Reside Music Change Weblog
On this weblog submit Keith Negus (Professor of Musicology at Goldsmiths, College of London) and Qian Zhang (Affiliate Professor on the College of Music and Recording Artwork, Communication College of China) current observations and a case-study from their new journal article on the evolution of the dwell music economic system and new patterns of commodification which might be rising within the face of digitalization.
The article is printed in Common Music and Society and might be accessed at:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03007766.2021.1921909
The Covid-19 pandemic halted many actions we took as a right, but accelerated modifications underway lengthy earlier than the virus began circulating. It disrupted our habits and routines, but launched new patterns of behaviour into our lives – whether or not in houses, faculties and workplaces, or at sport stadiums, and in bars and eating places. As recounted in lots of posts on the Reside Music Change and past, it has had a big impact on dwell music, but additionally given momentum to modifications already underway.
We contemplate these modifications, and their broader context, in an article simply printed in Common Music and Society which offers a genealogical narrative of those shifts within the economies and industries of dwell music, together with altering understandings of the dwell expertise. On this submit, we define a number of the key arguments of the article and supply an illustrative instance of how these modifications to the music economic system have performed out in China.
Adjustments to the dwell expertise
The article highlights how digital applied sciences have been built-in into dwell occasions inside a broader ‘expertise economic system’, and the way dwell music has been included into digital platforms and social media inside an ‘consideration economic system’. The expertise economic system (sometimes considered the specialness and shortage of live shows), and the eye economic system (requiring us to barter an abundance of tracks, clips, messages, apps, video games and so forth) exist collectively. As audiences seize performances on smartphones for importing and sharing, so dwell music turns into a recorded ingredient of content material. The streaming of dwell motion – whether or not a set from a basement membership, competition subject, or a singer’s kitchen – can provide entry to a novel expertise. But, it additionally struggles for consideration within the swirl of ample content material, after which turns into a fraction of knowledge saved within the warehouses, mountains, and subterranean caves of cyberjunk.
Digital platforms, streaming, and social media are altering how we take into consideration dwell music, and including additional dimensions to being a musician. Changing into a pop musician now not entails turning your self right into a ‘performing artist’ and a ‘recording artist’. It additionally entails changing into a ‘platform musician’ or, maybe, a ‘platform artist’. Within the following paragraphs we’ll clarify what we imply by these statements.
In our analysis we’ve got drawn on the work of Philip Auslander who identified that the time period ‘dwell music’ started showing in dictionaries through the Thirties to differentiate between dwell and recorded sound in radio broadcasting. When individuals listened to a phonograph cylinder or disk they have been fairly clearly listening to voices and music transmitted from a recording. However, the sound of a radio broadcast was extra ambiguous. The dwell/recorded distinction grew to become an moral and a authorized manner of categorizing broadcast sound (Auslander 2012). As Auslander additionally notes, the thought of dwell music at all times implied a way of spatial and temporal co-presence. But, for a few years, the liveness of the actual place was valued greater than the liveness of the actual time.
Social media and digital platforms are more and more demonstrating that an expertise occurring in actual time is starting to accumulate better emphasis and worth within the streaming of music. The dwell expertise is now not primarily about being current within the place the place a efficiency happens. Simply because the Walkman made recorded music extra cellular and built-in into diversified environment, so streaming permits audiences a unique expertise of dwell music. Reside streams might be accessed throughout a transitory journey on a practice amongst strangers, when sitting alone in a park, or when gathered with mates in a non-public residence or in bars and cafes.
Platform Musicians in China
In our article we embrace a extra prolonged dialogue of how the dwell turns into a recording, and the way the recording turns into a part of a dwell stream, and the way this each challenges and bridges the dwell and recorded fashions of reaching audiences, and gaining success. We illustrate this right here close to the rising significance of streamed Chinese language expertise exhibits, and the way in which digital and social media have supplied alternatives for what we name ‘platform musicians.’ We embrace these examples, partly, to counteract the way in which China has been uncared for in discussions of the worldwide music industries, with students usually assuming a North Atlantic construction of the music enterprise and careers of well-liked musicians derived from the research of rock music.
Expertise exhibits have been central to the music industries of Japan and South Korea. Expertise exhibits in China began life as showcases for the kind of selection leisure related to tv. They have been just like different expertise exhibits broadcast world wide, however notably influenced by exhibits produced in Korea. But, a more recent kind of expertise present has been launched and might be considered as a part of an extended historical past that traces again, exterior of tv, to the ‘battle of the bands’ that passed off in native rock venues from the Sixties, and to contests in jazz ballrooms through the Thirties. It’s a trendy digital inheritor to those pre-digital competitions, in addition to drawing on actuality tv.
The streamed Chinese language expertise present has turn into an essential route by which musicians can attain followers and attain stardom. Though initially dominated by pop idols, the format now embraces a wider vary of genres, kinds, and identities. It has turn into a strategically important format for indie, rap, singer-songwriters and dance musicians to interrupt out past restricted alternatives in small venues in native scenes, and out of doors of the trade constructions nonetheless dominated by idol manufacturing. Success on a expertise present will increase an act’s worth and offers efficiency alternatives throughout the standard phases of venues and festivals, together with the proliferating social media and digital platforms that require dwell and recorded ‘content material.’
