluegrass Musicians Due to the ACA (Obamacare) (thanks to James Moss). During the past several years, we've seen many benefit concerts and fund raising efforts held for sick and dieing bluegrass musicians. Unless they have a spouse with a full-time job that includes family benefits, an increasing rarity during the past generation, few bluegrass musicians have health care. They're constantly in fear of the disaster that a serious illness or injury presages. The emergency ward truly isn't a real substitute for good supportive and preventive care, nor does life on the road encourage good habits. Even early reports suggest that musicians may be leading the charge in a turnaround of attitudes toward Obamacare, even with its flaws and difficulties, which can be resolved if we work together to solve them.

Streaming concerts and even festivals will become more common. Changes in the way that television works and how a television can be connected to a computer make bluegrass concerts in your living room an increasingly common event. You can already watch some bluegrass events on television at a relatively small price. Imagine an evening with four or five different bands playing while you enjoy them from the comfort of your living room at a reasonable price made possible because of the economics of scale.

There is an emerging audience for bluegrass, if we can identify and nurture it. There's no knowing how many potential bluegrass fans there are out there. We meet many people along the road who tell us, “This is the first bluegrass event I've ever been to. I'm having a wonderful time.” Many of them have preconceptions about hillbilly music garnered from bad television and visions of hay bales. They never knew, until they came to the event that they were going to see some of the best musicians playing some of the most sophisticated music there is. Each of us can help grow the music by bringing a new person to a concert or to a day at your local festival, by being a good ambassador for the music, and by spreading the word. As time and technology move along, there will be new venues and new delivery systems for new fans. It's never like it was yesterday, let alone nearly seventy years ago, when Lester Flatt and Earle Scruggs stepped on the stage at the Grand Old Opry with Bill Monroe, and bluegrass music was born.

Writing on the Wall by Tom Standage - Book Review

In Writing on the Wall: The First 2,000 Years (Bloomsbury USA, 2013, 288 pages, $26.00), author Tom Standage considers the effects of writing on personal and public communication through the ages, positing that the writing and distribution of news, analysis, and opinion throughout history has always been a promoter of freedom, whereas limiting communications has always been the role of the elites and the rulers. He suggests that each advance in communications technology, in the freedom of information, has served to help create a more informed, aware, and, therefore, free people. He also says that efforts to censor, tax, behead, jail, or otherwise limit information are always doomed to failure. Along the way, he considers the major technological changes which altered society's ability to communicate as well as the officials' strategies used to limit their effect. At each juncture, he compares older (and sometimes now obsolete) means of communication as examples of social media in their time. In doing so, he presents a fascinating and convincing argument for human freedom at the expense of the status quo. Writing on the Wall is an important and interesting book filled with the personalities and events promoting improved communication through the ages. In the title, he considers that the present state of affairs is merely the next step in the process, which will only be fully revealed by time.

Standage begins his story in the dawn of civilization, suggesting that writing emerged on clay tablets and papyrus shortly after humans settled into a more agrarian lifestyle than nomadic hunter-gatherer. As they settled down, humans discovered the need to keep accounts and detail ownership and writing emerged. With the Greeks, knowledge became more frequently written, while Socrates lamented that the youth were losing their ability to memorize and listen. The Romans found it necessary to develop writing still further to help maintain control of their vast empire. Roman elites began communicating widely through news and personal letters, often written by scribes and widely disseminated. Early Bible texts were in the form of letters from the first apostles to local churches around Asia Minor and throughout the Mediterranean Roman holdings. With the fall of Rome, literacy, too, took a dive, only kept alive in the monasteries, where monks copied the holy writings. With Gutenberg's invention of the printing press around 1439, a revolution in literacy was set in motion exemplified by the wide distribution of Martin Luther's 95 theses, which ignited the Protestant Reformation. Throughout this time both the Church and the nobility sought to restrain the spread of knowledge by taxing presses and seeking to maintain illiteracy in common people. In England, Henry VIII imprisoned and executed many people because of their writings. Such brutal repression encouraged writers to say in disguised poetry what they could not say outright. Nevertheless, their was a constant pressure against the forces of privilege and the elite to spread knowledge and understanding through the written word. Coffee houses emerged as centers of discussion and social interaction across class lines. Science and philosophy especially flourished, as people were able to share their thoughts and ideas more widely. Reading the Bible in vernacular translations spread both literacy and faith, as well as encouraging people to interpret scripture themselves.

