View source for Hue and Cry


= case study on the use of fan labor by a music band


=Description=

Pat Kane:

"In terms of a debate about whether users' interactivity with net 
platforms is a form of exploitation of labor (in the Marxist sense), 
I'm aware that I might be living a somewhat schizophrenic life. In 
one domain, I'm a working musician who is part of a UK "legacy" act 
from the 80's, Hue And Cry. Since our relaunch in late 2008, our 
strategy has been to use the enthusiasm of online fandom to reanimate 
our "brand", by using flexible and media-rich social networks 
(particularly Ning) to capture the passions raised both by our live 
performance, and other traditional outlets of media exposure (radio, 
TV, press).

In these sites – particularly the Music Club, at http://hueandcry.ning.com - we actively encourage and facilitate all kinds  of 'fan labor' (cultural note: our biggest hit was called "Labour of 
Love" in 1987, more inspired by Gramsci than Bateson). 

This can include: cam-phone audio-visual recording from gigs; giving fans the 
opportunity to suggest and vote on songs they'd like us to perform 
and record; allowing fans to upload their own covers of our songs. 
But this doesn't include a lot of emergent, spontaneous activity that 
comes from the users' own ability to generate sub-networks and forums 
of their own, within the Hue And Cry Music Club site. We don't charge 
subscription fees to the site (like many other bands), and we have a 
programme of regular updates of audio-visual content produced by my 
musical partner and I – again, freely streamed.

There's much to say about this experience – which I hope to share at 
the NY conference in November. But in terms of kicking off this 
debate, the core point might be that our presumption has been that 
we're dealing with a radically counter-commercial audience and 
environment – one in which digital networked distribution of music 
has driven its price point to effectively zero, and in which that 
music has almost become a kind of 'community currency'. By that I 
mean a system of exchange whose value accumulation is fan enthusiasm 
and commitment, rather than straightforward monetary rent from IP-
identified saleable objects. (Although as Spotify, Last.fm and other 
outfits show, a licensing system may be a possible recommodifier of 
music consuming habits, though with the pressure of 'free' keeping 
overall revenue much lower than the heydays of CD sales).

So in terms of making a living, we have fallen upon the maxim "use 
what is ubiquitous to drive people to what is scarce" – ie use the 
ubiquity and free circulation of digital content to raise awareness 
about those real-world moments of spatio-temporal enclosure (the gig, 
the meet'n'greet, the music workshop) whose boundaries can be 
controlled, and thus commodified. (Our refinement on that is to 
create our own 'ubiquitous' commons of Hue And Cry music within the 
Music Club – 'reterritorialising', to no doubt misuse Deleuze, the 
deterritorialised flows of digital culture). It's not that we don't 
try to sell recordings anymore – we do, and we are doing so, though 
the objects these recordings are attached to are way beyond the old 
CD, and are more lifestyle/luxury products with music inserted, an 
extension of our "brand" across non-musical physical objects. But our 
working presumption is that recorded music, because of digitisation, 
networks and their innovations, is always under a huge gravitational 
force dragging it towards free usage.

And just to be clear, I come at the question of what value is being 
realised by commercial platform owners by the free labor of users 
from a small-business perspective – as artists seeking some kind of 
income from our endeavours and enterprises. We are rights-holders in 
our own small company, who seek to use non-commercial, part-
commercial (the usual social platforms) and fully-commercial (ie 
larger distributors and syndicators) networks to promote our music, 
both recorded and performed.

Commercially, I should be agnostic-ironic about what networks are 
best for that purpose. But civically, I'm a supporter of the 
'innovation commons' of the Net a la Lessig, and would resist any 
attempt to tamper with the basic end-to-end architecture of the Web 
(ie, to create tiers of net access with protocols restricted, for 
whatever reason). I guess I have to stake out my petit-bourgeois, 
mixed-economy, social-democrat traders' identity at the beginning. 
And what I'm looking for from a conference/discussion on 'the 
internet and playground and factory' is a new political economy of 
the Net that can find a place for creative and sustainable cultural 
enterprise, within this complex landscape (as Yochai Benkler says in 
the Wealth of Networks) of market, state and 'sharing' economies. I 
feel that the answers may lie as much in welfare and social policy. 
That is, what kind of social provisions and support can be made for a 
'general intellect' now active throughout society, as the Italian 
Marxists say? Does a four day week or a citizens' income more 
effectively answer our anxieties about our affective and cognitive 
'lives' pouring into these networks, than a discourse about how our 
free labor benefits Google's bottom line?"
(IDC mailing list)


[[Category:Music]]

[[Category:Cases]]