Popular Music Culture Research Articles

Techno-feudalism or platform capitalism? Conceptualising the digital society

A number of popular commentaries in recent years have contended that the emergence of an advanced, platform-oriented digital economy marks the end of capitalism as such. This paper evaluates these claims from theorists such as Mckenzie Wark and Yannis Varoufakis. Ultimately the paper suggests that a more useful and plausible alternative to them is to be found in the Regulation School assertion that ‘platform capitalism’ constitutes a new ‘regime of accumulation’: a successor to ‘Fordism’ and ‘post-Fordism’. The paper explains the historical origins of this approach, arguing for its continued usefulness and its compatibility with important recent developments in institutional, technological and media sociology. It explains the compatibility of an approach characterising ‘platform capitalism’ as a new regime of accumulation with a range of other perspectives on both ‘platformization’ and contemporary capitalism, and discusses both recent changes to popular music culture and broad trends in populist politics in recent decades as exemplifying cultural, social and political features of platform capitalism.

Interweaving Melody and Beat -Specialties of Japanese and Korean Pop Music Styles and Development from Yonezu Kenshi and Han JiSung

Currently, in Asia and around the world, Japanese and Korean popular music cultures have a large number of fans and imitators. These two pop music cultures have their own characteristics, both of which have extremely distinctive style characteristics, complete and standardized industrial systems and a large number of creative, young and energetic practitioners. Therefore, the author tries to explore the style and development characteristics of Japanese and Korean pop music. In order to be more precise and efficient, the author selected two representative musicians, Yonezu Kenshi (Japan) and Han JiSung (South Korea) for the study. The author's research method is as follows. The author makes full use of previous theoretical research on Japanese and Korean pop music, combined with professional knowledge of music, and collects statements and social interviews of relevant authors in order to have a comprehensive understanding of their representative music works. Then the author makes a coded analysis and statistical drawing of the melody, rhythm and emotional expression of his representative works. After the study, the author found that the development of Japanese and Korean popular music cultures are similar but also significantly different. Mainly, the former is relatively conservative and traditional, focusing on melody; the latter is more open and tolerant, focusing on rhythm; at the same time, there are quite a lot of similarities and differences between the two in terms of emotional expression and lyrical characteristics. Finally, based on the summarized developmental characteristics, the author draws some inspirations for the development of Chinese pop music.

Stars, Anti-Stars, Anti-Star-Stars

The phenomenon of stars and celebrities in media cultures – and especially in popular music cultures – seems to be omnipresent. At the same time, there is an astounding lack of analysis and research on these media personalities and personas, and international celebrity studies only recently a developing new field. Similarly, these kinds of observations are still very rare especially in German sociology as well as communication, media, culture and popular music studies. In this article, I therefore want to concentrate on the foundations of studying stars and celebrities within the attention economies by undertaking a theoretical transmedia-cultural framing of media personas and suggesting a typology. This ensuing typology of stars, anti-stars, and anti-star stars – especially within popular music cultures – demonstrates how stars and celebrities and their quantities and qualities of success and peer-group specific values coming form programs of (media and music) culture can serve as persona-seismographs of socio-cultural change between tradition and innovation.

Sad Girls on TikTok: Musical and Multimodal Participatory Practices as Affective Negotiations of Ordinary Feelings and Knowledges in Online Music Cultures

ABSTRACT This article examines musical participatory practices on TikTok as mediations of ordinary feelings and knowledges. It conducts a multimodal analysis of user-generated videos that recirculated the song “Complex” by Scottish singer-songwriter Katie Gregson-MacLeod, which became widely successful on the app in 2022. Through its features and sociotechnical affordances, TikTok fosters feminine-coded articulations of intimate affects and negotiations of ordinary feelings and knowledges that have been marginalized in popular music cultures. Its intersecting algorithmic logics and human practices also create new rules about what affective sensibilities are foregrounded and how they are circulated through multimodal and memetic participatory practices.

