"Some Thoughts on The Afterlives of Music" By David G. Such

I admit that when it comes to music, I may be a little oversensitive to bad music and wish there was not so much of it around. How many times must I listen to "Jingle Bells?" Worse yet, is when someone sends me a Christmas card that has a little chip inside, which plays the melody as soon as I open the card.

Sometimes, when I find myself over exposed to all the recorded music that shows up in the media and public places, even restrooms, I think that if live musical performance had four legs and a tail, it would rank high on the endangered species list. Music in public places, sometimes called muzak or incidental music, is free and doesn’t hurt anyone, so why should I care? I wouldn't, except that I happen to believe the situation has gotten out of control. First, there is simply too much of the stuff around. Do I really need to have music playing in the bathroom when I go to answer the call of nature? Are those natural bodily sounds we humans make so offensive that we need to mask them or are we following a precedent set by the ancient Chinese aristocrats who posted musicians outside the bathrooms during parties? Whenever a guest went to use the facilities, the musicians started up and successfully kept those unwanted sounds from reaching the sensitive ears of partygoers. Second, rarely is recorded music in public places played on sound equipment that renders good sound quality and does justice to the music, assuming the music is worthy of such treatment. Usually it is not, which leads me to the third reason. Most recorded music in public places really isn’t very good music. A lot of it is meant to play in the background as incidental music, something to fill the silence, or keep people shopping longer in malls. What does American culture have against silence? Do we find it awkward and threatening?

With so much recorded music constantly around us, it has to exert some kind of an affect, such as causing listeners to grow desensitized toward music, a paradox for someone who thinks that music should be listened to. As a society, how did we get to this point? Much has to do with our roots as an industrial society with a keen acumen for technological innovation. Once Thomas Edison invented the phonograph in the 1880s, live musical performance changed forever. Prior to Edison, keep in mind that the only way people heard music, with the exception of mechanical pianos and other such devices around at the time, was at a live performance by real musicians. In this manner, music served to bring people together in a social context, probably the most important function that music serves on the planet.

As recording technology advanced from simple wax cylinder recordings to modern digital technology, these advances have left us with an environment oversaturated with the afterlives of music, a term I use to refer to what happens with recorded products. In other words, once a live musical performance is recorded, the recording itself continues beyond the last strains of sound that die once the musicians put down their instruments. They take on lives of their own, so to speak, and sit inside the bids on record stores, get played over the radio, and basically get bought and sold over the marketplace.

These afterlives are so popular, that they have helped build a large multi billion dollar industry that includes not only recording companies but also major distributors and national and international retail outlets. Today, four major corporations control about 85 per cent of all the recorded music sold in the U.S. Pop music, as you probably know, represents the biggest seller in this marketplace.