How has the Internet and mass information culture affected the consumers of music?

Gary Martin Rolinson

Introduction Chapter 1: Excess use of the Internet Chapter 2: Sharing Chapter 3: Value Conclusion Bibliography

Summary

This dissertation attempts to explore how the Internet and mass information have affected the consumers of music. This is an important contemporary issue as it has recently, and will continue to shape the changes in the creative industries and generations of society to come. The introduction gives a brief description of the birth of the Internet and outlines the different effects it has had on society. Chapter One discusses how the Internet has given us the illusion of more free time and made daily tasks easier to manage. It argues that mass digitalisation in music has created a skip and shuffle revolution which ultimately effects our experience of music. Chapter Two entitled Sharing covers Napster and the onset of mass filesharing, and explains the creation of the global village. It also shows that with the sharing of content has come something which can be termed mass amateurisation, the boom in consumer generated content. Finally, Chapter Three has two elements: Exchange and Commodity Fetishism. These both explore how the value of music in modern society has changed because of the pure quantity of and access to content has become easier. This dissertation concludes that the Internet has affected the consumers of music because it is a versatile tool that can be used in a number of ways. It offers both positive and negative effect of social development and advocates that consumers proceed with caution.

Introduction

According to Leadbeater (2009, 233), the Internet is a mere platform that anyone with a computer or phone with wireless connection can access to find other people and to share ideas. It was originally designed for academics and researchers to share each others work: it is now used to shop, play music, watch films, and make friends. Unlike other technological innovations it continues to generate more and more uses and applications that will affect and influence our lives, many of them as yet unimaginable to our generation. Since its commercialised birth in 1991, the World Wide Web has changed the world and how we consume music and other forms of media. Not only has it become quick and easy to search for music in the extensive library that is available, but advances in technology have reached the point that there is so much content, filter systems have been created that suggest and recommend content and products that you may like by tracking your online activity. It has not only become a tool for consumption, but a gateway that can lead to over indulgence and excess of information and commodified products. It has stretched the paradigms of space and time, allowing us to stockpile data which has no expiration date with the potentially overwhelming variety of choice. The Internet has no doubt been used as a marketing tool for convenience of both the buyer and seller, completely altering the shopping experience from when the product is made to the consumer using it in their own home. However convenient this has become, it can be argued that the Internet has its disadvantages when time management and physical space is concerned.

Every gain in consumer-empowering convenience has come to the cost of dis-empowering the power of art to dominate our attentions, to induce a state of aesthetic surrender. (Reynolds, 2011, p. 71)

The Internet has also become a catalyst for communication and conversation. Although this may not have been its intended purpose, it is a versatile tool that we as a society have moulded as much as it has moulded us.

Communications tools dont get socially interesting until they get technologically boring. The invention of a tool doesnt create change; it has to have been around long enough that most of society is using it. Its when technology becomes normal, then ubiquitous, and finally so pervasive as to be invisible, that the really profound changes happen, and for young people today, our new social tools have passed normal and are heading to ubiquitous, and invisible is coming. (Shirky, 2008, p. 105)

In this essay, a number of themes will be discussed in relation to the Internet and its relationship with music consumption. It will explore how the paradigms of time and space have changed in modern society due to network technologies and how this has affected how we listen to and buy music. The transition from the Industrial Age to the Information Age began in the late 1970s with the advent of the personal computer and is still progressing with advances in computing technology, thus accelerating the flow of information and content.

During long periods of history, the mode of human sense perception changes with humanitys entire mode of existence. The manner in which human sense perception is organized, the medium in which it is accomplished, is determined not only by nature but by historical circumstances as well (Koepnick, 1999, p. 141).

Chapter 1 - Excess Use of the Internet Time Management

The Gin Craze was a time during the early years of the industrial age where people would drink gin in their newly created spare time to help them cope with the stresses created by the shift in their lifestyle, from their rural villages to their newly adopted urban landscape. (Shirky, 2011, pp. 1-6) claims that a similar dramatic social change took place just after the Second World War when there was a rise in national productivity, compulsory education was extended and life expectancy increased. Like their predecessors in the 1700s the post war population found themselves in the midst of radical social change: the advent of the television and something which became known as free time or leisure time. The sitcom was likened to the Gin Craze. Reynolds claimed in 2011 (p. 71) that the new digital era in capitalist societies finds itself in another revolution that effects time management, because we now live in an era dominated by our ability to be connected to the World Wide Web for hours on end: the Internet has become our Gin Craze and replacement for the sitcom.

