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The Death of “Industry Standard”
By Jeff Kaiser
[Note: This article was originally presented as a paper at the joint Association for Technology in Music
Instruction/College Music Society (ATMI/CMS) Conference in Miami, FL on October 26, 2023.]
Introduction
For the past few decades, one particular audio software company has positioned itself
as the “industry standard” through the combination of marketing and a vocal user
base.
At its most benign, the term “industry standard” is used by corporate entities to
demonstrate, maintain, or expand their market share. This is an important goal as seen
in the recent acquisitions by venture capitalists of media software companies Native
Instruments, Izotope, Brainworx, Plugin Alliance (Young 2023) and Avid, the makers of
Pro Tools (Vinn and Sen 2023) . This is also demonstrated by venture capitalists’ pursuit
of other software companies such as Ableton (Knopper 2021) , and for that matter,
Ableton purchasing Cycling ’74, the makers of Max/MSP (Rogerson 2017) .
At its worst, “industry standard” creates a conceptual framework that is used by
companies and their user base to dismiss, shame, marginalize, mock, ridicule, exclude,
and generally bully people that use one of the many other digital audio workstations
2
(DAWs) that are not considered by these companies—and many of their users—as
“standard.”
The term “industry standard” can also perpetuate certain styles of working and
creating, and the “standardization” of these workflows is sometimes used to scoff at
the very innovations that the large companies later incorporate into their DAWs.
The above might sound overly dramatic to some, but pedagogically it becomes a
question of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in—and out—of the classroom. What
about students using inexpensive, free, or open-source platforms? Are they made to
feel “less” by their use of a platform that is not “industry standard?” Does such
treatment motivate students to use hacked commercial software?
1 How do we
encourage creative and technological work both at school studios, and away from
school studios, in a way that includes students who are unable to afford access at
home to “industry standard” DAWs and their required hardware?
I ask you to look from the perspective of students entering music technology
programs, students that not only bring experience and knowledge, but grew up with
access to a far greater selection of software than the generation before: from
commercial offerings to the peripheries of the open-source underground. Today’s audio
students are growing up in a different world from the one I grew up in, a world far less
dominated by single audio companies. I ask this: if you don’t recognize yourself in the
questions I am asking, imagine the student’s perspective instead of your own. Their
reality is creating all of our futures in the audio industry. And it is for this future that I
propose we as educators stop perpetuating the idea of “industry standard” in the
classroom (and elsewhere) to refer to specific commercial DAWs.
2
Drawing from modern pedagogical studies, long-tail economics, and the history of
select contemporary DAWs, I will use examples from social media, popular magazines,
and professional organizations to support my arguments, which are rooted in my
extensive experience in the classroom and professional recording studios.
Problematizing “Industry” and “Standard”
The use of the term “industry standard” creates a monolithic view of what the music
industry is, what it does, what tools are used, and who counts as a member of the
“industry” as defined by their use of “standard” tools.
2 I do believe “industry standard” should be used as a term for technical standards of the music industry,
such as audio files, cables, connectors, et cetera. Which opens up a challenging, difficult, and related
discussion, i.e., who creates these standards?
1 Are our policies making necessary criminals out of students?
3
In dedicated audio organizations, confirmation bias takes place when members and
the tools they use are equated with the industry at large. Since most of them, their
friends, and colleagues, use this one software, they believe it is the “industry
standard.” This idea is amplified by the constant repetition of the term “industry
standard” in the aforementioned marketing campaigns, and reinforced by product
users with strong social media connections.
Large corporations that perpetuate the idea of “industry standard” discredit the
innovations of smaller companies while later incorporating those very same innovations
as their own. Smaller companies are quicker to introduce innovative changes: think of
Ableton when they started, and when others followed. The users of the “industry
standard” at first scoff at innovators, calling other platforms “toys,” then incorporate
their ideas later. Examples include folder tracks, clip-based workflows, et cetera (Tyler
2020; Cotton 2023) . Again, working to maintain market share. This becomes an
argumentum ab auctoritate where big names are used to justify the use of “industry
standard.” This can be seen in such recent ads by Avid featuring Miraval Studio,
Andrew Scheps, and Brad Pitt. It also creates a circular, even tautological, argument:
the company is the expert in its DAW, the company says its DAW is “industry
standard,” therefore the DAW is “industry standard.”