The Mediation of Genre, Identity, and Difference in Contemporary (Popular) Music Streaming

Abstract Music streaming service Spotify has recently declared that genre is becoming less important in popular music culture, linking this idea to post-identity claims. In contrast, the central argument of this article is that genre continues to matter in music streaming, where algorithmic recommendation systems remediate genre and its association with constructions of identity and difference. We examine Spotify's mediation of genre through a multimodal discourse analysis of genre metadata as presented on the website Every Noise at Once, playlist curation, and media discourse. Analysing the genres bubblegrunge and rap français (French rap), we show that the algorithmic and human processes of Spotify and its users rearticulate genre, shaping, in turn, patterns of recommendation, curation, and consumption. These processes remediate earlier constructions of identity, temporality, and place in music culture. Simultaneously, they intensify differentiation and individuation, tying in with postulations of multiplicity and diversity in neoliberalism that conceal power imbalances.

“Genrefluid” Spotify Playlists and Mediations of Genre and Identity in Music Streaming

Recent popular discourse has claimed that music and listeners’ tastes are becoming increasingly “genrefluid” in popular music culture, and this idea has been linked to the logics of music streaming services. This article analyzes the Spotify-curated playlist Lorem, which has been presented by the company as a primary illustration of “genrefluid” music curation and listening, to investigate Spotify’s mediations of genre and identity at the intersections of media discourse, genre metadata, and curated sound. I discuss how the idea of genrefluidity links post-genre and post-identity discourses to the technocultural logics of algorithmic recommendation. At the same time, Spotify’s mediation of genre remediates earlier hegemonic associations between genre and identity in popular music culture. This article concludes that musical categorization in music streaming does not transcend genre and identity but is characterized by ambivalent mappings of genre and identity mediated by the logics of algorithmic technologies.

Research on the Comparative Development of Modern Popular Music and Traditional Music Culture in Colleges and Universities in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Abstract In this paper, the forward neural network multi-feature fusion algorithm is used to extract the emotional features of music culture on artificial intelligence technology, considering the diversity and intermittency of the emotional features of the study, which needs to be parameterized. In the forward neural network architecture, the activation value obtained by using the nonlinear activation function is used, and the results obtained are passed to the next layer of data to realize layer-by-layer forward computation, which leads to the back-propagation activation function. The music culture emotion classification model is constructed based on the propagation mode of the forward neural network to determine the emotion recognition process. The research object is selected, the research process is determined, and in order to ensure the true validity of the research, it is necessary to test the reliability and validity of the research design scheme and to develop an empirical analysis of the comparison between popular music and traditional music culture. The results show that on the model, especially in the recognition of sacred, sad, passionate emotion type of music classification accuracy reached more than 88.2%. This paper’s model can improve the classification accuracy of music emotion to a certain extent. In the ontological knowledge analysis of popular music and traditional music culture, all three editions of textbooks show that general knowledge of music is predominant and has a large proportion, appreciation knowledge and extended knowledge are also considerable, and music knowledge is the least and has a small proportion. This study demonstrates the synergistic development of traditional culture and modern popular music, which is of great significance to the development of music education in colleges and universities.

‘Rocking the establishment’: Subculture, authenticity and the populist radical right in Sweden

This article uses the recent rise of populist radical right discourses in society as a cultural and political phenomenon to explore the role of popular music in constructing these discourses, with a focus on the Sweden Democrats (SD) and musician Peter Jezewski. By examining Jezewski’s direct collaborations with the SD and his song ‘My Land’, the article uncovers how popular music culture participates in the construction of populist discourses of ‘the people’ in nativist terms. The article contends that certain subcultural styles in popular music resonate strongly with populist discourses of a ‘silenced majority’ in need of a strong populist leader and as such contribute to the construction of the ‘people’ versus ‘elite’ antagonism beyond the political realm. The case study of Jezewski’s song and music video emphasises how nostalgic rock culture enables populist articulations by aligning with populist radical right anti-establishment, preservationist−nativist discourses and the performative construction of ‘the people’. Drawing on cultural studies resources, the article hence investigates the practices that bring ‘a people’ into existence through cultural tropes and mechanisms to better comprehend the links between articulations of populism, popular culture and subcultural performances of counter-hegemonic resistance.

