Music after COVID-19: Capital, Performance, and Sharing

Music, as performance, as living labour, precedes and exceeds its capture as recording and therefore, of its potential ownership as capital (dead labour) to be owned (by means of intellectual property) as a form of object (generating profit from the reproduction of copies—as regulated by copyright). Most musical performance is not commercial and most income generated from music comes from live performance, not the sale of recordings (physical or purely digital). The self-presentation of the ‘recording industry’ as ‘the music industry’ let alone ‘music as such’ obscures this. Free sharing exposed these illusions, as the free circulation of recordings in fact increases the earnings of those engaged in live performance. Reduced spending on recorded copies (capital) increases spending on live performance (living labour). Returns to live performance artists are better than for recordings (where almost all revenue from recordings return to rights holders—usually record companies not artists), and freely circulating copies generate publicity even as they reduce opportunity costs to live performance. The rise of sharing networks saw the rise in live music ticket sales and ticket prices—benefiting performers. However, COVID-19 offered record companies a new ‘justification’ for music as capital, with the falling-off of live performance in 2020–2022. How performers coped during lockdowns, and the revival of live music after Covid help illustrate that any return to ‘business as usual’ (prioritizing recordings as capital over performance as living labour) is mistaken, whatever the latest excuses might be.