A Study about Aesthetics of Contemporary Popular Music:
With Emphasis on Concepts of "Works" and "Authors".

MASUDA Satoshi

Summary:

This paper intends to overview empirical studies about various practices of contemporary popular music and then attempts to examine aesthetic problems extracted from them. Our main concern lies in exploring contemporary aspects of concepts of "works" and "authors"; How have these concepts altered their meanings through practices, and how have they affected the practices conversely?
As subjects of our research, the following three topics: club music, music industry and copyright of music are taken up. Each corresponds to three different social fields where technology (the media), organizational and industrial structure, and the law that are brought up by sociologist of music Richard Peterson cross with the contemporary practices of popular music. The questions asked are:
1) Club music: how have technological developments in musical practices altered the conditions of "works" and "authors"?
2) Music industry: today, how is the production of popular music determined in the organizational and industrial structures and how does it cross with the aesthetic concepts?
3) Copyright of music: how has the legal system appropriated the concepts to connect it to the actual economic structure?
These three empirical fields, club music, music industry and copyright of music are discussed in chapter 1 to 3, as conspicuous fields in which the three elements, technology, organizational and industrial structure, and law each constructs concepts of "works" and "authors" , and conversely the elements are affected by the aesthetic concepts.
Then in the final chapter, the structure of the concepts of musical "works" and "authors" will be examined more at an abstract level.

Chapter 1. Media Technology and Contemporary Popular Music: Aesthetics of Club Music

In this chapter, the issues of club music is dealt with, which is one of the contemporary popular music based on new musical technology. In so-called club culture, each music is produced by using various devices such as turntables, samplers and synthesizers, which I shall call the intermediate technologies that serve both as instruments and recording machinery. Here, the music is not simply performed but is "played" by DJs, and it should be examined how this has affected the state of "works" and "authors". Firstly, we will overview the historical development of club music; these impromptu styles were first attempted in clubs and discos, and in course of its world-wide propagation, it came to have an identity as modern art, just as other forms of popular music did (ex. rock music).
Next, we shall move on to the discussion on the relations of popular music and media technology, especially how it's being formulated in case of "live culture" and "disc culture" (cf. Sarah Thornton, 1995, Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital, Cambridge: Polity). Interestingly, these two show dichotomical relations in between; while the former (ex. rock) relies deeply upon its "live" performance, the latter (ex. club music) doesn't need any elements of "performance" and has an alternative forms of distribution and practice. Such a difference on the level of musical practices, I shall argue, originates from the fact that these two cultures premise very different form of "authenticity". Also, it will be argued that these two cultures are produced through a different processes, and as is shown by our example of the cover versions and remixes of Suzanne Vega's "Tom's Diner", we draw out the condition of concept of "works" in club music.
Further, we shall point out that the practices of club music have put the traditional idea of "performance" in debate. Here, the "author" is no longer an exclusive possessor of the "works" he or she produces, because there exist the DJs. A DJ may not be an "author", of course, but is the agent that multiplies the concept of the author. This is because, in his/her pendulous move between phonographs and audiences, each DJ shall add particular arrangements to the original, and might able to give a temporal effect of fixation to the original.

Chapter 2. "Authors" in the Institutional Structure of Music Industry.

In this chapter, the structural aspect of popular music industry is discussed. Firstly, we will overview the critiques of cultural industries which was started by Theodor W. Adorno, and see how this particular branch of industry has been situated in the preceding studies. In our view, there have been at least two major paradigmatic changes since Adorno; one was the modification given by Richard Peterson, and the other, by Keith Negus. Each has urged a revision of the view of contemporary music industry given by Adorno, as, for him, the music industry was nothing but an "apparatus" for the endless enhancement of capitalist production, where the consumers were always manipulated as if at its own will. It is obvious that the music industry today does not function this way; the production has to mediate in between desires of the consumers as well as resources of musical materials/capitals, and followingly, should be seen as a part of wider social practices. It is no longer just one autonomic practice that can be dominated by the industry.
Then, we will look at some of the actual production processes in case of music in television commercials, paying closer attention to the question of authorship concept; what kind of "author" is projected onto the products by the producers themselves. In the contemporary music industry, these processes consists of an accumulation of very diverse practices of collective creation, and this complexity within the industry is further added by the desires of consumers. This makes it harder to determine who the producer is, and not only that, the one who produces music is no longer relevant to the one who owns it, either. Here, the "owner" and winner of economic profits are the ones who mediate existing cultural resources and connections, and join them to the circuit of economy in a most effective way.

Chapter 3. History and Structure of Musical Copyright.

In this chapter, the issues of copyright (that is to say, the exclusive legal right to determine the authorship) will be investigated. Basically, this concept takes it for granted that a work is a natural expression of the author's personality, and that its belonging to the author should be justified by law. It's an idea derived from the institutionalization of the 19th Century Romantic Ideology that underwent after the French Revolution. But during its introduction to Japan, it brought complex relations to Japanese concepts about Western arts which were not established yet. Therefore, Japanese institution of "chosaku-ken" (Japanese translation of the word "copyright") was approved into law, relatively independent from the system of aesthetic concepts in Japanese, and also was adjusted to the interests of music industry.
In today Japan, the actual applications of the copyright law is not functioning as a warranty of such Romantic idea about the author-work relations. It is rather one of the economic adjustment systems of the industry, as will be made clear in the following analysis of business tie-ups in the field of advertising industry. In this business environment, there are complex relations between the "author" to whom the "work" attributes and the publishers or record producing companies which possess institutional ownership of the "work". Here, the law of copyright is not expected either to protect the ownership of a work nor the creativity/individuality of the author reflected upon the works. Rather, it's a rule of the economic game in which each actor tries to collect maximum profits out of these musical practices, taking advantages of related laws and rules (ex. JASRAC's levying regulations).

Chapter 4. Concepts of "Works" and "Authors" in Contemporary Popular Music.

Based on the empirical researches and arguments conducted in former chapters, we shall try some theoretical speculation of the works/authors concepts in contemporary popular music in this ending chapter. First, discourses surrounding popular music will be analyzed. By using the analytical framework proposed by Joseph Margolis (1959 "The Identity of a Work of Art", Mind, Vol.LXVIII, No. 269, pp.34-50.), it will be verified that there exist two different modes of viewing musical works within these discourses; one is that of "folk music", and the other, "recorded music". While the former belongs to so-called "live culture", the latter corresponds to the "disc culture", and it is this latter concept of works that has become predominant in the history of poplar music.
Next, we shall take up Roland Barthes, Ken-ichi Sasaki and Michel Foucault, and examine their view of the author. In so-called "death of the author" argument advocated by them, their attack was not quite addressed towards the whole of the concept, "author". Apparently, they have targeted mainly at its Romantic attributes, and have failed to take account of other properties of the concept, "author". Further, we will categorize the relation of an "author" towards his or her "works" as follows; ownership, production and attribution. The harmonious co-existence of the three (that was once a tacit premise of discourses of modern aesthetics about music) has now become highly unstable and fragmented, we shall argue. This is because, in the practices of contemporary popular music, there intervene very various institutional contexts and creative mediators, and out of these practices, indeed infinite numbers of "authors" and "creators (if not authors)" are discursively produced. In other words, an "author" in contemporary popular music keeps on proliferating via and into the countless social practices, while a "work" becomes a fixed material like a music record. At last, we conclude that such a proliferation of "authors" arises out of three social contexts, namely, media technology, industrial structure and the law system.