On 'Death of the Author' and Its Place in Art

I am so glad that I waited to purchase Ben Folds’ Way To Normal until the Stems and Seeds version was released.

Not only does Stems and Seeds provide the Stems for each song on the album, but it also features remastered versions of each song and B-sides that didn’t make the initial cut. In particular, I’ve really enjoyed listening to the B-sides because they remind me of the Ben Folds Five era.

Man, I loved Philosophy and Kate.

Hang on... let me explain Stems really quick for those of you who aren’t familiar with them. Stems are a new thing in the music world where an artist provides listeners with the source files of their songs- vocals, guitars, drums, etc.- split apart so that we can play with each track and create something different with it if we so choose.

In the past, I’ve blogged about Radiohead’s introduction of stems, comparing it with the ‘death of the author’ meme that’s been floating around the postmodern philosophy community. But now that Ben Folds is jumping on board, I'm suddenly filled with a new sense of excitement about the future of the music industry. This could very well be a pivotal point in music history- perhaps more important than the introduction of Rock & Roll and the advent of iTunes.

Stems are so incredibly important because they invite us to move beyond simply listening to music and push us toward interacting with it, too. When we play around with Stems, we get to create something new with songs that we couldn’t have created in the first place. In a sense, we get to “borrow” the musicianship of Ben Folds (or Radiohead or the other artists who are providing Stems) and combine it with our own ideas regarding what a song should sound like.

Besides redefining the role of listeners, there's also the ability to make a lot more money. I'm sure Radiohead and Folds are attracting listeners who might not be interested in their work aside from the fact that they can take it and make it into something they DO enjoy. There's a lot of creative people out there who are willing to drop some money into the coffers of artists who provide this sort of thing.

Third Eye Blind is capitalizing on this idea and using it as a promotional tool. On the social music side indabamusic.com, they've released Stems from a few songs off their new studio album (for free) and invited fans and friends to remix them. The best ones have been reviewed by the band and are possibly going to be featured on an extended release of the album.

In doing this, 3eb created momentum about their new album. Inbada users were able to hear tracks before they were “released” and get excited about it They were also given the chance to truly influence the direction that Stephan Jenkins and his band took the music.

Just as social networking is making music better, I’m really hoping that we can figure out a way to do integrate it into other mediums as well.

For instance, I’ve really enjoyed watching recut trailers of movies. Is there a way for filmmakers to give viewers the chance to interact with their films and make our own “audience cuts?” I would think that big fans of certain films would be willing the pay extra for a DVD with source materials that they could re-edit in Final Cut, iMovie, or Windows Movie Maker (I’d LOVE to re-edit Donnie Darko or BladeRunner).

On a more personal level, I’m wondering if there is a way for me as a blogger/author to provide readers with more interactive texts? I think that the “comments” space is a good start, but I’d love to see it go even further without resorting to “choose your own adventure” type stuff.

I think it takes a bit of humility on the part of the artist to surrender his work to the public. But I don’t think it’s “giving up” the rights to releasing your music, films, prose, etc the way you want to. It’s a really amazing thing to present a piece of art and then see how other people interact with it and respond to it.

Screw copyrights, let’s make something together.