Some cultural critics slam the mixing of art and economics, insisting that commerce cheapens creativity. For Ben Aslinger, that intersection is where things start to get interesting.
“Everything is economic in the long run,” says the assistant professor in Bentley’s English and Media Studies Department. “Our system of commodity exchange and payment actually creates the conditions for creativity.”
Aslinger’s latest run at art and commerce explores the changing value of music in the age of media convergence. As the music industry trends toward reinvention in the wake of disappearing CD sales, record labels are giving way to nontraditional businesses. Today’s hit songs are as likely to hail from a TV show, video game or social-media site as from radio play.
“We used to have media specificity, where film was film,” explains Aslinger, who holds a PhD in media and cultural studies from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “But now film is on my computer. It’s rendered into binary code; it’s a data stream. As boundaries between media industries and media forms break down, how do we make sense of what the product or commodity is? And how do those industries relate to each other?
“I’m looking at this moment where gaming firms and television firms and music firms hash out what these relationships might be economically.”
New Rock Stars of Taste
The professor’s research points to the rise of new players. The television music supervisor, for example, used to take on largely administrative tasks such as checking copyrights and tracking down stock music. Today, with more TV shows using music more creatively — think Glee or Mad Men — some music supervisors are considered on par with an executive producer.
“You see television aspiring to art status,” Aslinger says. “There’s a lot of talk about music supervisors providing the taste-making function that once belonged to artist and repertoire divisions in the music industry.”
Discordant Views
Music licensing is an especially rich realm for exploring music’s value – narrative, cultural, monetary and otherwise.
“Media convergence puts each of these dimensions of value up for grabs,” Aslinger observes. “In licensing, you see the competing definitions of value that must be sorted out between parties in the recording, television and gaming industries – and among the viewing or playing public.”
The tug of war over music licensing involves record labels and publishing houses, which look to the fees as revenue to offset anemic CD sales, and producers who want to use the music for a TV series or video game. Television and gaming industry executives argue for paying lower rates to reflect their expanded role in promoting music. And the money at stake is substantial, The two major performance rights organizations, ASCAP and BMI, collected license fees of $1.8 billion in 2009.
“Music licensing is an evolving and important part of the music industry’s future,” says Aslinger. “But it’s unlikely that licensing – or any other single strategy – will restore the music industry to a golden age.”
Research in a developing industry comes with challenges. Much of the information is proprietary, and the trade publications that dominate old media often have little bearing on the new marketplace.
“Keeping up and getting published within an academic time line can be difficult,” admits Aslinger, whose unconventional research sources include blogs, industry reports, textual analyses, and notes on video game play sessions. “But it’s exciting to be contributing to a field that’s really defining itself.”