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Libby Larsen Interview (2/99)
3. Radio and the Music Business
RK: How has the music business changed? You, I know, started in the early 70s?
LL: Yes. It's changed tremendously, I think. In public concerts (concerts produced outside the university system), I have witnessed the growth of the concert industry from 1960 to the present. It's an interesting matrix of concert production, the recording industry, public radio, and music conservatory educational approaches. I think it's a natural evolution and an interesting challenge for composers. In 1960, the concert industry was not a year-round business that it is now. Certain ways of doing business, certain ways of thinking about concerts, and certain ways of thinking about marketing concerts have developed in the last 30 years and have, I think, become overly concerned with commercial marketing in an effort to apply commercial marketing techniques to a non-commercial endeavor.
The result of this kind of thinking and its aftermath are things like the Denver Project. Have you heard about it? The Denver Project was a marketing research effort directed by WCFR-FM, a classical radio station in Denver, Colorado, which was trying to determine the listening habits and preferences of its perceived market. Using typical commercial market research methods, they determined that the general population prefers classical music to be light and buoyant and played in the background as an accompaniment to everyday life activities. Rather than broadcasting an entire piece of music, such as a symphony, the Report suggested that audiences prefer pieces to be broken up into smaller doses. It went further to recommend what kinds of music should be played at what hours of the day, and made recommendations about the nature of dissonance in music. They "discovered" that people don't want dissonance before 9 o'clock in the morning and that people don't like to listen to the singing voice broadcast over the radio.
All this is based on a fundamental shift in public radio's perception of how its listeners actually listen to music. Many radio stations throughout the country have adopted some of the findings of the Denver Project in various configurations. Have you noticed your radio station changing in the last ten years? They're no longer broadcasting full symphonies... There is a new perception of audience preference which developed without in-depth psychological research and resulted in a new programming strategy called "modal music."
RK: Three-minute pieces...?
LL: And single movements...
It's a direct outgrowth of this commercial marketing research venture. All based on the belief that public radio wants a mass audience. Why? To sell ads? They're not selling things. They're getting grants and what have you. In recent years, the classical music industry became convinced that counting the number of people receiving their product (...they call it product now...) is a way of measuring success. And when this happens, it entirely changes the role of the composer in the concert community.
This kind of thinking has permeated the non-profit concert world. We now use marketing techniques to support salaries based on for-profit values at non-profit organizations.
RK: I was wondering, by any chance, if you're familiar with Frank Oteri's speech at the public radio conference last year where he got up and talked about the need and success of programming new music. He even had a list -- The Century List of pieces that could be played -- new music that could be played on the radio of varying lengths.
Frank is the Editor and Publisher of our new magazine.
LL: Oh fabulous!
RK: You've really been taking a look, focusing on a particular element (of how the music's changed) and it's the pressures of mass audiences, commercialization...
LL: Right, and the confusion of marketplace with community, which is a very serious, and I think very contemporary, issue. As more and more organizations seek to find community and define community, there is a temptation to confuse community with marketplace. I'm quite concerned at the moment about the National Endowment for the Arts. Not for the usual reasons, but I'm concerned that in fact the issue of confusing marketplace with community is going to be central very soon.
If success is measured in quantitative terms, it may happen that the Endowment and attendant foundations and some of the organizations begin to talk about artistic and commercial partnerships as a way of reaching community. This can be interesting, but it's also very dangerous. If, let's say, the New York Philharmonic puts in a grant to the NEA to become the orchestra for six Paramount films, that's a commercial venture which can be viewed as an artistic venture for the Philharmonic. The New York Philharmonic would not consider this venture central to its mission, but it could confuse the monetary and quantitative success with its own artistic goals. Do you see what I'm saying?
RK: Absolutely, and the implications of it. If organizations continue to have more non-musician types in influential positions who are heading towards nothing but bottom-line financial issues, it begins to change the direction, the goal, the sort of prime reason that the orchestra has existed for 150 some-odd years.
LL: Yes, that's true, and I think that the prime directive for many arts organizations is very subtly in jeopardy right now because of exactly what you said. If the central definition of success for the people running the organizations is quantifiable and statistical more than it is conceptual and qualitative...if that balance is tipped too far towards short-term profit strategies, then artists will probably cease to work in those organizations, and a whole new era will dawn. It will be the next thing, whatever it is.
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