This suggests that it is not necessarily what we are doing that is different to pre-Net times, just how and when we are doing it. This is true especially in regards to the production and consumption of music. Arguably this is because of the ease of access offered by the Internet; it is more convenient for some to borrow music than to physically buy it from a high-street store or iTunes, or even wait for its delivery from an online distributor. It could be seen that the Internet actually allows us to be more flexible with our time management because it offers results with such speed. Music related content such as documentaries, music videos and full albums are available at demand on certain websites and Internet services such as iTunes, Spotify and Youtube, that there is no need to plan around them being broadcasted; it gives the consumer power and control of when they consume their media.

Basically, what we expect from the computer - in writing, in accessing information, in communication and the delivery of various entertainment products - is instant response. If we want a certain item of information, we expect to access it immediately. If we want to listen to a piece of music, we no longer need to even get up and search for the record, tape or CD; we can find it within seconds by pressing a key on a computer keyboard or mobile phone. (Hoffman, 2009, p. 146)

Because of the instantaneous nature of the Internet it could be argued that regular Web users are gaining time with one-click-buys and high-speed album streams that would have otherwise been spent on a more time consuming method of these

activities. It suggests that perhaps the Internet has created the illusion of a busy lifestyle for people, allowing us to manage more tasks by decreasing the temporal demand of each one. So how is that saved time now spent? Does it give us more free time, or simply a chance to consume more and more information?

The hours spent sleeping are an interval in which we cannot do anything, and nothing is seemingly accomplished; this, in our societies, is seen as either inefficient, vaguely shameful or, at the very least, a sheer waste of time. (Hoffman, 2009, p.31)

In Western cultures in particular, humans have become accustomed to arranging their day around activities with a conscious awareness of the future. Hoffman pointed out that we begin our day by clock watching and continue to do so at regular intervals throughout the day. Each time check dictating our next set of actions. (Hoffman, 2009, p.63) This has inevitably shifted as the medium of receiving content has changed. It seems that the convenience of accessibility to the copious amounts of recorded music available online has left consumers sinking in the mire of options (Reynolds, 2011, p. 77), so much so that there is not enough time in their day to listen to everything they want to.

Time, of course is the one thing that most listeners dont have at their disposal these days. (Reynolds, 2011, p. 77)

Skip and Shuffle Revolution

The earliest form of mass digitalisation in music was the introduction of the CD player. Essentially a data-decoding machine, it offered complete and ease of control and manipulation of music. Accompanied by the remote control, the CD player made it vastly more tempting to disrupt the flow of musical time. (Reynolds, 2011, p. 71) It fashioned the skip revolution which proliferated after the birth of the Internet and the MP3.

What the inventors of the MP3 were banking on was that most of the time most of us are not listening that closely, and we arent listening in ideal circumstances. According to Sterne, the MP3 was designed with the assumption that the listener is either engaged in other activities (work, socialising) or, if listening immersively, doing so in a noisy environment (public transport, a car, walking on a busy street). (Reynolds, 2011, p. 70)

It can be argued that the MP3 has a different function to previous music formats like CD and Vinyl records. It is more compact and easier to carry around than the portable CD player, but more importantly MP3 audio is easier to produce therefore easier to keep up with current music trends. Digital and social technologies have allowed the production and distribution of music to now be an extremely simple and fast process, resulting in what Reynolds describes as high-turnover micro-trends. So the MP3 form is a perfect design to suit mass exchange culture and casual listening. (2011, p. 71)

The increasing use of the Internet has led to substituting other methods of performing tasks and consuming entertainment. This has inevitably had an effect on attention span and shifts in our perception of time and space. Has our social and digital technologies developed faster than our biological evolution can keep up with? Music, as a mirror of society, and how it is now consumed as a result of the Internet, reflects how we skip through experiences, now never being fully immersed by one task or piece of music but juggling thoughts and multi-tasking between the physical and virtual world. (Attali, 1985, p. 5)

