If we reflect for a bit, we’ve always thought about versioning in a mere product conception; for example, different versions of Microsoft Office, of a Transavia’s flight or of a Netflix account. But if we turn on the radio (for those who still listen to it) or pay attention on the playing background of a supermarket or a shop, we will realize that music, that nowadays has become one of the main digital information goods, is also strongly subject to these second-degree price discrimination.
42 years have passed when Eric Clapton, the best living guitarist of the history according to Rolling Stones[i], built his fortune covering Cocaine from John Weldon Cale; he basically came out with a different version of someone else’s song. However, this is not really what the real definition of versioning means, that is, in the music case, the same author proposing different version of a same song. “Radio edit”, “remix”, “video version”, “remastered”, “reprise”, “unplugged”; it’s nowadays usual to come across these extensions right next to the same original title of a song composed by the same author. In all of these cases, the strategy of the artist/band is simple: making his effort available through all the different channels and trying to reach as many targets as possible (e.g. the rockers, the pop lovers, the forevertechno club, ecc…). This phenomena can be seen as a fragmentation of the song; as if the artist, through his song itself, was putting a mask with the goal of be liked by anyone. But what’s the problem at the root with this practice? As the famous Italian dramatist and poet Luigi Pirandello taught us, among all his masterpieces, especially in Six Characters in Search of an Author, the mask hides the concepts of “self” and “identity”[ii] that, applied to music, should be proper to a song and eventually reflect the artist’s thought and personality. The result of this approach is a different philosophy of making music: be liked instead of be yourself, even if this means being fake to your loyal fans.
How can we sum up versioning into music with a metaphor? It’s like a wall of glass, “something that prevents someone from doing a different job or doing their job more effectively”[iii]. But here is the paradox; is doing a different job (a different version of the same song) that prevents an artist to do his job more effectively: being himself.
[i] https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/100-greatest-guitarists-153675/eric-clapton-4-38244/
[ii] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877042811026036
[iii] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/glass-wall
