Sonic Technologies

Popular Music, Digital Culture and the Creative Process

Robert Strachan

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781501310645
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

Awarded a Certificate of Merit at the ARSC Awards for Excellence 2018 In the past two decades digital technologies have fundamentally changed the way we think about, make and use popular music. From the production of multimillion selling pop records to the ubiquitous remix that has become a marker of Web 2.0, the emergence of new music production technologies have had a transformative effect upon 21st Century digital culture. Sonic Technologies examines these issues with a specific focus upon the impact of digitization upon creativity; that is, what musicians, cultural producers and prosumers do. For many, music production has moved out of the professional recording studio and into the home. Using a broad range of examples ranging from experimental electronic music to more mainstream genres, the book examines how contemporary creative practice is shaped by the visual and sonic look and feel of recording technologies such as Digital Audio Workstations.

Chapter One

Digital technologies, democratization and cultural production

Making music is getting more and more accessible. As Steve Jobs pointed out in his latest keynote speech, anyone can now be a music maker. Soundcloud’s part is that, as well as being a really useful tool for the major artists and record labels, we empower this new generation of music-makers to share their creations and get feedback.

Dave Hynes, vice president of Soundcloud. (Quoted in Swash 2011, 7)

This pronouncement from a senior executive of one of the most significant internet start-ups of recent years is typical of the way in which new media companies commonly frame their respective business models and USPs. For the new media industry, from high-tech corporations to start-up companies, the idea that their products somehow empower consumers, enable creativity and allow a voice for individual expression has become an overriding logic of product development, as well as a key to how such products are marketed to, and understood by, the public. Such a logic is a direct reflection of the level of ubiquity and extraordinary financial success of web-based services and apps that have become integrated in the lives of consumers from the mid-2000s onwards. From Facebook and Twitter to Instagram, Soundcloud, Vimeo and YouTube, these services are essentially platforms for users to create, upload and share differing types of content. These services have become the defining business models of Web 2.0 (generally accepted as the second stage in of internet development), a historical period characterized by the emergence of social media and a move away from static HTML pages towards more dynamic or user-generated content, further accelerated by the further ubiquity of the ‘untethered’ web – as experienced and accessed through tablet computers and smartphones. As such, the idea of the empowered user is entwined within the DNA of Web 2.0, defining its core functions and discourses, in which leveraging the power of the consumer has become central to the business models of tech companies. Simultaneously, the prosumer (a portmanteau of producer and consumer first coined by Alvin Toffler in his 1970 work, Future Shock) has become recognized as a target market for technology, computing and information technology industries and is also a contemporary cultural buzzword (Gerhardt 2008; Gunelius 2010). Prosumer technologies such as camcorders, sound recording equipment and DAWs have provided relatively affordable tools which have been utilized in an uncountable plethora of high-quality, self-produced media.

These twin aspects of digitalization have meant that the democratization of culture, empowerment and everyday creativity have become enduring concepts in common public discourse about internet culture and digital technologies more generally. In the decade since Time magazine (Grossman 2006) famously pronounced ‘You’ (as a signifier for the general public) as their person of the year for ‘founding and framing the new digital democracy’ such discourses have become so pervasive that they have become almost self-evident.

This broader context of technological progression and discursive framing is crucial in coming to terms with the shifts in music production practices facilitated by personal computer – based applications that are central to this book. And in some ways we can take the general thrust of these broader everyday discourses of democratization as highly apposite. There is no doubt that technological developments from the 1990s onwards have led to a levelling between the ‘professional’ and ‘amateur’ studio both in terms of achievable audio quality and the actual techniques and interfaces used to realize finished recordings. As Théberge (2012, 83) notes, hardware and software developers have increasingly designed professional and consumer versions of their products with almost interchangeable fea­tures, meaning that ‘the sheer power of these technologies has largely fulfilled the dream of a professional quality home recording that earlier technologies … only promised’. As a result ‘the distinction between what can be considered a “professional” or “commercial” project studio and simply a “personal” or “home” studio … [has] become increasingly difficult to make’ (ibid.).

However, while these technological changes are undeniable and highly significant, I do not want to categorize them as unproblematically providing some kind of across-the-board democratization of musical practice. Rather, this chapter will argue that the effects and implications of these technological changes are complex, multifarious and subject to a variety of nuanced social and cultural contexts. In effect, they have to be situated within distinct and often separate cultural and industrial realms. As the wealth of sociological work from the culture of production perspective (Negus 1992; Peterson 1997; Du Gay 1997; Hesmondhalgh 2007) to Bourdieian analyses of the cultural industries (Pratt 1997; Hibbett 2005; Strachan 2007; Moore 2007; Scott 2012) has demonstrated, cultural production and creativity takes place according to specific discursive, economic and cultural conventions. We should not be blinded to implications of these existing and evolving frameworks by merely replicating the pervading utopianism of public discourse. With this in mind, I want to suggest that the concepts of democratization and the prosumer when applied to musical practice are somewhat knotty and less than straightforward than pervading popular discourse would suggest. Rather than taking as wholesale the idea that developments in technology have constituted a disruptive break with previous practice, it is important to place them within the structural specificities and historical legacy of popular music production.

