| This dissertation concentrates on the changing form of the music commodity over the last two decades. Specifically, it traces the transition from music on compact discs to music as a digital file on computers/mobile devices and the economic, industrial, aesthetic and cultural consequences this shift has for how we produce, present, and consume music. As computers became viable sources for the playback of popular music in the 1980s and 1990s, the roots of the digital music commodity took hold. Stripped of many of their previous attributes (i.e. album art, compressed sound, packaging, etc.), recordings as digital files were initially decontextualized commodities. On computers, music underwent an interface-lift, gradually getting redressed with new features (i.e. metadata, interfaces, digital "packaging"). This dissertation focuses on five technologies---Winamp, Metadata, Napster, iTunes and Cloud Computing---that were key to rehabilitating the music commodity in its digital environments. These technologies and the cultural practices that accompanied them gave music new paratexts and micromaterials that ultimately constituted the digital music commodity. Through case studies, generative archival research, and descriptive analysis, this study makes methodological and intellectual contributions to the field of communication and technology studies as well as to studies of new media and the cultural industries. By teasing out the differences between the commodity aspects of the CD and the digital file, this project offers fresh perspectives on materiality, aesthetics, labour and ownership in an era of digital goods. Digital music's fluid and ubiquitous nature seems to subvert those who seek to profit from it. But while digital music offers the potential to disrupt the traditional ways of doing business in music, it also affords new forms of control and power. This has not stopped artists, hobbyists and users from carrying out creative experiments that call into question the codes and conventions of the digital music commodity. In doing so, they make visible the promise of digital music: to turn our attention to the commodification process and to force a reconsideration of the role music plays in the contemporary moment. |
