WHY DO THESE WEB PAGES EXIST?

Six reasons

Reason 1 (professional). Some people complain that they find my publications hard to get hold of. This web site partially solves that problem.

Reason 2 (professional). Other people, including students, produce some really good stuff that is difficult to get hold of. This web site contributes in a small way to solving that problem.

Reason 3 (personal). We are subjected to a lot of propaganda and disinformation via the dominant media which are owned by multinational corporate fat cats. This site provides the opportunity to spread other notions of the world we live in.

Reason 4 (both). It’s the 21st century and dead trees aren’t a good environmental idea. Besides, standing in front of a photocopier in a small room is not good for my health and it wastes a lot of time. I can also get information to my students quicker and cheaper (not for me but for the taxpayer) if I use this website.

Reason 5 (ethical). I believe that freedom of information should mean exactly what it says, in this case that information, ideas and knowledge should be freely available (like universal health care) to all, rich or poor, powerful or disempowered, wherever they live and whatever their situation. That’s why I don’t charge for any services available on this site.

Reason 6 (ethical). I regard consumerist propaganda (a.k.a. advertising) as a cultural, social and ideological scourge. I think it is essential to provide non-commercial sources of ideas and information. There is an unfortunate contradiction between reasons 5 and 6, which is why I have to ask for donations.

How do these web pages help solve the professional problem?

In order to make as many of my own texts as possible available and in order to save time and expense organising photocopies, I have converted most of the articles I have published in English to online-readable formats. I have also converted several previously unpublished writings for purposes of online accessibility (See Online texts and Conditions of use).

Several key texts by other authors are also difficult to obtain (e.g. Franco Fabbri's work on genre and style). I intend to make more such work more readily available by publishing it online. I also include important work by my own students.

Since published course literature is scarce for most of the courses I teach, and since I previously had to spend inordinate amounts of time in front of the photocopier, I have converted important handouts to web-readable format so that students can easily access such materials (See Courses).

Sometimes students turn in work that may be of interest outside those following, or teaching, one of my courses. It would be silly if this work was not available to a larger readership (See Student texts).

Many publishers steer clear of work containing quotations of music in notated form because [i] page laying is a time-consuming process, [ii] most of the examples quoted in work about popular music are under copyright whose clearance can involve horrendous amounts of time, work and money (See Copyright matters). It is, however, important that the results of musicological work in our area of studies be readily available for purposes of education and research.

COPYRIGHT MATTERS   ... see also Conditions of use

Problems of music copyright in popular music studies are a veritable minefield. Visitors are therefore asked to note the following.

1. Although education and research materials appearing openly on these web pages are intended primarily for internal use by students officially registered to receive tuition with us at the Faculty of Music (Faculté de musique à l’Université de Montréal), anyone visiting this site is welcome to make us of those materials provided this site’s Conditions of use are observed.
2. Copyright subsists in much of the material presented here.
3. The written material is copyrighted by either the author or by both the author and the publisher.
4. Some notated music examples associated with certain online texts are copyrighted by a third party and are used here solely for educational and research purposes. No financial profit whatsoever is derived by myself nor by the instititutions for whom I work from such citation. These music examples may not be further used by anyone who is not registered for tuition at the Faculté de musique à l’Université de Montréal.
5. A few extracts of recorded music under copyright by others than myself, which are used in analysis classes or which students need to access in order to fulfil course requirements, are stored as MP3 files in folders on this site. These folders require the unique user-ID and password I give only to students registered for the course in question each year. The contents of these restricted-access folders are accessible to no-one else, not even to internet search engines like Google. No financial profit whatsoever is derived by myself nor by the instititutions for whom I work from the presence of these MP3 files on this site.

For one set of solutions to problems of quoting music in notated form, see MMMSP Inc.

For a more detailed discussion of conventional copyright law’s effects on research and education in popular music, see:

CONDITIONS OF USE

1. I am, or one of my students is, originator of those materials (see Copyright matters);
2. you clearly refer to the author in question and include the relevant URL at this website as the source of those materials;
3. you do not distort, misquote or otherwise misrepresent the ideas or information you use;
4. you do not use materials from this site for financial profit or for any commercial ends;
5. you notify me before re-posting, elsewhere on the internet, any entire file, or substantial parts of a file, authored by myself or by one of my students.

Moreover:

1. If you wish to publish commercially any of my work, or that of my students, or if you want to re-post entire files, or substantial parts thereof, which appear on this site, you should contact me first.
2. If you wish to use work authored by someone other than myself or one of my students, and if that work appears on this site, you should contact that author directly. If you are unable to retrieve contact details for such an author, you may email me, but I do not guarantee to have up-to-date contact information.
3. If you use any of my materials, or those of my students, in your teaching or research, it would be civil of you to let me know. I regret that I cannot guarantee any reply.

Philip Tagg (Montréal, 2006-06-02)

Site Definition
By ‘on this site’, ‘at this website’, etc. is meant any text, image, audio or video recording stored as a file whose URL starts with any of the following prefixes: [1] http://www.tagg.org/ [2] http://tagg.org/ [3] www.tagg.org/ [4] http://musicmediastudies.net/tagg/   

I assume people come to this website for information and that they can read. I have excluded animation altogether and tried to keep graphics to a minimum so that pages will load faster, all in an effort to save both you and me time and money online. There is already enough clutter on the web! The ‘No Frills’ idea comes from the low-budget UK supermarket chain Kwik-Save.

Non-commercial and independent

I pay out of my own pocket to keep this website running. I'd rather do that than become dependent on income from sources whose activities I oppose or on those who don't like some of the things I have to say here: for example that advertising, like the capitalism it belongs to, sucks. But you can donate... ... and you can go anti-capitalist! The reasons why I don’t use MySpace, FaceBook or similar arrangements are: [1] they include advertising; [2] they force everyone to join or sign up to their system; [3] they don't allow for my free book download service. Another reason why it's good to donate!