In order to unpack this, the chapter will initially outline issues around digital democratization in terms of production and distribution. In particular, it identifies three often overlapping relevant fields: amateur/hobbyist, small-scale cultural production and the mainstream recording industry, and goes on to examine how digital recording practices operate within them. First, it addresses the question of access to technology by examining how the distribution of cracked software (whereby the removal of copy protection features from software makes it freely available) and a depreciation of the price of VST applications have broadened the number of people utilizing studio technology. It argues that this factor alongside the easy dissemination of information about studio skills and more intuitive user-friendly modality to VST technologies has served to lower the entry barriers to music production. The chapter then unpacks common discourses relating to the effects of digitization upon distribution and mediation, arguing that the wider dispersal of studio technologies does not necessarily equate a singular democratization of popular music practice. Rather, it suggests that digitization should be understood as having differential effects relating to the specificities of a given cultural field.

Secondly, it will examine how such technologies have significant implications for small-scale cultural production operating outside of, or on the periphery of, the mainstream. Finally, it will examine the situation and use of digital audio workstations in the mainstream pop industry. Through a detailed analysis of hit single recordings in 2015 it will argue that digital technologies have led to both changes in the sites of production of popular music and in the predominant creative units through which pop is produced.

The democratization of production

In a series of articles on the British post-punk, indie and dance music scenes Hesmondhalgh (1997, 1998, 1999) draws upon various theoretical positions to propose a typology of democratization as a way of assessing ‘the level of democracy in any given form of media production’ (1998, 256). These elements of democratization are: increased participation and access, a decentralization in terms of media organizations and technologies, equality in levels of reward and status for participants and the emergence of innovative and diverse forms of expression. This typology provides a useful framework for a discussion of the effects of digitization upon cultural production. Although Hesmondhalgh’s research discusses a period when the full impact of the internet on music cultures, production, consumption and economic flows was yet to be felt, each of these four elements has had material effects on the ways in which music practices and their promotion have developed over the past two decades.

The key thrusts of the democratization argument in relation to digitization and music practice have been twofold: the democratization of production and the democratization of distribution. So, on the one hand, we have the availability of digital music making technologies to a much wider group of consumers and producers (Jacobson 2011–12; Leyshon 2014) and, on the other, the possibilities of distribution of recordings and access to a wider audience outside of traditional media and industry channels (Adegoke 2006; Mali 2008; Swash 2011; Hracs 2012). In tandem these two factors are often read as producing a quasi-utopian virtual landscape in which the traditional barriers for entry to the music industry and the control of distribution have been eroded. Ryan and Hughes sum this position up neatly:

Whereas technology previously alienated the average person from the music production process, the relationship is now reversed, and technology has returned the means of production to the people, ushering in an era of recording democracy. If you want a voice you can have one. And the audience votes with the click of a mouse. (Ryan and Hughes 2006, 240)

With regard to the democratization of production there is no doubt that recording, sequencing and synthesizer technologies have in the past twenty years become much more accessible to a wider range of people purely through the development of computer-based technologies and their widespread availability. First, software and hardware targeted at the consumer market (as opposed to the professional audio industry) has become much more sophisticated and have undergone a price drop in real terms. Secondly, the gap between professional- and amateur-targeted technologies has significantly shrunk in terms of the quality of recording that can be made on either. Thirdly, internet technologies have meant that a significant proportion of music software programs have been available as illegal downloads, thereby massively increasing the number and demography of consumers who have access to such programs.

This third issue is highly significant in that anybody with access to an internet connection and a personal computer, and having some level of computer literacy can engage in production at some level. This presents a substantial change from the hobbyist market outlined by Théberge (1997) in his study of home studio technologies of the 1980s and 1990s. The rapid permeation of MIDI technologies in the early 1980s led to a concurrent expansion of the consumer market for synthesizers, sequencers and home recording equipment. The entrance into the market of large Japanese corporations in the mid-1970s along with the advent of digital technologies and MIDI protocol led to a significant drop in price and a level of technological compatibility that enabled home studios to become widespread for the amateur and semi-professional musician (ibid.). However, to set up a home studio as a hobby nonetheless required a fairly significant financial outlay on hardware and appropriate space in which to house such studio facilities.

A new set of possibilities was opened up in the 1990s when the differing tasks of the home studio could be performed on the singular site of the personal computer. As Chapter 2 will discuss in detail, personal computers became more powerful and widely available in the 1990s and the types of sampling, sequencing and digital recording technologies that emerged in the 1980s became available to home recordists through newly developed computer programs in the form of virtual studio technology. The shift from hardware to software meant that the DAW provided a singular environment that allowed users to record, edit and play back digital audio on their personal computers in a process of convergent digitization. Programs such as Cubase, Pro Tools and Logic developed over a number of years to provide professional standard production facilities within virtual environments without the need for external hardware such as synthesizers, sequencers or tape.

