Abstract
This paper investigates the missing link between music and material studies in analyses of everyday music reception. In light of the increasing material fragmentation and heterogeneity of contemporary modes of music consumption, I interrogate how to theorize the materiality of music technologies within everyday interactions with music. Thus, I review accounts on ‘music and everyday life’ before discussing contemporary modes of music consumption. Then I proceed to look at how recent technological changes have contributed in re-configuring questions of materiality in analyses of music reception. Ultimately, the article explores the relationship between individuals and the technologies they use to listen to music. The multiplicity of material options at individuals’ disposal accounts for both the presence and diffusion of music within everyday life.
Highlights
Drawing on the contemporary modes of music consumption that are increasingly characterized by the fragmentation and heterogeneity of material interactions with music, I seek to understand how listening practices are defined by the music content listened to, and by the type of technology and materiality used to do so
Investigations related to music listening are traditionally divided between two paradigms: one that poses ‘music‘ as an object that individuals interact with in everyday life and which affects them; and a second that scrutinizes particular music technologies and their materiality to explore the type of cultural changes they induce
This article has discussed issues of music consumption in relation first to macro statistics that point towards a greater fragmentation and heterogeneity of the ways in which individuals interact with music technologies, and second in relation to more micro and grounded accounts of everyday listening practices
Summary
This paper discusses the ways in which the materiality of music technologies can be included within analyses of everyday interactions between individuals and recorded music, in the context of the digital age of music technologies. Between two paradigms: one that poses ‘music‘ as an object that individuals interact with in everyday life and which affects them (see DeNora, 2000, 2003; Hennion, 2003, 2007; Hennion, et al, 2000); and a second that scrutinizes particular music technologies and their materiality to explore the type of cultural changes they induce (see Bull, 2005, 2007; Simun, 2009; Sterne, 2006) While the former paradigm critically neglects to account for the materiality of music technologies, the latter neglects the importance of music content that individuals listen to through these technologies as well as other forms of material consumption of music. Affordances are tested in the context of listening practices, and the ways these material interactions play out alters how individuals continuously use one music technology, or abandon it over time
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