The most extreme example of this happened in 2006, when the mayor of Sao Paulo passed a ‘Clean City’  law to clean up the visual pollution caused by some 8,000 poster sites, many of which had been erected illegally.

Opinion, of course, was split down the middle. Some thought it was a ‘triumph of public interest over private…of aesthetics over ugliness…of cleanliness over trash.’ Others claimed the city looked ‘a sadder,duller place’ and that – in addition to being commercial – advertising is a form of entertainment which engages and informs.

Judge for yourself. Sao Paulo isn’t going to win many architectural prizes, so without the colour of advertising and neo signs, there is a ‘communist bloc’ feel about the skyline. To be fair, these pictures were taken before the job (the complete removal of the sites themselves) had been finished.

Nevertheless, I’m beginning to think London might benefit from a similar approach.

CAPITAL CAMPAIGNS

I picked up some interesting messages today, my first trip into town since before Christmas.

For example,  the Bakerloo entrance to the tube at Paddington Station. There are some large, landscape sites, all carrying posters for the animated feature ‘Waltz with Bashir’, proclaiming its opening – on 21 November. On either side, a portrait-format poster, showing the results of some market research by CBS (the site owners) proclaiming that 9/10 passengers like advertising.

Down the escalators,  the static paper ‘cards’ have been replaced by long rows of digital screens. Yesterday, they carried three messages, two of which were:

* Details of London Underground’s text messaging services to let passengers know about engineering works

* A CBS campaign about the benefits of advertising on digital panels on the Tube.

In other words, 66% of display time was taken by the two owners (Transport for London and CBS). Marshall McLuhan proven right again: the medium is the message.

Cross-track gallery sites (that’s the posters we mindlessly stare at while waiting for a train) are also being upgrades to animations. At Paddington and Oxford Circus, both were carrying messages from CBS about how great it is to advertise on cross-track gallery sites.

Do you see a theme beginning to emerge?

Obviously, the owners are terrified of ‘going dark’ (as West End theatres would say), so they try to maintain confidence with a sort of ‘meta-advertising, (metads?): advertising about advertising.

The third campaign on the escalator was for  Channel 4′s ‘Great British Food Fight’. Imagine the terror: travelling into London’s subterranean world, surrounded by multiple images of Gordon Ramsey. Like some post-modern entrance to Dante’s inferno.

The theme was continued on the platform by giant posters for Channel Five’s remake of ‘Minder’ starring Shane Ritchie as Archie Daley (sic – that is not a typing error; he’s Arthur’s nephew. I am not making this up.)

Interesting variations on the metad form: an advertisement to drive the viewer to another media to watch an advertisement.

IN THE TRENCHES

One of the reasons for my visit was a meeting with an executive who has worked in advertising sales for the past 25 years. He’s run teams for many of the major media brands, and knows the game inside-out.

“It’s a very sensitive market,” he told me. “The economy slides a couple of percentage points? Advertising drops exponentially, TV is down 25% year-on-year, commercial radio is down 35%”

Of course, it’s not all down to a slowing economy; new media has taken a sizeable share of the total pot. The most recent full report I can find is a 2007 US analysis from PWC, which shows total TV spend at $51bn,  newspapers at $48bn, radio a shade off $20bn and outdoor at $7bn.

In the 10 years you 2007, online spend rose from $1.9bn to $21.2bn.

(According two Channel 4′s CEO Andy Duncan, the UK market is in now worth $3bn, about the same as TV advertising. A report by ‘Efficient Frontier’ supports this, saying the Q4 2008 was up 14% year-on-year)

So, a major factor in the change to the capital’s visual communication is a shift in media and technology. It’s not just about a downturn; it’ss the way that we, the audience,  spend our time, where we direct our attention, and how we have become immune to certain forms of persuasion.

But there is no doubt that the ads currently running are signs of the times. And it looks as though the only thing that advertising has to sell is itself.

Bill Drummond thinks that we have reached the end of recorded music.

His thinks that ‘real’ music makers are looking for new ways to create and share their work – like his ’17′ project, in which he’s recording 100 choirs of 17 people all singing a single note, which he will play back to them at a one-off, never-to-be repeated event, before destroying the recordings.

Bill Drummond might be mad. And I love him for it.

WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONARE?

To set this in context, he was behind KLF, the acid house group that made a fortune in the early 1990s, then incinerated it to kick off their ‘K Foundation Burn a Million Quid’ tour.

He also considered cutting off his hand at The Brit Awards, but had second thoughts on that one.

Since then, he has popped up (I was about to say ‘on the art scene’, but Drummond really transcends that sort of pigeonhole), acting as one of life’s agents provocateurs, challenging conventional wisdom, posing difficult questions, and generally making people feel uncomfortable.

His latest notion is that recorded music is dead. The more I think about this, sitting  at my PC, listening to some easy jazz on Windows Media Player, the more I think he’s onto something. Here’s a summary of the story so far:

1) The most important artist in the history of recorded music is… Enrico Caruso. In his short life (he died aged 48) he made over 220 recordings of tenor arias which meant that his public could now listen to him at home.

