Advocacy in the Digital Sphere: Taking Control of the Digital Score -

The direction things are heading... a place we don’t want to end up in

Lisa Hooper ()

Friday, 3.30 pm

Platte River Room

MLA Denver 2015

In 2013 I stood here talking about the growing use of digital, or e-scores, among professional musicians, providing a litany of advantages digital scores offered. This wishlist, which was and still is being met by many commercial e-score companies, was neatly summarized in the 2010/2011 issue of the American Music Teacher by George Litterst:

  • “the ability to replace an entire room full of print materials with a single, handheld device;
  • “copy-and-paste (…);
  • “readability in low-light conditions;
  • “hands-free reading;
  • “audio-interpretation of the text…”[1]

Although Litterst’s initial excitement may have dampened a bit in light of his subsequent discovery of DRM (and we’re coming back to that!), the popular adoption of digital scores among professional musicians is nothing to take lightly, particularly as one commercial e-score vendor aloneis able to boast 4.5 million customers.[2]Early on, this company, and others like it, were finding public domain scores and encoding them so they can be viewed, downloaded, read, and marked up in the digital environment. More recently, however, MusicNotes has begun partnering to provide digital scores to their customers from publishers that many of us will be familiar with, including Alfred Music Publishing, Peermusic Publishing, Faber Music LTD, Universal Music Publishing, and many more.[3]

We have already found ourselves cut out entirely from the digital recording industry and this has a major impact on our ability to collect, preserve, and provide access to an already enormous and ever growing collection of cultural output. This is true not only of some major performers but also of an unknown number of local bands who only release digital downloads. History has lost an extraordinarily large amount of our cultural heritage before it has even had a chance to become history. If things persist as they are, and there’s no sign of younger generations giving up their digital devices, then we’re going to find ourselves in a similar situation with digital scores in short handful of years. Here are 3 trends showing thiswillindeedpersist, that digital scores slowly but surely are taking over the market.

Trend No. 1 - The economic indicators are there. So much there, in fact,that an industry performance review in IBISWorld opened with this statement:

Online sheet music substitutes are cannibalizing the industry’s revenue. However, the industry has begun to sell legitimate sheet music directly online, which is an increasingly popular service and growing revenue stream.[4]

The report, which identified online sheet music sources and vendors as serious threats to brick and mortar shops, made this prediction:

IBISWorld estimates that industry revenue will decline at a 5.1% annualized rate to $344.9 million in the five years to 2013 [that’s down from $505.2 million in 2004]. However, a post-recession recovery in spending and the emergence of digital industry products are expected to lift revenue a slight 0.6% in 2013.[5]

Among the many threats from the digital environment, the report also pointed to “a growing prevalence of file sharing and free music sites has enabled consumers to substitute away from legitimate sheet music, siphoning revenue away from the industry.”[6] Finally – it is statements like this that strike fear in my heart:

Nonetheless, sheet music publishers are bolstering digital sheet music sales by encouraging online retailers to promote ‘instant access’ of downloadable products. So far, licensing agencies are on track to take the reins on digital sales. For example, Harry Fox Agency has a deal with Musicnotes.com to license digital sheet music. The company also has an iPad application for sheet music. By making major investments in such infrastructure, sheet music publishers are promoting their digital products to provide consumers with convenient access in a way that better competes with other digital alternatives.[7]

Let me read one line again: “So far, licensing agencies are on track to take the reins on digital sales.”

Trend No. 2 - The social indicators are there. While I and many of my friends may struggle to interpret information on a digital screen, the people of generation y, aka millennials, have no problem with this. ICEF, a self-described “dedicated market intelligence resource for the international education industry,”[8] provides us with some rather sobering statistics:

  • “among children 2 to 5 years of age who have internet access at home, more know how to play a computer game and use a smartphone than know how to ride a bike or tie their shoelaces.
  • “as of 2012, millennials owned more than half of all tablet computers.
  • “… about 20% of millennials check their smartphones at least every 10 minutes. In the US, it’s 40%.
  • “Globally, one-third of millennials check their smartphones at least every 30 minutes. In the US, it’s more than 50%.”[9]

Of the generations that are to follow, the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC)recognized that “Children’s experiences with technology and interactive media are increasingly part of the context of their lives, which must be considered as part of the developmentally appropriate framework.”[10] Among the many guiding principles identified in this statement, are “When used appropriately, technology and media can enhance children’s cognitive and social abilities;” “technology tools can help educators make and strengthen home-school connections;” and “technology and media can enhance early childhood practice when integrated into the environment, curriculum, and daily routines.”[11] In short, as we look towards younger generations and our future students, musicians, and library patrons, technology is increasingly an integral part of daily life; they are as comfortable with the screen as we are with paper.

Trend No. 3 – the use of digital scores is becoming increasingly nuanced. For years we’ve been touting the speed of access and portability of digital scores. Musicians today are finding new ways to take advantage of the digital score. The Borromeo Quartet of the New England Conservatory is taking the lead in this and changing the way chamber ensembles, musicians, and even audiences interact with each other and with the score. They adopted an all-digital approach early on, and rather than reading from individual parts they read from the full score.[12] Their youngest and newest member, Kris Tong, was initially against this approach but in a Facebook conversation with me this past weekend now has this to say about it:

The most profound change for my quartet has been the advantage of reading from the score at all times. Besides the superficial gains made in not wasting time figuring out who is playing what, the real benefit stems from all members of the ensemble using their experience and expertise towards an educated, nuanced reading of every detail in context of the complete music. The diversity of opinions on examining the very same details means that your time is spent on the true stuff of which an interpretation is based, and through the process of this work your shared vision of what needs to be achieved can be navigated in common understanding, in real time.[13]

I had the good fortune to meet Kris at the 2014 Birdfoot Festival; I can tell you that for someone who started out as a sceptic, he’s gone to full blown dedicated digital score user. While we had printed music for the Festival artists, Kris still managed to keep his computer with his library of digital scores close at hand.

