Eastern European Music Industries and Policies after the Fall of Communism
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Eastern European Music Industries and Policies after the Fall of Communism

From State Control to Free Market

Patryk Galuszka, Patryk Galuszka

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eBook - ePub

Eastern European Music Industries and Policies after the Fall of Communism

From State Control to Free Market

Patryk Galuszka, Patryk Galuszka

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About This Book

During the last thirty years Eastern Europe has been a place of radical political, economic, and social transformation, and these changes have affected the cultural industries of its countries. This volume consists of twelve chapters by leading international researchers. Stories are documented of various organisations that once dominated the 'communist music industries' — such as state-owned record companies, music festivals, and collecting societies. The strategies employed by artists and industries to join international music markets after the fall of communism are explained and evaluated. Political and economic transformations that coincided with the advent of digitalisation and the Internet intensified the changes. All these issues posed challenges both to record labels and artists who, after adjusting to the rules of the free-market economy, were faced with the falling record sales of records caused by the advent of new communication technologies. This book examines how these processes have all affected the music scene, industries, and markets in various Eastern European countries.

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Publisher
Routledge
Year
2021
ISBN
9781000374599

Part I

Introduction

1Contextualising research on the Eastern European music industries

Patryk Galuszka1

Why study the transition of Eastern European music?

The year 2019 marked thirty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989. This event is just one manifestation, albeit symbolically the most powerful, of the larger process of the dissolution of the Eastern Bloc. It is debated when this process started—most likely sometime between the signing of the GdaƄsk Social Accords on 31 August 1980 and the signing of the Polish Round Table Agreement on 5 April 1989. Equally problematic would be choosing the end date—was it the dissolution of the Soviet Union on 26 December 1991 or the final breakup of Yugoslavia, which formally ended in the first decade of the twenty-first century? These questions show that regardless of what happened in Eastern Europe at the turn of the twenty-first century, it was a process that unfolded at different speeds and had different culminating moments from country to country. Even more important is that despite showing some common features, countries of the Eastern Bloc differed significantly; therefore, the processes of transition in the region took various paths and led to different results. It is important to be aware of these differences when undertaking a task as broad as the one undertaken by this book: to study how one type of human activity (music making) evolved over a large time span in many countries representing common historical experiences but different cultures and languages. In other words, attempting to analyse the evolution of music or music industries during the last thirty years is itself a complicated task. Now think about shifting the dominant format in which music is distributed and listened to, from vinyl to compact disc to mp3 to streaming. This is a topic for a lengthy monograph, perhaps more than one. Next, let us consider the transition of Eastern European societies, economies and political systems. Much has been written about these topics (e.g. Gevorkyan 2018; Krastev and Holmes 2018; Myant and Drahokoupil 2010; Piatkowski 2018), and yet several research questions remain unanswered. If both these fields of research are complex, is it possible to address both in one book? My answer is positive with the reservation that because the goal of finding uniform trends that apply to a whole region is rather unattainable, we should instead concentrate on selected phenomena on a country level.
Taking this into account, the goal of this book is to analyse the processes of transition of the broadly defined music industries, policies and selected music phenomena in Eastern European countries during the last thirty years. In other words, this is an attempt to explain how various aspects of music making, promotion and distribution look in selected countries of Eastern Europe, taking into consideration that their histories differ from that of Western countries. Such a goal addresses the insufficient attention paid in music scholarship to non-Anglo-American music and the even lesser attention paid to Eastern European music2. Paradoxically, before 1989, English-speaking scholars could learn more about music industries in Tunisia, Tanzania, Kenya or Sri Lanka (all covered in Roger Wallis and Krister Malm’s book on the music industry in ‘small countries’ [1984]) than about how record labels worked in the German Democratic Republic or Czechoslovakia. The fall of communism3 brought some attention to these topics, manifested for example by chapters and articles by