It is [also] becoming very clear that the brittle temporality of networked life is not good for our psychological well-being; it makes us restless, erodes our ability to focus and be in the moment. We are always interrupting ourselves, disrupting the flow of experience. (Reynolds, 2011, p. 72)

The flow of experience could be referring to the paradigms of space as much as time here. The skipping and shuffling from one place to another: the mind being in two places at once. Reynolds says that [t] he integrity of here is being broken up as much as the integrity of now. (2011, p. 72)

Research by Ofcom, the organisation with authority over Britains telecommunications, suggests that families congregate in the living room to watch TV but are only partially present, because they are busy texting or surfing the Web via laptops and handheld devices. They are plugged into social networks even while nestling

in the bosom of the family, a syndrome thats been dubbed connected cocooning. (Reynolds, 2011, p. 72)

This suggests that the Internet, in particular mobile technologies, is having a negative effect on social activity. It is a tempting distraction that discourages many forms of the immersive experience and the listeners no longer finds themselves lost in music. Since the CD player, most platforms of music consumption such as iTunes, Spotify and YouTube offer a skip and even a shuffle function which allows and even encourages listeners to skip not just from track to track but to move on seamlessly before they have experienced whole tracks. These platforms condone the disorder, disjunction, and discontinuity of the musical listening experience and grant the satisfaction of roused curiosities quickly. YouTube, based around excerpts, is already in the business of fragmenting larger narratives (the programme, the movie, the album), but this function actually encourages us, as viewers, to break cultural fragments into even smaller sub-units, insidiously eroding our ability to concentrate and our willingness to let something to unfold. As with the Internet as a whole, our sense of temporality grows ever more brittle and inconsistent (Reynolds, 2011, p. 61)

Does this excessive use of the Internet then reduce the essence of an experience when we are only skimming the surface of the overall intended product of creativity? Have we now purely become sponges for information without reflecting on our intentions or purposes? (Hoffman, 2009, p. 180)

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It is as if we have substituted speed for significance. This is the basic paradox: if we try to pack too many experiences into our time, then we lose the ability to experience - to process occurrences through the filter of our selves until they become ours, and part of us. The human organism functions at different temporal scales. (Hoffman, 2009, p. 180)

It is obvious that by affecting our individual lifestyle and behaviour, our growing obsession for speedy processes has infected our social relationships. The effects of the Internet have transcended isolation and personality and now pervades the relationships we have, not only with close friends and family, but with the virtually connected friends we have made in online communities. The skipping and shuffling of songs was precedent in how we would consume other types of media including films and games, and how we would communicate with each other. The Internet provoked the Information Age, and McLuhan went as far as to claim that the global village would be a place where time has ceased, space has vanished.(McLuhan, 2008, p. 63)

The domain of relationships, above all, is one in which quantity does not equal quality, and speed is no guarantee of satisfaction. Coming to know another person calls for a certain affective energy and sustained attention; for the willingness to travel into the inwardness of another person, to probe behind appearances, to let empathy follows its own unpredictable temporal

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pathways. Intimacy can rarely fit into sound-bite intervals, and it rarely happens on schedule. (Hoffman, 2009, p. 176)

Surely the same rules apply for music consumption? If we keep skipping through songs there will be no guarantee of satisfaction. It could be argued of course that our very nature of listening is a fragmented shuffle. The composition of sounds in everyday life are heard as an improvised performance according to the variety of tasks we do and our environmental surroundings, most of which are beyond our control. And with the aid of digital technologies we are encouraged to confusingly blend together the only sounds we really do have control of hearing: the music we listen to.

We hear sounds from everywhere, without having to focus. Sounds come from above, from below, from in front of us, from behind us, from our right from our left. We cant shut out sound automatically. We simply are not equipped with earlids. Where a visual space is an organised continuum of a uniformed connected kind, the ear world is a world of simultaneous relationships. (McLuhan, 2008, p. 111)

Chapter 2 - Sharing Mass (P2P) File-Sharing

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The natural constraints of the analog world were abolished by the birth of the digital technology. What before was both impossible and illegal is now just illegal. (Lessig, 2008, p. 38)

Here Lawrence Lessig discusses the idea of file-sharing and how it has threatened profit in the record industry for both artists and record companies. Older music platforms such as the cassette and the LP record were protected from duplication and mass sharing in three ways:

1. Lessig argued that the law was designed to support the record industry and forbade the duplication of LPs. (2008, p. 38) 2. The economic cost for the consumer to duplicate an LP for example were extremely high and difficult on an amateur level. 3. Being physical objects, vinyl and analogue tape was prone to wear and therefore had a limited life span.

