Estimated reading time 6 minutes
Table of Contents
Introduction
Ever wonder if writing a hit song means you’re selling out? When pitching songs, do you worry about losing creative control? The question of art vs commerce has only been with us a relatively short amount of time. Read more to find out what changed.
This article uses musical terms. For definitions, see the Glossary at the end of the post.
The BSW Debates Art vs Commerce
This post came about as I thought about the reactions of Boston Songwriters Workshop (BSW) members at the comparative critique of two versions of 32 Flavors.
Some people liked the original version as performed by Ani DiFranco, for they saw it as a true work of art. Click here to hear the song.
Her version leans toward folk form. The lyrics contain the personal expression of a complex woman and has beautiful imagery woven into its fabric. However, it can sometimes be hard to follow her line of thought.
They felt that Alana Davis’ version ruined DiFranco’s song. That Davis had turned it into commercially oriented “trash” with the single goal of making money. Click here to hear the song.
In contrast, other BSW members favored the cover version by Davis. They felt it sounded more professional, and that it “corrected the mistakes” in the original version. Davis’ version has much slicker production, and the song itself has been heavily rewritten.
In the rewrite, Davis turned the title into a hook that repeated throughout the song. Whereas the original has the title line repeated only twice. This turns the form of the song into a verse/chorus structure – well suited for pop music radio play.
Davis’ version keeps both the intros and outros short, in contrast with DiFranco’s version. Also, Davis cut one of DiFranco’s verses, making the song both more focused and shorter.
In essence, we had a battle of opinions on the question of art vs commerce. And each group favored their preferred version as the successful one.
The History of Art vs Commerce
18th Century Music
The funny thing is that the issue of art vs commerce didn’t arise until the early 19th century. Bach, Vivaldi, and Haydn would have all considered themselves craftsmen. We have a tendency to forget that the great classical masters worked for a living, and each had a patron.
Bach worked in churches, thus all the organ music. Vivaldi taught violin at a girl’s orphanage and music school, and that’s why he wrote so many string concerti. Haydn had noble patrons, which explains why he wrote a lot of chamber music.
What they composed depended on where they worked. Haydn had the good fortune to have enlightened patrons, whereas Mozart had to suffer with patrons who didn’t understand him. Plus, Mozart hated having to wear livery.
Napoleon Bonaparte
19th Century Music
In the 19th Century, all this changed. Political unrest stirred the air. Napoleon and republican sentiments shook the monarchies of the world. In addition, the rising middle class now had the leisure time to pick up musical instruments.
Composers found less work from wealthy patrons, but they could now successfully sell the sheet music for their compositions. (The sheet music industry would eventually morph into the recording industry.)
They arranged music for small family wind, brass, and string ensembles, or for piano, to serve the needs of the middle-class market. They received revenue from public concerts. In addition, they wrote lieders, airs, and songs.
Hence, the 19th century saw the rise of the A&R man. A&R stands for artists and repertoire, and A&R men had the job of matching stage singers with the songs they sang.
Suddenly, composers faced a new dilemma. Should they compose for the sake of art: breaking new ground, personal expression, vision, etc. Or conversely, should they try to make money so they could eat next week. (Or in the case of Wagner, create art then skip out on his creditors).
Richard Wagner
Art vs Commerce in the Modern World
Record Labels
The question of art vs commerce remains with us now more than ever before. Currently, record companies function less like patrons and more like investment bankers. They put down a large amount of cash on an artist in the hopes that the artist or songwriter will bring in huge returns.
Many music industry executives, such as Clive Davis who discovered Whitney Houston, started out as lawyers. A frightening number of the most powerful executives have no music background at all. Therefore, the hopeful songwriters’ professional goals revolve around convincing these people that the songs they write can be commercially successful.
This happens when you create songs with a certain sound and form, and by being as professional as possible with submission packages, personal bearing, and attitude. A certain amount of local success, to prove that you can make it at the local or regional level, also helps a lot. Of course, once you have wider success you may gain more artistic latitude.
Much closer to the old patron system is the network of grants and fellowships. However, even they may ask for specific things in the compositions. Many modern composers write for TV and film, while others get high academic degrees and teach while they compose on the side.
So, the professional composer has almost never been free of the worries of making a living. Either that, or the composer did music as an avocation rather than as a vocation, such as Charles Ives did. In other words, you have a day job and do music as a hobby. It may be a serious hobby, but a hobby none the less. Sometimes it’s best to leave it that way too.
Whitney Houston
The Internet
What about services like Spotify, YouTube Music, SoundCloud, and Apple Music? Can’t independent artists earn a living that way? While possible, artists earn a few dollars for every 1,000 plays with these services. This means that they need to get around a million clicks per month to earn a living. They can make a living while still retaining creative control. However, it comes with the cost of having a much larger amount of work.
So, record labels no longer offer the only avenue to monetary success. However, they do still offer a lot of advantages that an artist will want to consider before deciding to either go with a label or go it alone. In either case, the art vs commerce question remains even to a degree for independent artists.
Some People Don’t Worry About Art vs Commerce at All
In indigenous cultures, anyone may write music. According to Kurt Sachs, a native musician might work on a tune while carving his dugout canoe. He’ll continue to shape the song until he presents it at the tribal festival later in the month, where it may or may not gain acceptance.
If it gets accepted, it will go into the tribe’s stock of music. If not, he’ll work on another song. These may be one or two step melodies that have little in common with Western music. Yet, he is a songwriter because he writes songs, and music remains central to the life of the people. The art vs commerce question never even comes up.
Too often we Westerners feel that we can only be “songwriters” if we do it as a profession. We hold up the specialist as the ideal. These days, too many people enjoy music only as a passive experience via vinyl or online streaming. As a result, many people have lost the personal connection to music.
It wasn’t always this way. Only a few hundred years ago, Western musicians played and sang mostly for themselves. In the Medieval period, the monks in the monasteries sang vespers to no audience. They sang to God and to themselves. Now you can hear monks singing on YouTube.
In the Renaissance, a group of friends would sing a John Dowland air with the lute. It wasn’t until the late Baroque that we had our first public performance organized by a composer named Telemann. The concept of being a star has been around for less time than you might think.
More people need to sing or play music together to regain the personal connection to music and music writing.
Concluding Thoughts on Art vs Commerce
The question of art vs commerce really arose out of the fact that composers became a specialized, professional group. After the death of the patronage system, they had to bow to the wants and needs of the public to make a living. Either that or they had to do music part time.
Getting back to 32 Flavors, you might ask yourself, “So how do you measure the success of a song?” Read about it in the companion post: Measuring a Song’s Success.
© 2022 Geoffrey Keith
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