Additionally, karaoke has been associated with drunk people doing something ironic, but for a majority of people karaoke is serious. There is a group of people that might be hoping to be discovered for their singing abilities while others get enjoyment out of doing it. Karaoke is also a place where everyone is celebrated, no matter whether the singing is good or not, and sometimes the bad performance receives better support than a good one. In this way, karaoke is for everyone, where “performing karaoke is one of the few ways that the average person can “act out” in public.” Kevin Brown describes the criticism karaoke has gotten as a liveness anxiety, “characterized by attacks on the technological aspects of culture that threaten to replace live performance.”
The reason I chose karaoke as a platform is because it’s an already existing medium. “Karaoke undermines class divisions because it challenges the boundary between “high” and “low” art.” People undermine the power of karaoke for those reasons. I’ve been interested in presenting low art in high art places, or high art through low art mediums. My project will therefore dance on the line between high and low art, as well as between irony and seriousness. How can I use the rules of capitalism to the advantage of my music while simultaneously expressing criticism?
In addition to releasing the karaoke versions on streaming services and the full version for paying fans, I have hosted a free show around eight songs I have written, that are karaoke versions of songs that never existed. In the show I talked about my struggles of making ends meet as a classical composer as well as asking the audience to donate money to me. The ways they could donate money is through the Icelandic money transfer app Aur (my phone number is +354 692-6793), through money transfer from the bank (rknr.0526-26-850940 kt.1411892639 if you happen to have an Icelandic bank account) and through the money transfer service PayPal (eyglo.viborg@gmail.com). This way I’m using a type of freemium business strategy, the one that wikipedia uses, where the service is essentially for free but they accept donations. Freemium is a pricing strategy that offers basic products or services for free but charges a fee for additional (premium) features that extend the functionality of the free version. At the end of the show I will then collect a small fee from everyone so I can pay the Icelandic performance rights organisation, STEF, for the use of my own music.
I studied classical composition in the United States of America during the years of 2014-2020. I did both Bachelors and Masters degrees there. Education in the USA is not cheap, so I had to take a student loan, which at the time was 17,790,560ISK. Since I moved back home after my graduation five years ago I’ve received 1,859,920ISK in direct payments for being a composer, which means salary and payments for commissions. STEF, the Icelandic performance rights organisation, has given me 543,806ISK for public performances of my pieces. Most of that money came from the year 2020 when I wrote a piece for the Iceland Symphony Orchestra –around 400,000ISK. In total I have received 2,403,726ISK since my graduation from my masters in composition, which might seem a lot, but when divided over the 60 months I’ve been working as a classical composer, it averages at 40,062ISK a month. I have to admit the number is higher than I dared to hope, but way lower than a person with a masters degree should agree upon.
So how are my student loans doing today, after I’ve paid off of them for 5 years? They are now at 24,535,742ISK, seven million ISK higher than when I took them and this number does nothing but increase day by day, because Icelandic student loans are bound to inflation.
When I look at these numbers, my mind drifts away to simpler times, when I was still just a composition student in New York and everyone in America got US $2000 during the COVID-19 pandemic for free as a gift from the government in order to boost the economy, called a stimulus check.
As a classical composer I have been struggling. I’ve been struggling to find a way to get paid fairly for my work. Most people who commission me underpay me, in exchange for “exposure”. But I have had a problem with the exposure part as the audience for my chosen medium, e.i. classical concert music is rather small. One could then suggest that I go into releasing my music as recordings, but I don’t find that route feasible either, as the business model of streaming services such as Spotify and YouTube is not amiable towards the artists that share their music through their platform. Some might then suggest to not use those platforms for sharing my music, but that is easier said than done, as no one listens to music on CDs anymore. Other streaming services such as Deezer or Tidal might have better conditions for artists, but the fact of the matter is that Spotify and YouTube are leading in terms of numbers of customers. After contemplating this dilemma I have found a loophole: I can release my music on the most popular platforms and still get paid fairly for my work. My plan is to write a few pop songs and release them as karaoke versions only on YouTube and Spotify and reserve the full version for live performances, patreon downloads or a CD.
When I did my master in music composition in New York I fell in love with karaoke as a medium. I wondered about the songs that never get sung in the karaoke music catalog. My friend, Elijah Brown, gave me the idea to write a concept album with songs written especially for the medium of karaoke, and therefore writing karaoke versions of songs that have never existed. Much like concept albums which have been made with film scores to films that never existed. A concept Elijah calls ideomedia which is media that only exists in the context of another media. For example the band Spinal Tap only exists in the context of the “rockumentary” it was presented in.
“Karaoke is a unique social game of performance play” with rather loose rules to follow. The gist of it is to sing live to a pre-recorded backing track. Karaoke is a compound Japanese word meaning “empty” (kara) “orchestra” (o-kestura). The Japanese word “kara” has also been translated as “void”, the void being the missing vocals in which the performer then fills with their singing.
There are a number of different platforms where this social game can be played—most notably in bars where one performs in front of strangers, and private rooms which can be rented for an hourly rate where one performs alone or with friends. In an article about karaoke’s role in contemporary art, Anastasia Howe Bukowski notes that “Karaoke is unique as both an entertainment technology and a mode of performance in that it is necessarily incomplete without the participation of the singer.” Karaoke has also been judged for being unoriginal copying or repetition of someone else’s music. Consider, however, that all classical music is a repetition of someone else’s music for example, and people can either love or hate a certain performance by a particular orchestra. In my mind, karaoke is a performance of a similar kind.
It is important to think about your wallet when you get only about 40,000ISK a month, and save some money. I have been finding ways to save money and have found a few good tips that I would like to share.
If you would like to continue reading my reflective paper, please follow this link to a patreon site where you can purchase the rest for $5. Thank you. https://www.patreon.com/altereyglo/shop