Digital scores are not going away, nor can we, as music librarians, educators, and vendors, afford to ignore them. Before the licensing agencies take complete control of digital scores and put in place use, access, and pricing models that are beyond what a typical academic library can work with, we must step up and start advocating, loudly and effectively, for the needs of academic libraries and our users. We have seen this happen already with e-books and streaming film, and the consequences are profound. Let’s learn from our experiences with these resources to identify the issues that we need to formulate recommendations and advocacy points on.

My work experience with streaming media and readings on e-books have revealed a number of issues that will undoubtedly come up with digital scores. I propose these as areas for deeper exploration as we formulate our advocacy plan.

1.Purchasing models restrict long-term access and preservation.

Streaming media has three core types of purchases:

  • Term licenses (or access for 1, 3, or 5 years) for individual titles or collections
  • Perpetual licenses for individual titles or collections
  • Subscription licenses for collections

While you may find some price savings, hidden costs include renewal fees, hosting fees, even updating fees. Both term and subscription models mean we do not own the content, which also means we can’t preserve the content for long-term research, study, and access. One might think that the perpetual access model solves this problem, but no, perpetual access means perpetual access for the life of file – digital conversion and copying even for the purposes of preservation is strictly prohibited.

2. Licenses limit access.

With both e-books and streaming media, license restrictions prevent us from allowing non-affiliates such as community members and even alumni from viewing content off-campus. This material is also not eligible for interlibrary loan, a basic resource sharing service that benefits users and libraries alike.

3. The user interface is only as good as the vendor makes it.

Many users come to academic e-books expecting a user experience not too dissimilar from that of the Kindle or other commercial e-readers. Unfortunately, their needs and expectations often fall flat, with clunky annotation tools, digital “lending” models that prevent multiple people from accessing a title, limitations on the amount of content that can be downloaded, restrictions on how content can be shared with students and classmates, and non-standard file formats that require different reader software and plug-ins.

4. Pricing models that are out of this world.

While the commercial e-book and streaming film industries have a habit of selling e-books and lending films at a fraction of the cost of their printed cousins, the opposite is true for academic e-books and streaming media. E-books, at least, appear to be priced out near the same cost of a printed book. That is not, true, however, of streaming media. One distributor will sell the DVD with PPR for $225 but a 3-year term license for $350 [MediaEd #Regeneration as example]. Another company will offer a DVD with PPR for $295 but the streaming version with perpetual access will cost you an extraordinary $885 [academic video store, Whole Gritty City as example]. To get the best price per title a library could purchase or subscribe to a collection, but at a several thousand dollar price tag, where $7,000 is at the low-end, the media budget is drained in no time.

5. Vendor provided MARC records are a mess.

For a variety of very good reasons, libraries are increasingly becoming dependent on vendor-supplied MARC records to provide access to digital content. We’ve seen this with the MARC records we get for streaming audio content. Problems identified in a lit review of e-book cataloging woes include:

  • “absent, incomplete, or improperly formatted LC (Library of Congress) subject headings
  • “use of discontinued LC subject headings
  • “absent, incomplete, or improperly formatted LC classification numbers
  • “absent or incomplete publication information
  • “missing or incorrect ISBNs
  • “absent or incomplete physical description fields
  • “provision of basic information solely in languages other than English
  • “overly general descriptive information for rare or unique works
  • “inclusion of MARC fields that are no longer in use
  • “inclusion of local notes specific to a library other than the one loading the records
  • “metadata that were poorly converted from another standard to AACR2
  • “use of name and series headings that are inconsistent with authority records
  • “inconsistent treatment of multivolume works
  • “cataloging of individual periodical issues as if they were monographs
  • “improper spelling, capitalization, and punctuation.”[14]

These issues of access, preservation, pricing, and licensing are just starting places. There is much more work to be done to identify the issues we may confront as the digital score market develops. These are issues that must be dealt with collaboratively, with leadership from the music library community and input from electronic resources librarians, from publishers, from vendors, and even from delivery platform managers. These are issues that the Resource Sharing and Collection Development Committee will be grappling with and seeking your input and activism on. We cannot afford to wait until the field is developed. Let’s not be reactive, let’s not fight against an industry that has already set itself up to defeat the ideals of long-term access and preservation libraries hold dear. Let’s be proactive, let’s not allow the industry to define us, instead, let’s take this opportunity to define the industry.

1

[1] George Litterst. “Random Access: A Ringside Seat.” American MusicTeacher (Dec./Jan. 2010/11): 50.

[2] accessed February 21, 2015.

[3] accessed February 21, 2015.

[4]AgataKaczanowska. IBISWorld Industry Report OD4845 Sheet Music Publishers in the US (April 2013): p. 4.

[5]Ibid., p. 6.

[6]Ibid., p. 6.

[7]Ibid., p. 7.

[8] accessed February 22, 2015.

[9] “Generation Y Poised to Bring Permanent Change. (April 2, 2013), accessed February 22, 2015.

[10]National Association for the Education of Young Children and the Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning and Children’s Media at Saint Vincent College.“Technology and Interactive Media as Tools in Early Childhood Programs Serving Children from Birth through Age 8.” (January 2012), p. 5. accessed February 22, 2015.

[11]Ibid., p. 6-8.

[12]Daniel J. Wakin. “Bytes and Beethoven,” in The New York Times, (January 16, 2011). accessed February 22, 2015.

[13]Faceook correspondence, February 21-22, 2015.

[14] William H. Walters. “E-books in Academic Libraries: Challenges for Discovery and Access” in Serials Review 39(2013): p. 100.