Music Commodities Research Articles

Broken promises and transoceanic fragments: Japanese tango musicians in Manchuria, 1935–46

This article examines the personal experiences and memories of Japanese tango musicians in Manchuria in the years leading up to and immediately after the Second World War, revealing the tensions between migration and movement, on the one hand, and memory and loss, on the other. By engaging with the ideas surrounding tairiku (‘continents’) in early to mid-twentieth century Japan, this article moves away from triangulating the transoceanic movements of Japanese tango musicians and musical commodities across Japan, China and Latin America at this time. Instead, it considers such movements as the sonic manifestation of the island/continent dichotomy that framed Japanese maritime thinking in the first half of the twentieth century. Consequently, in offering a Japan-reflexive scholarship for the study and writing of global music histories, this article argues for the need to move beyond a geo-oceanic approach in examining transoceanic circulations.

‘Everybody Wants to Be My Enemy’: Popular Music and Transmediality in Arcane

The popularization of Arcane, released in 2021 on Netflix, has gone hand in hand with the billboard success by Imagine Dragons, Enemy. The series' soundtrack is rooted in previous musical commodities produced by Riot Games, whose growing interest in expanding the e-sports market through transmedia strategies has been reflected in the increasing weight of its non-playable products. The series proposes a confrontation between the members of two socioeconomically contrasting cities, which, along with the relationship between its protagonists and the selected music for its illustration, brings the imagined reality of the show closer to the daily experience of its audience. The suggested analysis and the collection of the participants' experiences in the transmedia phenomenon shows how the strategy followed by the developer has effectively impacted the consumption of both the video game and the music of the artists involved in the confection of its Original SoundTrack.

‘Just be Easy, Feel the Music’ – Branding in the Musical and Social Life of Kampala’s Hip-hop Scene

ABSTRACT Situating branding as socio-cultural performative practice, this article provides critical insight into the hip-hop scene in Kampala, Uganda, with spatial contexts evoked through ethnographic accounts. Focusing on a recording studio in the city, branding mobilises, first, musical life through performative practices such as the creation of musical commodities informed by sound and image; and second, branding characterises and extends social life through formal and informal collaborative processes. Sustaining this is hip-hop’s prominence as a global brand of popular culture; apprehendings of the genre act in response to problematic social and economic issues in Uganda, engendered in turn by neoliberal structural adjustment policies and development interventions. Drawing on popular music studies and postcolonial scholarship, this article argues that practices of branding in Kampala’s hip-hop milieu acts in response to this social and economic uncertainty.

“A Circuit Tour of the Globe”: “Hiawatha” and the Double-Stake of Imperial Pop

AbstractBetween 1903 and 1904, the two-step “Hiawatha” spread rapidly throughout much of the colonial world. The travels of “Hiawatha” reveal both what Stuart Hall calls the “double-stake” of popular culture as well as what Amy Kaplan describes as the “anarchic” nature of empire: through its circulation and repeated hearings, “Hiawatha” became both a kind of colonizing force and also a medium that disturbed ideas about racial hierarchies and nationhood that served to justify colonial rule. By charting the global movement of “Hiawatha,” I show how the song became both a colonial force and also a medium for expressions that challenged imperial logic. The tune exhibited imperial tendencies: it saturated soundscapes and, as part of an emerging form of new musical commodities, coaxed listeners into recognizing their shifting status from auditors to consumers. Through its Native American subject matter, the song also helped to perpetuate ideas of evolutionary racial science that served to justify the violence of imperialism. The very qualities that made “Hiawatha” a colonizing song, though, especially its repetitious ubiquity, also increased the complexity of its meaning as it circuited the globe, leading some listeners to hear an accumulation of meanings that seemed to exceed the forms of US imperial pop.

Music as a Technology of Surveillance

AbstractThis article explores surveillance in cloud-based music streaming. Key catalysts in the transition from ownership- to access-based models of music distribution, services like Spotify, Pandora, or Deezer have positioned themselves as a means of reintegrating listeners into “digital enclosures” over which rights holders exercise greater control. Yet streaming's promise of remonetizing musical commodities demonetized by filesharing has been called into doubt by difficulties in converting users of advertising-based “freemium” services into paying subscribers. In need of alternative means of extracting value from users, streaming platforms have increasingly refashioned themselves as enterprises whose business extends beyond music-related services to encompass the collection, aggregation, and exchange of user data. In pursuing this strategy, streaming platforms place themselves in direct competition with other new media companies trading in user data. In order to distinguish themselves from such competitors, streaming platforms cast music as a particularly valuable source of data, offering privileged access to listeners’ innermost selves. But they also cast music as an ideal tracking device, accompanying individuals across a variety of social, physical and geographical spaces. In this way, the very attributes that make music so powerful a “technology of the self” facilitate its transformation into an equally powerful technology of surveillance.

