Cybersounds

Textbook

The research presented in this volume is very recent, and the general approach is that of rethinking popular musicology: its purpose, its aims, and its methods. Contributors to the volume were asked to write something original and, at the same time, to provide an instructive example of a particular way of working and thinking. The essays have been written with a view to helping graduate students with research methodology and the application of relevant theoretical models. The team of contributors is an exceptionally strong one: it contains many of the pre-eminent academic figures involved in popular musicological research, and there is a spread of European, American, Asian, and Australasian scholars. The volume covers seven main themes: Film, Video and Multimedia; Technology and Studio Production; Gender and Sexuality; Identity and Ethnicity; Performance and Gesture; Reception and Scenes and The Music Industry and Globalization. The Ashgate Research Companion is designed to offer scholars and graduate students a comprehensive and authoritative state-of-the-art review of current research in a particular area. The companion's editor brings together a team of respected and experienced experts to write chapters on the key issues in their speciality, providing a comprehensive reference to the field.

Streaming Music examines how the Internet has become integrated in contemporary music use, by focusing on streaming as a practice and a technology for music consumption. The backdrop to this enquiry is the digitization of society and culture, where the music industry has undergone profound disruptions, and where music streaming has altered listening modes and meanings of music in everyday life. The objective of Streaming Music is to shed light on what these transformations mean for listeners, by looking at their adaptation in specific cultural contexts, but also by considering how online music platforms and streaming services guide music listeners in specific ways. Drawing on case studies from Moscow and Stockholm, and providing analysis of Spotify, VK and YouTube as popular but distinct sites for music, Streaming Music discusses, through a qualitative, cross-cultural, study, questions around music and value, music sharing, modes of engaging with music, and the way that contemporary music listening is increasingly part of mobile, automated and computational processes. Offering a nuanced perspective on these issues, it adds to research about music and digital media, shedding new light on music cultures as they appear today. As such, this volume will appeal to scholars of media, sociology and music with interests in digital technologies.

Virtuality has entered our lives making anything we desire possible. We are, as Gorillaz once sang, in an exciting age where 'the digital won't let [us] go...' Technology has revolutionized music, especially in the 21st century where the traditional rules and conventions of music creation, consumption, distribution, promotion, and performance have been erased and substituted with unthinkable and exciting methods in which absolutely anyone can explore, enjoy, and participate in creating and listening to music. Virtual Music explores the interactive relationship of sound, music, and image, and its users (creators/musicians/performers/audience/consumers). Areas involving the historical, technological, and creative practices of virtual music are surveyed including its connection with creators, musicians, performers, audience, and consumers. Shara Rambarran looks at the fascination and innovations surrounding virtual music, and illustrates key artists (such as Grace Jones, The Weeknd), creators (such as King Tubby, Kraftwerk, MadVillain, Danger Mouse), audiovisuals in video games and performances (such as Cuphead and Gorillaz), audiences, and consumers that contribute in making this musical experience a phenomenon. Whether it is interrogating the (un)realness of performers, modified identities of artists, technological manipulation of the Internet, music industry and music production, or accessible opportunities in creativity, the book offers a fresh understanding of virtual music and appeals to readers who have an interest in this digital revolution.

Has the virtual invaded the realm of the real, or has the real expanded its definition to include what once was characterized as virtual? With the continual evolution of digital technology, this distinction grows increasingly hazy. But perhaps the distinction has become obsolete; perhaps it is time to pay attention to the intersections, mutations, and transmigrations of the virtual and the real. Certainly it is time to reinterpret the practice and study of music. The Oxford Handbook of Music and Virtuality, edited by Sheila Whiteley and Shara Rambarran, is the first book to offer a kaleidoscope of interdisciplinary perspectives from scholars around the globe on the way in which virtuality mediates the dissemination, acquisition, performance, creation, and reimagining of music. The Oxford Handbook of Music and Virtuality addresses eight themes that often overlap and interact with one another. Questions of the role of the audience, artistic agency, individual and communal identity, subjectivity, and spatiality repeatedly arise. Authors specifically explore phenomena including holographic musicians and virtual bands, and the benefits and detriments surrounding the free circulation of music on the internet. In addition, the book investigates the way in which fans and musicians negotiate gender identities as well as the dynamics of audience participation and community building in a virtual environment. The handbook rehistoricizes the virtual by tracing its progression from cartoons in the 1950s to current industry innovations and changes in practice. Well-grounded and wide-reaching, this is a book that students of any number of disciplines, from Music to Cultural Studies, have awaited.

Jonathan Sterne shows that understanding the historical meaning of the MP3, the world's most common format for recorded audio, involves rethinking the place of digital technologies in the broader universe of twentieth-century communication history.