However copying digital technology has no such material restraints. Whilst it is still illegal it is cheap to replicate and has a much greater life span to the extent that few consumers will ever experience having to replace something digitally recorded. The lack of protection of digital content paired with the potential connectivity provided by the Internet was leapt at as an opportunity for file-sharing on a global scale.

No doubt the most famous story of musical innovation has been the explosion called Napster a technology simplifying file sharing

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for MP3 files. The idea was the brainchild of Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker. (Lessig, 2002, p. 130)

Napster is widely known as the earliest user friendly interface that allowed Internet users to send files to each other. Fanning and Parker engineered a system that produced an online database of all the music that was stored on peoples personal computers. (Lessig, 2002, p. 130) This then allowed a user to search for all MP3 files held by all other users with the Napster software, and transfer files to their own computer. Howkins summarised the process as: [t]ype in the name of a band or a track and Napster not only searches websites but the hard disks of all connected users for a music file containing that track. (2007, p. 63) It is clear that file-sharing was a turning point in terms of technology and social behaviour; people showed that when presented with an alternative to paying for music, it was grasped regardless of its illegal nature. We, as a society, cant kill this new form of creativity. We can only criminalize it. We cant stop our kids from using the technologies we give them to remix the culture around them. (Lessig, 2009, p. 109) The life-cycle of certain markets move on as society moves on, creating a change in demand. And by removing the monetary restrictions of the physical world, the ways and reach of speech are now greater. More people can use a wider set of tools to express ideas and emotions differently. More can, and so more will, at least until the law effectively blocks it. (Lessig, 2008, p. 83) In terms of the music industry, the file sharing phenomenon changed things drastically. It forced new forms of practice as people spend more time on the Internet. Swedish-founded company Spotify provides a leading music streaming service which has recently taken advantage of network technologies as a means of self-promotion.

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Integrating users accounts with Facebook and Twitter allows them to access their friends playlists. Social networking sites could be seen as a essential building block used to develop our digital relationships. Facebook alone has over 800 million active users each of which with an average of 130 online friends. Social networking sites like this allow users to meet new people that they would not have had the chance to in person for many different reasons.

Communication

These social environments allow anytime/anywhere access to like-minded people to collaborate, share knowledge, and everything else, including music. We must get used to the idea of this free flow of information being the norm rather than the exception. We must realise how the power of online networking contributes to the fulfillment of the needs and desires of the digital kids, especially once it intertwines with offline, real-life events and experiences. (Kusek and Leonard, 2005, p. 105)

The dominance of the internet and network technologies has created a global village, a term closely associated with Marshall McLuhan. In his book Understanding Media (1964), he describes how the world is contracted into a village by network technologies. He talks about how the speed of electricity brings together social and political functions and raised human awareness of responsibility to an intense degree. (McLuhan, 1964, p. 5). Through media such as the telephone, television and the internet, people are being increasingly linked together across the

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globe. This has enabled communication with people all around the world as fast as it takes us to contact those who live in the same village. McLuhan also predicts quite accurately thirty years before the invention of the internet, how it will be an extension of consciousness (McLuhan, 1962, p. 31).

