Whatever I Want: Death Grips, Disobedience and the Music Industries

The experimental hip-hop group Death Grips, formed in 2010, quickly rose to prominence and signed with the major label Epic Records in 2012. Their first Epic album, The Money Store, (2012) did well and the band appeared to be settling in to a profitable and productive relationship with the company. Yet in 2013 Death Grips released their second album, No Love Deep Web, online, for free, and without authorization from the label. Despite this breach of contract, Epic Records did not do the expected and seek to enforce their contract or sue for damages. Instead, Death Grips were released from their contract and allowed ownership of their recordings. By offering an account of these events, and analyzing the response to them in trade journals, blogs, and interviews with the band, this thesis examines the actions of the band and the company in the context of the ongoing digitalization-driven restructuring of the music industries. My findings show that by analyzing the actions of Death Grips through frame works drawn from media studies, popular music studies, art history, and political theory, the group can be seen as taking advantage of a contemporary process of media democratization (brought on in part by new media technologies) as a means of rebelling against their employer. This disobedience affects the group\u27s relationships to their intellectual property rights and their rights to control their own labour. I argue that Death Grips\u27 actions suggest that new possibilities of artists\u27 control over their work within the existing record industry and that it may be possible for other artists to take similar action, ultimately pushing toward a shifting balance of power in the record industry

Sharing Sounds: Musical Innovation, Collaboration, and Ideological Expression in the Chilean Netlabel Movement

In recent years technological advances have triggered radical shifts in the ways people produce, disseminate, perform, and consume music across the globe. This dissertation contributes to the understanding of these overarching transformations by examining the creative and social practices of Chilean electronic musicians affiliated with a relatively new class of non-commercial, Internet-based music distribution services known as netlabels. While maintaining ideological commitments to provide free access to their musical catalogs, these collectives allow affiliated musicians to share innovative works through an alternative venue, removed from the commodifying pressures that have governed the circulation of recorded music for over a century. To cultivate a more collaborative rather than competitive or proprietary creative environment, netlabel artists also generally release their works under the customizable guidelines of Creative Commons licenses, which enable content producers to offer others default permissions for the reuse, remixing, and/or sampling of their work. Drawing on extensive fieldwork conducted primarily among electronica, electroacoustic, and electro-pop musicians associated with the Santiago-based netlabels Pueblo Nuevo, Jacobino Discos, and Michita Rex, this dissertation analyzes the nature of musical innovation, collaboration, and ideological expression in this historically unprecedented context. It applies the art world theory of Howard Becker (1983) to explore how musicians realize their works and reconceive what is artistically possible in relation to evolving creative circumstances. It relates theories of public discourse and community formation to the realities of new media fragmentation as it examines how netlabels provide a platform for artists to collaborate, communicate, and establish expansive social networks bound by shared aesthetics and social convictions. Incorporating theories of artistic experimentalism, this dissertation further investigates the ideological dimensions of the netlabel movement and their relationship to leftist social movements in Latin America. Lastly, this work offers a musicological case study illuminating a broader transnational paradigm shift in the nature of cultural production and dissemination. According to Creative Commons co-founder Lawrence Lessig (2008), this shift reflects a transition from the “read only” model of the past century, marked by passive consumption and the strictly commercial exchange of media culture, to the more democratic and participatory “read/write” model of the digital era.PHDMusic: MusicologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/136959/1/bodiford_1.pd

Music Aggregators and Intermediation of the Digital Music Market

This article demonstrates that, contrary to popular belief, the advent of the Internet has not made intermediaries in the music market obsolete. Individual artists and independent record labels who want to sell their music in digital music stores must deliver their records via third-party companies called music aggregators. Drawing on the concepts of new institutional economics, the article demonstrates that the emergence of music aggregators is a market response to the high level of transaction costs and bargaining asymmetry associated with selling digital music online. The conclusion suggests that the major music conglomerates may seek ownership links with music aggregators, leading to the emergence of vertically integrated companies, which may have profound consequences for cultural markets

