Live and Recorded: Music Experience in the Digital Millennium

By Yngvar Kjus

This book uncovers how music experience–live and recorded–is changing along with the use of digital technology in the 2000s. Focussing on the Nordic region, this volume utilizes the theory of mentalization: the capacity to perceive and interpret what others are thinking and feeling, and applies it to the analysis of mediated forms of agency in popular music. The rise of new media in music production has enabled sound recording and processing to occur more rapidly and in more places, including the live concert stage. Digital technology has also introduced new distribution and consumption technologies that allow record listening to be more closely linked to the live music experience. The use of digital technology has therefore facilitated an expanding range of activities and experiences with music. Here, Yngvar Kjus addresses a topic that has a truly global reach that is of interest to scholars of musicology, media studies and technology studies.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Release date: Feb 9, 2018
• ISBN: 9783319703688

Book preview

© The Author(s) 2018

Yngvar KjusLive and RecordedPop Music, Culture and Identityhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70368-8_1

1. Setting the Scene

Yngvar Kjus¹ 

(1)

Department of Media and Communication, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

At the music academy, she was trained as a vocalist. In her live concerts, she wants to do more than sing, however, and begins to experiment with recording and processing her voice in real time. The result astounds her, as well as the audience.

A member of the audience [had] looked forward to the concert for a long time, searching the internet for all the music the artist had made. As the live performance reaches a peak, he picks up his smartphone to record and save the moment for later.

The concert organizer teamed up with a record distributor, both aiming to offer their audience something extra. Together they install a mobile studio backstage, where the artist is asked to make a special recording, which they then release online.

These examples point to the range of opportunities that are available to artists, audiences, and their intermediaries in the digital millennium. The use of those opportunities, however, raises certain questions. Why does the singer intervene in the live flow of her voice, and what is achieved by trying to capture it in new ways? What becomes of live performance when it is saturated with new media? A striking feature of the examples above, which are all picked from the chapters to come, and a broad trend in popular music in general, is the blurring of established boundaries between live and recorded music. This development seems to allow for new ways of creating, experiencing and mediating music, the motives and outcomes of which will be studied in this book.

Let’s begin at the beginning. For most of our history, music has been live. But people did not think of it as such when there was no alternative. For a long time, the sound of music was created exclusively at the same time and place in which it was experienced. This applied to solitary humming as well as music shared in pubs or between parent and child at bedtime. Music was always performed by (and for) someone present, there and then. By the end of the nineteenth century, however, the invention of the phonograph and sound recording presented alternatives, enabling music to be created and experienced beyond the there and then. Music could reach people’s ears without bringing performers, instruments, and notation along because the listener could simply press play. This, in turn, triggered the development of two distinct domains of music: the growing sphere of recorded music and the existing sphere of live music.

A key affordance of recording technology is its mobility , broadly defined as movement ascribed with meaning. On the one hand, sound recording enabled mobility of music between people, with recordings traveling between homes, cities, and continents. On the other hand, it enabled new forms of mobility within the music itself via the moving and manipulating of sound elements. Obvious examples of the latter include the splicing and overdubbing of different takes, but sound recording was also the start of an evolution toward more advanced techniques of processing and designing sounds to take a desired shape, an art form spearheaded by The Beatles in popular music. The music that was called live was, conversely, characterized by its lack of mobility and manipulability, with performer and listener located at the same place and with the music only existing during the time they shared together.

Throughout the twentieth century, the mobility of recorded music, and the growing systems of production, distribution, and consumption of popular music, added to its contrasts with live music. Alongside these developments, concerts and festivals came to represent a sector of their own. Soon enough, the mobility of recorded music began to blur borders, as in the case of radio channels broadcasting live concerts to listeners elsewhere. Since the turn of the twenty-first century, however, the mobility of music has dramatically increased, in tandem with its rapid diffusion via the internet and mobile devices, from laptops to smartphones. These media are also swiftly moving into the domain of live music, expanding the overlap between the live and the recorded. But what happens when music becomes somehow both?