Wicke and Shepherd (1993), Kurkela (1993, 1997), Elavsky (2011, 2013), Helbig (2013) and Galuszka and Wyrzykowska (2020), but this output is far from sufficient, especially considering how fascinating were the processes taking place in Eastern Europe throughout the last thirty years. Political and economic transformations in the countries of the region coincided with the advent of digitalisation and the Internet, which intensified the changes. Obviously, any type of human activity has been at least to some extent affected by the advent of the Internet, but in the case of music, this influence was thorough (Anderson 2013; Leyshon 2014). Therefore, it can be argued that during the last three decades, the music industries, artists and audiences in Eastern European countries were subject to two shocks: the first related to the fall of state-controlled economies, resulting in a difficult transition to capitalism, and the second was caused by the advent of the Internet and digitalisation. These shocks posed a challenge to artists, music businesses and other music institutions, who, after adjusting to the rules of the free-market economy, were faced with falling record sales spurred by the advent of new communication technologies. This makes the Eastern European music scenes, industries, and markets interesting topics requiring further study.
At this point, three caveats should be made. First, what do we mean by Eastern Europe? Most people in Poland or Hungary would frown upon calling themselves ‘Eastern Europeans’—Central Europe is much more often used as a self-identifying label. Similarly, former Yugoslavian countries, apart from Slovenia, may identify more with Southern than Eastern Europe. Then, there is Russia, with 77% of its total landmass lying in Asia. Clearly, some common denominator is necessary. In this volume, we consider Eastern Europe those European countries that for most of the second half of twentieth century were on the eastern side of the Iron Curtain. This is not to disguise obvious differences between, for example, the German Democratic Republic and Bulgaria, but to make things easier for international readers. To address actual regional differences, the book is divided into three main parts: Russia, Central Europe and Southeast Europe. The common historical experience of inhabitants of all the countries discussed in this book is living under some sort of state socialism or communism for the most part of the second half of the twentieth century.
Second, despite all the similarities in the fate of Eastern European nations after World War II, the countries of the region differed; and after the fall of communism, their paths of development differed significantly. The first to join the West was the German Democratic Republic, which was incorporated into the Federal Republic of Germany (Western Germany) and practically joined the European Economic Community shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Some countries chose free-market liberal democracy and joined the European Union (EU) in 2004 (Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia) or shortly after (Bulgaria, Romania, and Croatia). North Macedonia, Montenegro, Albania and Serbia are official candidates for future membership of the EU, while Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine signed Association Agreements with the EU, which suggests they may have ambition to join it in the future. Finally, there is Russia and other post-Soviet republics (which, considering the geographical context of this volume, stands for Belarus) that chose different paths of development. The entire distinction becomes even more complicated when one considers the recent rule of law crisis in Hungary and Poland and successes of populist politicians in the region. For example, although Hungary is an EU member and can be considered a developed country, in recent years, it has moved away from the standards that characterise liberal democracies. One such field is media freedom—in the 2019 World Press Freedom Index, Hungary ranked 87, which is the lowest position of all EU member countries and below some candidate countries. The crisis of liberal democracy in some Eastern European EU member states may be temporary; nevertheless, it adds a new dimension to analyses of the political and social transformation of the region (see also Krastev and Holmes 2018).
Third, considering the broad definition of Eastern Europe, we are talking of a highly diverse region inhabited by approximately 300 million people. Despite a common historical and economic experience, it is not possible to make far-reaching generalisations about the whole region, even if we limit ourselves only to music or the music industry. Therefore, writing a book about music in a region in its entirety is likely impossible, while covering each country would make the volume much longer than the limits set by any publisher. The only solution is concentrating on selected music-related phenomena and institutions in some Eastern European countries. We attempted to cover a wide range of institutions and phenomena: record labels, collecting societies, festivals, canon formation, music exports and piracy in specific contexts on a country level. The contents of the volume are discussed later in this introduction.