Copyright reform and business model innovation: regulatory propaganda at German music industry conferences

Inspired by new digital technologies, diverse actors in cultural and creative industries propagate conflicting visions of how to adequately innovate – or rather preserve and strictly enforce – copyright-related business models, which has resulted in substantial amounts of regulatory uncertainty. Looking at a decade of regulatory discourse at industry events in the popular music industry in Germany, we investigate how these actors make sense of and strategically shape this uncertainty in the process of industry transformation. Our longitudinal argumentative discourse analysis reveals cycles of regulatory propaganda of two discourse coalitions that do not engage in debate, but aim to find support for competing business models among regulators and the public. Organizing, canceling, and participating in industry events are discursive strategies used effectively to transport their claims by both industry lobbyists and challenging actors, but industry incumbents are failing to use these sites for testing out and introducing new business models. We conclude that regulatory struggles, not least at industry events, mediate between disruptive technologies and business model innovation

Home Studio Owners\u27 Strategies to Compete in the Recording Industry

The purpose of this multiple case study was to explore strategies that well-established home recording studio owners in a city in the southeastern United States have used to compete in the recording industry. Four home recording studio owners served as participants. Each participant owned and operated a home studio business in the target area for longer than 10 years. Porter\u27s 5 competitive forces model and Christensen\u27s disruptive innovation theory were the conceptual lenses for this study. Interviews, direct observations, and website documents were the 3 data collection sources used to achieve methodological triangulation. The data were analyzed using Yin\u27s 5-step thematic approach to qualitative data analysis: compiling, disassembling, reassembling, interpreting, and concluding. Four themes emerged from the analysis of the data: doing business and making money with friends, keeping the family safe and the studio secure, decoupling the clock from the creative process, and linking strategy to personal goals. The findings of this study may contribute to positive social change by economically empowering aspiring entrepreneurs to become small business owners and create new jobs that help strengthen their local economies

The Discourse and Culture of Chip Music Studying the Methods and Values of the Chipscene

Master's Thesis popular music MUR502 - University of Agder 2018This thesis tackles some of the complicated internal issues that has colored the chipscene. Through analyzing discourse in blog posts, academic material and online communication between chiptune practitioners it aims to define the current generation of chiptune musicians. Interviewing figures of interest has given insight into the aesthetic of chiptune and what is important to the current community. Analyzing the aesthetic values can give insight into the elements of the genre that is so difficult to define. The goal is to expand upon the work of Marylou Polymeropoulou (2014) and see it in context of my own involvement with the scene as well as the many reflections documented by academics. By gaining an understanding of how the different historical events and ideologies of chiptune culture has affected the discourse throughout the ages, we can perhaps define a new generation of chipmusicians. Most importantly, there are aspects of newer chiptune culture that has remained untouched in academia. This research aims to contribute knowledge on the aesthetics of the chiptune medium and culture, put in the context of Polymeropoulou’s work. It will demonstrate the musical aesthetic that is often neglected in other articles. For instance, the tech-oriented aesthetic created on obsolete hardware that has recently influenced those creating chiptune music with modern tools, and vice versa

