Question for this evening's SNLC-mash up edition:
Is YouTube 'destroying music?'
I'm not sure of the answer (being a loser, natch), which is why I raise the issue here. The impetus for this was an incident this past Monday night in Essen, Germany, reported by Kate Connolly of The Guardian here, where the pianist Krystian Zimerman was giving a recital, and saw someone (who is the main loser here) video-capturing part of the performance on his iPhone. Clearly the idiot shouldn't have done that. Besides the obvious general prohibition of videoing artists in performance w/o their permission, it's also physically distracting to artists, as well as rude to both them and fellow concertgoers. But the quote that is the starting point for discussion here (if any) is this outburst by Zimerman from the stage:
"The destruction of music because of YouTube is enormous."
So follow along...
To put the quote back in some context, Zimerman was frazzled after he saw the guy videoing him, and left the stage briefly. After he returned to the stage, as Connolly wrote in her article:
"On returning, he told the audience that he had lost many recording projects and contracts because music managers had told him: "We're sorry, that has already been on YouTube." "The destruction of music because of YouTube is enormous," he added."
Granted, there's a lot of ambiguity there, in the sense that obviously by default, we don't know what recording projects and contracts got cancelled because something was already on YT. In all likelihood, these would be projects of past music and nothing contemporary, which is par for classical music.
In fact, at the risk of upping the irony quotient, I just went to YT to do a bit of research. At the time of this writing (not Saturday, of which more at the end), if you type in "Krystian Zimerman" (with the quotes, i.e. Boolean search), YT gives you "About 36,400 results". One particular video has >3.25 million hits, this one. However, that's not typical for videos of him, as most of the videos with him have YT hit stats in the 3-digit and 4-digit range. (Note that I use the phrase "videos with him" rather than "his videos". This is because he clearly didn't post those videos himself, and I doubt that he would, even if given the chance.)
KZ's attitude seems to be similar to that expressed by Sir George Martin back in the Financial Times from April 20, 2007:
"Technology, which was always our great friend, has suddenly turned into an enemy. It's made a world of people who firmly believe that all music should be free."
Obviously creative musicians who go to the labor of composition, and performing, not to mention recording, deserve the fruit of their labors. Hence music piracy is wrong, by whatever technology.
Yet just speaking from my own (limited) experience with YT, I can see the shades of ambiguity that Zimerman chooses, it seems, not to see. If I find rare or otherwise hard to obtain footage of a piece of music, or particular performers, who will never feature anywhere near me in real life, I have to settle for video as the next best thing, and I'm often very happy to track down such videos. But I'll also admit that I sometimes use YT as a quick substitute for buying an album, or even checking an album out of the library, in case I want to check out a musician I've heard of, but whose music I haven't yet heard, especially in the case of past artists.
In the case of classical recordings, because the overwhelming majority of them are new recordings of old repertoire which has many recordings already, it's easy to argue, in essence: "who needs another recording of Beethoven or Chopin?" The arguable answer is: no one. OTOH, each new generation recreates great music from the past afresh, or hopefully afresh. For artists who want to document their 'takes' on the great works of the past, or even contemporary works (!!!), then they'll want to make recordings or some sort, whether studio or taken from live performances (with post-production editing as needed).
There isn't an easy answer here. If there were, there would be no need for discussion on this topic. You can express your thoughts here (in addition to voting in the poll, perhaps), if so inclined. Or you can indulge in the usual SNLC protocol, namely your loser stories of the week. But do keep in mind that I'm not here this Saturday night to mojo comments and reply, so I'll need a sub here who wants to do so. I will literally not see in any form this SNLC for several days, so you guys are completely on your own.....