Music As A Commodity

 

If commodity is defined by its usual definition, something that is bought and sold, to de-commodify music would mean to devalue the recording fixed in a medium. If each pressing of a vinyl record, owned by different individuals had a separate valuation, that record could be traded. It’s “non-fungible” in that example. If only one entity owned the entire pressing of, say, a thousand records that could be traded as well, like a silo of wheat. But as a whole it couldn’t be completely de-commodified. At least some of the records could be sold.

If commodity is defined as “a useful or valuable thing”, such as time, then its value is extrinsic and based on our relationship with it.

The performance of music, either live or in a recording, is something that fundamentally costs nothing. A free concert in a park is a commodity in the second definition. It is de-commodified in the sense that it doesn’t involve an exchange of money between the audience and artist. To de-commodify would be to prevent the exchange of money, which isn’t completely impossible.

Performances of classical music in the 19th century were not concerts as we know them. They were private events, and perhaps the musicians were paid stipends, but it wasn’t an “industry” until concerts started to be promoted ticketed events. (I believe Haydn was one of the first composers whose works were promoted as concerts with paid admission).

An example of de-commodification is a free concert in a park, like we have in Chicago with the Grant Park Symphony, and all large cities have them. It doesn’t involve a direct exchange between the artist and the public. But once an industry exists you can’t remove money exchange from the equation. It wouldn’t be that they’d hand out free records at the concert. But ironically that’s what has happened with the advent of the internet, so it was devalued by the medium itself, which didn’t rely on a fixed object. like vinyl, tape or CD.