Artists, audiences, and their intermediaries are in various ways embracing these new opportunities to reconfigure the live and the recorded. With the aid of laptops, tablets, and other mobile devices, artists enjoy an unprecedented opportunity to bring technologies inherent to studio work with them onto the live stage, recording, editing, and processing sound as part of a concert performance, whether of electronic dance music or avant-garde jazz. Equally relevant is the trend toward audiences bringing smartphones to concert venues, whether to record the music or share (it) with people not present. Music intermediaries, including concert organizers and record sellers, are finding new ways to enable this interaction and offer new musical experiences as well, thus managing some growth within a sector that was hit hard by the digital upheaval.

This book examines the emerging overlaps between live and recorded music, looking at both the opportunities and the challenges presented to those who create and experience this music in this way.

Music offers vast opportunities for inward reflection and outward interaction, as is obvious in daily life as well as in the academic literature. The exploitation of these opportunities requires human resources, such as musicality, motivation, and training, but it also depends on external technological resources, such as musical instruments, amplifiers, and headphones. In the 2000s, the availability of digital music technology spread its possibilities to an unprecedented range of people and places. We should therefore stop and ask what the implications of this growth are for how people relate to music. In particular, does the use of new technology trigger new and somehow stronger experiences with music, or does it actually hinder them?

This study of the opportunities and challenges involved in the overlap of live and recorded music will also capitalize on the potential of the analytical perspective known as mentalization : the capacity to perceive and interpret behaviour in terms of intentional mental states, to imagine what others are thinking and feeling (Busch 2008: xv). Mentalization, a notion developed within psychology, has gained currency as a perspective for understanding the development of personal identity and social interaction. In fact, one of its prime theorists, Peter Fonagy (2008: 5), argues that it represents an evolutionary pinnacle of human intellectual achievement in its provision of consciousness of mental states in self and others. It also captures the very basic and everyday aspect of simply relating to others, from family and friends to rivals and strangers (with varying degrees of success)—a fact that complicates the identification of mentalization’s requirements, as well as its rewards. Music presents extensive opportunities for mentalization. Just consider how powerfully the song I Will Survive conveys what it feels like to be left by a loved one. To perceive and interpret thoughts and feelings via music is not only an experience in itself but also the basis for communication via music. Mentalization therefore relates not only to how audiences listen to music but also to how artists express themselves via music—for example, when an artist tries to interpret some form of the human condition, then tries to make that interpretation perceivable to others.

The concept will be useful for mapping the differences between live and recorded music, as well as for understanding the opportunities inherent in that overlap. This study proposes not only a fresh approach to the relationship between the live and the recorded but also a perspective on music and media that is directly informed by mentalization. The starting point for applying this concept is my conviction that music is an art form with a vast and varied potential for mentalization. The perception and interpretation of thoughts and feelings represent crucial elements of human interaction and self-understanding, both of which are undertaken via music every day. If the use of new media somehow supports (or obstructs) the mentalization of artists and audiences, we would do well to understand why.

In what follows, I shall introduce the analytical approach of this book and account for its specific context in time and place (Norway in the 2000s), then supply an overview of its chapters.

Approach

My interest in mentalization hints at the theoretical and methodological premises of this study. I tend to privilege human experiences with music and media and am thus more concerned with musical subjects than musical objects . My research has a social and ethnographic orientation that is certainly present elsewhere in both music and media scholarship, but I strive also to account for aspects of the musical content (for more, see Chap. 2). A strict isolation of subject from object (musician from music, audience from audio) would be at once strained and counterproductive for my purposes. As I seek to understand how artists express themselves via new media, for example, I must also be sensitive to what they are expressing.