Were living in a time when technology is favoring the social. More vibrant sharing economies are the result. (Lessig, 2008, p. 172)

With the potential for global communication a market emerged to create platforms specifically designed for social networking which came in the form of sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Tumblr and many other blogging websites that offer a messaging facility. This new technology made so many previously impossible things possible that Shirky claimed it was a revolution, arguing that when we change the way we communicate, we change society. (2009, p. 17) It could be argued that the transition to and inclusion of network technologies as a means of communication was inevitable. Human beings are social creatures - not occasionally or by accident but always. (Shirky, 2009, pg.14) The effects of online social integration was not limited to those who were actively using the Internet to communicate. As the Internet created new communities it changed the way people work, create, consume and produce:

and anything that changes the way groups get things done will affect society as a whole. This change will not be limited to any particular set of institutions or functions. For any given organisation,

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the important questions are When will the change happen? and What will change? The only two answers we can rule out are never, and nothing. (Shirky, 2009, p. 23)

Music sharing platforms quickly developed into legal services where a sharer could create a profile and upload content quickly on sites such as Soundcloud, Myspace and Facebook band pages. These developments reorganised the process in which we produced and consumed music, wrote blogs, and uploaded photos: in the past where people may have physically come together too share their photographs or music, we now upload photos, music and thoughts on to blogs and other sharing platforms and we collect followers and virtual friends through the content. Not only has the Internet relieved the difficulty of individual tasks but also the stress of group activity. Each new social platform has enabled more and more specialist ease. For example WordPress and other blog sites have allowed us to express ourselves in more detail than Facebook and Twitter, which encouraged brevity; SoundCloud has encouraged and enabled more amateur musicians to upload their music than YouTube because it is a community specifically designed for audio content. And services like Flickr has allowed photo-sharing to become easier. By making more and more individuals connected it has resulted in making society as a whole more powerful and requires less effort from the individual because [s]haring creates the fewest demands on the participants. (Shirky, 2009, p. 49) This new system for sharing drastically changed the most basic form of sharing information, the way we communicate, with an irreversible effect. What the Internet did for music consumption was free it of economic censor, becoming the first example and inception of a much larger digitalised sharing world. It demonstrated that

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[m]usic is prophecy. Its styles and economic organization are ahead of the rest of society because it explores, much than material reality can, the entire range of possibilities in a given code. (Attali, 1985, p.11) This led to media in other creative forms being shared worldwide. Lessig recognised that rather like the books produced as a result of the invention of the printing press, digital technologies produced the tools that could be adopted by the general population with ease, including even the most innovative systems and therefore anyone can now express themselves through music film and other images. (Lessig, 2009, p. 69) And so the blog has taken over from the diary, Soundcloud uploads have taken over hours and hours of audio tape recorded stored in the bedroom of amateur musicians, and the family photo album is now stored on Facebook and Instagram. And with the scale of digital space offered by the Internet, any digital media that is created can be shared and consumed by anyone.

Ridiculously easy group-forming matters because the desire to be part of a group that shares, cooperates, or acts in concert is a basic human instinct that has always been constrained by

transaction costs. (Shirky, 2009, p. 54)

Mass Amateurisation

To a first approximation, anyone in the developed world can publish anything anytime, and the instant it is published, it is globally available and readily findable. If anyone can be a publisher, then anyone can be a journalist then journalistic privilege suddenly

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becomes a loophole too large to be borne by society. (Shirky, 2009, p. 71)

The plethora of content now created and shared by non-professionals in a specific field has led to the mass amateurisation of publishing. (Shirky, 2009, p. 60) It could be argued that the seemingly limitless virtual capabilities of the Internet has only allowed to us to develop further what was already possible. Although the professional and often physical option of gathering information is still available in the form of newspapers, magazines, DVDs and CDs, it is becoming more common to use a digital alternative published and created by an arguably less reliable source in terms of quality of content. The traditional media industries are being crippled because it requires fewer employees, smaller premises and overheads to publish electronically. Small firms and individuals including bloggers and specialist online magazines are actually challenging physical publications such as the Guardian and Good Housekeeping, similarly celebrity magazines such as Hello are challenged for readership by news updates made on Twitter where celebrities are able to communicate with fans directly, creating a far more personal relationship with them. Prior to the Internet communicating with the public involved running a printing press or owning a record label. It involved owning physical land and a large workforce. It involved distribution networks and retail outlets. Above all it involved highly skilled and specialist trained professionals at all levels, from the printing press floor, through creative development, up to senior level management holding degrees in finance and business.

