Musical Production, Copyright, and the Private Ownership of Culture

Exploring a Digitised, Networked Milieu: The Cardiff Independent Music Sector in the Age of Immaterial Product

“…This literature ignores a body of other research which claims that such illegal activities in fact have the opposite effect on sales (Filby, 2008), namely, that practices of free circulation can stimulate legitimate purchase. There is also a significant body of academic literature which highlights the creative and innovative potential of free exchange of content, in line with open-source modes of thought (McLeod, 2003;Gillespie, 2006). However, an in-depth, qualitative exploration of an independent and their perspectives and practices on digitisation has not yet been completed.…”

“…Addressing this complexity means addressing the full gamut of consequences raised by the technology/society interaction, celebratory or otherwise. The final section addresses both positive and negative consequences, proposing that mp3 technology contributes to a decentring of place (Meyrowitz, 1986;Casey, 1997) and the artist (McLeod, 2003) as a result of networked communication which does not always lead to improved economic and social situations for all. This makes the case for using qualitative inquiry to best understand these outcomes and their trajectory in terms of the independent music milieu, as the blurred boundaries caused by 'prosumption' (Bruns, 2008), the cultural enrichment of the scene through democratisation of creative and distributive capacities to those thought of traditionally as consumers, raise significant issues for commodification of such goods, democratic access to music and musicians' control over their product, amongst a myriad of other related consequences.…”

“…Such business models are presented as the ideal and most fruitful means of sustaining the creative sector and progressing the careers of artists, and have, for a large part of the 20 th century, become dominant in that they are the most effective in securing lucrative revenue streams, to the exclusion of all others. They have also been successful, until this point, in resisting any threat to their dominance despite notable format developments, such as the cassette (McLeod, 2003). Welsh uses the concept of technique to explore the potential for cultural contestation of such dominant discourses, and the capacity for New Social Movements to contest such trajectories.…”

“…This study is concerned with understanding how the rise of computer mediated communication (CMC) and a resultant 'network of networks' (Castells, 2000;Hassan, 2004) has disrupted traditional modes of production and consumption within a particular creative sector; the music industry, focusing on Cardiff's increasingly amorphous independent music milieu (Webb, 2007) at a point when the changes wrought by digitisation and global network communication is beginning to have a significant impact. Emerging practices of 'prosumption' (Bruns, 2008), consumers who are increasingly empowered to create and distribute original content, are supposedly enriching the milieu, encouraging creativity and innovation by drawing upon others works (McLeod, 2003;Gillespie, 2006).…”

Copyright and the World's Most Popular Song

“…This is patently false, but McLeod softens it, citing Claghorn for the proposition that "a very similar song was published by Horace Waters in 1858 as 'Happy Greetings to All.'" 61 McLeod exaggerates the assertions of James J. Fuld, author of the masterpiece of musical history and bibliography "The Book of World-Famous Music, Classical, Popular and Folk." 62 Fuld states that the song "Good Morning to All" --and note that he does not consider melody and lyrics separately --bears "a similarity" to "A Happy New Year" and "Good Night to You All," and a "considerable similarity" to "Happy Greeting to All".…”