Head full of sermons, mouth full of spiders.

Why the Capitalist Commodification of Music is an Act of Censorship, or Why This Whole Fiona Apple Affair Makes Me Even More Cynical About the Music Industry.

Sue Curry Jansen, in her book Censorship: The Knot that Binds Power and Knowledge argues that the roots of our society’s current definition of censorship are found in Enlightenment thinking. During the Enlightenment, the church and government held a monopoly over the public channels for the distribution of knowledge. In order to secure liberal notions of liberty, thinkers like Diderot heavily criticized the fact that these institutions had so much power in deciding how knowledge, and what knowledge could filter into society. Essentially, liberalism defended the rights of individuals against the encroachment of powerful institutions, like the church and government. In the absence of a corporate capitalist economy like the one that exists today, the Enlightenment thinkers did not argue that the corporate institutions had the same power to control the dissemination of knowledge in society. Despite the absence of Enlightenment criticism of corporate knowledge control, it is quite easy to see how, given the size and influence of the distribution side of the corporate “state” today, the same critique of information control by the church and the government could apply to corporations today. What I'm trying to say is that the control of knowledge by corporations in America is innately problematic; it is censorial at its root, and given the ever increasing power and influence of corporate institutions, it has become ever more harmful to the free flow of knowledge and expression that liberal societies like America hold so dear.

So how, exactly, are corporate entities censorial? Traditional notions of censorship depict the censor as someone or some organization that assumes the mantle of mediator of public morals. In other words, traditional censors are concerned with cultural artifacts that reflect or promote a perceived decline in public morals and values. By censoring cultural artifacts that offend the delicate sensibilities of those they seek to protect, they believe that they are ultimately benefiting society. In addition to protecting a given society from the loose morals of some of its members, censorship often becomes the agent of the state, most notably in totalitarian regimes. When radical political ideas contrary to the interest of the state are put forth, it is the job of the state censor to limit the proliferation of such ideas. How the censorship on the part of corporate institutions differs is in the ideological reasons why cultural artifacts are censored. Morals and social order definitely play a role in how corporate institutions commit censorial acts, but the ultimate reason behind corporate censorship is not only some hazy conception of public good or social order; instead the marketability of the cultural artifact in question is the base reason for the act of censorship.

By their very nature, corporations are beholden to the interests of shareholders and profit motive. Therefore, when corporations decide what cultural products to sell to the public, it is always the cultural products are likely to ensure a healthy profit margin. A corporate institution that claims to be committed to promulgating culture, like, oh, say, popular music, is, in fact, more concerned with making money for its shareholders than it is with seeing that a diverse array of music reaches the listening public. Profit motive trumps any effort to distribute a variety of quality music.

This is entirely problematic in American society.

The United States, as a liberal democracy, is premised on the assumption that knowledge is a social resource, a public utility, or a collective good. Sue Curry Jansen notes that “access to knowledge is a right rather than a privilege; it assumes free entry of diverse ideas into a public marketplace which is open to all citizen/shoppers who seek knowledge.” In having profit motive trump public good as the arbiter of what knowledge is brought into the marketplace (both literally and figuratively), one of the most essential characteristics of a liberal democratic society has been subverted. In Jansen’s words, “as a result of liberalism’s compromises with the comforts of capitalism, the institutional structures of liberal societies have never been as pure as their ideological structures.” In fact, it could be argued that corporations that are in the business of distributing knowledge to societies are inherently censorial.

This argument is certainly open to a number of legitimate criticisms. The most apparent critique of this whole matter is the assertion that corporations can essentially do whatever they want with their money and with their products. Does the corporation not have every right to determine what commodities it chooses to distribute to the general public? After all, it is the corporation and its shareholders that are putting up the money in order to distribute the commodity. Certainly, this critique is valid for the kind of company that distributes commodities like toothbrushes, steel or hammers. It is when corporations that are in the business of distributing culture that this line of reasoning becomes problematic. Culture, or in this case, popular music, is not simply an ordinary consumer item. Popular music is value laden, it is educational - in short, music is a form of knowledge. Music exercises an influence upon public consciousness. In that respect it is more akin to education than to industry and the offerings of the corporate institutions should be as much a matter of concern as the quality of our education. Essentially, if one views music as merely another commodity in a capitalist market, than the criticism that corporations are censoring music fall flat, for reasons cited above. But to view music this way is entirely reductionistic.

Tied to this argument is the fact that corporate distributors should have a responsibility to the public to ensure the product they are delivering is of a certain degree of quality (whether this often plays out is another argument). If automobile manufacturers are obligated to produce and distribute cars that are safe and reliable, should not the companies that produce and distribute music be obligated to produce a quality product? Or, since ideas of “quality” in music are highly subjective, should the corporations not be compelled to offer a diverse array of music, in order to meet the aesthetic criteria of a myriad of listeners?

The argument can also be made that the corporations are merely giving the public what it wants. In essence, the consumer is voting with dollars, and the products that win are the products that make the most money. In such a democratic process, how could any efforts to restrict public access to certain styles of music be censorial? Does censorship not imply some sort of totalitarian suppression of culture that the general public wants access to? While this argument is certainly valid, an effective counter argument can be made. Essentially, the argument is this: if the general public is only exposed to a small cultural or ideological sample from the enormous and diverse music world, how would the public effectively know what it wants? If the corporations that distribute music only offer a small sample of a diverse art form to the public, how would the public know what else is out there? By limiting the music that is promoted to the music which makes money, only a small sample of the music produced by an enormous industry ever reaches the ears of the listening public. In addition, if the public already “knows what it wants,” why do the distributing corporations put billions of dollars behind the promotion of their music? If the public already knew what kind of music they liked, no promotion would be necessary – instead the public would select the music based on their preexisting tastes that are in no way shaped by promotion and advertisements. Given such evidence, it is very easy to ascertain why scholars like Lawrence Grossberg have referred to recent marketing strategies of music distributors as “hegemonic taste manufacturing.”

All these arguments fall flat if there is much diversity among the corporations that distribute music. It can be said that if one distributor refuses to sell a certain album or single, it is possible that another distributor may sell it. Economic and ideological diversity help facilitate the distribution of many different styles of music in society. The problem with this argument is that the diversity of distributing corporations is ever shrinking. Corporate mergers, or “synergy” have resulted in a less diverse musical marketplace. The multiplicity of small companies that once distributed many kinds of music have been swallowed up by corporate behemoths like Wal-Mart, Clear Channel or Universal Music Group. The effect of this consolidation is that there is less ideological diversity among the companies that distribute music, which has resulted in a general decline in the diversity of music distributed.

I'm not sure if there's a good way that this problem can be resolved. Ideally, I like to think that if we cancelled the production of a couple Stealth Bombers, we could channel those millions of dollars towards the creation of a robust National Endowment for the Arts. That could help in efforts to circumvent the pernicious pursuit of profit on the part of the music industry. But the NEA isn't without it's problems either, and to hope for more funding for the Arts while right-wing nincompoops posess the cultural clout they currently do is damn near pointless.

What about file-sharing then? For now, in light of the way Sony et. al. have been behaving, I'd say "go for it." Even if you think it's a form of theft, go for it. Ethically speaking, I think it's worse to legitimize a corrupt and censorial record industry by paying for its products than it is to download the product via P2P software. At least P2P software allows artists a chance to reach their fans with their product. That's infinitely more moral than allowing the Music industry to continue treating music as a mere commodity that can be bought and sold in a Capitalist marketplace that reached its ethical nadir years ago.

links:
Creative Commons
Radio Consolidation
Fiona Apple