The message of the above argument, when repeated enough, becomes a framework
employed by users of that DAW, where the repetition itself becomes the evidence. As
George Lakoff states, “Framing is the most commonplace thing we do with thought
and language. Frames are the cognitive structures we think with…The more the
language of a frame is repeated, the stronger the frame gets, along with the system the
frame is in (Lakoff 2010) .” Corporations, like politicians and preachers, know this to be
true.
The use of software deemed “industry standard” then provides users with an
ideological pendant, providing a direct sign of their allegiances to “industry standard,”
an association with “industry standard,” and an association with other famous users of
“industry standard.” All of the above leads to a “team” mentality in the audio world
similar to that of sports, politics, and even religion.
Long Tail Economics and Home Studios
The music industry is much bigger than what many people who use the term “industry
standard” might think. In my experience they use the term to refer to a narrow band of
the “industry,” a small but financially large part that is then used to define the whole of
what is actually much larger, more complex, and diverse in practice.
I build the following idea of a diverse and complex music industry from a combination
of evidence, observation, anecdotal stories, and conjecture built off the idea of long tail
4
economics, a term first used in 2004 by author Chris Anderson in an article in Wired
(Anderson 2004) and further developed in his book, The Long Tail: Why the Future of
Business is Selling Less of More (Anderson 2006) .
Here is a partial list of DAWs available today: Pro Tools, Logic, Digital Performer,
Ableton Live, Cubase, Reaper, FL Studio, Nuendo, Soundforge, Studio One, Sequoia,
Reason, Mixbus, Garageband, Samplitude, Mixcraft, Bitwig, Cakewalk, Total Studio,
BandLab, Audition, Ardour, Audacity, along with many variants of each. A mix varying
from expensive to open-source. Anecdotally speaking, I know many users that have
either full-time or part-time income from using these DAWs, even the beloved and
sometimes beleaguered Audacity is used in some professional environments.
The following is an image of a power law distribution:
Power law distribution is a term, as Anderson writes, that refers to “a curve where a
small number of things occur with high amplitude and a large number of things with
low amplitude (Anderson 2006, 121) .” In my example here, we see a vertical axis of
dollars spent on work using DAWs that includes a variety with few at the
top—blockbuster movies, big dollar pop music productions, major video games—all
the way done to the many smaller budget items—including podcasts, small community
theater audio/music cues, neighborhood church messages, high school band concerts
and auditions, recording/mixing/mastering local bands, and more. The horizontal axis
is of DAWs most commonly used from the list above.
5
My conjecture is that this illustrates the music industry as a whole is much larger than
the few jobs at the top. In other words, the music industry is not just the large budget
projects that might be more homogenous in their DAW selection. Another way to view
the horizontal axis would be by studio size: from large commercial studios to smaller
home-based studios.
3
If we view the industry as more than just big dollar popular productions and studios, all
of a sudden, the inclusion of job possibilities into our concept grows, as does what
defines the music industry, who is counted as being in the industry, along with the
variety of DAW preferences.
This is an important point, again, because of DEI. As someone who has recruited for
programs now for over ten years, the lack of inclusion of DAWs helps create imposter
syndrome (a form of negative metacognition) in potential students. As cognitive
science researcher and author Stanislas DeHaene writes, “Metacognition remains the
main culprit for struggling students, after a while, they no longer have any reason to be
curious (Dehaene 2020) ” I would argue they lose curiosity due to the perceived lack of
access to resources by those telling them they need expensive equipment, and at the
same time being told the resources they are using are not good enough, i.e., not
“industry standard.” There are many subtle ways that this sort of gatekeeping happens
3 It should be noted in addition, that as of the time of this writing, there are legal allegations that certain
large corporations have misrepresented their assets/market share to shareholders to enable the sale of
the company (Miller 2023; Kahn 2023) .
6
in addition to the bludgeon of the term “industry standard,” i.e., qualifying terms such
as, “well, that DAW is ok for now.” The crushing of curiosity is a large impediment to
education.
In spite of the fact that we have evidence that there is more than one aspect of the
industry—and skills in other DAWs are getting called for in job advertisements
(Hastings 2022) —the term “industry standard” is still used dismiss, shame, marginalize,
mock, ridicule, exclude, and generally bully people using so many of the platforms that
are not considered “standard.” We see this on social media groups and forums where
these DAWs are still referred to as toys, for amateurs, fine for non-professional work,
and more which tells a large part of the industry that what they are using is not
“standard” and all the social ideas and normalization that goes with that term.
