Clay Shirkyの最新作「The Music Business and the Big Flip」

以前簡単にご紹介したClay Shirkyの最新作「The Music Business and the Big Flip」がアップされた。Shirkyの「Clay Shirky's Writings About the Internet :Economics and Culture, Media and Community, Open Source」は、メーリングリスト登録しておけば、隔週くらいの間隔で最新の論考が届く。興味のある人は登録されることをお勧めします。

この最新論考は、音楽産業の機能を三段階に分け、その両端、つまりプロダクション(製作)とディストリビューション(流通)はIT化が容易になされたが、最も重要な
「The most important departments at a record label are Artists & Repertoire, and Marketing. A&R's job is to find new talent, and Marketing's job is to publicize it.」という機能のIT化が今後どうなるかという点についてである。

「The first and last thirds of the music industry have been reconfigured by digital tools. The functions in the middle have not.

Thanks to software like ProTools and CakeWalk, the production of music is heavily digital. Thanks to Napster and its heirs like Gnutella and Kazaa, the reproduction and distribution of music is also digital. As usual, this digitization has taken an enormous amount of power formerly reserved for professionals and delivered it to amateurs. But the middle part -- deciding what new music should be available -- is still analog and still professionally controlled.

The most important departments at a record label are Artists & Repertoire, and Marketing. A&R's job is to find new talent, and Marketing's job is to publicize it. These are both genuinely hard tasks, and unlike production or distribution, there is no serious competition for those functions outside the labels themselves. Prior to its demise, Napster began publicizing itself as a way to find new music, but this was a fig leaf, since users had to know the name of a song or artist in advance. Napster did little to place new music in an existing context, and the current file-sharing networks don't do much better. In strong
contrast to writing and photos, almost all the music available on the internet is there because it was chosen by professionals.」

Napsterといえどもその「新しい才能を見出して広く一般に知らしめる」という機能は果たせていなかったとShirkyは指摘する。

「Prior to its demise, Napster began publicizing itself as a way to find new music, but this was a fig leaf, since users had to know the name of
a song or artist in advance. Napster did little to place new music in an existing context, and the current file-sharing networks don't do much better. In strong contrast to writing and photos, almost all the music available on the internet is there because it was chosen by professionals.」

そしてそこを克服する技術の登場によって、

「"filter, then publish" is giving way to "publish, then filter."」

つまり、誰もが新しい音楽をどんどん発表すればよく、その中から自動的に素晴らしいものが選び出されて広くヒットするというような仕組みができるようになると分析している。ぜひご一読を。