Кавер-версии в эстрадной вокальной музыке: тенденции возникновения

The research is dedicated to examining the origins and the history of development of a musical adaptation technique known as creating cover versions within the study of the aspect of interpretation in contemporary music, particularly in popular vocal art. The aim of the paper is to identify the main trends in the emergence of cover versions in popular vocal music. The scientific novelty of the research lies in its exploration of the peculiarities of the phenomenon of cover versions in the context of the transformation of popular music and vocal-popular performance culture as a whole, spanning from the 1940s to the early 21st century. As a result, the author concludes that the key trends in the history of emergence of cover versions in popular vocal music were as follows: 1) the practical one, involving the use of cover versions to improve performers’ skill; 2) the commercial one, where recording cover versions became a popular commercial product due to advancements in recording and broadcasting technologies; 3) the artistic individualisation, within which higher demands were placed on song material in popular music culture and certain criteria, such as individualisation, sincerity, purity of performance and authenticity of the performer’s versions, were predominant.

Application of Bp neural network model based on modern popular music and traditional music culture fusion teaching in colleges and universities

Abstract This paper analyzes the characteristics of music teaching development, constructs a variety of music integration teaching methods in the background of the “Internet+” era, and evaluates the quality of this teaching method based on the BP neural network algorithm. Since the traditional BP neural network cannot consider modeling the critical point of adjacent teaching quality levels, a Markov chain Monte Carlo simulation with adaptive sampling and BP network is used to study the teaching evaluation problem. Simulation through the constructed evaluation system yields that the prediction accuracy of the model constructed in this paper reaches more than 94%, and the absolute value of the relative error between the predicted and expected results of the model in this paper is controlled within 1.5%. According to this study, teaching the integration of modern pop music and traditional music culture on the Internet is feasible.

Maritime heritage and modern national identities in Scandinavia, circa 1900–2020

The Scandinavian nations are maritime nations but this does not mean that ‘maritime’ is a natural and conscious component of modern national identities in Scandinavia. National identities are shaped by diverse historical narratives and experiences, and they fluctuate in time and space. The contributions to this forum attempt to answer the question of to what extent modern national identities in Scandinavia incorporate such a maritime component. They study this question from the perspectives of Swedish naval officers and popular music culture, Danish maritime heritage culture and maritime labour, and Finland's naval diplomacy.

Jamaican Sound Systems and Knowledge Systems: Practice-Based Research (PBR) in Popular Culture

Working with popular street cultures in the Global South offers scope for practice-based research (PBR) to go beyond its application with creative practitioners in the galleries and theatres of the Global North. We start from an account of a “reasoning session” with reggae sound system owners, selectors, and engineers staged as a PBR event in Kingston, Jamaica. Such popular music cultures across the Global South have their own specialist apparatus for playing recorded music and—most important for a PBR investigation—their own embodied, situated, and tacit knowledge systems. These include the sophisticated arts of selecting music, tuning up a sound system, and the value of the culture for the communities from which they originate, as well as strategies for current challenges, such as police harassment and lack of government recognition or support. Accessing such grassroots knowledge systems requires not only a good rapport with local practitioners but also close cooperation with their own organizations and with local university researchers. Such PBR also demands sharing research findings—for example, by screening the documentary film we made of the reasoning session for its participant. It is concluded that practitioners’ ways of knowing as revealed by PBR can help challenge conventional ideas about the nature of knowledge itself.

Negotiating girlhood in rock music: Nandi Bushell, prodigy discourse and adult mentor-fans

Abstract Nandi Bushell (b. 2010) is a British-Zulu drummer and multi-instrumentalist whose early career has garnered much attention from audiences and the international music press. In this article, we investigate the case of Bushell as a point of entry for understanding children's participation in mainstream popular music culture and the broader public sphere. We explore Bushell's social media presence, creative output and public reception in relation to three interrelated themes: (1) the functioning of social media and the music press as arenas for the (re)negotiation of ideas about child prodigy; (2) child musicians’ political activism; and (3) the role of adult ‘mentor-fans’ in sponsoring girls’ participation in rock culture. In grappling with the complexities of these themes, we place a particular emphasis on querying how dominant conceptions of girlhood inform the press coverage of Bushell's music and social media output, as well as on examining her highly visible relationships with established male rock artists serving as mentors, fans and industry brokers. Ultimately, the article sheds new light on how notions of girlhood as a cultural identity are negotiated by young artists and their (often adult) audiences in relation to musical genre boundaries.