Music and Digital Media

Anthropology has neglected the study of music. Music and Digital Media shows how and why this should be redressed. It does so by enabling music to expand the horizons of digital anthropology, demonstrating how the field can build interdisciplinary links to music and sound studies, digital/media studies, and science and technology studies. Music and Digital Media is the first comparative ethnographic study of the impact of digital media on music worldwide. It offers a radical and lucid new theoretical framework for understanding digital media through music, showing that music is today where the promises and problems of the digital assume clamouring audibility. The book contains ten chapters, eight of which present comprehensive original ethnographies; they are bookended by an authoritative introduction and a comparative postlude. Five chapters address popular, folk, art and crossover musics in the global South and North, including Kenya, Argentina, India, Canada and the UK. Three chapters bring the digital experimentally to the fore, presenting pioneering ethnographies of anextra-legal peer-to-peer site and the streaming platform Spotify, a series of prominent internet-mediated music genres, and the first ethnography of a global software package, the interactive music platform Max. The book is unique in bringing ethnographic research on popular, folk, art and crossover musics from the global North and South into a comparative framework on a large scale, and creates an innovative new paradigm for comparative anthropology. It shows how music enlarges anthropology while demanding to be understood with reference to classic themes of anthropological theory. Praise for Music and Digital Media ‘Music and Digital Media is a groundbreaking update to our understandings of sound, media, digitization, and music. Truly transdisciplinary and transnational in scope, it innovates methodologically through new models for collaboration, multi-sited ethnography, and comparative work. It also offers an important defense of—and advancement of—theories of mediation.’ Jonathan Sterne, Communication Studies and Art History, McGill University 'Music and Digital Media is a nuanced exploration of the burgeoning digital music scene across both the global North and the global South. Ethnographically rich and theoretically sophisticated, this collection will become the new standard for this field.' Anna Tsing, Anthropology, University of California at Santa Cruz 'The global drama of music's digitisation elicits extreme responses – from catastrophe to piratical opportunism – but between them lie more nuanced perspectives. This timely, absolutely necessary collection applies anthropological understanding to a deliriously immersive field, bringing welcome clarity to complex processes whose impact is felt far beyond what we call music.' David Toop, London College of Communication, musician and writer ‘Spanning continents and academic disciplines, the rich ethnographies contained in Music and Digital Media makes it obligatory reading for anyone wishing to understand the complex, contradictory, and momentous effects that digitization is having on musical cultures.’ Eric Drott, Music, University of Texas, Austin ‘This superb collection, with an authoritative overview as its introduction, represents the state of the art in studies of the digitalisation of music. It is also a testament to what anthropology at its reflexive best can offer the rest of the social sciences and humanities.’ David Hesmondhalgh, Media and Communication, University of Leeds ‘This exciting volume forges new ground in the study of local conditions, institutions, and sounds of digital music in the Global South and North. The book’s planetary scope and its commitment to the “messiness” of ethnographic sites and concepts amplifies emergent configurations and meanings of music, the digital, and the aesthetic.’ Marina Peterson, Anthropology, University of Texas, Austi

Music and Digital Media

Anthropology has neglected the study of music. Music and Digital Media shows how and why this should be redressed. It does so by enabling music to expand the horizons of digital anthropology, demonstrating how the field can build interdisciplinary links to music and sound studies, digital/media studies, and science and technology studies. Music and Digital Media is the first comparative ethnographic study of the impact of digital media on music worldwide. It offers a radical and lucid new theoretical framework for understanding digital media through music, showing that music is today where the promises and problems of the digital assume clamouring audibility. The book contains ten chapters, eight of which present comprehensive original ethnographies; they are bookended by an authoritative introduction and a comparative postlude. Five chapters address popular, folk, art and crossover musics in the global South and North, including Kenya, Argentina, India, Canada and the UK. Three chapters bring the digital experimentally to the fore, presenting pioneering ethnographies of anextra-legal peer-to-peer site and the streaming platform Spotify, a series of prominent internet-mediated music genres, and the first ethnography of a global software package, the interactive music platform Max. The book is unique in bringing ethnographic research on popular, folk, art and crossover musics from the global North and South into a comparative framework on a large scale, and creates an innovative new paradigm for comparative anthropology. It shows how music enlarges anthropology while demanding to be understood with reference to classic themes of anthropological theory. Praise for Music and Digital Media ‘Music and Digital Media is a groundbreaking update to our understandings of sound, media, digitization, and music. Truly transdisciplinary and transnational in scope, it innovates methodologically through new models for collaboration, multi-sited ethnography, and comparative work. It also offers an important defense of—and advancement of—theories of mediation.’ Jonathan Sterne, Communication Studies and Art History, McGill University 'Music and Digital Media is a nuanced exploration of the burgeoning digital music scene across both the global North and the global South. Ethnographically rich and theoretically sophisticated, this collection will become the new standard for this field.' Anna Tsing, Anthropology, University of California at Santa Cruz 'The global drama of music's digitisation elicits extreme responses – from catastrophe to piratical opportunism – but between them lie more nuanced perspectives. This timely, absolutely necessary collection applies anthropological understanding to a deliriously immersive field, bringing welcome clarity to complex processes whose impact is felt far beyond what we call music.' David Toop, London College of Communication, musician and writer ‘Spanning continents and academic disciplines, the rich ethnographies contained in Music and Digital Media makes it obligatory reading for anyone wishing to understand the complex, contradictory, and momentous effects that digitization is having on musical cultures.’ Eric Drott, Music, University of Texas, Austin ‘This superb collection, with an authoritative overview as its introduction, represents the state of the art in studies of the digitalisation of music. It is also a testament to what anthropology at its reflexive best can offer the rest of the social sciences and humanities.’ David Hesmondhalgh, Media and Communication, University of Leeds ‘This exciting volume forges new ground in the study of local conditions, institutions, and sounds of digital music in the Global South and North. The book’s planetary scope and its commitment to the “messiness” of ethnographic sites and concepts amplifies emergent configurations and meanings of music, the digital, and the aesthetic.’ Marina Peterson, Anthropology, University of Texas, Austi

