On Authorship

Digital automation has revolutionized music production. As the market and procedural structures have shifted, so too has the relationship between artist and art.

Increasingly, and to the benefit of music as a whole, the accessibility of computers and digital audio interfaces has significantly democratized the production and consumption of music. We see more and more the institutional constraints of old-guard music production dismantled in lieu of independent outlets on websites like Soundcloud or Bandcamp. No longer is an artist held in creative limbo until a major record label executive chances upon their work, an extremely unlikely event in and of itself. In the post-internet world, an artist can garner a significant following by recording locally and simply posting their work on a well-trafficked platform. And though the institutionalized model of production does provide benefits to a small, highly concentrated group of artists, their status is often more dependent on their willingness to conform to the restraints imposed by those institutions than on the merits of their art. The new model, the model in which art is distributed directly to easily accessible platforms, allows an artist to bypass these restraints, and see the efficacy of their work determined in real time through listener/viewer support. The model also gives some assurance that an artist’s work will not fail due to niche appeal, as there are a growing number of niche audiences engaged in vibrant online communities that share an intense affection for their particular interest. Furthermore, the increased access to unconventional work offered by the internet ensures greater propagation of those works, necessarily involving more people in specific subcultural communities.

However, despite the great advantages that come with democratized distribution, there remain notable detriments in its construction. Those detriments definitely do not, however, include a mournful nostalgia for the supposed “specialness” (a synonym for “produced by a select few”) of music under the institutional system, an argument which often has more to do with aesthetic preferences than uniqueness. In fact, contrary to this viewpoint, the accessibility of distribution has resulted in remarkable innovations, specifically within the field of electronic music. Many musicians that I have covered exemplify this.

Unfortunately, the detriments still largely pertain to electronic music. The technical sophistication of production software presents a troubling dilemma: how responsible is the artist for their work if its production is deeply dependent on complex algorithms for which the artist is not responsible? If one should choose, one can construct a multi-instrumental work entirely out of preset material, never once engaging with a single facet of music theory. This ease of production threatens to dismantle the intrinsic relationship between the artist and the art. Contrarily, one could argue that music has always had a fractured relationship to its creator, as it is necessarily mediated through exterior instruments (excluding purely vocal performances). How could one argue that the pianist must necessarily deny authorship of their work by virtue of its debt to the piano? This argument, however, fails to consider the value of composition in the musical tradition. The pianist has authored the piece by virtue of their composing it, just as the classical composer is responsible for their composition. In the case of algorithmically precomposed music though, authorship is much more difficult to delegate. Perhaps the programmer is the author in this instance, or perhaps there is none at all.

This all begs the question, what are the responsibilities of electronic musicians in the age of automated composition? To begin answering this question, it must first be acknowledged that composition remains the central indicator of authorship for any given piece, and that performative considerations need not be taken into account in its delegation. Secondarily, it must be noted that any composition is inexorably linked to the cultural codes and symbols in which it exists. This presents a dilemma. Music is never created in a vacuum, therefore influence is inescapable. Furthermore, the consumption and transmutation of external symbols which informs all composition is itself a form of coding, a process of distilling references to conform to an aesthetic framework. The distinction between this form of coding and the type employed by an external force lies in their ownership. No matter the degree to which an artist’s compositional form is beholden to external components, the artist has coded all of the stimuli internally, necessarily indicating their ownership of the code. One degree removed from direct authorship perhaps, the artist owns the code that authors their work, a crucial point when answering the question of responsibility. If we consider this to be true, it must then also be true that the submission of external coding as the totalizing basis for a composition exonerates the artist from any authorship. There are, of course, degrees to which the implementation of borrowed material degrades an artist’s authorship in any given piece, so repurposing external material does not denote thievery in itself necessarily. It is the process of manipulation, be it in content or context, of external material that counteracts this degradation, and can therefore consolidate true authorship in the framework of sampled musical components. Though the specific point at which an artist creates a composition remains unclear, both the maximization of personal interaction, and the conscious effort to innovate in a composition are imperative in building a closer relationship between the artist and the art. On the side of the consumer, it may be useful to devalue the vapid pieces that briefly make us sympathize with those reactionaries who bemoan the loss of music’s “specialness.”