True Kvlt? The Cultural Capital of “Nordicness” in Extreme Metal

In this article, we respond to the question of, "What is the cultural capital of Nordicness in heavy metal?". Through examining the popularity of Nordic symbolism in metal music, scenes and practices, we argue that the Nordic has been ascribed significant value in metal, wherein it offers a vehicle for narratives of masculinity, nationalism and ideology. Here we contend that the cultural capital given to Nordicness underpins not only the prevalence and market success of metal in Northern Europe, but also the ongoing circulation of narratives about the North in metal scenes across multiple global regions. Through analysing the repeated motifs of Nordic mythology, ecology and imagery as they emerge throughout metal's historic and contemporary manifestations, our article demonstrates the cultural capital with which the North is continually imbued in heavy metal. We call into focus how metal's aesthetic fascination with Nordicness as a site of heathenism, resistance and frontier landscapes is intertwined with a longer thematic history of masculinity, rebellion and affective community. This article therefore interrogates the cultural capital of Nordicness in metal scenes, and how this continues to shape the trajectories for the genre both in Northern Europe and throughout the world.

Digital Subscriptions: The Unending Consumption of Music in the Digital Era

ABSTRACTWhen Apple purchased Beats Music in 2014, it signified a major moment in the transformation of the recorded music commodity. This is the second time in the digital era that Apple has catalyzed a transformation of the recorded commodity after first disrupting the recording industry by creating the iTunes store. Now, the recording industry is changing from a business model dependent on the sale of commodities to a model based on subscriptions and streaming. I call this model unending consumption because it traps music listeners in a cycle where they must continually subscribe to have access to music. By giving subscribers unlimited access to music in exchange for $10 per month, the recording industry aims to increase the amount that the average consumer spends per year on music by 200%.

Decomposed: a political ecology of music

AbstractThis article is about what recordings are made of, and about what happens to those recordings when they are disposed of. It inscribes a history of recorded music in three main materials: shellac, plastic and data. These materials constitute the five most prevalent recording formats since 1900: 78s, LPs, cassettes, CDs and MP3s. The goal is to forge a political ecology of the evolving relationship between popular music and sound technology, which accounts not only for human production and consumption but also material manufacture and disposal. Such an orientation is useful for developing an analytical framework that is adequate to the complexities of the global material–cultural flows in which the recorded music commodity is constituted and deconstituted. It also strives towards a more responsible way of thinking about the relationship between popular music's cultural and economic value, on the one hand, and its environmental cost, on the other.

Copyright Law and the Changing Economic Value of Popular Music in India

Abstract Using archival and ethnographic data, this study examines Indian understandings of music as intellectual property, as expressed in industrial logic and practice, in industrial, legal and public discourse and through the content of, and approaches to, the Indian Copyright Act. Those understandings were powerfully influenced by changing technology, market dynamics, and Indian relations with the world economy (after 1984). Collectively, these phenomena led to sometimes extreme changes in the nature and economic value of music commodities in India between 1970 and 2010, and, ultimately, to the Copyright (Amendment) Bill 2012, the "Bollywood" amendments.

Beyond Musical Exceptionalism: Music, Value, and Ethnomusicology

Abstract I want to begin my discussion of ethnomusicology and power by considering the manifold conceptions of musical value in capitalist social and economic contexts. My guiding questions are these: what happens to music when it becomes a commodity? Is there something exceptional about music commodities in social life? Finding a way to navigate these questions, I would argue, is one way that the field of ethnomusicology might achieve greater theoretical relevance in the broader interdisciplinary discourses about the politics of culture. I will later suggest in this essay that an approach that broadens our understanding of reification and commodification of music as social practice might provide one way to address the problem of "musical exceptionalism" that at once provides us with an entrée into discussing the politics of cultural practice, even as the sometimes overly-specialized nature of our research seemingly dims the perceived relevance of our contribution.