Adolf Sonnenfeld’s Pan Twardowski: Some Observations on the Theatrical Musical Version of the Legend

The subject of the analysis consists in the sources concerning the ballet Pan Twardowski by Adolf Sonnenfeld. On the basis of the surviving description of the performance from 1898 and the piano excerpts of selected ballet scenes, conclusions were drawn about the Warsaw composer’s work as another variant of the popular Polish legend. The important research context is a reflection on the popular music culture of the second half of the 19th century and contemporary styles of reception

Listening to Anohni's variously vibrating voice: studying transfeminine vocality in 21st-century popular music culture through the concept of vocal figurations

AbstractThis article examines the work and reception of singer-songwriter Anohni to investigate sonic and discursive negotiations of transfeminine vocality in 21st-century popular music culture. Developing Haraway's concept of feminist figurations, it introduces the concept of vocal figurations, which articulates a performative, relational and multiply mediated understanding of voice, wherein gendered voice takes shape through processes of voicing and listening. I initially examine Anohni's reception to analyse how biologist, trans-exclusionary and othering discourses surrounding voice and gender inform emergent discourses of transfeminine voices in the first decades of the 21st century. Subsequently, I build on trans and queer theorisations of voice and listening to engage Anohni's variably vibrating voice as a vocal figuration that may challenge biologist and marginalising constructions of transfeminine vocality. I suggest that it may attune us to recognise all gendered voices as thoroughly situated yet changeable configurations of sounding voices, bodies, and subjects.

Cultural Approach in Scientific Research Activity of Interaction Between Popular and Folk Musical Culture in Creativity of Ukrainian Vocal-Instrumental Ensembles of 1960s and 1980s

The purposeof the article is to identify the types of interaction between the national mass culture of the 60–80s, represented by vocal and instrumental ensembles and folk music, and to determine the trends in its development during this period. The research methodology is based on the systematic analysis of domestic pop of the 1960-80's. The descriptive approach provides the disclosure of the most complete picture of Ukrainian pop, which allows different approaches to the problems of its evolution in the author's, performer's, educational, and entertainment context.Scientific novelty. The most complete systematisation of the music of national VIЕ in the context of interaction with folklore (by years of releasing albums, singles), for the first time a list of pop arrangements of Ukrainian folk songs by the most famous ensembles is presented. Besides, the general tendency of penetration of folk song and dance intonations into author's compositions is covered. The combined types, namely the use of author's music and folk poetry and vice versa in one work, are shown. It is proven that the regional factor is not localised in the music of certain ensembles, but is common to many, arrangements of songs of different regional origin are found in the music of ensembles from all regions of Ukraine. Conclusions. The period of the 60s and 80s in Ukrainian popular culture is significant in terms of new approaches to authorship and performance. It is then that it becomes mass. This is the time of the birth of professional pop education, the function of which was partially performed by Ukrainian ensembles, experience in ensembles provided professional skills of performers. Folk music culture has become an integral part of the repertoire of bands in the form of pop arrangements, genre stylisations. Orientation to folklore is demonstrated by all well-known ensembles of that period, the range of folk songs processed by pop musicians is significantly expanding. There is a total renewal of all means of expression associated with the development trends of European pop culture, to which the national fully belongs. Key words: vocal and instrumental ensemble, pop culture, folklore, pop arrangement, music album.

Live Music Consumption of the Adolescents of Generation Z

Getting more adolescents to participate in live music would increase the vitality and sustainability of venues and popular music culture. We studied 15–18-year-old Finnish adolescents of Generation Z and their live music consumption habits with the help of segmentation. The research questions were: Why and with whom do adolescents attend live music events? What kind of live music events do adolescents go to? and, What kind of knowledge do these typologies provide about adolescents’ needs from a broader perspective? Considering that there is a vast number of segmentation studies based on event participation motives, it is peculiar that there are no motivational segmentation studies on adolescent event participants. One of the reasons might be that traditionally youth has been considered as a single homogenous consumer segment. Our results showed that adolescent live music event attendees demonstrated different needs. Four segments were identified: adolescents driven either by content, scene, friendship or social factors. Article cover photo: Jaana Ahvenainen.

