Wear My Headphones: Damon Krukowski On How Digital Culture Changes Us
In music and the culture it reflects, 2017 was predictably unpredictable: idols fell, empires shook, consensus was scarce. All this week, NPR Music is talking with artists, makers and thinkers whose work captured something unique about a chaotic year, and hinted at bigger revelations around the bend.
Digital technology has dominated music-making and listening for decades, but its effects have hit a little harder lately. Streaming has overtaken downloads as the music industry's primary revenue generator. Devices like the voice-operated Amazon Echo have surged in popularity, making the seamlessness of the digital experience feel like part of our bodies themselves. A redheaded heartthrob with an acoustic guitar claimed the top slot on Spotify's year-end chart, where every other artist in the top five hails from the digitally constructed realms of hip-hop, R&B and EDM, by crafting the pop-star equivalent of a dancehall track.
In the midst of this irrevocable shift, Damon Krukowski has emerged as a kind and clear-headed navigator. In April, the 53-year-old musician, writer and creative bon vivant published The New Analog: Listening and Reconnecting in a Digital World, a kind of guidebook to our new sonic realities. Over the summer, working with the production company Radiotopia, he launched a companion podcast called Ways of Hearing. Not only is the podcast a clear and emotionally resonant exploration of how digital culture has changed making and listening to music; it is also a potent political intervention, revealing ways in which listeners can be more than passive consumers shaped by algorithmically constructed playlists, and perhaps become active players who fully grasp and make choices about the music that so deeply affects their lives.
is divided into six episodes, structured around big themes like "Money," "Power" and "Love." Krukowski personalizes these abstractions by having listeners "wear my headphones for a bit" — going through the same thickets of comprehension and new fields of perception that he, an indie rock veteran and child of the analog age, experienced as he learned to become a delight. The other is the texture of the podcast itself: Working with sound designer Ian Cross, Krukowski has created a series about music that feels like music in its own right.