Economy of the Ether: Early Radio History and the Commodification of Music

IntroductionHistory offers many examples of events that are unduly neglected because they do not memorialize an individual of charismatic personality, have timelines with a quantifiable beginning and end, or possess some other narrative device for easily communicating their story. complex history of early radio often results in an oversimplification of the facts, as the narrative of its creation becomes obscure nearly before it begins. A technical history of tuners, tubes, and transistors would serve radio well as a chronicle of its evolution as a workable device, but such a history is of interest only to those with the requisite expertise to appreciate its nuance. Similarly, a legislative account of the various radio and communication acts of the twentieth century has merit, but it lacks the intimacy of human interest to which great history aspires. An under-explored methodology examines radio as an influence upon the commodification of popular music. This article delineates such an approach by establishing a theoretical framework for the process of commodification, applying this framework to the early history of radio, and concluding with some observations about the future of radio and popular music.The Process of CommodificationCulture scholar Stuart Hall noted the difficulties a periodisation of popular culture involves, though he offered the 1880s-1920s as a broad era of its genesis.1 Sometimes called The Gilded Age in American history, this period is marked by profound advances in scientific, economic, and artistic pursuits. It is also the era in which America emerges as a world power. While founding fathers such as George Washington and Benjamin Franklin defined the first one hundred years of the nation's history, industrialist inventors such as Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse defined the next one hundred years. Edison in particular, perhaps more than any other man of his day, had a knack for recognizing the commercial utility of invention.2 His belief that the value of a new discovery was commensurate with its potential for monetization has become a bedrock principle of modem American capitalism.While he acknowledged the impact that Edison's phonograph, and later radio, had on the commodification of music, ethnomusicologist Timothy D. Taylor defended a theoretical basis for the process by which music became commoditized through scrutinizing the evolution of the player piano.3 By applying the concepts of Ideologies, Reification, and Fetishism to player piano advertisements, Taylor revealed several similarities between the economic behavior of music and that of traditional commodities.4 Whether or not an intangible product, such as music, can become a commodity in the purest sense is contingent upon how much room for abstraction is given to its definition.5 Still, despite any difficulties of classification that arise, the common language that these ideas offer is a convenient place to begin an exploration of how technology and mass communication have fundamentally changed the business of music.It is clear that from the late nineteenth century on, music evolved from a primarily personal, cultural, and religious enterprise to become a highly commercialized entity. Taylor highlighted the central role that music technology and music products play in this phenomenon:The production and dissemination of music involves a wide range of technological artifacts: violins, pianos, tin whistles, radios, CD players, MP3 players, and so forth. Each of these technologies exists as a separate commodity-yet inextricably intertwined with the musical commodities they contribute to producing.6He also identified ideologies of democratization and personal autonomy as crucial stratagems used by player piano advertisers to hawk their wares.7 Ideologies of democratization took a three-pronged approach by promoting: 1) access to music in the home, 2) the ability of anyone to play music using a player piano, and 3) the availability of more and more music as the library of player piano rolls expands. …

Musical Identity Online : A 'Netnographic' Perspective of Online Communities

Today`s technology enables consumers to trade millions of dollars, conduct online banking, access entertainment, and do countless other activities at the click of a button. Online social networks (OSN) have become a cultural phenomenon that allows for individualistic consumerism. Consumers are increasingly utilizing OSN to share ideas, build communities, and contact fellow consumers who are similar to themselves. The relevance of online communities to the music is immense especially because musicians are now using social media to build global audiences. Not only is information about music and performance disseminated online, but musical commodities are sold and traded online. Online music communities allow consumers to elect and create new identities online through the purchase of subcultural commodities. Given the growing economic importance of online music communities it is important to get a holistic view of subcultural communities online. This study utilized content analysis of online music community websites using the Netnography methodology as developed by Kozinet for data collection to analyze consumers` purchasing and consumption behavior of subcultural commodities online as related to the formation of subcultural identities. Findings showed that subcultural items are predominantly purchased online, especially digital music, and there is a need for more custom craft items. The authors presented a new conceptual taxonomy of online subcultural consumer classifications based on online behavior patterns.

The Structural Functions of Stardom in the Recording Industry

Stars are central to the experience of popular music, a focal point for individual and collective desire and a site for the interpretation of authorial intent. However, the social structure of stardom is also central to the industrial organization of popular music. Beginning with a discussion of approaches to stardom more generally, this paper outlines the key functions played by popular music stardom in the structure of the contemporary recording industry. It considers both the economic functions of stardom (the transferral of financial risk from the record label to the artist and the stabilization of markets) and its ideological significance (submerging the process of commodification inherent within popular music and acting as the primary means through which the popular music commodity attains its commercial value). In the final section, the paper considers the contemporary music industry and the changing power balance between record labels and stars, concluding that, if the major labels become significantly less powerful, then this will have major implications for the nature of popular music stardom per se.

