Edgar Bronfman Jr. and the Music Industry

The New York Times > Business > Your Money > Wipe Egg Off Face. Try Again. Voilà:

'Flows poison like ivy, oh they grimy/Already offers on my sixth album from labels trying to sign me.'

Fairly elaborate piece about the Seagram heir involved in the music industry. What's interesting here for someone who tends to think of music as expression and creation through sound is to get a peep in other perspectives on music. Sure, the first step to achieve their perspective is to see music as a commodity, which seems rather awkward for a musician But there are more steps involved if one wants to get insight into "corporate culture" of The Biz. It's not just money. It's also this notion that "artists" (musicians, mostly singers, with record contracts) create hits or non-hits. Members of that culture seem to think that "hitness" is an intrinsic quality of an artist's output. Of course, they're acutely aware that the way people listen to music is influenced by their own processes. But the point is, the comments of analysts and "insiders" still point, when they talk about "the music," toward music as production. It's good to keep in mind that the model is quite recent. Attali's /Noise/ (read the first edition of the French original Bruits only last year or the year before) describes many steps in the construction of this model...