In a recent news publication, 6 out of 10 creative industries stories were about music rights and acquisitions. The commodity value of music goes without too much saying. We have long recognized that music (songs, tunes) has commercial value; even if over time, what is now quite a long time, the question of who owns this creative commodity has been vexed. Further still, when and how music ‘use’ is defined and constituted remains a subject of debate and considerable litigation, by individuals as well as by corporations.
Recent creative industries news has included multi-million-dollar catalogue acquisitions of works by such popular recording artists of the later 20th Century and early 21st Century as Sting and Neil Finn and the administration of song royalties for hundreds of thousands of contemporary songwriters, along with their millions of songs. Music ‘travels’. It gets places. So, as a commodity it is an attractive proposition to leverage for commercial enterprises and for investors. Spatially it is attractive, filling air space not physical space, adjustable in volume to circumstance and need, transportable, channel-able, controllable, evocative, nostalgic, emotional, connective. Music doesn’t just sell it enhances, accompanies and pervades much of our lives, and if we take the commercial value of the creativity imbued in it… is it any wonder 6 out of 10 of those recent creative industries stories were focused on leveraging the commercial, creative, emotional power of music?
An interesting exercise is to break down creative industries products into their sensory elements and their intellectual elements, and then to map out their markets and (perhaps) market potentials based on this breakdown. Visual culture is pervasive, of course; aural culture, arguably even more so. Interesting to compare both visual and aural elements in a range of creative industries products and experiences that focus, predominantly, on tactility. The sensory maps of creative industries sub-sectors would be fascinating! Certainly, some work has been done on design and marketing sensory profiles. Some too on the nature of play – that of children and that of adults – and some also related to the nature of communication and the media arts. But a multi-dimensional and multi-layered sensory map of the 21st Century creative industries would be fascinating.
There is a reason why there are currently so many creative industries stories about music rights and acquisitions. Part of the reason is market potential, of course - simple financial opportunity, commercial desire. Part of it might also be a realization in the contemporary world that anything so pervasive - unbound by (or at least, unbound to) location, accessible through many avenues of connection and communication – that such a thing has heightened and pervasive value. However, some of it might also be that the nature of music is such, in our present as well as in our past, that liberates, that is about being in the moment, that appeals to our interior conditions of self as well as to our exterior conditions of any time and place. In other words, what appears on first thought to be a contemporary creative industries phenomenon might in fact be based on a continuing, ancient human need.
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