Technology
Required Listening: With Napster, Pop Music Meets Academia
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“The prospect of a student in a remote settlement in Alaska taking a course on Motown with
access to every recording made by the label is no longer just an interesting idea—it is a reality whose
time has finally come.”
– Bill Kelly
In November 2003, Penn State signed a groundbreaking agreement with online music service Napster, becoming the first university in the nation to provide its students with a legal and quality alternative to illegal downloading. The entertainment value for students was obvious, but what about the educational value? To up the educational quotient of the new venture, College of Arts and Architecture Dean Richard Durst and Bill Kelly, head of the Department of Integrative Arts, approached President Graham Spanier with a plan to integrate Napster into a series of courses focused on American popular music and culture.
Kelly,
who has been teaching courses in popular media at the University for the past 15 years, had previously tried
to develop a course using the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s digital resources, but came up against copyright
issues. “With the Napster agreement, the course I had been trying to develop became possible immediately,” he
says. “The problem with teaching popular music is there’s so much to listen to that we can’t
realistically ask students or the library to buy all the records one would need to listen to for a class.
Napster solves that problem.”
Thanks to the Napster agreement, this fall Kelly is teaching an online course titled “The Popular Arts in America: Popular Music,” which covers the major popular genres, including blues, jazz, gospel, country and mainstream pop. It is the first-ever college course that uses Napster, the leader in legal online music services.
According to Durst, this is the first course in the nation that links the educational resources of a major university to the online resources of a commercial music service. “This linkage provides extraordinary opportunities for students and opens up remarkable possibilities for the future. If we can do this with popular music, the potential for expanded online support in music and, eventually, film and video, could revolutionize teaching in the arts.”
The course will eventually be offered through the World Campus and through the E-Learning Cooperative, which allows Penn State students enrolled at one campus to take an online course taught by a faculty member at another campus. Enrollment for this fall was capped at 45, but Kelly plans to open the class to more students in the future.
The course is intended to be the first in a series that will cover rock and roll, country, blues
and all other popular genres in depth. Kelly envisions specialized courses that focus on individual artists
and labels. “Courses on Motown, Bob Dylan, the Beatles and hip hop are not only now possible, but likely
to be developed in the near future.”
Development of the series actually dates back about 10 years, when AT&T helped to create the Center for Educational Outreach in Popular Music as a joint venture between Penn State and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The agreement signed with Napster in 2003 has brought the years of planning and development to fruition. When the agreement was signed, Spanier said it was the first step in a new, legal approach designed to meet student interest in getting extensive digital access to music. After a pilot program last spring, which was limited to students living in residence halls at University Park, the service was extended to all Penn State students this fall.
The agreement gives students access to Napster’s “Premium Service,” which allows them to download to their hard drives an unlimited number of songs for as long as they are enrolled. They also can purchase tracks that they can burn onto a CD for 99 cents, or they can purchase an entire album for $9.99. In addition, the Napster service offers artist bios, album information, premium radio stations and exclusive tracks unavailable elsewhere.
All courses that use Napster will be offered exclusively online. “Part of what makes this so exciting is the prospect of opening a new and important area of study to students anywhere, regardless of their age, location or unique personal circumstances,” says Kelly. “Online learning eliminates all of the barriers of time and place that limit our ability to serve students beyond our traditional classrooms, and Napster provides us with a legal means of delivering content impossible to even consider just a few years ago. The prospect of a student in a remote settlement in Alaska taking a course on Motown with access to every recording made by the label is no longer just an interesting idea—it is a reality whose time has finally come.”
