Oct 22: Thorley (2016)

Biography

Mark Thorley works at the intersection of industry, consulting, and research. His work brings togther creative professionals in music-related fields to explore the intersection of music and technology.


Collaboration in Crouwdsourcing

In examining crowdfunding wihtin the context of music projects, Thorley considers the collaborative relationship between musicians and audiences in realizing music performances. In the realization of musical projects, therefore, Thorely suggests that we imagine the “producer as a collective”: an amalgamation of traditional rolls—composer, singer, arranger, manager, and fan—that become both condensed for the project initiator and shared with funding agents (fans).

This collaborative relationship between musicians and audience members points to one of the most significant aspects of crowdfunding: the close relatiponship that develops between artist and audience. Crowdfunding platforms, then, highlight the complex ways in which a sense of immediacy develops through the use of mediating technologies. In essence, crowdfunding sites are platforms for computer-generated communication (CMC, see Watson 1997) that enable an enhanced sense of immediacy—circumventing traditional barriers between artists and their audiences

The presence of cultural intermediaries or gatekeepers has always been somewhat problematic for those who wish to take their music to a paying audience, often being seen as a barrier between the audience’s money and the creative practitioner. As Hirsch (1972, 128) notes, for a cultural good to reach an audience, it must “first succeed in (a) competi­tion against others for selection and promotion by an entrepreneurial organization, and then, in (b) receiving mass media coverage in such forms as book review, radio station airplay and film criticism.” Crowdfunding alters this situation… (p. 3)

Because of the collaborative nature of crowdfunded projects, Thorley argues that artists and audiences can develop stronger social, musical, and economic bonds.

Freedom from the Culture Industry

Earlier this semester we discussed

Adorno and Horkheimer’s examination of the Culture Industry. Acknowledging the standaradization within which traditional models of music industry operate (and I think we can include Classical music as an industry in this conversation), Adorno and Horkheimer critique the resulting sameness in musical expression. Drawing upon

The Musical Product?

One of the key issues that Thorley addresses in this chapter is the way in which crowd funding processes have pushed back against traditional notions of the musical product. In pre-Internet contexts, or what sorely refers to as the “era of recorded music,” music consumers conceptualized their patronage of musicians around the exchange of recorded music objects—CDs, LPs, even MP3s. The emergence and growing popular position of crowd funding sites, therefore, opens up a space for re-examining core ideas about the objectification of musical performance, harkening back to our earlier readings regarding the fundamental nature of music as processual rather than object oriented (see Attali 1985, Taylor 2001, and Sterne 2012).

Crowdfunding Platforms

PledgeMusic
ArtistShare
Indiegogo
Patreon
Kickstarter
Airbnb Experiences
GoFundMe

Questions

  1. Have you ever participated in a crowdsourced project (musical or not, as an artist or funder)? What was your experience? In what ways did the crowdsourced process empower the artist? The audience?
  2. How is intellectual property impacted by crowdsourced projects? What sort of ownership does/should the funder (audience) have over the project?
  3. How does crowdsourcing raise critical questions regarding the nature of music and musical experience?
  4. Look over the various crowdfunding sites listed above (add to the list!). How do these various platforms enable artist-audience collaboration?

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