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For the consumer it meant purchase of whole albums and complete newspapers, despite actually only wanting to read the front page or listening to a few tracks from an album. The Internet has therefore allowed greater discrimination of what they pay for and consume, and this has invited the amateur to present themselves alongside the professional to attract a niche audience. Amateur creators of content, in particular musicians, are thriving on the Internet and are making themselves and their content available to potentially millions of people. It has now become as normal for an amateur musician to find his YouTube video thrown up in a search engine alongside a multimillion album selling artist as attending an open mic night in a small local venue. This, however, is not necessarily good news for consumers. Whereas before musicians claimed fame and critical success through recommendation and by the praise spread by word of mouth, there is an abundance of musicians not signed to a major record label or performing in large venues who are still producing music and are able to share and promote it with the power of online networking. And while the old world of scarcity may had some disadvantages, it spared us the worst of amateur production. Surely it is as bad to gorge on junk as to starve? (Shirky, 2009, p. 83) Nevertheless, in the developed world at least, people are lucky enough to live amongst others in society that can afford to, and have the time to, express themselves through words, images and music and share them globally. Does this mean we have given more meaning to the things we create and share now, knowing that they may only ever be heard and not paid for? Are we now reverting to the original form of composition and doing solely for the sake of doing and [p]laying for ones own pleasure? (Attali, 1985, p. 134)

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Composition thus appears as a negation of the division of roles and labor as constructed by the old codes. Therefore, in the final analysis, to listen to music in the network of composition is to rewrite it. The listener is the operator. Composition, then, beyond the realm of music, calls into question the distinction between worker and consumer, between doing and destroying, a

fundamental division of roles in all societies in which usage is defined by a code; to compose is to take pleasure in the instruments, the tools of communication, in use-time and exchangetime as lived and no longer as stockpiled. (Attali, 1985, p. 135)

This supports the idea that the Internet has changed roles and relationships within society. The online world demands more than just sharing for it to function and for everyone to benefit. It involves cooperation, which is harder than simply sharing, because it involves changing your behaviour to synchronise with people who are changing their behaviour to synchronise with you. (Shirky, 2009, p. 50)

Chapter 3 - Value Exchange

Another aspect of human sociology that has been affected by the Internet is the value to which we give things, both personally and culturally. In a society where illegal downloads are at an all-time high it is difficult to conclude how morality has perhaps changed in this alternative online culture, and how much of a determinant it is

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when it comes to making decisions such as streaming live concerts or downloading music illegally. As more and more people join the global village online, perhaps some guilt of not paying for music or streaming online concerts is relieved as one does not see physically who they are stealing from; in a shop there is a cashier and often at small intimate gigs a performer will sell their music in person. Maybe there is less or no guilt felt because the music or experience was not perceived as an exchange as it was taken, and so easily. One of the problems with online streaming and downloading is where the content is hosted. For illegal streaming, the footage has been illegally uploaded to a website host and certain websites find a legal loop hole that allows them to host links to the content being streamed, but do not host the content itself. So as the content is so easily accessible it may be that people stealing it do not feel it is an exchange or something that has been given to them, thus losing the obligation to reciprocate with money, their gift in return.

It is easy to find a large number of facts on the obligation to receive. (Mauss, 1954, p. 11)

This suggests that within a lot of relationships there are times where one expects to receive something, like hospitality, or a present from someone. But [t]he obligation to give is no less important. (Mauss, 1954, p. 11). To give or reciprocate a gift demonstrates social integrity and builds social relationships. However with the online culture and its number of illegal downloaders growing it could be seen that because the content it being taken from hosted sites, there is no-one to offend in society by not giving something in return for them. This displays an emotional

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attachment with giving and receiving as well as just material gain. Our morality is not solely commercial. Things have values which are emotional as well as material. (Mauss, 1954, p.63). This suggests that as there may not always be an emotional attachment to an artist whose music is being downloaded, it doesnt matter whether they will be paid or not. Perhaps it would be different if to download the music illegally the receiver was in the presence of the artist who created the content, consciously knowing that the artist will not be receiving money from them. Perhaps its the dehumanising of the exchanges within society that lifts guilt from people. Could it be that the global village is home to an alternative culture of thieves and criminals? So why dont people stream or download illegally? There are some companies like Spotify and Youtube that allow free streaming of content to the public as the performers are often paid from sponsorship of the event. What role do these companies play when trying to resolve issues of morality? These companies create an avant garde culture of people who can watch and listen to music for free of charge of both money and guilt. Networking technologies that support Youtubes live concert streaming allow performers to give some receivers a gift without the obligation to receive a gift in return from them. In terms of the receiver how is this different to illegal streaming? They are still not reciprocating a gift in return for theirs. It could be seen that some viewers may still feel similar guilt because of this, as giving is an obligation they may miss out on feeling morally content. However, knowing the performer will receive a gift it is likely people are happy to watch the concert for free.