While that appears to be stating the blindingly obvious,  that’s because we’ve all grown up with it, and  assume it to be part of the  ‘natural’ state of affairs. In Caruso’s time, that was as significant a leap as powered flight. It changed everything.

He reached an audience with a representation of his work that hitherto had been the preserve of those who could get to La Scala or The Met. It was the beginning of the ‘democratisation’ of music.

In his way, he was the Bill Gates of the early recording industry. Edison and, later, Berliner may have created the hardware platform, but Caruso created the software.

What did a member of the gentry want with an ugly wooden box and a great horn stuck on top of it? In itself, they didn’t – but they did want to listen to and to show their friends that they listened to the world’s greatest tenor.

2) The most important day in the history of recorded music is 5 July 1954, when a young truck driver walked into Sun Records to record a couple of songs for his mother. Fooling around between takes, he sang ‘That’s All Right (Mama), and the legend of Elvis Presley was born.

Putting aside Presley’s importance as a cultural icon, his significance in this context is that prior to recording, he had no musical career. He was entirely created by the record industry, a reversal in the relationship between artist and medium.

3) The most important year in the history of recorded music is 1966, when The Beatles and Glenn Gould made the same, paradigm-shifting decision: they would no longer play live:

Classical pianist Gould wanted to concentrate of the Bach canon, and felt that the intimacy of the chamber genre couldn’t be communicated from the concert platform;

For The Beatles, the decision was more complex, but there’s no doubt it was heavily influenced by the fact that the techniques they had started to use on Revolver (tape looping and early sampling) couldn’t be toured. Sgt Peppers would be impossible to perform live.

And so the template changed again. The record (more specifically the album, by now format-of-choice) became an artefact in-and-of itself. Not a device for promoting the live performance, but an artwork that would stand alone.

4) The most important technology in the history of recorded music is the mp3 file. Think about how it is changing our relationship with recorded music:

* The album is redundant: through iTunes, Napster or any other file sharing site (legal or pirate) we can now pick and choose our tracks;

* Music is ubiquitous: we can play it anywhere, any time, in almost any circumstance. Muzak used to be limited to lifts, hotel lobbies and shopping centres. Now we take our own aural wallpaper wherever we go;

* There is no barrier to access: we can now reach any artist, any genre, any song, any composition, any time. And that ease makes us lazy. Music has become background sound, filling the empty spaces of our days, and plastering over the sonic mess of everyday life.

THE DAY THE MUSIC DIED

Drummond points out that before recording technology, music was context-depended: from orchestral compositions for State occasions to folk-songs in the field. Once it could be packaged and transferred into another setting – more importantly, any setting – it started to lose its meaning.  Which in turn, diminished its value.

It is the paradox of the democratisation. When something is available all the time, at very little cost, we value it less. This is not an argument for exclusivity; rather it’s just pointing out that when the tap can be turned on at any time, we take water for granted. And with that, the thrill has gone.

The thrill of knowing that your favourite artist’s new record would be released in three months. Saving your pocket money to buy it. Selling stuff at school to make up the difference. The bus trip to town on Saturday. Entering the record shop and seeing its bright cover, smelling the cellophane wrapper, turning it over and reading the track list – the liturgy for the mass that will follow. Handing over the money, receiving the plastic bag and realising that the prize was yours. Cuddling it on the bus ride home, the hero returning from his/her quest. Rushing upstairs to your bedroom, turning on your record player, and then, and then…

The black circle, etched with a fine line that fragmented the light on its surface. Your hand, palm-spread as wide as possible across the underside, balancing it with care so not to mark the surface. Two hands now, fingers either side of the round, lowering it gently into place. Start the turntable. Bend down, eye-level with the needle. Gently lift the arm and …pause…anticipation…will it be as good as…swallow nervously…holding your breath… you drop the needle onto the surface…the speakers ‘bump’ then ‘hiss’ then…it begins. And it’s the best moment of your life. It is glorious.

Today? Point. Click. Type. Listen. Forget.

WAKE ME UP BEFORE YOU GO-GO

Do not think that this is a Luddite’s blast against the new and a return to the ‘good old days’. I love the web to the point of addiction. But there is no doubt that a lot of the ritual has gone, and with it, the magic.

This is what Drummond – with his off-the-wall, left-of-centre performances – is addressing. More specifically, he’s asking us to wake-up. If you’re one of 1700 people to have participated in his choral project, and you know that when you hear it in its full performance, it is the only time it will ever happen and that it will be destroyed immediately after – wouldn’t you pay attention?

Like you did the first time you placed the needle on that album.

The quality of that moment wasn’t in the music itself (the experience is equally relevant to the classical collector, the punk and the Roller’s fan). The quality was in the attention.

In the film Diva, the plot centres on a pirate recording of a operatic soprano who has never made a record. The only way you can experience her voice is to see her live. She believes that scarcity increases the quality of the moment.

