Stay streaming and the emergence of platform musicians – Keith Negus and Qian Zhang |

Stay Music Trade Weblog

On this weblog publish Keith Negus (Professor of Musicology at Goldsmiths, College of London) and Qian Zhang (Affiliate Professor on the College of Music and Recording Artwork, Communication College of China) current observations and a case-study from their new journal article on the evolution of the stay music financial system and new patterns of commodification which might be rising within the face of digitalization.

The article is printed in Widespread Music and Society and might be accessed at:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03007766.2021.1921909

The Covid-19 pandemic halted many actions we took as a right, but accelerated modifications underway lengthy earlier than the virus began circulating. It disrupted our habits and routines, but launched new patterns of behaviour into our lives – whether or not in properties, colleges and workplaces, or at sport stadiums, and in bars and eating places. As recounted in lots of posts on the Stay Music Trade and past, it has had a big impact on stay music, but additionally given momentum to modifications already underway.

We contemplate these modifications, and their broader context, in an article simply printed in Widespread Music and Society  which supplies a genealogical narrative of those shifts within the economies and industries of stay music, together with altering understandings of the stay expertise. On this publish, we define a number of the key arguments of the article and supply an illustrative instance of how these modifications to the music financial system have performed out in China.

Adjustments to the stay expertise

The article highlights how digital applied sciences have been built-in into stay occasions inside a broader ‘expertise financial system’, and the way stay music has been integrated into digital platforms and social media inside an ‘consideration financial system’. The expertise financial system (usually regarded as the specialness and shortage of concert events), and the eye financial system (requiring us to barter an abundance of tracks, clips, messages, apps, video games and so forth) exist collectively. As audiences seize performances on smartphones for importing and sharing, so stay music turns into a recorded aspect of content material. The streaming of stay motion – whether or not a set from a basement membership, pageant area, or a singer’s kitchen – can provide entry to a novel expertise. But, it additionally struggles for consideration within the swirl of considerable content material, after which turns into a fraction of information saved within the warehouses, mountains, and subterranean caves of cyberjunk.

Digital platforms, streaming, and social media are altering how we take into consideration stay music, and including additional dimensions to being a musician. Changing into a pop musician not entails turning your self right into a ‘performing artist’ and a ‘recording artist’. It additionally entails changing into a ‘platform musician’ or, maybe, a ‘platform artist’. Within the following paragraphs we’ll clarify what we imply by these statements.

In our analysis we’ve drawn on the work of Philip Auslander who identified that the time period ‘stay music’ started showing in dictionaries throughout the Thirties to differentiate between stay and recorded sound in radio broadcasting. When folks listened to a phonograph cylinder or disk they had been fairly clearly listening to voices and music transmitted from a recording. However, the sound of a radio broadcast was extra ambiguous. The stay/recorded distinction turned an moral and a authorized approach of categorizing broadcast sound (Auslander 2012). As Auslander additionally notes, the thought of stay music all the time implied a way of spatial and temporal co-presence. But, for a few years, the liveness of the true place was valued greater than the liveness of the true time.

Social media and digital platforms are more and more demonstrating that an expertise occurring in actual time is starting to amass better emphasis and worth within the streaming of music. The stay expertise is not primarily about being current within the place the place a efficiency happens.  Simply because the Walkman made recorded music extra cell and built-in into diversified environment, so streaming permits audiences a distinct expertise of stay music. Stay streams might be accessed throughout a transitory journey on a practice amongst strangers, when sitting alone in a park, or when gathered with buddies in a personal residence or in bars and cafes.

Platform Musicians in China

In our article we embody a extra prolonged dialogue of how the stay turns into a recording, and the way the recording turns into a part of a stay stream, and the way this each challenges and bridges the stay and recorded fashions of reaching audiences, and gaining success. We illustrate this right here with regards to the growing significance of streamed Chinese language expertise exhibits, and the way in which digital and social media have offered alternatives for what we name ‘platform musicians.’ We embody these examples, partly, to counteract the way in which China has been uncared for in discussions of the worldwide music industries, with students usually assuming a North Atlantic construction of the music enterprise and careers of common musicians derived from the research of rock music.

Expertise exhibits have been central to the music industries of Japan and South Korea. Expertise exhibits in China began life as showcases for the kind of selection leisure related to tv. They had been much like different expertise exhibits broadcast around the globe, however notably influenced by exhibits produced in Korea. But, a more recent kind of expertise present has been launched and might be considered as a part of an extended historical past that traces again, exterior of tv, to the ‘battle of the bands’ that came about in native rock venues from the Sixties, and to contests in jazz ballrooms throughout the Thirties. It’s a fashionable digital inheritor to those pre-digital competitions, in addition to drawing on actuality tv.

The streamed Chinese language expertise present has change into an necessary route by way of which musicians can attain followers and attain stardom. Though initially dominated by pop idols, the format now embraces a wider vary of genres, kinds, and identities. It has change into a strategically vital format for indie, rap, singer-songwriters and dance musicians to interrupt out past restricted alternatives in small venues in native scenes, and out of doors of the business buildings nonetheless dominated by idol manufacturing. Success on a expertise present will increase an act’s worth and supplies efficiency alternatives throughout the normal levels of venues and festivals, together with the proliferating social media and digital platforms that require stay and recorded ‘content material.’

