Simon Frith at U of I

[hsu@uicsrd.CSRD.UIUC.EDU (William Tsun-Yuk Hsu)]

Simon Frith Speaks at Bevier Hall, Urbana, Illinois, 9/18/86


(If you don't know who Simon Frith is, you probably won't be interested
in this article. This is based on notes I took frantically at the talk,
so I apologize in advance for inaccuracies. My own comments are in
square brackets.)

This is a talk jointly sponsored by about five departments/colleges
at the University of Illinois, which should be a clear indication of
what a cool place this is. The audience was mostly under 30, with a
surprising number of trendies, and some were students in a Communications
class, so I wasn't the only one taking notes. There was a longish
delay of the start of the talk because nobody could find a microphone.

I apologize for not remembering the title of the talk; it had words
like "music" and "post-modernism" in it. Simon Frith is an unassuming
looking, soft-spoken person of medium build and dark hair. He had
this horrible dark green printed shirt on with red tennis shoes, but
then nobody's perfect. :-)

Frith began by saying that he wanted to look to the future of popular
music instead of to the past, as he did in Sound Effects and his
other books. He first talked about two personal things that related
to the lecture:

1) In Britain, a Canadian professor William Melody (sp.?) has been
   hired by the Thatcher government to give recommendations on what
   kind of research should be done in universities. This is obviously
   motivated by the desire to develop and control new technologies.
   The side effect is, of course, that money for people like Frith
   might be cut. 

2) Recently, Frith was part of a subcommittee of the Labor Party in
   Britain. The subcommittee was composed of people who are not Labor
   Party members, and the purpose was to produce a statement on
   popular culture for the Labor Party. Frith added that some of
   this talk is influenced by the committee discussions. (The 
   subcommittee consisted of, among others, representatives from
   Rough Trade, RCA records, the musicians' union, Peter Jenner (sp.?)
   who discovered Pink Floyd and is now managing Billy Bragg, and
   is actively involved in music and politics.)

Frith believes that there has been a crisis in theories about pop
music since 1978-1979. While it used to be that people thought they
were able to make sense of what was going on, that was not true
anymore. Frith himself no longer believes that the music industry
works as he described it in Sound Effects, and suggested that
we return our copies. :-) He looks at this crisis in three ways:

1) Crisis of Profitability
This is not so much a collapse in profits as a collapse in profits from
record sales. Frith does not believe this is because of punk, or 
business competition, but rather the technological and social changes 
outside the music industry which are parallel to the changes in the '50s.
Some of these are economic changes such as the rise in unemployment,
the demographic change in age groups, and the increase in home taping, 
video games, home computers, all of which lead to a shift in 
leisure patterns. The music industry is increasingly dependent 
on a few smash hits and successful acts.

2) Rise of Punk and Post-Punk Musics
Frith believes that this has no direct effect on profits. He points
out that punk raised questions about how rock really worked, and
believes that punk is (was?) essentially an art movement involving
many people with art school backgrounds which threatened established
ideas about rock music, such as sexuality and gender. [I forgot to
challenge the punk-as-art-movement idea, sorry. ---Bill]

3) Postmodern Ideas about Culture
Frith mentions the postmodern ideas of mass culture as a surface culture
whose participants are alienated individuals who are all style and show.
He considers this a despairing view as it negates all faith in class,
subcultures, community, and any distinctions between high and low
culture, and reality and simulated reality. He elaborates on this later.

Frith goes on to talk about major issues discussed by the subcommittee:

1) Effect of the New Technology
He believes that the new communications technology (satellite, video,
cable TV) does not have a direct effect on music, but rather an effect
on how people used TVs. The music industry no longer derives its biggest
profits from making music for specific people, but from providing
cheap entertainment for TV and related media. He quoted a music industry
executive as saying "We are all in the fashion industry." While
music videos originally served a promotional purpose, they have now 
become profitable entertainment in themselves. Just as people in the
film industry are able to "pre-sell" ideas for movies and then make
movies to fit the market, the music industry can make videos to fit
the TV shows they appear on.

2) Rise of Corporate Soundtracks
Rock is increasingly used for commercial advertising. For example,
Cream's "I feel free" was used in a Renault commercial. Corporate
sponsorship has become important in the music industry. So has
the increasing connection between Hollywood and pop music.

Frith also made a remark about the moralization of pop music and
censorship. Unfortunately he did not elaborate.

The new communications technology has caused a breakdown in the
old notions about "national markets." As entertainment industries try
to explore multi-national markets, there has been some resistance
in Europe and elsewhere. Cable TV is seen as the final Americanization
of individual cultures by some. The French recently passed a law to
requiring subtitling in French of all English videos, so as to make
these videos more expensive to distribute in France. Subtitling also
blocks out part of the screen, thus diminishing the appeal of these 
videos. This is an example of the "competitive nationalism" against
American technology.