In America the Puritans came, of course, to practice their own religion, not to establish freedom of religion, and thus discouraged writings that suggested understandings of faith different from their own. The battles against the imposition of the Stamp Act by Parliament and the printing of Patrick Henry's pamphlet “Common Sense,” did much to fan the flame of the Revolution. As printers became increasingly able to disseminate information in bulk, the exchange of knowledge became more widespread. Once established, the Founders were clear that freedom of the press was perhaps their highest priority, because they enshrined it in the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution, right beside religion and speech. Perhaps the greatest mistake in the administration of our second President, John Adams, was his insistence upon passing the alien and sedition acts, which sought to control the press. They were quickly withdrawn, but Adams only served one term as President.

Interestingly, Standage sees the consolidation of media control first in newspaper empires (Hearst, Pulitzer, Greeley), then in radio broadcasting, and finally in network television (NBC, CBS, ABC) as anomalies during which media was further concentrated under the control of a relatively few individuals and corporations. This trend was accompanied by what was seen as a relative “dumbing down” of information based on too little breadth of information sources. The development of the Internet and particularly of social media have broadened the sources of information and increased the amount of diversity of opinion focused on every question. Of course, the new freedom leads to the possibility of new incursions on privacy and greater risk for government interference with privacy. Also, it makes it increasingly difficult for anyone to keep secrets.

Much of Standage's argument helped clarify issues that had befuddled me in the past, particularly the Stamp Act and the Alien and Sedition Acts. But I read a lot of American history with some areas becoming holes despite my familiarity with it. Therefore, the fact that the material on the French Revolution served to confuse rather than clarify my knowledge of that area made me wonder whether a reader less informed about American history would have the same problem of not finding the clarity they desired. Nevertheless, Standage's account of social media in a larger context sheds important light on the communication process and people's desire to be in touch with each other.

Tom Standage

 

Tom Standage is digital editor at The Economist, overseeing the magazine's website, Economist.com, and its smartphone, tablet and e-reader editions. Before that he was business affairs editor, running the back half of the magazine, and he previously served as business editor, technology editor and science correspondent. Tom is also the author of five history books, including "An Edible History of Humanity" (2009), "A History of the World in Six Glasses" (2005), a New York Times bestseller, and "The Victorian Internet" (1998), described by the Wall Street Journal as a "dot-com cult classic". He writes the video-game column for Intelligent Life, The Economist's lifestyle magazine, is a regular commentator on BBC radio, and has written for other publications including the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, the New York Times and Wired. He holds a degree in engineering and computer science from Oxford University, and is the least musical member of a musical family. He is married and lives in London with his wife and children.

Writing on the Wall: The First 2,000 Years by Tom Standage (Bloomsbury USA, 2013, 288 pages, $26.00) tells the story of social media through the lens of the spread of communication throughout human history. It has been described as a pre-history of Internet social media.  The book relates a lively and interesting story through eyes looking both backward and forward, rather than concentrating on the technology of now. The book is filled with surprising insights presented with wit and grace. I received the book as an electronic galley from publisher through Edelweiss Beyond the Treeline. I read it on a Kindle.

What About YouTube? - Essay

The essay below is a re-posting of my monthly column on the Welcome Page of the California Bluegrass Association web site, which appeared on Tuesday. As a content producer, I have found YouTube to be an increasingly important and demanding adjunct to this blog. In fact, it may be slowly but surely taking over. Here's the current state of my musings on this. Interested to read your responses.

I started making videos just to see if the new technology worked for me. Once I decided they were a pretty good way to share bluegrass music, it became inevitable that I would have to start a You Tube channel of my own. When I bought a low priced HD camcorder and began to learn to make titles, we started getting serious about including video as a part of our effort to communicate the part of the bluegrass world we live in. I say “we,” because my long suffering wife, Irene, has become an integral part of the effort to build our video channel and integrate it with our Facebook page, Ted and Irene's Most Excellent Bluegrass Adventure, and my blog. I got lucky back in 2011 when, at the Doyle Lawson bluegrass festival in Denton, NC, I asked Josh Williams to sing one of my favorite songs, Mordecai. I determined to record it. This song, whose content is quite unusual for a bluegrass song, tells of a Jewish peddlar coming to homes in the mountains with a backpack full of life's necessities. About half way through the song, a bird drops down from the rafters and lands on Josh's guitar. He continues to sing the entire song, to the bird, without missing a beat. The rest is history, as the song went viral around the world. To date it has had 1,872,300 plays. I've become hooked on trying to use video to illustrate what bluegrass means to us. To date, the channel displays 988 individual songs by performers from the very top of the bluegrass hierarchy to some songs of jammers having a good time. And I've learned a lot about media.