Music and Digital Media: A planetary anthropology

Anthropology has neglected the study of music. Music and Digital Media shows how and why this should be redressed. It does so by enabling music to expand the horizons of digital anthropology, demonstrating how the field can build interdisciplinary links to music and sound studies, digital/media studies, and science and technology studies. Music and Digital Media is the first comparative ethnographic study of the impact of digital media on music worldwide. It offers a radical and lucid new theoretical framework for understanding digital media through music, showing that music is today where the promises and problems of the digital assume clamouring audibility. The book contains ten chapters, eight of which present comprehensive original ethnographies; they are bookended by an authoritative introduction and a comparative postlude. Five chapters address popular, folk, art and crossover musics in the global South and North, including Kenya, Argentina, India, Canada and the UK. Three chapters bring the digital experimentally to the fore, presenting pioneering ethnographies of an extra-legal peer-to-peer site and the streaming platform Spotify, a series of prominent internet-mediated music genres, and the first ethnography of a global software package, the interactive music platform Max. The book is unique in bringing ethnographic research on popular, folk, art and crossover musics from the global North and South into a comparative framework on a large scale, and creates an innovative new paradigm for comparative anthropology. It shows how music enlarges anthropology while demanding to be understood with reference to classic themes of anthropological theory

The Screenplay Business: Managing creativity in script development in the contemporary British independent film industry

A screenplay is sometimes said to be a blueprint for a film, and its genesis and development is therefore important to our understanding of how films are created. Film business studies has traditionally avoided close study of the screenplay development process, perhaps as a result of the film studies emphasis on analysing the text of the completed film, and the auteur theory emphasis on the importance of the director; both of which may have marginalised the study of development and the creativity of development practitioners. Professional screenplay development is a team activity, with creative collaboration between screenwriters, producers, development executives, financiers, and directors. So how does power and creative control shift between members of this team, especially as people arrive or leave? And how does this multiple authorship affect the auteur theory idea that the director is the creative author of the film? This research sets out to open debates around the process and nature of the business of script development, and consider how development practitioners experience, collaborate and participate in the process of screenplay development in the UK today. It uses original interviews, observation and hermeneutic reflection; and asks how cross-disciplinary ideas around creativity, managing creative people, motivation, organisational culture, and team theory could be used to consider how the creative team of writer, producer, director and development executive can work effectively together. It proposes new theories, including defining the independent film value chain and the commitment matrix, analysing changing power relationships during development, and establishing new typologies around film categories and their relationship to funding. The core of this PhD by Prior Publication is the book The Screenplay Business: managing creativity and script development in the film industry. The supporting paper explores the contexts of film industry studies; the film value chain; auteurship and screenplay studies