So, for instance The Rap of China (Zhōngguó yǒu xīhā) has opened up an area for the presentation of a style of televisual Chinese language rap, whereas encouraging debates about aesthetics, identities, and codes of public expression. Rave Now (Jì kèdiànyīn) is an digital dance music expertise present that offers viewers a window into the way in which tracks are produced and remixed utilizing turntables, laptops, and software program. I’m CZR–I’m Singer-Songwriter (Wŏ shì chàngzuòrén) follows contenders from their early demo tapes, by way of studio association, after which on to rehearsal, and staged efficiency.

The Massive Band (Yùeduìdexiàtiān), streamed on iQIY owned by Baidu, is a present that allows bands to be acknowledged, usually after years of taking part in small gigs. It has helped revitalise the indie scene, and allowed older performers to succeed in newer audiences. A notable instance is the band New Pants (Xinkùzi) that had been shaped in 1996, launched their first album in 1998, but solely achieved wider success and recognition after successful The Massive Band in 2019.

Streamed Chinese language expertise exhibits cross the stay and recorded. Performances could also be streamed as they’re going down. They might even be pre-recorded, along with narrative sections, after which streamed to permit voting and for stay feedback to be inserted throughout the display screen. Expertise exhibits present stay music to these unable to attend a gig venue (like stay broadcasts), and the publicity provides musicians entry to a extra typical touring profession on stage in entrance of audiences.

The expertise present dramatizes what Simon Frith as soon as known as the ‘shifting boundary between the “staged” and the on a regular basis’ (1996: 204). This commentary from the pre-digital age is equally relevant to digital platforms. It’s dramatized within the narratives and representations within the expertise present, as a lot as within the staged video or streamed performances on YouTube, Kaishou, or TikTok. The expertise present condenses the mechanics of the fashionable music business. It turns into a metaphor for the conflict of aggressive individualism and collective participation, as performers journey the legendary journey from obscurity to stardom, benefiting from a winner-takes-all financial system while concurrently embedded into scenes, communities and fan cultures.

Exterior of the expertise exhibits in China, a dynamic digital music infrastructure is growing inside which over 100 platforms, presently reaching over 600 million streaming customers, present shops for musicians to add recordings, stream performances, and obtain commentary. Though, within the early days the rewards had been through varieties of ad-hoc ‘digital gifting’, the platforms have gotten more and more redesigned to permit newbie and unknown musicians a structured route in direction of audiences, and to attach with media and music industries intermediaries. For instance, in 2017 Tencent Music – a Chinese language firm on-line platform that develops streaming providers – initiated an ‘incentive undertaking’ to inspire indie musicians to add their recordings, claiming to succeed in probably 800 million month-to-month customers. Tencent reportedly paid out 590 million Yuan (roughly 84 million U.S. {dollars}) to musicians (though contractual particulars of this usually are not clear, and it’s a problem for our ongoing analysis). This undertaking turned extra formally constituted because the Tencent Musician Program – a platform that permits musicians to create and share their music, join with publishers, and to obtain enter and recommendation on publicity, advertising and marketing and copyright. On the similar time, the platform permits listening, watching, socialising and interacting. Music platforms in China, starting from quick video platforms like TikTok, social media platforms like SinaWeibo, and music streaming platforms like QQ music, have initiated related initiatives to encourage musicians and acquire ‘content material.’ Final yr, Tencent introduced further initiatives to help extra conventional folks and Chinese language dialect music.

In our article we confer with ‘platform musicians’. This emergent id builds upon and extends the way in which commerce, business and expertise, intersecting with the actions of musicians and audiences, allowed for the emergence of the ‘recording artist’, and industrial venues afforded the ‘stay performer’. A very good instance of this might be No Social gathering For Cao Dong (Cao Dong Meiyou Paidui). This Taiwan band has, since its formation, used platforms to launch recordings, to stay stream recordings and performances, and created the title music for the online game Devotion. Though there are various variations between what No Social gathering For Cao Dong are doing and the presentation of musicians on expertise exhibits (and the way in which idols and celebrities use platforms), there’s a rising development for bands to make use of audio streaming and stay apps from their earliest days. A wide range of platforms afford the mixing of efficiency and recording with different visible arts and transferring photographs. Platforms permit musicians to create with different musicians, and to place their work on-line and obtain quick responses, and to realize followers and to work together with these followers. The platform musician bridges the stage, studio, and display screen. The stage turns into a platform, and the platform turns into a stage.

Keith Negus and Qian Zhang

References

Auslander, Philip (2012) ‘Digital Liveness: A Historico-Philosophical Perspective’ PAJ: A Journal of Efficiency and Artwork, 34/3, pp. 3-11.

Frith, Simon (1996) Performing Rites, Oxford: Oxford College Press.