‘Melodies wander around as ghosts’: on Playlist as cultural form

Rekret, Paul

doi:10.1111/criq.12471

Cited by 15 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…This can involve using music to increase stimulation and mental acuity to keep up with ‘accelerated work’ (2015: 834) or to decrease stimulation to counteract ‘perceptive surplus, hypervigilance and stress levels’. For political theorist Paul Rekret (2019: 62), streaming offers a more individualised, personalised version of muzak, embodying ‘a movement away from music’s embedded social meaning towards its identification with social function’ (2019: 64). While he does not use the term ‘muzak’, A.T.…”

Section: Streaming Encourages Functional Musical Experiencementioning

confidence: 99%

Streaming’s Effects on Music Culture: Old Anxieties and New Simplifications

Hesmondhalgh

2021

Cultural Sociology

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This article identifies five key themes, or sets of criticisms, that have emerged in online commentary on the new musical system centred on streaming platforms, and in related academic research: Streaming encourages ‘functional’ rather than meaningful, aesthetic musical experience. Streaming encourages bland, unchallenging music. Streaming makes musical experience passive and distracted, and music recedes into the background (here the article also discusses limitations of the widely used concepts of ‘ubiquitous music’ and ‘ubiquitous listening’). Streaming makes music tracks and songs shorter, and musical experience more fragmented. Streaming discourages and/or limits musical discovery and adventurousness. The article addresses each of these themes in turn, examining the degree to which criticisms of streaming’s effects on musical experience along these lines might be considered valid, and the degree to which they might genuinely enhance critical understanding of contemporary musical experience. It also considers these themes in relation to older forms of evaluation, particularly those that developed in the 20th century in response to the industrialisation of music, and argues that many recent criticisms problematically reproduce older anxieties and assumptions.

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Section: Streaming Encourages Functional Musical Experiencementioning

confidence: 99%

Streaming’s Effects on Music Culture: Old Anxieties and New Simplifications

Hesmondhalgh

2021

Cultural Sociology

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“…For, as Paul Rekret has shown, even though sonic content might appear irrelevant where platforms seek to keep the listener engaged, such persistence of experience is nevertheless well served by 'sound that takes its audience neither too high nor too low', for the 'continual production of audience data with minimal friction' (2019: 59, 69). In pop music, this perfectly matches 'chill' music, and the definition of ambient by Brian Eno (Rekret, 2019). All tensions are diluted in such sound material, as it itself becomes a 'sonic flux' (Cox, 2011: 155) and the composer becomes, as per John Cage's vision, a 'curator' of 'sonic matter' (Cox, 2011).…”

Section: Chilversmentioning

confidence: 70%

Of Sound and Flavour – Revisiting the Notion of Material for the Cultural Sociological Analysis of Art Domains

Darmon¹

2020

Cultural Sociology

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This article proposes a possible path for a materialist cultural sociology of art, focusing on the dynamics of art(s) domains and harnessing Adorno’s dialectical notion of material anew. I seek to establish links between dynamics of the arts domains and the fostering of specific modes of engagement with them – and, potentially, stances in other domains of life. I argue that a return to Adorno’s notion of (musical) material allows for such connections to be made: the ‘material’ is where the dynamics of the specific arts domains are inscribed; but it is also what is engaged with – by composers and artists as well as by interpreters, performers and publics. A dialectical material lens seems well suited for the critical study of the dynamic of arts domains in the 20th and 21st centuries, given the multiple artistic ‘breaks’ proclaimed. Focusing on some well-known movements in music and cuisine which sought to ‘emancipate’, ‘democratise’, and ‘diversify’ sounds and flavours, I analyse the processes through which they produced sound and flavour anew. I suggest that sounds and flavours themselves have become the carriers of logics relevant to music and cuisine, and that they have come to imperiously command modes of commitment (from composers and chefs, performers, listeners and diners alike) that evince specific stances. Through this necessarily sketchy survey, I provide indications that broader, cross-cutting cultural dynamics may be at stake. Overall, I seek to make clear what theoretical steps are afforded by the joint attention to materiality and the dynamic of art domains.

