Kim Patrick Clow wrote:
[snip]> I think it's very exciting to be able to do all this, and while
I'm not sure
where the dust will settle on all this (distribution seems to be
a big issue still for independent publishers), I'm very curious for other
thoughts on this entire process. I know many here have been in
music and publishing since before the advent of the Internet and PC. These
developments have to be fascinating to participate in.
[snip]
I think it's fascinating, as well.
There are good points and bad points in all this democratization. With
the old-line publishers, not all of whom are necessarily using "big
seller" status as a determinant of what they will publish (Southern,
Kjos, Presser, MMB, CLBarnhouse, come to mind as publishers who publish
because of the musical quality and less because they'll make large
profits on any one composer or composition) there was always the culling
of garbage that went on. They wouldn't publish just anything -- it had
to have what that particular publisher felt had musical merit. With the
internet, anybody can publish anything, so that people who in the past
could simply buy anything from a particular publisher knowing it had a
minimum level of quality, need to know what to look for in advance. The
individual needs to have much more expertise and ability to filter the
crap from the gems. Unfortunately, today's educational system is
preparing people less and less to be able to make such decisions for
themselves, with all the teaching towards success on standardized tests
(no child left behind evaluation tests as well as personal-success tests
such as the S.A.T. or the A.C.T. in the U.S. -- I can't speak at all
about educational processes in other countries) the ability of the
individual to assess quality in products is sorely lacking.
Just as the advent of MIDI and personal computers and notation software
allows anybody who can find the on switches and can press a key on a
musical keyboard to call themselves "composer" with no educational
minimum which used to be required in order to know how to write the
music on paper to put in front of others, so, too, the potential of
internet sales has allowed anybody to call themselves "publisher."
Another downside to this democratization is that everybody gets to shout
at the world "Hey, my opinion is worthwhile, read all about it right
here at www.icanspewgarbage.com and read how wonderfully brilliant I
am!" Heck, most of the people who have made it over the hurdle to
actually make it into print don't have opinions worth reading and often
get over-inflated ideas about how important to the rotation of the earth
their opinions are -- now that anybody and everybody can do it, there
are more inflated egos and more silly rantings than before. Maybe there
are more gems as well, but the signal-to-noise ratio hasn't gotten any
better.
Sturgeon's law (90% of anything is crap) most definitely holds true of
the stuff on the internet. The problem is that with such an exponential
explosion of how much stuff is available, it makes it much harder to
find the 10% which is worthwhile. The democratization offered by the
Internet hasn't necessarily produced much more worthwhile content --
it's just made it harder to wade through all that is available in order
to find the worthwhile stuff, whether it be self-published music,
self-important opinions offered on countless blogs, videos on youtube
which shouldn't have made it out of the video cameras they were recorded
on, whatever.
On the other hand, support groups such as this Finale group were never
possible, not with the breadth of membership and scope of knowledge and
experience, before the advent of the internet, and that alone makes all
the overabundance of crap worthwhile. :-)
--
David H. Bailey
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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