University of Chicago Press. ALL rights reserved, May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted Copyright © 2011. under U.S. or applicable copyright lam. CONCLUSION To some considerable extent we have been reliving the experiences of American music fans of earlier generations. Beginning in 1929, a cultural product, sheet music, in the course of its distribution in an authorized man- ner by the publishers who “owned” it, came to be challenged by a new com- modity, the song sheet, which was distributed in an unauthorized manner by bootleggers. This unauthorized distribution caused great anguish to the song owners, who did battle against the unauthorized mode of distribution even while an authorized version of the new commodity had gotten underway, as le- gitimate song-lyric magazines. Seven decades later, another cultural product, the compact disc, in the course of its distribution in an authorized manner by the record companies who “owned” it, came to be challenged by a new com- modity, the MP3 file, which was distributed in an unauthorized manner over uncontrolled digital networks. This unauthorized distribution caused great anguish to the song owners, who engaged the unauthorized mode of distri- bution in harsh confrontations, even while authorized versions of the new commodity got underway, as Apple’s ‘Tunes and its various rivals. I would not go so far as to claim that song sheets and song sharing exem- plify “history repeating itself.” The historical contexts, then and now, are too drastically different from one another to exemplify repetition, and there is a substantial structural distinction between the respective distribution chains. In the song-sheet era, an identifiable set of “songlegging” middlemen—print- ers, distributors, peddlers, and store owners—took on the greatest legal risks. Today, with song sharing, Napster, Grokster, and other companies have been punished by litigation, but also—and this is new—individual listeners, the collectors of songs, have been hit hard via litigation, owing to the rise of peer- to-peer distribution systems that make middlemen hard to identify, if not cut- ting them out of the process altogether. Nonetheless, the journey from song sheets to song sharing may well pro- voke a strong sense of the familiar, whereby patterns of human behavior, in- dividual and corporate, have repeated themselves time and again. Someone comes along with a transformational song product. Legitimate companies try ar EBSCO Publishing : eBook Academic Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 9/19/2017 11:58 PM via UNTVERSTOAD DEL BOSQUE ‘Al: 378641 ; Kernfeld, Barry Dean.; Pop Song Piracy : Disobedient Music Distribution Since 1929 Account: 977129University of Chicago Press. ALL rights reserved, May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted Copyright © 2011. under U.S. or applicable copyright lam. to suppress that product, for fear of the damage that it will do to profits from an existing song product. A “shadow” distribution chain comes into being, working around legitimate channels, to satisfy demand for whatever transfor- mation happens to be at hand. Bootleg song sheets and their legitimate successors functioned as a re- sponse to then-recent technological developments in the distribution system that was delivering Tin Pan Alley songs to audiences. This distribution system had been operating smoothly as a near-perfect monopoly during the 1920s. With the growing preeminence of records, radio, and musical film, one after the next, through the course of the 1920s, a sweeping change took place in the way that Americans related to popular songs. Increasingly people heard music, or made music, not by gathering around the piano and singing, but by listening passively to professional performances of songs in concerts, on stage, and in movie houses, or by actively singing along with music delivered directly into the home via mechanical, electric, and electronic means. As musical no- tation became less essential to the general listener, compilations of popular song lyrics without music were poised to become much more attractive than they would have been when the piano was preeminent. And if the general public did not need to convert notes into sound, if instead the music could be heard in film, musical theater, and vaudeville, or at home on records and via radio broadcasts, then a huge financial incentive emerged. Instead of paying the then-current price of thirty or thirty-five cents for a single piece of piano and vocal sheet music, listeners could get a bootleg sheet of lyrics to dozens, scores, or even hundreds of songs for only a nickel or a dime. Music publish- ers trembled, and this first contest, over song lyrics, was underway, extending from 1929 into the early 1940s: prohibition, failed containment, and then an ultimate assimilation into business as usual. From the late 1940s into the 1970s, pop song fake books followed exactly the same path in principle, albeit under different circumstances and with a ifferent purpose. Nightclub entertainers wanted handy volumes of popular songs to assist in fulfilling requests from patrons at the bar or from dancers. For fear of lost profit, legitimate music publishers refused to satisfy that need, a repackaging of individual sheet music into concise compilations of songs. So “gangsters” filled the gap. Once again it was prohibition, failed