Here are some current statistics published by YouTube suggesting its current scope and, perhaps, influence:

• More than 1 billion unique users visit YouTube each month

• Over 6 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube—that's almost an hour for every person on Earth, and 50% more than last year

• 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute

• 70% of YouTube traffic comes from outside the US
  

What does all this mean to our little corner of the YouTube world? Incrasingly I find that people come up to me to introduce themselves telling me they keep running into my videos on YouTube. Since my blogs, my writing, are, to me, the more important part of what I do, commanding most of my energy, this has been a surprise. In the past I've said that my readers think of me as a photographer who intersperses his pictures with text, which they scan, at best, while I think of myself as a writer who takes pictures. Our friend Henri Deschamps was the first person I know of to call me a photo-journalist, a characterization I've now embraced. Strangely, if you look at my statistics, the video channel currently has roughly three times more viewers than the blog does. What a surprise to me, considering that we started taking videos really as a sideline
.
After becoming aware that YouTube was supporting its vast effort through placing advertising on the videos uploaded by millions of people, I examined the issues surrounding my becoming a YouTube Partner in order to participate in the income from advertising. For several years I had resisted this, believing that the performers and the copyright holders deserved the income. Before videoing any band, I always receive verbal permission from them to record and post. Through discussions with a number of people in the industry, I determined that I owned the videos themselves and was a legitimate stake holder in their revenue. Last summer I registered as a YouTube partner, and the videos have since contributed a modest (about $0.001 per view) return to supplement the, also modest, income from ads on the blog and purchases at Amazon generated through people entering from the portal on my blog. This all goes to contribute towards meeting the costs of attending events and traveling to them.

I have recently become aware that my posting videos we take of bands performing seems to be useful to the bands themselves. Several bands, including The Steep Canyon Rangers, IIIrd Tyme Out, and Donna Ulisse & the Poor Mountain Boys have featured videos I produced on their web sites or Facebook pages. Whenever this occurs, I can see the bump in viewership in my daily numbers and in increases in the number of subscribers to my YouTube channel. (YouTube provides extensive “analytics,” as does blogger, which help participants gauge their reach and, if they're so inclined, increase their market penetration and income. In no case am I able to identify the individual involved, although in some cases I can make a pretty good guess, based on location.) I can only believe this is mutually beneficial, and that more bands would benefit by making good use of quality videos posted of them on YouTube. While many bands are posting professionally created videos produced by their record companies or other entities, these are not necessarily what YouTube viewers are seeking out. Rather, I believe the typical YouTube viewer is interested in seeing a band in a more natural performance situation without the “benefit” of professional production values.

The videos we record and I produce represent raw performances, just the band playing the song in a festival setting. They are recorded through a microphone mounted on the camera and never from the festival's sound board. Recently, through changes in the technology available to me (or at least my awareness of it and ability to use it), I've been able to add a title screen with the name of the band, song, location, and date recorded as well as two credit pages at the end of the song identifying each performer in the band, who recorded the song, and the address of my blog, making a more professional look and better information about the song available to the viewer. I also try to include the name of the song writer, when I'm able to determine it, on the publication data section provided by YouTube. I'm always grateful to fans who correct errors that I've made as well as to viewers who flag objectionable comments. In only a very few instances have I been asked by artists or their representatives to remove videos. I've always done so as quickly as I can get to a computer.

In sum, I believe that YouTube represents a powerful and useful way to share bluegrass songs with a broad, international community. The data indicate that my YouTube videos have been seen in 216 counntries or territories generating nearly three million visits during the last four years. That's a lot of folks tuning in to bluegrass music. We live in such a rapidly changing media environment, no one can predict where the recording industry or the income streams available to artists are headed. I can only say I hope that those who perform the music and write it can consistenly be rewarded more generously.