The new technology has also increased the attraction of crossover
marketing. Frith gives Live Aid as an example: an event which can be
entertaining to all people throughout the world, which is the
dream future product of the entertainment industry. Most major labels
now invest in crossover markets. The independents are also changing.
Originally they were looked upon as market research for the majors.
Now the major labels have little interest in independent labels 
except as product developers and starmakers.

Frith made the interesting suggestion that perhaps in the future
the major labels will no longer be making records, since this is
not the most profitable activity for them. Instead the independent
labels will be the only ones to stay in the music-making business.

Frith stresses that all these changes happened in spite of the record
industry, i.e., the state of affairs now is not their fault. As a
result of the fall in profits, the music industry has become very
conservative in its investments in new acts. The new technology changes
the way people listen to music in subtle ways (Frith gives as an
example the replacement of 78s by LPs. People don't listen to only
three minutes of a symphony anymore.) Technological improvements
have also brought equipment prices down and democratized music
production. [The major labels however do not pass savings due to
improved technology to the consumer. See Charles Newman's The Postmodern
Aura for a good discussion of this as it applies to literary production.]

According to Frith, the record industry believes that it faces 
two major challenges:

1) Hometaping
This is more a challenge to traditional property rights than a major
cause of diminishing profits. It is seen (by the record industry)
as a threat to the idea of music as commodity. Campaigns by the
record industry against this portrays it as theft from the artists,
and emphasizes the conservative, romantic notion that artists 
should be rewarded for their labors. Copyright began as a literary
notion, and copyright in music has a very literary bias. However,
the idea of records not as a finished product, but rather an
object to be further processed for other creative enterprises,
e.g., scratching, remixing/dubbing, use of sampling synthesizers.
New and difficult legal problems concerning copyright arise. The
industry is interested in copyright not only where profits are
concerned, but also as a means of controlling the use of music.

2) Piracy
This is really the big issue. The entertainment industry as a whole
is worried about profits lost to pirated products such as cassettes
(especially in the Far East,) pirated cable TV and satellite programs.
Cassettes are especially seen as a risky investment because of
piracy. 

All these factors contribute to the move of the record industry out
of records as a major source of profitability. 

Frith concludes his talk with some projections of possible future
scenarios (he warns that similar predictions have turned out to
be totally wrong in the past.)

1) There will be a rise of ironic, militant, nationalistic, romantic
   protectionist policies for music directed against the USA. [I
   might add that there are similar protectionist policies inside
   the US also; witness the parallel import ban that has raised
   all the complaints in this mailing list. ---Bill]

2) The academic tradition of analyzing pop music as a part of youth
   culture is probably inadequate. There has been a neglect of
   the relationship between amateur and professional music-making.
   [This has certainly not been neglected in this mailing list.
   Maybe I should write Frith and tell him about lovehounds? 
   ---Bill] An interesting point that Frith brought up: the
   musicians' union was against amateurism in music-making.
   [So much for the idea that a musicians' union is for people who make 
   music. ---Bill]

3) The postmodern argument that we shall eventually see a flat,
   homogeneous culture may not be accurate. Frith foresees rather
   a fragmentation of pop culture: the multinational centers of
   entertainment production and the marginals will not come 
   together. [I interpret this as meaning the major labels will
   be making entertainment for the masses, while small
   independent producers will make specialized music for 
   specific people. Incredibly close to some of the ideas which
   have been brought up earlier in this mailing list. ---Bill]



There was an intelligent question/answer session at the end, which
took long enough that the organizers were worried that they may miss
the Die Kreuzen show at the Illini Union. I was too lazy to take
notes at the end (also some of the speakers were very soft-spoken.)
I had prepared some questions, but most of them had been addressed
by Frith in his talk already. I asked a question which had been
suggested by Hofboyy (somewhat rephrased diplomatically by me):

Me: "Many rock critics and writers are not academically attached
     to any institutions, and derive their major income from their
     writing. Do you see any contradiction in that while they 
     criticize the system, they in a sense pander to it by writing
     about its products?"

Frith's reply was that it is difficult for record companies to control
rock writers, and he does not see a real contradiction in being a
part of the system and criticizing it. (Despite my diplomacy, he
did allude to the fact that he himself might be considered a part
of the system.)

Anyway, it was a most interesting and informative evening, and I'll
definitely try to get Simon Frith's address to raise some of the
questions I did not get to ask. Comments?

Bill Hsu