Commodity Fetishism

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Adorno once wrote that the real secret of success...is the mere reflection of what one pays in the market for the product. The consumer is really worshipping the money that he himself has paid for the ticket to Toscanini concert. For Adorno and the Frankfurt School, commodity fetishism is the basis of a theory of how cultural forms such as popular music can secure the continuing economic, political and ideological domination of capitalism. (Strinati, 2004, p. 50)

The idea of transforming the subjective value of music into a commodified object is of course not a new idea introduced by the Internet. There have been changes in the form of the commodity as advances in technology have inevitably affected the production and consumption of music. The development of the gramophone record (by Emile Berliner in 1887) which became commercially popularised and successful in the late 1930s is an example of this. It presented for the first time, the opportunity for people to listen to music in the comfort of their own home and the replay of a record at ones own leisure, not restricted by the schedule of performers and concerts. This of course had social repercussions, creating a new, more personal kind of relationship between the music and its listener. The listening experience could now be reduced to a very intimate and isolated occurrence with a commodity, no longer just an event of social gathering. Since the dawn of the Internet there have been other changes in how and when people carry out daily tasks such as listening to and collecting music. As technology advances we have even commodified the process of purchase and consumption as we are able to participate in engaging activities whilst online, creating a new culture

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where products to buy are only a click of a mouse away. Things like shopping, instant communication or watching live music prior to the invention of the Internet involved leaving the house and socialising with people face to face. There was no option of the virtual world over the physical world. Money was handed over physically to the cashier, taking in a persons body language was an important part of analysing someones mood in conversation and being one of many in a crowd was the only way to partake in a concert. These cultural mannerisms still exist of course, but network technologies offer new alternatives that require less time, effort or physical interactivity. Now that music is arguably cheaper and easier to create, do we value it less or more? The quality of production we were paying for prior to the Information Age may have been just as significant as the scarcity of the product. We are now saturated with a new virtual form of commodity that we cant physically touch but is just as real and even easier to store and stockpile. We still treat music as an object, a thing that is a means to an end. Conclusion

To conclude, it is clear that the Internet has changed social behaviour and mutated old habits. But although the internet has had an irrefutable impact, it has only actually built upon its truly revolutionary predecessors: the telegram was the first means of electronically communicating; the telephone was the first device to transmit conversations; the printing press created the first mass production of text and the gramophone was the first means of listening to recorded music.

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The old view of online as a separate space, cyberspace, apart from the real world, was an accident of history. Back when the online population was tiny, most of the people you knew in your daily life werent part of that population. Now that computers and increasingly computerlike phones have been broadly adopted, the whole notion of cyberspace is fading. Our social media tools arent an alternative to real life, they are part of it. (Shirky, 2009, p. 37)

This shows the level of integration of the Internet in our society, like the television and telephone, gradually increased and became more familiar after their birth. The shock factor has worn off. It is no longer strange, but accepted by us, that it is possible to instantly message someone on the other side of the planet. The use of the Internet has affected our social structures, resulting in isolated networking immersion and music being shared at a global scale. A global village has been created which has forced new forms of practice in the music industry, taking advantage of the popularity of social networking. This has drastically changed the way we share, create and communicate. The existence of the Internet is reshaping the landscape of our towns and cities, in particular the high street and of course retail outlets which supplied music commodities like the record and CDs. Music publications that used to be sold in newsagents are being presented to a smaller and smaller clientele in hard copy form. Like the Kindle book reader which is now delivering literature and books digitally, Amazon and iTunes and even supermarkets are offering music downloads direct to our computers and handheld devices. This is creating ever increasing niche market consumerism, and the days of youths gathering around a jukebox or record player in a

