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

Reside 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 reside music economic system and new patterns of commodification which might be rising within the face of digitalization.

The article is revealed in Fashionable Music and Society and could 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 houses, faculties and workplaces, or at sport stadiums, and in bars and eating places. As recounted in lots of posts on the Reside Music Trade and past, it has had a huge effect on reside music, but additionally given momentum to modifications already underway.

We contemplate these modifications, and their broader context, in an article simply revealed in Fashionable Music and Society  which gives a genealogical narrative of those shifts within the economies and industries of reside music, together with altering understandings of the reside 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 economic system have performed out in China.

Modifications to the reside expertise

The article highlights how digital applied sciences have been built-in into reside occasions inside a broader ‘expertise economic system’, and the way reside music has been included into digital platforms and social media inside an ‘consideration economic system’. The expertise economic system (usually regarded as the specialness and shortage of concert events), and the eye economic 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 reside music turns into a recorded factor of content material. The streaming of reside motion – whether or not a set from a basement membership, pageant subject, 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 knowledge saved within the warehouses, mountains, and subterranean caves of cyberjunk.

Digital platforms, streaming, and social media are altering how we take into consideration reside music, and including additional dimensions to being a musician. Changing into a pop musician not includes 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 now we have drawn on the work of Philip Auslander who identified that the time period ‘reside music’ started showing in dictionaries throughout the Thirties to differentiate between reside and recorded sound in radio broadcasting. When folks listened to a phonograph cylinder or disk they have been fairly clearly listening to voices and music transmitted from a recording. However, the sound of a radio broadcast was extra ambiguous. The reside/recorded distinction turned an moral and a authorized means of categorizing broadcast sound (Auslander 2012). As Auslander additionally notes, the thought of reside 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 accumulate higher emphasis and worth within the streaming of music. The reside expertise is not primarily about being current within the place the place a efficiency happens.  Simply because the Walkman made recorded music extra cellular and built-in into various environment, so streaming permits audiences a distinct expertise of reside music. Reside streams could be accessed throughout a transitory journey on a practice amongst strangers, when sitting alone in a park, or when gathered with mates in a non-public house or in bars and cafes.

Platform Musicians in China

In our article we embrace a extra prolonged dialogue of how the reside turns into a recording, and the way the recording turns into a part of a reside stream, and the way this each challenges and bridges the reside and recorded fashions of reaching audiences, and gaining success. We illustrate this right here as regards to the growing significance of streamed Chinese language expertise exhibits, and the best way digital and social media have offered alternatives for what we name ‘platform musicians.’ We embrace these examples, partially, to counteract the best way China has been uncared for in discussions of the worldwide music industries, with students typically assuming a North Atlantic construction of the music enterprise and careers of fashionable 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 have 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 could be seen as a part of an extended historical past that traces again, outdoors of tv, to the ‘battle of the bands’ that occurred in native rock venues from the Nineteen Sixties, and to contests in jazz ballrooms throughout the Thirties. It’s a trendy digital inheritor to those pre-digital competitions, in addition to drawing on actuality tv.

The streamed Chinese language expertise present has develop into an vital 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 develop into a strategically important 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 constructions nonetheless dominated by idol manufacturing. Success on a expertise present will increase an act’s worth and gives efficiency alternatives throughout the normal phases of venues and festivals, together with the proliferating social media and digital platforms that require reside 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 best way 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 Large Band (Yùeduìdexiàtiān), streamed on iQIY owned by Baidu, is a present that permits bands to be acknowledged, typically after years of enjoying small gigs. It has helped revitalise the indie scene, and allowed older performers to achieve newer audiences. A notable instance is the band New Pants (Xinkùzi) that have been shaped in 1996, launched their first album in 1998, but solely achieved wider success and recognition after profitable The Large Band in 2019.

Streamed Chinese language expertise exhibits cross the reside and recorded. Performances could also be streamed as they’re happening. They might even be pre-recorded, along with narrative sections, after which streamed to permit voting and for reside feedback to be inserted throughout the display. Expertise exhibits present reside music to these unable to attend a gig venue (like reside broadcasts), and the publicity offers 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, taking advantage of a winner-takes-all economic system while concurrently embedded into scenes, communities and fan cultures.

Exterior of the expertise exhibits in China, a dynamic digital music infrastructure is creating inside which over 100 platforms, at the moment reaching over 600 million streaming customers, present retailers for musicians to add recordings, stream performances, and obtain commentary. Though, within the early days the rewards have been through kinds 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 venture’ to encourage indie musicians to add their recordings, claiming to achieve 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 should not clear, and it’s a problem for our ongoing analysis). This venture 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 identical time, the platform permits listening, watching, socialising and interacting. Music platforms in China, starting from brief video platforms like TikTok, social media platforms like SinaWeibo, and music streaming platforms like QQ music, have initiated related initiatives to encourage musicians and achieve ‘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 best way commerce, business and know-how, intersecting with the actions of musicians and audiences, allowed for the emergence of the ‘recording artist’, and business venues afforded the ‘reside performer’. An excellent instance of this might be No Get together For Cao Dong (Cao Dong Meiyou Paidui). This Taiwan band has, since its formation, used platforms to launch recordings, to reside stream recordings and performances, and created the title tune for the online game Devotion. Though there are various variations between what No Get together For Cao Dong are doing and the presentation of musicians on expertise exhibits (and the best way idols and celebrities use platforms), there’s a rising development for bands to make use of audio streaming and reside apps from their earliest days. Quite a lot of platforms afford the mixing of efficiency and recording with different visible arts and shifting photographs. Platforms enable 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. 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.