That truth and the iPod are not easy bedfellows.

It is Sunday morning. Ben and I sit in the kitchen. I skim the pages of a broadsheet, while my 13 year-old son reads one of yesterday’s supplements; he’s found a review of a new X-box game that, at a guess, involves disembowelling vampires.

BEN: That’s really cool.

ME (not looking up from the Arts section): Have you played it?

BEN: No. But it’s got 5 stars in here.

ME (wondering about getting tickets for the new ‘Godot’): And that makes it ‘cool’ does it, because it says so in there?

BEN: Well, it’s why we buy the big papers, isn’t it?

And I realise that I am at one of life’s key parental conversations. We’ve talked about sex, about bullying, about drugs. Now it’s ‘truth’ in the press.

M: How do you think a newspaper makes money, Ben? Where does my £1.50 actually go?

B: The paper shop?

M: Yes – to Mr Singh, and to the distributor who delivers the papers to the shop each morning. By the time they’ve taken their cut, it doesn’t leave very much for the people who make the papers. So how does a newspaper make its money?

We pause. Ben flicks a page or two, looking for a picture of a hole to crawl into.

 

All he can find is listings for London cinemas.

B: Advertising.

M: Spot on. The newspapers sell space to companies who want to sell things to their readers. No advertising, no newspapers. So the first thing to remember about newspapers is that their business purpose isn’t to print news. It’s to generate advertising revenue.

B: Cool. So why do newspapers write all this sort of stuff? (He points at a feature about a soap actress in the ‘Property’ section.) Why not just run ads?

M: Because too much advertising wouldn’t be very interesting, then no one would buy the paper. That’s the publisher’s dilemma. It’s a question of balance.

B: So get more journalists writing more stories.

M: Well, that’s good for you as a reader, but not good for the publisher as a business. That’s more cost.

B: But there’s loads of writing in these papers, pages and pages of news.

M: Is there? What is ‘news’, Ben?

B: Um…Stories about things that happen in the world. Gaza and the Credit crunch and things like that.

M: And all the sections of this newspaper are full of that, are they?

B: Well, no. Looking at this part (the listings insert he has in front of him), it’s got records and dvds and films and stuff.

M: A famous newspaper publisher called Randolph Hearst once said: “News is something that somebody, somewhere doesn’t want to see in print. Everything else is publicity.”

B: So what’s this? (He points to the soapstar ‘profile’).

M: Read the final paragraph – the bit in italics.

B: “The Notting Hill flat is on the market for £675,000 with Foxtons”

He stops and smiles. A penny drops, and for the next few minutes he’s ploughing through pages of newsprint, looking for publicity stories: a disgraced MP and his new book; a glamour model and her new TV series.

B: Jokes! (it’s a different language, but I’m keeping up) It’s all Publicity! All of it!

M: Well, not quite ALL. But most of it is. And the reason is simple – it’s cheaper than news. News takes time to research, time to collate, time to write, time to check. And as the businessman running the newspaper, you want to cut your costs – but you need to keep the amount of editorial content, because your readers demand it.

B: So make the journalists work harder.

M: Going to be a media mogul when you grow up? Despite the stereotype, most journalists and editors are incredibly productive. But when the advertising people sell more space, it creates a need for more editorial to keep that balance. So it becomes very tempting to use packaged material from publicists and agents and PRs, who are being paid for by someone else.

B: So the editor can fill more space, while the publisher keeps his costs down. Cool. So is this publicity?

He has found a ‘car of the year’ piece by Jeremy Clarkson. To a teenage would-be petrol-head, Clarkson is a deity.

M: Well, it has no news value, but it isn’t promoting anything in particular. So we’ll call it Entertainment – one of the main reasons people chose their Sunday paper.

B: So what about all this (he points back at the cinema listings).

M: That’s the fifth type on content. That’s Information; helpful facts to help you make decisions. You’ll find a lot of those in the Sundays, especially in the Travel sections.

B: News. Advertising. Publicity. Entertainment. Information. Is that it?

M: Pretty much. It’s a good filter to apply each time you read the paper – especially to weed out the PR man’s dream – Publicity that’s being presented as News. Put it in another order, and it spells PAINE.

B ??

M : Thomas Paine was a man who lived round the time of the American and French Revolutions. He wrote a couple of very famous books, The Rights of Man and The Age of Reason. He was quite complicated, and no friend of the Church or the English Government, but all you need to remember is his basic philosophy – we should each think for ourselves. So when you read the paper, and to make sure you read with a questioning mind, remember PAINE. Think for yourself, not the way that others want you to think.

Fatherly advice duly dispensed, I head for a morning shower. Twenty minutes later, Ben is standing in the bedroom door.

B: I looked up Paine on the web. He might have written those books, but he died in poverty and no one went to his funeral.

M : Yes, well, ermm…

B : I bet the man who publishes the Sunday paper won’t die poor.

M : Probably not.

B : Although all that stuff we talked about, that’s on the internet for free. So ‘praps he will.