Cracked software, peer-to-peer networks and warez

Increases in the processing speeds of computers were also directly paralleled by the emergence of internet technologies, and with these developments distinct cultures and discourses emerged. The internet provided a means for the dispersal and sharing of software and an overarching logic for such sharing to take place on a mass scale. The originating ethos of the internet as a channel for the free distribution of information has had a fundamental legacy in its legal and cultural history. In many ways, these ideas were built into the DNA of internet culture. As Turner (2006) convincingly argues, the countercultural roots and connections of central figures involved in the incipient technological hub of Silicon Valley served to shift the discourses of computer culture from its roots in post-war military research towards a collaborative technologically driven utopia deeply influenced by the communal ideals of the hippies. As a direct result of its emergence from within this milieu, a common discursive position within internet culture throughout its existence has taken the form of a popular ‘intellectual property critique’ (Hemmungs Wirtén 2006) as manifest in the pro-piracy/anti-intellectual property movements. Forums and file-sharing sites have become ‘spaces where intellectual property and file-sharing are debated, wherein anti-copyright/pro-piracy rhetoric constitutes a kind of “party line” for this emergent audience’ (Lobato 2011, 114). As such, there has been something of a normalization of file-sharing among internet consumers.

An element of this culture has been dedicated network of individuals who used hacking as a form of political activism (or on a spectrum from anarchists to neo-libertarians) through a commitment to removing copy protection features from computer software and making free copies widely available. From the late 1990s what became known as the warez scene became (in terms of software) the most important source of copyrighted material illegally distributed online (Décary-Hétu 2014). Based around a ‘modern gift economy’ with ‘a consistent and internally rational structure of actively anti-economic behavior’ (Rehn 2004, 359) the warez scene emerged as a network of individuals whose shared values and subcultural practice led to a rapid acceleration in the global distribution of cracked software. A key motivating factor for individuals involved in the scene is the accumulation of subcultural capital leading to an exponential growth in the amount of applications available for download. The unlocking of software through the circulation of stolen passwords, the generation of key generation software (which generate personal unique passwords) and the disabling of other security functions became a central form of subcultural activity within this virtual scene. The fact that being the first to crack newly released software gave hackers kudos, status and a relative amount of fame within the scene led to a very quick turnover of software from official release to pirated version (Rehn 2004). In addition, the distribution of cracked copies (usually bearing the hacker’s digital signature) outside of the scene via popular torrent aggregators and file-sharing sites in order to increase the hacker’s reputation and fame meant that illegal software became available to a much wider audience. As a significant part of this movement, the hacking and distribution of cracked music production software became a focus for a buoyant audiowarez subgenre within the warez scene, with hundreds of newsgroups, aggregator and torrent sites emerging in the period. This meant that virtually all major audio software packages became available for free within a few clicks of a mouse to anyone who had the inclination to look for them. As such, cracked software and peer-to-peer networks have been an important point of entry to production technology for a significant caucus of consumers. For example, Whelan’s (2006) ethnographic study of amateur hip-hop and dance production points to widespread use of cracked copies by his respondents, indicating that for a large number of young musicians peer-to-peer networks constituted the ‘basis of community’ in which the use of illegal software had become an accepted part.

The impact of illegal downloads upon the music production software sector thus constitutes an unprecedented lowering of entry into studio technology. Although exact figures are difficult to come by, given the illegal nature of downloading, there are definite signs that cracked music software actually constitutes the major way in which computer-based technology is accessed by consumers. For example, the growth in computer hardware peripherals such as soundcards and control surfaces has substantially outstripped the equivalent growth in music software sales during the same period. Figures up to 2014 show a 35 per cent increase in the value of the soundcard market over a ten-year period while recording and sequencing software had experienced an 11 per cent decrease solely in the year leading up to the study (Challacombe and Block 2014, 30). These figures suggest that while the market for computer-based software is actually growing, the revenue derived from its sale is decreasing (through a mixture of piracy and a related drop in retail price for individual applications).

This trend has created a significant problem for the music production software industry. The trade body for the sector, the International Music Software Trade Association (IMSTA) includes board members from companies such as Cakewalk, Native Instruments and Steinberg and was specifically set up to address the problem of pirated software through an attempt to ‘raise awareness’ of piracy issues among music technology consumers. In the organization’s initial press release they estimated that a vast majority of music software in use (80 per cent) was pirated and that this figure was, in turn, a much higher percentage than that experienced within the general software industry where the piracy rate is estimated at 36 per cent. In other words, ‘for every legal copy of a [music related] software program sold, there are 5 illegal copies in use by potential consumers’.¹ The proliferation of pirated software has been instrumental in encouraging a reduction in the overall price of DAW software, further increasing its accessibility. NAMM’s 2014 global ro...