A Visit to Judith Burnette at WBRF in Galax

On a lovely Thursday afternoon we drove from our campground in Hillsville over to Galax to visit evening on-air bluegrass host Judith Burnette in the studio of WBRF-FM. Broadcasting 100,000 watts and streaming worldwide, WBRF has a vast local audience and an unlimited world wide audience for the bluegrass music it spins nightly from 6:00 PM eastern time until midnight.  Judith Burnette, a lifelong resident of Galax with a lifetime passion for bluegrass music is the host from Tuesday through Saturday along with maintaining a part-time position at a local jewelry store. She has been at both since her graduation from high school.  

Judith Burnette at the Console

WBRF-FM transmits its 100,000 watts at 98.1 FM to a four state region including portions of SW Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, and West Virginia as well streaming world-wide on the Internet. Here's a map of the station's coverage area:

WBRF-FM Coverage Map

 

WBRF is housed in a small building our GPS took us to down a sharply winding road through a pretty neighborhood making us wonder whether we could possibly be on the right road. We even turned around and asked one time and were told we hadn't gone quite far enough. We should have traveled the extra couple of hundred yards, for there we were in front of what was obviously a radio station.

WBRF-FM's Studio

 

We were ushered into the studio, where Judith Burnett was preparing to go on the air. She stood behind a sound board with a computer screen in front of her pushing buttons to cue up adds, public service announcements and bluegrass songs she had chosen from the station's huge catalog. Judith has complete freedom to choose what songs she programs, but must include a proportion of Old-Time string band music because of its popularity in the region. There's also a distinct preference for traditional bluegrass, which the station emphasizes heavily in its programming. 

Judith Burnette at Work

  Watching Judith at work is a study in both efficiency and concentration. She manages to keep pushing computer buttons and chat animatedly with us before donning her headphones and changing to her on-air personality to announce the next song for her audience. Even her accent makes a subtle but distinct change to a less regional "radio" voice. Her love for her job and the music she presents to her audience comes through in everything she does. She tells us she has a listener in Oregon who tunes her in each day.  We chat for a while, and then Judith adjusts the mic in front of me, and we begin to talk on air. I'm uncomfortable at first, but we quickly settle into a conversation inserted between songs, talking about my blog and our mutual interest in bluegrass music. She's an experiences interviewer who asks open ended questions and lets me talk without letting me go on for too long. 

Judith and Me on-the-air

 A few minutes more, and it was all over. We shook hands and headed back to our campground in Hillsville after an interesting and new experience. 

Tune in to WBRF-FM 98.1 when you're in the service area, or listen on your computer to the station as it streams bluegrass music each evening from 6:00 PM eastern time until midnight. You won't be sorry.

Spreadable Media by Jenkins, Ford & Green - Book Review

 Since the day the first Monk decided to copy his master's sermon onto a scroll the pace of change in our media world has been changing. Gutenberg's invention of movable type led to the Europe's becoming literate in a few centuries. Telegraph, recording, film, and now all the forms of digital transmission and creation have served not only to increase the speed, but to change the nature of how communication spreads, reforms, changes. The world has become one in which we may all participate in the production of ideas, in the shape of media as well as in their consumption. The comfortable world in which a relatively small elite of thinkers and producers have “made” media while a vast horde of customers and fans have bought and used it recedes further each day as in every aspect of our lives we have the capacity to produce and comment upon a world that changes even as we interact with it. The dizzying pace of this change shows no signs of stopping as our world becomes one in which trillions of images compete with each other for our attention in a world no longer under anyone's control. We have gone from a world where the producers competed with each other to attach fans to their product, make them stick, whether it be a deodorant, a piece of entertainment, a brand of automobile, a reference group of like ethnic, racial, or linguistic similarity, a political party, or, indeed, a nation or (perhaps) a world. New media moves from being “sticky” to being “spreadable.” It welcomes new audiences in strange and wonderful ways that both intrigue us and frighten us as we begin to learn how we ourselves are empowered even in the course of being overwhelmed. Such is the world that Spreadable Media: : Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture by Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford & Joshua Green (New York University Press, 2013, 352 Pages, $29.86) describes and seeks to explain in a challenging and important new book. In line with living with the creature they have described, the authors also are maintaining an invaluable web site, The web site is filled with blogs, essays, and other material about this forthcoming book, serving at once to demonstrate the book's thesis while giving the authors a forum and the world of creative information consumers and producers a platform on which they may comment and elaborate upon the book's thesis. In short, it's best to read the book with some sort of computer by your side.