This study focuses on how artists and audiences use new technology , and, relatedly, how this technology thus affords new forms of musical agency (i.e., the ability to do things with music). It relates to existing trends in technology and music research by addressing technological influences on human perception/psychology, as well as the role of new technology in sociocultural formations (e.g., Sterne 2012). I aim to contribute to these areas of interest—one looking inward, into the mind, and one looking outward, into the social world. These twin ambitions pointedly parallel two of the affordances associated with live and recorded music, given that studio recordings offer opportunities for individual sonic excavation, and concerts offer opportunities for collective action.

From a bird’s-eye perspective, this study sets out to explore what happens when new technology is introduced into established places and practices, such as, in this case, live music events. It is therefore anchored in media research’s interest in the use of new digital technologies (e.g., Jenkins 2006). To fully grasp the significance of new media, however, the project also engages with musical activities and experiences (e.g., Born 2013). It is therefore anchored in music research as well. And, indeed, I have found that media research and music research stand strong together, in that attentiveness to the musical experience can promote an understanding of the media, and attentiveness to the mediating technology can promote an understanding of the music. I shall return to the theoretical positioning of this study and its relation to existing research on live and recorded music in Chap. 2.

The starting point for this study is that the mobility of digital media brings with it new conditions for the creation and experience of music. Claiming novelty here is, however, complicated because most new technologies and practices have predecessors. As Bertolt Brecht said, Nothing arises from nothing; the new springs from the old, but that is just what makes it new (1978: 110). Although many industry players and commentators speak of a digital revolution, evolution is closer to the truth—a point supported by research showing that media innovations are usually incremental and accumulative (Storsul and Krumsvik 2013: 18). This is also the case for the use of recording technology, which Ragnhild Brøvig-Hanssen and Anne Danielsen (2016: 6) address in their search for the distinctively digital in contemporary music:

For instance, while the cut-and-paste technique is not unique to digital technology, the scale with which this technique is applied within the digital era is almost unthinkable via analogue technology, and it is thus often associated with the digital. The resulting quantitative change in its use is so dramatic that it has, in a sense, become a qualitative signature of the digital.

The same argument goes for several of the phenomena studied in this book, including the use of mobile media to record live concert performances, which certainly existed before the 2000s (it was known as bootlegging ), but which is now done on a scale and in ways that, in sum, represent something new.

My ambition to unpack the encounters between people, technology, and music is also reflected in my methods, including interviews and observation, which are described further below. Accurate descriptions of the relationships and overlaps that are being formed are a crucial prerequisite of any substantial analysis of their affordances for those involved in them. The overlap and interlinkages of live and recorded, after all, are likely to vary for both artists and audiences—this is no one-way street toward convergence but rather a host of crossing passages between people and places.

The structural and material conditions for exploring new forms of music mediation vary considerably between countries, for example. Access to new technology is unevenly distributed around the world, as is indicated by statistics tracking internet use in different countries. While Iceland tops the list of internet penetration with 100% of its population online, many other countries have only a few per cent.¹ The economic resources of artists and audiences vary, of course, and this discrepancy carries through the industry dedicated to organizing live concerts and selling records (and its booking agents, promotors, guides, curators, and, increasingly, software programmers and developers of recommendation algorithms). Public support of music production and distribution, including subsidies to concert venues, festivals, studios, and record labels, also varies and sometimes prioritizes certain traditions and genres over others. Historical, cultural, and social factors also play a role, including local music legacies, trends in musical interests, and the development of genre communities. For example, folk music milieus might value live music in a different way from performers and fans of electronica, who are likely to embrace more mediated elements. Lastly, different segments of the population are likely to have different musical preferences and habits that are relatable to age, gender, and education.

All these shifting frameworks somehow impact the opportunities for engagement with live and recorded music. The present study, however, primarily sets out to discover how those opportunities are actually exploited by both artists wanting to express themselves and audiences seeking musical experiences. It is therefore sensitive to local conditions and individual interests, such as artists’ specific aesthetic projects or the special relationship that fans develop with some artists or certain forms of expression. It also encompasses how people develop, adapt, and learn about ways of engaging with music.

