Popular Music in the Post Digital Age ed. by Ewa Mazierska, Les Gillon, Ton Rigg

Abstract

Reviewed by: Popular Music in the Post Digital Age ed. by Ewa Mazierska, Les Gillon, Ton Rigg J. Martin Vest (bio) Popular Music in the Post Digital Age. Edited by Ewa Mazierska, Les Gillon, and Ton Rigg. London: Bloomsbury, 2019. Pp. 292. Hardcover £103.68. In their introduction to Popular Music in the Post Digital Age: Politics, Economy, Culture and Technology, Mazierska, Gillon, and Rigg define the present “post digital age” not as a stage after digital technologies, but one in which these technologies have become ubiquitous (pp. 2–5). In bringing together these thirteen essays examining post-digital popular music, the editors have created an illuminating cross-section of evolving musical cultures in a number of national and international contexts, primarily in Europe, but with occasional forays beyond. The essays in part one provide snapshots of a post-digital music industry in which longstanding verities of production, marketing, and distribution have been shaken. Galuszka and Wyrzykowska, for example, chart the shifting meaning of “independence” by examining fifty-two Polish record labels, while Kenny Forbes and Waldemar Kuligowski document the persisting (and even increasing) role for live music festivals across Europe. In part two, contributors explore the lives and works of post-digital age musicians themselves, rendering a collective portrait of increasingly precarious musical labor. The theme wends through Mazierska’s and Rigg’s examination of English musicians Peter Hook and Graham Massey; Lars Bröndum’s interviews with contemporary Swedish composers; and Ewa Mazierska’s study of Austrian and Hungarian indie rock bands. Conversely, Chris Inglis’s essay examines European electro-swing, a genre foreign to most Americans, but which encapsulates perfectly the post-digital age’s potential to transcend past, present, and future through digital “sampling” techniques. Finally, part three explores music consumption in the post-digital age and here an important and recurring theme is that of “curation.” Emília Barna argues that music curation services, such as 22tracks, have played a key role in crystallizing new forms of class distinction. Andrew Fry, on the other hand, voices concern that by giving us exactly what (they think) we want, streaming music platforms and their curatorial algorithms will contribute to an impoverished marketplace of ideas. In their introduction, the editors also evoke French music scholar Jacques Attali to argue that the dematerialized, borderless, and fluid nature of music production and consumption in this post-digital age not only mirrors the broader global economy, but also prefigures its incipient transformations (pp. 1–2). In that spirit, many of the collection’s essays offer thought-provoking analyses of post-digital music’s compatibility and complicity with the present and emerging neoliberal dispensation. In Manchester, UK, Kamila Rymajdo finds club owners engaging in high-risk investments in the name of novelty, diversifying their investments across several [End Page 382] ventures and employing volunteer “crowdsourced” labor. Mathew Flynn, on the other hand, looks to media history to distill a “heuristic” for predicting the future of music consumption in the post-digital age. Technologies that facilitate broader playlist choice and “situational control” while also reducing the necessity of skill and knowledge on the part of users, he argues, will carry the day. Paulo Magauddo assesses predictions that blockchain technology will undermine neoliberal currents in the music industry and (smartly) issues a skeptical “not so fast!” The blockchain’s much-trumpeted decentralism, he points out, is already being challenged by the incursion of massive firms such as Spotify, while its potential to make early song-downloaders “shareholders” in the song’s revenues threatens to extend the logic of capitalism even further into the heart of post-digital musical culture. Finally, Michael Huber analyzes the findings of a 2015 survey on musical attitudes and behaviors conducted by the Institute for Music Sociology in Vienna. By examining the answers of young respondents, he is able to offer some well-founded predictions for the future of music consumption. As the American philosopher Yogi Berra once warned, however, “it’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” Not surprisingly, then, contributors’ projections for the future of post-digital music are less consistently illuminating than their analyses of the present, with many opting for a non-committal prediction...