So, for instance The Rap of China (Zhōngguó yǒu xīhā) has opened up an area for the presentation of a style of televisual Chinese language rap, whereas encouraging debates about aesthetics, identities, and codes of public expression. Rave Now (Jì kèdiànyīn) is an digital dance music expertise present that offers viewers a window into the way in which tracks are produced and remixed utilizing turntables, laptops, and software program. I’m CZR–I’m Singer-Songwriter (Wŏ shì chàngzuòrén) follows contenders from their early demo tapes, by studio association, after which on to rehearsal, and staged efficiency.
The Huge Band (Yùeduìdexiàtiān), streamed on iQIY owned by Baidu, is a present that allows bands to be acknowledged, usually after years of taking part in small gigs. It has helped revitalise the indie scene, and allowed older performers to succeed in newer audiences. A notable instance is the band New Pants (Xinkùzi) that have been fashioned in 1996, launched their first album in 1998, but solely achieved wider success and recognition after profitable The Huge Band in 2019.
Streamed Chinese language expertise exhibits cross the dwell and recorded. Performances could also be streamed as they’re going down. They could even be pre-recorded, along with narrative sections, after which streamed to permit voting and for dwell feedback to be inserted throughout the display. Expertise exhibits present dwell music to these unable to attend a gig venue (like dwell broadcasts), and the publicity offers musicians entry to a extra typical touring profession on stage in entrance of audiences.
The expertise present dramatizes what Simon Frith as soon as known as the ‘shifting boundary between the “staged” and the on a regular basis’ (1996: 204). This remark from the pre-digital age is equally relevant to digital platforms. It’s dramatized within the narratives and representations within the expertise present, as a lot as within the staged video or streamed performances on YouTube, Kaishou, or TikTok. The expertise present condenses the mechanics of the trendy music trade. It turns into a metaphor for the conflict of aggressive individualism and collective participation, as performers journey the legendary journey from obscurity to stardom, making the most of a winner-takes-all economic system while concurrently embedded into scenes, communities and fan cultures.
Outdoors of the expertise exhibits in China, a dynamic digital music infrastructure is growing inside which over 100 platforms, at present reaching over 600 million streaming customers, present retailers for musicians to add recordings, stream performances, and obtain commentary. Though, within the early days the rewards have been by way of kinds of ad-hoc ‘digital gifting’, the platforms have gotten more and more redesigned to permit novice and unknown musicians a structured route in the direction of audiences, and to attach with media and music industries intermediaries. For instance, in 2017 Tencent Music – a Chinese language firm on-line platform that develops streaming providers – initiated an ‘incentive challenge’ to inspire indie musicians to add their recordings, claiming to succeed in probably 800 million month-to-month customers. Tencent reportedly paid out 590 million Yuan (roughly 84 million U.S. {dollars}) to musicians (though contractual particulars of this will not be clear, and it’s a difficulty for our ongoing analysis). This challenge grew to become extra formally constituted because the Tencent Musician Program – a platform that permits musicians to create and share their music, join with publishers, and to obtain enter and recommendation on publicity, advertising and copyright. On the identical time, the platform permits listening, watching, socialising and interacting. Music platforms in China, starting from quick video platforms like TikTok, social media platforms like SinaWeibo, and music streaming platforms like QQ music, have initiated related initiatives to encourage musicians and achieve ‘content material.’ Final yr, Tencent introduced further initiatives to help extra conventional people and Chinese language dialect music.
In our article we confer with ‘platform musicians’. This emergent identification builds upon and extends the way in which commerce, trade and expertise, intersecting with the actions of musicians and audiences, allowed for the emergence of the ‘recording artist’, and business venues afforded the ‘dwell performer’. An excellent instance of this may be No Get together For Cao Dong (Cao Dong Meiyou Paidui). This Taiwan band has, since its formation, used platforms to launch recordings, to dwell stream recordings and performances, and created the title track for the online game Devotion. Though there are various variations between what No Get together For Cao Dong are doing and the presentation of musicians on expertise exhibits (and the way in which idols and celebrities use platforms), there’s a rising pattern for bands to make use of audio streaming and dwell apps from their earliest days. A wide range of platforms afford the mixing of efficiency and recording with different visible arts and shifting pictures. Platforms enable musicians to create with different musicians, and to place their work on-line and obtain instant responses, and to realize followers and to work together with these followers. The platform musician bridges the stage, studio, and display. The stage turns into a platform, and the platform turns into a stage.
Keith Negus and Qian Zhang
References
Auslander, Philip (2012) ‘Digital Liveness: A Historico-Philosophical Perspective’ PAJ: A Journal of Efficiency and Artwork, 34/3, pp. 3-11.
Frith, Simon (1996) Performing Rites, Oxford: Oxford College Press.
