The Medium Is The Massage

Artrockers,
Last week I left you all speechless, open -mouthed in amazement that I was predicting a future, any future, for the music industry. I pointed out that the turning points in the history of the business were all related to formats and that while the mp3 has caused much damage it is at best an interim format and that another, better and easier to monetise format will be along in a minute and the rule book will be re-written once again.

In the meantime, while we wait for the next bus, have a think about this: as Marshall Mcluhan said many years ago: 'The medium is the massage'. Now, I've never really understood what he meant by that, like the guy in the cinema queue in Annie Hall I've always chucked it about to impress women without understanding it myself*. But I think it may apply to mp3s. Is it possible that the present crop of pop-mongers out there actually create music which is defined by the limitations of the compressed music file, consciously or unconsciously? In other words, has the format dictated, or at the very least informed the music that's being created right now? A brief flit through the radio1 playlist reveals that the soft-synth reigns supreme, be it grimey, souley or simply poppy, the same synth presets are present time after time prompting calls of 'Not that bloody synth sound again! It's on 5 of the top 10 singles. You'd think they could use a different sound once in a while wouldn't you?' Well maybe you would think that, but you're a purist and you believe that anything electronic after Man Machine is rubbish. The man / child / idiot on the street couldn't give a toss, it all sounds great on his iPod. And that's the point. Synths sound good in an mp3 format, guitars, orchestras and other assorted 'real' instruments less so. And if you've got any brains at all you'll use synths and drum machines. They cut through, probably because like the mp3, it's all digital. When CDs came along there was a mad rush to buy Yamaha DX7s, simply because the 8 bit technology involved was a precise match for the 8 bit CD player, the medium was dictating the process. It still is, probably always will.

Of course the way we record has also informed the music we hear, now that you can set up in the bedroom with a digital recorder and produce amazing stuff why would you want to bother with miking up drums and amps and giving next door a heart attack? Not while you can record the entire thing with soft-synths and drum programmes without ever taking the headphones off.

But I return to the point, has the mp3 defined the music we hear, has the medium become the massage? I think so, how about you?

Tom Artrocker

* McLuhan described key points of change in how man has viewed the world and how these views were changed by the adoption of new media. "The technique of invention was the discovery of the nineteenth [century]", brought on by the adoption of fixed points of view and perspective by typography, while "[t]he technique of the suspended judgment is the discovery of the twentieth century", brought on by the bard abilities of radio, movies and television.

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