Specificity of the Eastern European situation

Although the title of this book is largely self-explanatory—the volume studies the transition ‘From State Control to Free Market’—one could ask what exactly ‘state control’ was in Eastern Europe? What was so special about the organisation and functioning of Eastern European music industries and scenes before 1989 that differed from their organisation in the West? Although, as mentioned previously, the situation in each country of the region was a bit different, a few common features should be emphasised.
First, the music industries and the media were state owned (see e.g. Wicke and Shepherd 1993; Patton 2012 and Chapter 5 in this volume). The music industries stand in this context usually for a monopolist record label, such as Melodya in the USSR, and the state-owned live music business, organised in the form of various enterprises (e.g. estradas in Poland). If there were more than one label in a country, they were usually all controlled by the state, e.g. in Czechoslovakia, there were three: Supraphon, Panton, and Opus. It should be noted, however, that even though in almost all the cases the state was the owner, there were exceptions to the rule: in the 1980s, the Polish government allowed several record labels to open, funded by private capital from the Polish diaspora (Galuszka and Wyrzykowska 2020).
The consequence of state ownership combined with functioning in a centrally planned economy usually meant the inability to meet demand (Patton 2012). These labels either did not produce enough records (in Poland, for example, this was a result of problems with raw materials to press vinyl [Galuszka, 2020a]) or they did not release the titles that were particularly appealing to audiences (see Chapter 3 in this volume and Kurkela 1993). Contrary to the system in the West, in many cases, it did not even particularly matter what people wanted to listen to. In other words, from the business viewpoint, these labels were not particularly savvy, although, as shown in Chapter 5 in this volume, some had skilled managers. In addition, government regulations at times went so far that they precluded the efficient functioning of the market, even in places where it would theoretically be possible. One such example was paying for live performances not in relation to revenue from ticket sales but ‘according to centrally set rates for individual categories [assigned to musicians in administrative decision based on their music education or lack thereof] multiplied by the number of concerts played, regardless of the size of the auditorium (a small club in the basement or a stadium)’ (Pasternak-Mazur 2020, 24, see also Chapter 6 in this volume).
Second, music from the West was not particularly welcome by the authorities. ‘Music from the West’ can be understood in two ways: as both music that came directly from Western countries in the form of records or through radio and music played by local musicians that sounded like Western music (which, in the 1960s, meant rock). There were significant differences, both in geographical and temporal character. Geographically, some governments, such as that of Yugoslavia (see Chapter 12 and Vuletic 2012), were open to Western popular culture, while others, such as that of the USSR (see Chapter 3), were not. Time also mattered; for example, while jazz was banned in Poland in 1950, it became accepted in the following decades (Hatschek 2010). Playing rock ’n’ roll music was discouraged, but once its name was changed to big-beat and politically controversial topics were avoided, it became tolerated by the authorities (Idzikowska-Czubaj 2020). In some Eastern European countries, radios aired Anglo-American rock music, while in others, preference was given to French or Italian music (see Chapter 11), or music from the West was avoided regardless of exact country of origin.
Third, there was political control in the form of censorship that affected media professionals, but most of all musicians (Antal, 2017; Idzikowska-Czubaj 2020). As in other cases, there were significant differences between various countries of the region: what was an acceptable form of artistic expression in 1980s Poland or Yugoslavia would send musicians to prison in 1970s Soviet Union or Albania. Censorship is not the main issue when studying the transition of Eastern European music (although see Chapter 7 in this volume); nevertheless, its existence should be considered whenever we discuss the situation before 1989.

How to study the transition of Eastern European music

If Eastern Europe is so diversified and both historical and geographical circumstances have so much significance, what theoretical approaches can be applied to study the transition of the regions’ music industries and scenes? Two analytical tools are particularly useful here: historical institutionalism and world-system theory. Although most of the chapter authors employ either of the two aforementioned perspectives, some use different approaches. As will become clear later in this chapter, these choices are justified by the topics of their chapters.
The first approach—historical institutionalism—can help us understand the present shape of the music market and its institutions by looking at their pasts. Historical institutionalists ‘divide the flow of historical events into periods of continuity pun...

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