Graphs from Tye Hastings’ Blog (Hastings 2022)
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Pedagogical Concerns
The term “industry standard” also perpetuates sameness. An article that provoked
quite a bit of dialogue came out in The Verge in 2021 titled “‘Pro Tools proficiency’ may
be keeping us from diversifying audio,” arguing very clearly what is stated in its title
(McDowell 2021) . Similarly, professor, musician, and author, Kaley Lane Eaton argues in
her article, “Hit the reset button: Rethinking how we teach music technology” that,
…in higher education, the norm is to teach ‘industry standard’ software: invest
in expensive on-campus studios by getting ‘deals’…Avid or Apple, teach the
students what they will need to know to have a career as an audio engineer,
producer, or film composer—and then leave them…in debt and no access to
these tools when they graduate…Luckily, there are still ways of engaging with
music technology and building a robust and well-rounded expertise without
joining the scheme. (Eaton 2022)
Pedagogically, educational systems favoring concepts of “industry standard” are
problematic on many levels, not the least because they support a structural rigor, rather
than creative and intellectual rigor. I believe we need to develop ideas of critical
pedagogy in teaching music technology. Pedagogy simply means an approach to
teaching and critical here means what is essential, or most important, to that
pedagogy. To unpack further, author and professor Jesse Stommel writes in his article
Critical Digital Pedagogy: a Definition , “Critical, as in mission-critical…Critical, as in a
8
reflective and nuanced approach to a thing; Critical, as in criticizing institutional or
corporate impediments to learning (Stommel 2014) .”
I believe that the following are critical to music technology in education:
4
1. It must be Equitable
It should create awareness of—and access to—music technology instructional
resources to as broad a group as possible. There should be as many free and
inexpensive resources as possible, encouraging and supporting the potential of
students who may lack the means to purchase expensive options.
2. It must be Accessible in different ways
Geographically —Such a pedagogy should incorporate a focus on what can be
learned away from studio locations with the inherent financial investment they require. I
do not want to take away from the importance of studio located coursework—access
to expensive equipment is a joy, but it is also a privilege not available to all. One goal I
envision is that students who own or have access to a laptop can not only produce
music, but complete their coursework in their bedroom, at their kitchen table, in their
favorite park, coffeehouse or library—anywhere, in fact, without requiring additional
costly software or an extra trip to school.
Financially —It should be accessible to people of varying financial means.
Ability —it should be usable by people of varying abilities.
3. It must be Cross-Platform
The pedagogy I envision should not simply dictate investment in a specific computer
brand, OS, or software in its choice of teaching tools. In addition to expensive software
that many consider “standard,” it should introduce and instruct students on the use of
affordable professional software that supports different operating systems and
importantly: different vintages of computers.
4. It must be Creative
Encourage students to express musical creativity while learning music technology
fundamentals.
4 This list was originally developed for my website, WhyReaper.com
9
5. It must be Innovative
Reinforce the value of innovation while acknowledging and learning from the rich
lineage and history contributed by the musicians, music technologists, producers,
engineers, artists, and innovators in other fields that have gone before.
6. It must be Professional
This pedagogy should offer transferable skills that will enable students not only to work
in various professional environments, but also at a distance from the studio.
7. It must be Entrepreneurial
A pedagogy of this kind should encourage—or at least introduce—an entrepreneurial
approach, presenting scenarios in which students might own their own means of
producing music rather than be locked into studios owned by others. It should attempt
to create independent thinkers who can embrace solutions outside of expensive
options.
8. It must be Critically-Engaged
What does it mean to be critically-engaged in music technology?
For me, it means to explore and ask questions about the frameworks, power
structures, and contexts in which music technology is created and used.
Technology is not created in a void, it is created by people living in cultures with shared
meanings, values, aesthetics, tools, art, institutions, and other structures. How do
these things inform and influence what is being made and how it is being used? Who
made it, why did they make it, and for what purpose?
The recording studio itself (even if it is in your bedroom or the classroom) is a location
of cultural production, both in terms of cultural products such as recorded music as
well as the production of meanings and values of a culture.
Conclusion
Not addressing these issues in music technology education is a tacit acceptance of the
ideas of “industry standard” perpetuated by corporations. Teaching software platforms
without engaging these problems becomes a silent and complicit advocacy for these
commercial platforms and all the problems mentioned above. As Richard Shaull wrote,
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“There is no such thing as a neutral educational process (Freire 2000) .” It is incumbent
upon us to constantly examine, question, and refresh our pedagogies, creative
practices, and the tools that are part of them.
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———. 2006. The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More .
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