A new song is sung at a concert and released as a recording on a CD. On the day of its first performance, a person in the audience records it on an iPhone and posts it to YouTube. Within hours thousands of people have viewed it or heard it. The song enters the playlist of XM/Sirius radio and is heard by more people. Hundred of people share the song with their friends on Facebook by linking to the video. Someone is struck by the song, rips it from the CD and sends it to countless others. A band in Africa hears the song, changes the lyric slightly while adapting the tune and its rhythm to a new setting and uploads the variation to YouTube. Millions more hear the song, but few pay for it, while its originator often doesn't even get credit for its composition. The song has now spread worldwide to perhaps millions of consumers on a dozen or more different platforms. This is “spreadability” which creates problems and opportunities for each person interacting with the song. Few of those people feel a moral obligation to credit or pay for the creativity of the originators. Copyright has become a word without meaning.

In often dense academic langugage, the authors examine these phenomena of new media and trace their implications for entertainment and media producers and fans, who they posit as a different creature from the consumers of yore, largely because the possess “agency,” the ability to act upon what they hear or see, and by acting serve to change and adapt the original to their own more idiosyncratic selves. The problem of delivering consumers to the product through advertising and of paying residuals for the “after life” of a product, whether it be a song, a long-ago produced television program, a book, or an advertisement have become increasingly complex. The consumer has become separated into fan communities which feel themselves to be active participants in not only the consumption, but the creation of entertainment. They meet online in forums where they discuss plot lines, characters, possible alternative story directions, and more. The current wave of popularity for classic matches in World Wrestling Entertainment and the British science fiction relic “Dr. Who” exist because fan archivists have cobbled together old matches and performances to create an archive which found its way to YouTube. Both the McMahon family and BBC have been smart enough to repackage this detritus of lost material to serve up to new fans and extend the life of the performances. Yet who gets paid now?

Henry Jenkins

 

Sam Ford

Joshua Green

Henry Jenkins is Provost’s Professor of Communication, Journalism, Cinematic Arts, and Education at USC. Sam Ford is Director of Digital Strategy with Peppercomm Strategic Communications, an affiliate with the MIT Program in Comparative Media Studies and the Western Kentucky University Popular Culture Studies Program, and a regular contributor to Fast Company. Joshua Green is a Strategist at digital strategy firm Undercurrent. With a PhD in Media Studies, he has managed research projects at MIT and the University of California.

Spreadable Media is largely a scholarly book by and for media professionals published just as the distinction between fan and producer, consumer and performer is becoming ever more tenuous and the choices available to viewers, readers, listeners, performers, writers, and artists have become greater than ever, and increasingly unmanageable. It is language, then, that separates the important concepts of this book from the mass of potential readers it has. Simultaneously, though, the enhanced version of it, through its web site, makes it available to a wider constituency. In videos of conference sessions, author Joshua Green discusses the change in the nature of curation while in another video, Henry Jenkins explores the changing face of copyright and intellectual property. Essays, blogs, and digital links further broaden the conepts and the audience while making the web site, and perhaps even the book, interactive. Such repurposing illustrates precisely (or better, perhaps, muddily) what Spreadable Media posits in its arguments. The combination of the book and web site make the contents of each fully accessible to a wide variety of media creators, consumers, adapters, and archivists thus increasing the utility of each.

Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture by Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford, and Joshua Green (NYU Press, 352 pages, January 2013, $29.95) is available from the publisher and all the usual sources. It is heavily annotated while also presenting many internal opportunities to find the examples presented. I read it in an electronic galley made available to me by the publisher through Net Galley.

Bluegrass - A Spreadable Music - Essay

The essay below is an unedited version of my CBA Column for this month. It discusses the bluegrass
implications of a new book and website to be published next month called Spreadable Media. My review of this important new book will be posted about a week from now. I thought I'd preview some of its implications here. If you want to go further, I suggest you read my review and then read the whole thing. But here's a start. 

We live in a rapidly changing media environment that has nothing but good in it for bluegrass music, in all its forms, while at the same time standing as a harbinger for change that many of us will find difficult to integrate into our way of consuming media. As the CD seems to be dying as a means of disseminating music, after a run of more than a generation at a price that has never been sustainable, and bluegrass festivals, while highly enjoyable for those who attend for various reasons, are not expensive enough to pay performers anything approaching a living wage, we see change in delivery and presentation in every direction. In a new book to be published next month (Spreadable Media) and an active/interactive web site of the same name, Henry Jackson, Sam Ford, and Joshua Green lay out a picture of this new media world, based on the Internet and YouTube, that has huge importance for both creators, producers, and consumers of bluegrass music. While the book is written by and for “media professionals,” its importance for bluegrass is so large that it deserves wide and thoughtful consideration in our community.