The Firm Foundation of Organizational Flexibility: The 360 Contract in the Digitalizing Music Industry

The devaluation of the recorded music commodity under digitalization has destabilized the recording industry. One primary record industry response is the new “360 deal” form of the recording contract. By securing rights to individual acts’ live performance, music publishing and licensing, and merchandizing activities, this new deal expands record companies’ access to more profitable fields of music industry activity (if in piecemeal fashion). We examine the context, evolution, and varieties of the 360 deal, and argue that it re-secures record industry profitability and further stratifies the population of recording artists by shifting risk onto performers.

Lully in Siam: music and diplomacy in French-Siamese cultural exchanges, 1680-1690

In the 1680s, the kingdoms of France and Siam (the name for Thailand before 1939) sent several embassies to each other. Louis XIV admired the political and social authority of his Siamese counterpart Phra Narai; the two rulers engaged in detailed diplomacy through their intermediaries, and the cross-cultural exchanges that ensued were filled with music for entertainment and ritual. When three Siamese ambassadors visited France in 1686, they met Jean-Baptiste Lully and invited him to dine with them before attending one of his operas. French envoys subsequently carried the music of French operas to Siam, where extracts were performed before Phra Narai. This article examines documentary evidence of European musical commodities and musicians travelling to Siam, considers the role of Jesuits and other missionaries in cultivating and disseminating European music, critiques French ethnographic observations of Siamese music (and vice versa), analyses the role of musical performance in diplomatic ceremonial at the courts of Siam and France, and assesses cross-cultural reactions to musical performances. Finally, it evaluates forms of cultural reflexivity found in writings by Dufresny and Voltaire (with the latter ventriloquizing composer André-Cardinal Destouches, who as a youth travelled to Siam as part of the 1687 French embassy), in which fictional Siamese characters comment on French music and society.

Making music behave: Metadata and the digital music commodity

This article offers a case study of the Compact Disc Database and ID3 tags, two instrumental information technologies for digital music on computers. Using an interpretive analysis of the technical and cultural features of the Compact Disc Database and ID3 tags as well as press releases and journalistic accounts detailing the rise of these services, this article places digital metadata within the broader history of recorded music specifically and digital objects more generally. Started as hobby projects, the Compact Disc Database and ID3 tags have evolved into central components of the digital music ecosystem. As keystone technologies, they contributed to the emergence of a digital music commodity. Since both technologies derive much of their value from user contributions, this article also contributes to current theorization on the role of users in the production of digital commodities.

Grim Up North: Northern England, Northern Europe and Black Metal

In this article, the authors examine the tensions that surround the commercial success of black metal as a global music commodity and the identification of the genre with the conscious revival of myths and ideologies of an ancient northern European history and nationalist culture, via the ways in which an “imagined community” of Nordicness, identified with the original Norwegian scene, has been embraced and adapted by participants in the local extreme metal scene in northern England.

Sounds in the cloud: Cloud computing and the digital music commodity

This paper investigates the rise of cloud computing, specifically for music. More than just new technologies for distribution, cloud services establish a fundamentally different relationship between listeners and their music. As the metaphor suggests, the cloud offers an infinite space where music is ever available, but cloud services also act as transient and enclosed spaces where the music we “own” is always at an ethereal distance. Cloud–based music services represent a particular cultural model of music distribution — one that enmeshes users in a network of technologies and a process of continual commodification.

Teaching and Learning Guide for: Popular Music Cultures, Media and Youth Consumption: Towards an Integration of Structure, Culture and Agency

Teaching and Learning Guide for: Popular Music Cultures, Media and Youth Consumption: Towards an Integration of Structure, Culture and Agency

THE DISSEMINATION AND USE OF EUROPEAN MUSIC BOOKS IN EARLY MODERN ASIA

Musical commodities frequently accompanied European explorers, soldiers, merchants and missionaries who travelled to Asia in the early modern period. During this time, numerous theoretical treatises and musical scores – both printed and manuscript – were disseminated throughout Asia. This article examines the dissemination and use of European musical works in early modern China, Japan and the Philippines, before identifying the titles of scores and treatises so far known to have been present in these territories. In order to measure the relative success of European missionaries in transplanting music to early modern Asia, it then takes as case studies the local production of three significant sources of European music during the seventeenth century: (1) the earliest example of printed European music from Asia, produced by the Jesuit press at Nagasaki in 1605; (2) a Chinese treatise on European music that was commissioned by the Kangxi Emperor in 1713 and printed the following decade; and (3) a 116-page manuscript treatise, compiled by an unidentified Jesuit in late seventeenth-century Manila, which synthesises the most current European music theory as well as commenting on local musical practices.