containment, and then an ultimate assimilation into business as usual. Unauthorized music photocopying presented a thornier type of contest than did song sheets or fake books. This action was connected to, and indeed was subsidiary to, distribution fights extending far beyond the scope of music, 218 : CONCLUSION EBSCO Publishing : eBook Academic Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 9/19/2017 11:58 PM via UNTVERSTOAD DEL BOSQUE ‘Al: 378641 ; Kernfeld, Barry Dean.; Pop Song Piracy : Disobedient Music Distribution Since 1929 Account: 977129University of Chicago Press. ALL rights reserved, May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted Copyright © 2011. under U.S. or applicable copyright lam. and eventually it coalesced instead around the photocopying of educational course packets at colleges and universities. Within the sphere of music, the battle involved a tricky mixture of equivalency and transformational use, in- sofar as the act of photocopying copyrighted music might be done merely to save money, or alternatively to facilitate an array of possibilities in modify- ing printed music to suit diverse circumstances of musical performance. And the nature of the central participants in the music photocopying distribution chain—educators and clergymen—made it much more difficult for song own- ers to pursue the harsh paths that have been manifest elsewhere. This contest drags on. Offshore broadcasting in northeastern Europe brought into play transna- tional relationships within the distribution chain, insofar as national control of the airwaves stood in conflict with international agreements on freedom of the seas. For decades, Europe was dominated by benevolent, noncommercial, national broadcasting monopolies that focused on the presentation of classical music, news, drama, and religious programming, Then, in the 1960s, rock mu- sic came along. When the existing national monopolists failed to understand 's greatne: and refused to broadcast it, defiant, commercially supported broadcasters stood their ships offshore, beyond territorial limits, and began to deliver popular music to eager land-based audiences. In response, Scandinavian countries took a carrot-and-stick approach, com- mencing popular music programming on the national networks while cracking down on the offshore “pirates” via harsh new legislation. The Dutch averted their legal eyes, tolerating offshore stations for many years. The United King- dom also tolerated its stations at first, but after a few years it tried the Scan- dinavian approach, combining suppression with assimilation. Unfortunately the BBC’s version of popular-music broadcasting was so inept that the pirates continued onward. Finally, and only gradually over the course of the 1980s and 1990s, broadcasting monopolies lost some of their hold, and commercial, land- based, popular-music radio stations came into being throughout northwestern Europe. Yet again, in the big picture, it was prohibition, failed containment, and then an ultimate assimilation, albeit with a revised form of commercially based business, rather than the previous nationalized business as usual. By contrast, the illegal copying of phonograph records, tapes, and compact discs has largely exemplified equivalency and scams, rather than transforma- tional qualities and well-intended purposes. Many of its practitioners have clearly been in it just to make a buck, skimming profits from authorized manu- facturers. And yet even here, as this story has moved through the decades from CONCLUSION : 219 EBSCO Publishing : eBook Academic Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 9/19/2017 11:58 PM via UNTVERSTOAD DEL BOSQUE ‘Al: 378641 ; Kernfeld, Barry Dean.; Pop Song Piracy : Disobedient Music Distribution Since 1929 Account: 977129University of Chicago Press. ALL rights reserved, May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted Copyright © 2011. under U.S. or applicable copyright lam. the 1940s to the present day, mitigating factors have emerged time and again, softening the venality. These factors have included a desire to issue record- ings that had been long out of print; efforts of plant managers to keep record factories running when legitimate production was slow; an awareness among unauthorized manufacturers of an emerging market for party tapes and dance mixes that cut across the legitimate industry’s normal lines and therefore pre- cluded di: allowing individuals to copy songs with ever-greater ease and the consequent ribution through legitimate channels; the invention of hardware blurring of distinctions among rightful individual use, questionable individual use, and illegitimate mass distribution; and the emergence of a widespread, musically inspired interest in releasing “homemade” concert recordings, which from 1969 onward led to a new genre of recordings—album bootleg- ging—and consequent attempts at a strict semantic distinction between the act of pirating recordings and the act of creating bootleg albums, where previ- ously these terms had been used interchangeably, without much care, From the 1970s onward, globalization has further complicated the picture, owing to contradictions among and between national and international agreements on copyright protection, and also owing to the emergence of cheap, unauthorized distribution chains suited to the realities of third-world economies. Over the course