Bluegrass Music is a form of music which has been maintained, treasured, and spread by its fans. The music is unusual in that a large proportion of those who love the music also play it regularly and, and some level, for pay. The lines between full scale professional, talented semi-professional, able amatuer, and fan are undefined at best and unclear in many cases. People gather to play, sing, and listen to bluegrass wherever it is played: at festivals, in local bluegrass associations, at pickin' parties, before concerts, at conventions, and in many other formal and informal settings. In effect, this range of places where bluegrass is played and enjoyed serves to keep the songs of the Bill Monroe, Flatt & Scruggs, the Stanley Brothers and other early practitioners of bluegrass alive and in the standard repertory. It also places the stamp of approval on new songs and performances as they migrate from the stage and the recording studio to the jam circle at varying levels of accomplishment. The arrival of a fairly recent songs first performed by The Lonesome River Band, IIIrd Tyme Out, Balsam Range, or the Gibson Brothers, by their mere inclusion in regular jams, identifies the song as now a part of the classic repertoire. This movement is facilitated by the existence of YouTube, where thousands of performances by the first generation greats are available either in studio recordings, television kinescopes, or amateur videos, made available for study and slavish copying by devoted adherents. These can also be adapted and changed to meet contemporary standards, alter the original, or add new wrinkles to it. Thus YouTube serves to both uphold tradition and encourage innovation. How The Infamous Stringdusters interpret Jimmy Martin upholds the Stringdusters' reputation as a bluegrass band and alters our understanding of the relevance of The King of Bluegrass.

Copyright has been hurt by the availability and transportability provided by the new media. While I must confess to not being as knowledgeable as I'd like to be (or planning to become in the next few months) about this important issue, I'm certainly aware that copyright and its enforcement affects performers, corporations, and performance videos as so-called Performance Rights Organizations scramble to help collect royalties and residuals for song writers, performers, and recording companies from all the people who perform the music in all its various forms and venues. Brought up in academic settings, I'm well aware of the requirements to give credit to those who originated material and stand to benefit from its use. I seek, on my own YouTube channel to identify the writer of each song I post as well as the names of all the performers. When requested by a copyright holder (rare) I immediately remove the video from my site, although I have no control over those who have shared it in the interim. It strikes me that living in the spreadable media world we have created thrusts an arrow in the heart of copyright holders, making it increasingly difficult to collect and distribute royalties and residuals to performers and writers. The current environment empowers fans, adapters, and alternative communities to spread material across the world without even acknowleging, let alone paying, the original creator. How to make rational providing recompense to those who create the performance is a matter of continuing concern.

Many performers are finding it effective to bypass the traditional publishing and recording methods for self-publishing content and merchandise through web sites or at merchandise tables at concerts and festivals. The example of rock band RadioHead's self publishing of a digital album which netted several million dollars is alive for all performers. Where this is headed is still very much up in the air, but it is clear that there's going to be change as well as winners and losers. One can only hope that the winners will not be solely those with deep pockets and access to expemsive legal advice. It's also worth noting that the existance of copyright goes to making production more expensive and does nothing to guarantee excellence. Neither, however, does a completely open and unfettered market of ideas, which by definition will include more bad product along with the inevitable jewels which never would have seen light of day had they been required to copyright their material and gain the notice of a label.

The line between fan and audience or producer has inevitably become blurred as fans can combine into motivated interest groups to affect the decisions of producers. Fans are, therefore, the key to both the maintanence of tradition and the support and spread of change. By seeking to narrow the definition of bluegrass they can keep the genre from growing and encouraging artistic experiement. By rewarding the best of the new and different, they encourage people to innovate. By subjecting the music to continuing re-evaluation and re-hearing based upon the increasingly large availability of choices, they make the world, whether it be the world of art, film, or music both more difficult to navigate and more suscpetible to change. Finally, only the test of time will determine what remains, what changes, and what enters the awareness of the audience. Now is perhaps the most challenging and exciting time to be in bluegrass since Flatt & Scruggs stepped on the Stage of the Grand Old Opry in 1945. Have a good time.