Multidirectionality and Collaborative Practice: Reggae and Dancehall Music between Germany and Jamaica

Against the backdrop of the global circulation of reggae and dancehall music, the article argues that the emergence of these genres in Germany resulted from multidirectional collaborations among musicians in Germany, Jamaica, and other places. Focusing on Gentleman and Seeed, Germany’s two most successful reggae artists, the article examines specific aesthetic forms and cultural practices as sites of multidirectionality and collaborative practice, such as the riddim, the feature song, the use of Jamaican Patois, and the journey to Jamaica. In the German case, the global dissemination and appropriation of Jamaican popular music resulted in the formulation of heterogeneous visions of transnational communities related to collaborative musical practices. At the same time, the article explains Gentleman’s and Seeed’s appropriation of this Black popular music culture as responses to their experiences in postwall Germany.

“Acidofilia”: The Work of the Acid Drinkers in the Discursive Landscape of Metal Music Culture

The main subject of this article is the artistic activity of one of the first thrash metal bands in Poland, the Acid Drinkers founded in 1986 in Poznań. The text outlines the state of indigenous metal music studies and identifies selected theoretical contexts related to song studies and the multimodality of popular music culture. In the analysis of the Acid Drinkers’ work, particular attention is paid to the intertextuality of the iconography of Acid Drinkers’ album covers, selected protest songs created by the band, and ironic interpretative covers, which also constitute an important element in the group’s discography.

Modern performing arts of Ukraine as lecture and practical lessons in the course with future teachers of musical art

The purpose of the work is to highlight experimental methodical approaches to the representation of certain aspects of modern Ukrainian vocal art on the example of the organization of research, educational and performing activities of master's students of the Faculty of Arts of V. Hnatyuk TNPU.
 The research methodology consists in the use of methods of historical and cultural discourse, historical and musicological positions on the problems of vocal art, in the implementation of activity and integrative approaches based on the example of art pedagogy. Attention is focused on the problem of representation of the main problems of the development of modern Ukrainian vocal art on the example of the organization of research, educational and performing activities of future music teachers. Taking into account the tasks of their professional training, the specifics and prospects of their future pedagogical and performing activities, we have already made attempts to extrapolate the history of performing schools to the content of the "Methodology of Music Education" course and the subjects of the school cycle, in particular, the reading of the "Artistic Culture of Ukraine" course during 2019–2020. The scientific novelty consists in the presentation of an integrative approach to the organization of the research, educational and performance activities of master's students on the example of the interaction of teachers of specialized lecture-theoretical ("History of Ukrainian Music", "Contemporary Music"), research courses ("Fundamentals of Music and Pedagogical Research", "Methodology of Scientific research", "Fundamentals of musical interpretation") and practical disciplines ("Vocal") during 2020–2021. A number of examples of research work of master's students are presented (essays, "musical quizzes", questionnaires, etc., related to the problems of modern musical art). A block of master's research materials related to musical Ternopil, with the organization of the competition and festival movement, is separately allocated. Excerpts from essays of master's students on the topic "Show business: pros and cons" are given. As examples of the cooperation of academic supervisors with vocal teachers, the content of master's studies was clarified, respectively - programs of master's students' concerts. For example, creative projects "Song about a song", "Moment".
 Conclusions. We believe that the best examples of modern pop songs are an important contribution to the vocal art of Ukraine. Their role especially increases in periods of social challenges, war tragedies as a reaction-protest of artists and society in general. At the same time, it is an interesting research material, a high-value performing and educational repertoire, which should be qualitatively presented in performance classes of art institutions. So, the layer of popular musical culture and performance, represented by the activities of famous soloists and bands from different regions of Ukraine, participants of the competition-festival movement in Ukraine and abroad, was and remains the subject of thorough comparative research.