of a half century, the illegal copying of recorded songs has done an uncertain amount of damage to recording corporations. In response to instances of piracy, laws have been enacted to protect recordings, and the penalties for violations have been raised substantially. Today, things seem to be at an impasse. A great deal of force may have been misapplied to small- time dealers who were bootlegging unauthorized new releases of rock music and songs in related genres, and recourses to legal action may not have had a meaningful effect on the distribution of mass-produced illegal copies of le- gitimate recordings, whatever their extent may be. But no one really knows. Meanwhile, formats have come and gone. If phonograph record and tape pi- racy eventually abated, the primary cause most likely was a falling out of fash- ion, as compact discs took over the market. If compact-disc piracy is currently abating, the primary cause most likely will be a falling out of fashion, as MP3 files continually gain favor. All the while, appeals against piracy have provided corporations with a powerful public relations tool for strengthening their con- trol of songs (at least on paper, if not in actuality) via legislation. Song sharing is the exclamation mark in the story, an utterly transforma- tional song product that has operated through distribution networks that in some instances have been entirely independent of authorized channels. Song 220 : CONCLUSION EBSCO Publishing : eBook Academic Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 9/19/2017 11:58 PM via UNTVERSTOAD DEL BOSQUE ‘Al: 378641 ; Kernfeld, Barry Dean.; Pop Song Piracy : Disobedient Music Distribution Since 1929 Account: 977129University of Chicago Press. ALL rights reserved, May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted Copyright © 2011. under U.S. or applicable copyright lam. sharing redefines the meaning of the globalization of music distribution. Song sharing divorces recordings from physical objects. Song sharing subverts the concept of albums, splintering them into individual tracks. Song sharing hands cover the control of the organization and presentation of those tracks from song. owners to individual listeners, who may personalize and recontextualize their listening, however they see fit. Song sharing opens an unprecedented wide universe of possibilities for musical understanding and enjoyment to anyone who participates in Internet searching and downloading, legal or not. ‘The recording industry has received these possibilities as threats, rather than as a collective transformational wonder. Déja vu, song sharing has be- come the new song sheet: the suppression of Napster, the failed containment of its successors, and a succession of meaningful but incomplete attempts at assimilation, through iTunes and other legitimized downloading services. This category of contested distribution has now spilled out widely into other media, especially videos, software, and, increasingly in the past couple of years, electronic books. More generally, analogous contested structures can be found outside of these realms and in many different eras, any time a new and unauthorized transformational idea or product has appeared." The stories in this book still resonate. Several of them remain active today. LP piracy is done. Tape piracy is done, at least outside of the third world. Compact-disc piracy is perhaps less of an issue than it was a decade ago, but when Chinese authorities cracked down on pirated CDs in advance of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, in a gesture of conciliation toward Western mores, they needed bulldozers to get the job done.’ So those illicit CDs haven't ex- actly gone away yet. Bootleg jazz fake books and pirate music radio continue to proliferate, but in nonthreatening small markets. Music photocopying, al- bum bootlegging, and unauthorized song downloading are ongoing concerns. And the distant echo of John Santangelo’s achievement of licensing agree- ments in the early 1940s was heard again in the spring of 2010, when Milun Tesovic negotiated an agreement with music publishers for the lyrics posted on his website, MetroLyrics.com, as the industry began to take steps toward assimilating a new era of the uncontrolled dissemination of song lyrics. Cor- porate concerns notwithstanding, people will keep trying to sell songs they don’t own or to acquire songs as cheaply as possible. More importantly, the music industry’s persistent lagging behind in adopting innovative products will generate the very piracy it seeks to eliminate. The wholesale disobedient distribution of songs is going to continue so long as owners keep shouting ;quivalency!” while everyone else perceives transformational use. “Equivalency!” whil 1 transformational CONCLUSION : 221 EBSCO Publishing : eBook Academic Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 9/19/2017 11:58 PM via UNTVERSTOAD DEL BOSQUE ‘Al: 378641 ; Kernfeld, Barry Dean.; Pop Song Piracy : Disobedient Music Distribution Since 1929 Account: 977129University of Chicago Press, ALL rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright lam. Copyright © 2011. EBSCO Publishing : eBook Academic Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 9/19/2017 11:58 PM via UNTVERSTDAD DEL BOSQUE AN: 378641 ; Kernfeld, Barry Dean.; Account: 977129 Pop Song Piracy : Disobedient Music Distribution Since 1929