This is why I wanted to offer a little bit of outside thinking for how to approach this topic. Henderson Cole, an entertainment attorney and newsletter reader, talked to me last year about this idea he called the “American Music Library”. The proposal was a fairly radical rethinking of the contemporary music streaming ecosystem. I allowed him a little bit of space below to describe his idea and provided
a link to his longer proposal here:
I grew up in the tail end of the CD era and experienced what it was like to be priced out of listening to music, so I’m a big fan of streaming—but the current system is a nightmare. Mainstream streaming services lean on major label dictated song selection or personalized obtuse algorithms, leaving artists and songwriters not making enough money from the royalties that have cannibalized other album sales. These issues reverberate across the entire music industry from shrinking with record industry profits funneling back up to the top.
A dramatic problem needs a drastic solution. My idea would unlock the potential of music streaming, while also supporting artists and songwriters. The current workshopping name is: The American Music Library. It is, in basic terms, a government-controlled music streaming service that anyone can access for free, similar to the public library system. This streaming service will not have algorithms or service generated playlists, but instead, be a repository for music across the globe. Artists and songwriters would be paid fairly, and no labels, publishers or other industry figures would be able to wield power over the service.
Yes, this is possible. If something like this is going to be built, it will be because creatives and music fans demand it.
I’ve talked to Cole about a number of thoughts on his idea before, but one of the reasons I was initially drawn to it was because it helped open my mind about how much the current system could potentially change. Certainly imagining an idea like this being implemented in the United States, in this current political climate, is extremely hard to do. However, I’m not in the position to snap my fingers and make this happen but rather I’m interested in seeing where these ideas could go.
There might be a reason why one of the songs I listened to a bunch in 2017, when diving more into the space of music streaming, was the Washington D.C. band Priests and their track “
Pink White House”, where the lead singer Katie Greer sings:
A puppet show in which you’re made to feel like you participate
Sign a letter, throw your shoe, vote for numbers 1 or 2
Consider the options of a binary
Consider the options of a binary
Consider the options of a binary
Consider the options of a binary
Last year spring, I spoke at a Northeastern University symposium, where one of the speakers was Kelly Hiser, the CEO and co-founder of the
company Rabble. The company created an open source platform, called MUSICat used at public library systems across the country to allow local artists to upload their music onto it. There are a number of differences between Rabble’s work and Cole’s proposal, but both helped me imagine how music could revert back toward a public, rather than a private, good. I certainly wouldn’t expect this to be a path for all music, but one of it’s greatest strengths is inspring people to from communities. Thus it’s exciting to imagine these large digital platforms being used to strengthen, rather than crush, the emergence of such groups.
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