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“…Of course, listener's are also 'made productive' insofar as they generate audience data via platforms such as Spotify. For more on this see Rekret, 2019. In the case of prenatal sound systems, however, the notion of auditory self-control is complicated, inasmuch as the affective target of these devices is someone-or, rather, something-other than the user. Although they are undoubtedly framed to offer reassurance to prospective users that through purchasing these devices they are fulfilling their role as 'good parents'-Babypod, for example, suggest that their device enables 'the pregnant mother to ensure fetal well-being'-prenatal sound systems are primarily intended to work on the pre-born as future-child Consequently, these technologies affirm the pregnant individual's maternalfamilial responsibility.…”

Section: Muzak For Foetusesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…11 The 'productivist' tendency of these audio-affective technologies is well-illustrated by the website for the 'Sonic Sleep Coach' app: a featured testimonial by Debbie Williamson suggests that the app has enabled them to be more productive at their work (see Sonic Sleep Coach, https://sonicsleepcoach.com/ [last accessed 20 June 2020]). Of course, listeners are also 'made productive' insofar as they generate audience data via platforms such as Spotify; for more on this, see Rekret, 2019. Mozart (and other types of classical music) can improve intellectual development and performance. 9 Babypod claim that Institut Marquès have tested foetal responses to a variety of sound and music samples in collaboration with Universal Music Group.…”

Section: Muzak For Foetusesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“… 11 The ‘productivist’ tendency of these audio-affective technologies is well-illustrated by the website for the ‘Sonic Sleep Coach’ app: a featured testimonial by Debbie Williamson suggests that the app has enabled them to be more productive at their work (see Sonic Sleep Coach, https://sonicsleepcoach.com/ [last accessed 20 June 2020]). Of course, listeners are also ‘made productive’ insofar as they generate audience data via platforms such as Spotify; for more on this, see Rekret, 2019. …”

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confidence: 99%

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‘Your Womb, the Perfect Classroom’: Prenatal Sound Systems and Uterine Audiophilia

Thompson¹

2020

Feminist Review

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In this article, I explore the auditory technopolitics of prenatal sound systems, asking what kinds of futures, listeners and temporalities they seek to produce. With patents for prenatal audio apparatus dating back to the late 1980s, there are now a range of devices available to expectant parents. These sound technologies offer multiple benefits: from soothing away stress to increasing the efficiency of ultrasonic scans. However, one common point of emphasis is their capacity to accelerate foetal ‘learning’ and cognitive development. Taking as exemplary the Babypod and BabyPlus devices, I argue that prenatal sound systems make audible a particular figuration of pregnancy and gestational labour that combines divergent notions of responsibility and passivity. Contra the equation of neoliberalism with self-control and individualism, I argue that prenatal sound systems amplify neoliberal capitalism’s elision of personal, maternal and familial responsibility. As reproductive sound technologies, prenatal sound systems facilitate maternal–familial investment in the pre-born as future-child. Consequently, financialised notions of inheritance are substituted for biological inheritance. Drawing attention to the common rhetorical figuration of the sonic as womb-like, furthermore, I argue that prenatal sound systems exemplify what I refer to as uterine audiophilia. By treating the womb as ‘the perfect classroom’, prenatal sound systems imply an intense maternal obligation to invest in and impress upon the future-child, while also envisioning the pregnant person’s body as an occupied, resonant space. Cohering with a fidelity discourse that posits the reproductive medium as passive container and a source of noise that is to be overcome, uterine audiophilia relies upon politically regressive conceptualisations of pregnancy. I thus argue that these devices mark the hitherto under-theorised convergence of auditory culture, technology and reproductive politics.

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‘Melodies wander around as ghosts’: on Playlist as cultural form

Cited by 15 publications

References 13 publications

Streaming’s Effects on Music Culture: Old Anxieties and New Simplifications

Streaming’s Effects on Music Culture: Old Anxieties and New Simplifications

Of Sound and Flavour – Revisiting the Notion of Material for the Cultural Sociological Analysis of Art Domains

‘Your Womb, the Perfect Classroom’: Prenatal Sound Systems and Uterine Audiophilia

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