I shall expand on the positioning of this study in what follows, then present its methods and materials, and summarize the premises for the analyses to come.

The Nordic Region in the 2000s

The research informing this book was primarily carried out in Norway, which is a small country in the Nordic region on the outskirts of continental Europe. Because it is small, with only 5 million inhabitants, it has always been powerfully oriented toward the larger countries to its south and west, culturally and otherwise. Most of Norway’s popular music has been brought in from abroad, mainly the UK and the USA, and much of its local music has been sung in English, despite its chiefly domestic audience (which has a high proficiency in English).² This reliance on imports was clearly operative for most of the twentieth century, with the exception of the international success of A-ha , which (among other things) gained a number-one hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1985 with the song Take on Me . Sweden, Norway’s larger and more continental neighbor, has long had a larger and more stable music sector, with acts such as Abba , Ace of Base , Roxette , and, more recently, Robyn , Swedish House Mafia , and Avicii , among others, actually making substantial contributions to the world of popular music (Wikstrøm 2013).

Norway has long been a little sibling among the Nordic nations; in fact, for most of its history it was under the rule of either Denmark or Sweden, gaining its political independence only in 1905. During the last couple of decades, however, it has begun to cultivate independence in its popular music as well. More Norwegian artists have started to use their mother tongue, including rappers, and those who perform in English have gained greater recognition abroad. Bernhoft, for example, was nominated for a Grammy in the R&B genre in 2015, and Kygo saw more than 800 million plays on YouTube and Spotify in 2016 with his house-music hit Firestone. Many other Norwegian musicians are succeeding with more niche-oriented and experimental music, such as the jazz and classical-inspired electronica of Susanne Sundfør , the improvised live electronics of Maja Ratkje , and the blackjazz metal of Shining . Sales of Norwegian records abroad have even gone from NOK23 million in 2012 to NOK46 million in 2015 (and income from copyrights and concerts abroad has also increased; Norwegian Arts Council 2016).

The growing confidence in Norwegian music can be related to certain key economic, political, and cultural factors. First, developments in the condition of the Norwegian population have clearly provided a solid foundation for producing and consuming music. On several occasions, Norway has topped the United Nations list of countries with good living conditions, based on criteria that include average income levels, life expectancy, literacy, and education.³ In 2017 it also took pole position in the global happiness ranking, followed by Denmark and Iceland.⁴ Norway is also one of the greatest funders of the United Nations, thanks to its successful monetization of oil resources in the North Sea, first discovered in the late 1960s. This is just one indication of the ample resources underpinning life in the country, including musical life.

The Nordic countries have strong social democratic traditions that also impact their cultural politics. The Norwegian Labour Party, Norway’s largest political party, has for many years fought to allocate 1% of the state budget to cultural ends. A basic premise of Norwegian cultural politics is its diminutive language community and correspondingly small marketplace. As early as 1965, officials established the Arts Council Norway to strengthen national culture, and the goal remains to sustain and develop a plurality of quality expressions that could have become marginal without public support.⁵ Music is the art form that receives by far the greatest amount of support, including measures devoted to concert organizers, composers, and record publishers, as well as to talents in need of music technology or rehearsal studios. The support system involving new albums is particularly popular, with the number of applications for help having increased from 362 in 2000 to 618 in 2015, perhaps reflecting the growing ambitions in this Norwegian music sector.⁶ Alongside this official support, public support for music has increased as well, particularly for festivals that contribute to artistic reinvention and are made available to as many as possible.⁷ All these gestures aim to promote activity and development within all forms of production, conveyance and documentation of music⁸. Each of the artists mentioned in this book has received support through some of these channels and in this way have absorbed their explicit and implicit incentives to cultivate quality and creativity. Perhaps less directly, the audience also feels the impact of these and other support systems, including, for example, the obligation of the public service broadcaster NRK to ensure that at least 35% of the music it plays on radio and television is Norwegian.⁹ A more recent initiative called Music Norway has, since 2012, received state