Article #2 - First Draft

(Title pending)

Thomas Patrick Hooper

ATHENS, Ga. – Bands like the Beatles may have revolutionized music, but with the digital age in full swing, the artists may not be the only driving force in the music industry anymore.

With music piped into elevators and laid over commercials, people experience music now more than ever before.

“The way that the world is experiencing music is new,” said Eric Stetson, a 23-year-old music composition major at Georgia Southern. “We take music for granted. It’s ubiquitous. It’s all around us.”

TV programs like the wildly successful American Idol have put up-and-coming musicians in the public eye while video games such as Rock Band and Guitar Hero make the everyman into the musician.

“It’s not really anything new, but I think they’ve done the best job of it,” said Bruce Burch, director of the Music Business program at the University of Georgia, of the American Idol phenomenon.

However, American Idol may be symptomatic of a greater trend in the musical world, as the industry has begun moving to court the performer and not the other way around.

The progressive rock group the Decemberists have emerged as a clear cut example, coming out of the city of Portland, Ore., far from the musical capitals of Los Angeles and Atlanta.

“Music has been decentralized,” said Burch of the Decemberists. “You don’t have to be in a major music center anymore.”

That hasn’t kept the innovations of the digital age from having received its fair share of flack from performers of many genres.

Singer-songwriter Ben Folds lampooned the changes of the editing process in the lyrics of “Rockin’ the Suburbs,” which carries the line “the song producer with computers fixes all my shitty tracks.”

Folds isn’t the only one who has taken notice.

Indie rock group Death Cab for Cutie made a statement at the 51st Grammy Awards, when the band members wore blue ribbons to protest the widespread use of Auto-Tune, a software program that corrects the tune of a voice or instrument.

Rapper Shawn Corey Carter, better known by his stage name Jay-Z, took things a step further. In June of 2009, he released D.O.A (Death of Auto-Tune) in protest of the program’s widespread use in the industry.

“It’s been around a lot longer than people think,” said Stetson in reference to the program, which began to gain national attention after Cher’s obvious use of it in her1998 song, “Believe.”

Since then, Auto-Tune has founds its way into the hands of any number of artists, with rapper T-Pain being the most visible example.

Will Hodge, a Marietta-based producer/engineer/songwriter who has been in the business for 20 years, doesn’t see any harm in using Auto-Tune.

“Background vocals need to be more in tune because they’re more a part of the instrumentation,” said Hodge, who also uses the program quite extensively in bass recordings. “The only way to get a real bass track is to play it on a keyboard.”

While the Auto-Tune controversy has become a trend, it comes on the heels of the sampling debate.

Artists initially relied on the instruments in their hands and the voices in their throats, but computers have made it possible for artists to cut and paste certain vocals, instruments and melodies into another, entirely unrelated song. The process has drawn criticism for its perceived lack of originality.

“They’re just taking existing pieces of existing media and making something,” said Hodge, who likened the sampling process to a collage. “As long as [the writer] is getting paid, it’s not a big deal.”

Unfortunately, not every sample is properly attributed, which has sparked a handful of highly publicized lawsuits. One of the most notable cases arose in the late 80s, when rapper Vanilla Ice sampled the bassline of “Under Pressure,” a Queen-Davie Bowie collaboration.

“It’s an inevitable thing,” Hodge said of the changes sweeping the industry. “It’s insane what I can do with an iPhone… I’m a purist. I think the people that will advance in the industry are the people associated with the pure songwriter. It all starts with the song.”

With the history of music stretching back so far and the recording industry being as young as it is, it’s anyone guess as to where the industry will go in the future.

“People shouldn’t be afraid of change,” said Stetson.