Observation Report

 

Observation Report II

For our Observation Report, we wanted to find a computer game that made use of the internet in order to create a world for its players. While there are popular examples of this, such as World of Warcraft and Second Life, there were few that pertained to our topic – music in new media. Games such as Rock Band might revolve around music, but there is a lack of any real community around the game. We decided to focus our efforts on the web site Songsterr – an instructional guitar web site that teaches users how to play specific songs by reading guitar tabs.

The Songsterr homepage is very simple and uncluttered. It presents the user with a few songs sorted by difficulty – beginner, intermediate, and advanced. These songs, such as “Stairway To Heaven” and “Here Comes The Sun,” are all very familiar and are meant to draw hesitant websurfers further into the site. Aside from these difficulty categories, there is a “Just Added” section, which would most benefit regular users who have become perhaps too familiar with the existing Songsterr catalogue and are looking for new additions. Users can sort by difficulty, genre, or search for a specific song or artist.

When a song is loaded, the Songsterr player displays guitar tablature, which uses numbers on six strings rather than notes on a staff. Because Songsterr offers “backing tracks” for  practicing musicians, you do not here lyrics or the actual instruments from the band, but rather a synthetic version that replays what Songsterr users posted . The user has a surprising amount of options for controlling both the sound and visual presentation of a tab. The most powerful tool is the mixer. This allows for the user to manipulate every instrument involved in the backing track, including drums. The volume of a specific instrument can be modified or muted completely. This is extremely useful for certain songs that feature a complex arrangement of tracks that are hard to individually pick out. The mixer is also where the user selects what tablature is visually being displayed as well. You can print the tab, or switch the song to half-speed, which can help you learn fast, complicated guitar parts.

Songsterr compares to Rock Band and Guitar Hero, which have proved to be mass phenomena. Songsterr does not deduct points for missing notes, or have bright colors or flashing lights. Michael Gordon wonders why there is no Orchestra Hero, and it seems like learning to play an instrument could be taught like a game. Applying video games to learning music seems to be just over the horizon. Classical music might use technology rather than viewing it as an adversary.

The community aspect of Songsterr is one of the most interesting features of the site. All of the tabs on the site are user-created and submitted through the “Submit Tab” command at the top of the page. The user-driven nature of the site is very beneficial on almost every account. There could be issues with song accuracy, but generally the feedback given by other users will help moderate this. Under each song, there is a comment section where users will leave feedback on the accuracy of the tabs. Like any online community, certain users are held in a higher regard than others, based on skill. Songsterr does maintain a blog and a Twitter, both of which update users on new features and additions to the site. There is also a “Song Requests” section, where users post songs they would like to see tabbed on the site.

Overall Songsterr is a very entertaining musical tool, and it helps take away the staleness that can come with traditional music lessons. The site is a good example of how the internet has so quickly changed the way music is learned and shared. Songsterr allows thirty-second demos of each song to be played, but a premium $9.90/month plan is required to view son tabs in their entirety.

 

Caitlyn, Joe, Whit

New Media and Society

Observation Report 1

29 Sept. 2009

Introduction

We observed how practices related to the performance and reproduction of music have changed as a result of new technologies, and if those changes reflect the utopian or dystopian themes. At the most basic level, these practices are how we pay for (or profit from), music and how we share it. Sharing can be broken down into: reproducing (a.k.a. copying), downloading, and sampling music. Copyright Law intends to protect creators from unauthorized reproductions, and the law has changed dramatically to deal with common internet practices. International recognition of copyright comes from the Berne Convention of 1886, and has become incorporated in to the United Nations as the WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization). Yet, each country is left to enforcement WIPO mandates with its own legislation. In the U.S., the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) 1998 serves that purpose.

Our method is carried out in four steps. In the first place, we analyzed how utopian and dystopian themes are presented alongside the developments of new musical technologies. Second, we look at the laws and treaties that govern copyright. Next, we consider specific legal actions that have resulted from music sampling or sharing practices, and finally the impact that the law has on creators and consumers.

Observations

Computer technologies make it much easier to copy, paste and rearrange sounds into original compositions. One result is the under emphasis of traditional “performance.” But if we compare this style of composition to collage making, how much credit is due to the original pieces? The exhibition, Cybernetic Serendipity (London 1968) sought to convince skeptics that new computer applications would lead to creative flourishing in art, and that they could be fun. This new way of making media led to many legal disputes between original works, and their derivatives. As the technology spread, consumers also began to use technology to copy music without paying royalties.

Copyright law is arbitrated by the federal courts, and is a very active branch of the law. Since the DMCA (1998) went into effect, the number of disputes has risen, as technological innovation outpaces legislation. In addition to the famous cases about file sharing services, sampling often results in legal action. We were surprised at the amount of deal-making that goes on around the practice of sampling. Almost always, the original songs received compensation when used as a sample. Despite this, even when permission is obtained, lawsuits can still arise, like the Beastie Boys song Pass the Mic, when the composer sued because they did not pay him as well as well as the publisher.

But the ever-present threat of legal action changes the way that artists use technology to process and utilize sounds. If the secondary user refuses to pay, sampling cases are decided by comparing the original to the new song, through the legal standard fair use. These cases have gone both ways, depending on how much material was used, and how important it was to the original composition.

Consumers are more interested in the rules about copying and sharing digital music. Although some people willingly violate the law, many are unaware of the common activities which are illegal and carry stiff penalties when enforced. If you make a back-up CD of your iTunes collection, you have violated federal law. Making mixed CDs from multiple copyrighted sources is also illegal. Although some exceptions have been granted for academic use, there have been cases where the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) has sued professors for the way they used copyrighted material at conferences.

Conclusions

Changes in intellectual property law have not resolved the debates about technology and music, but have actually made clashes more frequent. The technology is changing faster than the law, but as long as the law is behind the curve, it will only be able to resolve individual disputes without being able to enforce its own mandates. Although musicians are often confronted about questionable practices, consumers are much more likely to avoid consequences based on the sheer number of violations.

Whether you view changes in new media as utopian or dystopian depends on where you view the problem from. Our concern is not so much with the application of intellectual property rights, but the assumptions that our laws have been (very recently) built upon. The Berne Conference literally created the legal concept of copyright, and permitted creators to claim the profits from their work, without applying for copyright as soon as the work was “fixed.” As ability to sample and reproduce sounds increases, art becomes less fixed, and this may be the reason the number of disputes has risen.

But the de-emphasis of performance may lead us to forget that music is art. Imagining it only as a commodity to be bought and sold fundamentally misses something. Should we enforce laws that value the potential to profit over the creative process, and should everyone who breaks copyright law be punished? Although alternative licensing scenarios exist (e.g. Lessing’s Creative Commons License), the DMCA has criminalized many common practices, and is being enforced. The age of digital reproduction challenges what copyright is supposed to protect, and begs the question if our laws correspond to our stated goals.