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youth club have long been replaced by what some view as more isolated individuals within a group listening to a variety of genres through headphones. Ultimately, it can be argued that the most obvious manifestation of the skip and shuffle revolution is the popularity of the multi-artist, live music festival which is challenging the attendance at individual artist concerts. It could be further argued that fans at festivals now literally imitate their online experience by skipping from one stage to another to experience the range of sub-culture offered at any one festival. The impact of music downloads on the music industry is also reflected in the way the music charts are now created: first, sales now include both hard copy sales and digital sales, and secondly there is no longer a single chart, but a plethora of separate charts designated for different genres which reflects the niche markets that the Internet has helped create. Finally and most ironically, it could also be argued that the rise and popularity of consumer generated content from amateurs may have been, not in a little part responsible for, the resurrection of the appetite for live music, with a noticeable increase in the availability of open mic nights and opportunities offered to amateur musicians. However, this in itself seems to be heralding the end of an era of multimillion album selling artists that played sold out stadium tours. In The Future of Music, Kusek and Leonard declare that there are too many choices, too many different ways to get music. (2005, p. 37) The days of media controlling music trends and dictating what is offered to the music consumer are truly numbered. The market is now more diverse than ever and is being driven the consumer rather than the producer. Kusek and Leonard further argue that the music industry will have to adjust itself to

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becoming a service industry rather than a product based industry and has the potential to be more influential than ever before because of this. (2005, p. 39) In many respects, one of the most positive effects of the Internet is greater inclusiveness through the global connectivity of producers and consumers of music, allowing for greater collaboration and sharing; and through cheaper and easier access to music products. On the other hand it also creates the potential for isolation of individuals trapped in a virtual world: excessive Internet users who exclude themselves from physical social contact deny themselves the basic human need to connect outward.

Ridiculously easy group-forming matters because the desire to be part of a group that shares, cooperates, or acts in concert is a basic human instinct that has always been constrained by

transaction costs. (Shirky, 2009, p.54)

At the same time technophobes who are unable to take advantage of what the Internet has to offer are denying themselves an equally basic human need to be part of something bigger, not just as consumers but as producers themselves. [O]wning a computer means that you can create as well as receive many kinds of content, from the written word through sound and images. (Shirky, 2009, p. 108) The key is to strike a balance between the two impulses. How the Internet has affected societies is a contemporary issue, and important to monitor as it will have a lasting effect to the creative industries, especially music, and will shape how we communicate in the future.

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Amateur production, the result of all this new capability, means that the category of consumer is now a temporary behaviour rather than a permanent identity. (Shirky, 2009, p. 108)

Bibliography

ATTALI, J. 1985. Noise The Political Economy of Music . Minnesota: University of Minnesota. pp. 4-135. AUSLANDER, P. 1999. Liveness. Oxon: Routledge. DAVID, M 2010. Peer to Peer and the Music Industry. Nottingham: Nottingham Trent University. HOFFMAN, E. 2009. Time. London: Profile Books Ltd. pp. 31-180. HOWKINS, J (2007). The Creative Economy. London: Penguin Group. p.63. KOEPNICK, L. 1999. Walter Benjamin and the Aesthetics of Power. 2nd ed. Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press. p. 141. LEADBEATER, C. 2009. We Think. 2nd ed. London: Profile Books. p.233. LESSIG, L. 2002. The Future of Ideas. New York: Vintage Books. LESSIG, L. 2005. Free Culture. New York: Penguin Group. p18, 67, 70. MAUSS, M. 2011. The Gift. USA: Martino Publishing. pp. 11-63. MCLUHAN, M. 1962. The Gutenberg Typographic Man. London: Routledge. p.31. Galaxy: The Making of

MCLUHAN, M. 1964. Understanding Media. New York: Mentor. p.5. MCLUHAN, M. 2008. The Medium is the Massage. London: Penguin Books Ltd. pp.63-111.

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REYNOLDS, S. 2012. Retromania: Pop Cultures Addiction to its Own Past. London: Faber and Faber Ltd. pp. 61-72. SHIRKY, C. 2009. Here Comes Everybody. New York: Penguin Group. pp.14108. SHIRKY, C. 2011. Cognitive Surplus. London: Penguin Books Ltd. pp. 1-6. STRINATI, D. 2004. An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture. 2nd ed. London: Routledge. p. 50.

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