A slightly adapted manifesto by Sandy Pearlman on the inspiration for this year’s conference.
“I am one who has loved rock ’n’ roll and crawled from the ranks to the stage, to salute history and plant seeds for the erratic magic landscape of the new guard…Its members will be the guardians of our cultural voice. Their territory is global. The Internet is their CBGB. Their potential power to form and reform is unprecedented…”, Patti Smith, writing in the NY Times, on her election to the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame. Same as it ever was, Patti remains wholly right. Her remarks are the inspiration for [Pop and Policy 2007] the 2nd Annual Pop / Schulich Conference on the Future of Music, for which Patti will be a keynote speaker.
Pop Montreal, the Schulich School of Music of McGill University, the CIPP and the Future of Music Coalition Present :
“Fast, Cheap and Out of Control”, 100 New Effin' Models for the Future of Music: How to Crash the Pricing, Uphold the Ecstasy, Radically Expand the Catalog and Finally Get Artists and Rights Holders Paid the Big Bucks.
Music, Music everywhere. This is the paradox of Music today. And perhaps the problem. So much Music that it’s not even worth paying for. So much Music, so little time. Music has become more ubiquitous than ever and ever less essential. Music now serves so many ends other than its own ecstatic self. Other than the ineffable triggers it activates. In a digital era, music is infinitely distributed. But are these digital means of infinite distribution deactivating music? When coupled with other long term trends in both the business and art sectors of the music space: the fatal corruption and obsolescence of radio; the collapse of the society wide communitarian impulse once broadcast by radio; the extreme mismanagement of the record labels; the triumph of the mighty niche and retreat from community in music; the movement of control in the “mainstream” record business from the hands of a coterie of enlightened, inspirited, individual maniacs to just business (and multinational at that); the radically unanticipated consequences of ever newer enabling (and disabling) technologies; the decline in significance of the “mainstream” music business so precipitous, that, this business itself is become no more than a minor niche in a far vaster music space; the fait accompli irrelevance of most (if not all) the ethos based drive systems that have motivated music for at least the last thousand years etc, etc ...Well what you get is what we've got. Reading the trend lines, the Future of Music is not assured. There are those who think that the very existence of music as an autonomous force to move the world is at risk. That music itself needs salvation.
It is at once against this background, and, under the influence of the magnificent ethos of which Patti Smith is the standard bearer, that this conference has been organized: 100 New Effin’ Models for the Future of Music. 100 Countermeasures to the Subordination of Music. 100 Initiatives for the Salvation of Music.”
--- Sandy Pearlman, Schulich Distinguished Chair; Producer of the Clash and Blue Oyster Cult; Manager, Black Sabbath; Master of Cowbell
