Search results

Using a novel measure incorporating stylistic and acoustic data on recorded music from 1967 to 2017, we search for trends in the evolution of musical diversity in 125,340 albums. We find that temporal patterns of diversity differ for stylistic and acoustic data. We also find that the patterns differ dramatically by genre. Some genres, such as blues, jazz, and pop-rock, decrease in diversity over time; most other genres increase in diversity. The causes of these different trends present a puzzle for future research. We also find different patterns for recordings that made the Billboard 200 charts compared to all recordings, suggesting an association between selection processes driven by consumer popularity and diversity. Moreover, associations of diversity and industry structure found in prior research do not hold when we analyze data beyond the smaller sample of the more popular recordings found in Billboard. These findings have implications for many prior studies based exclusively on best-selling recordings

Working at the University of Liverpool alongside Julia Hallam and Lisa Shaw, and in the Department of Music, are Sara Cohen and Jacqueline Waldock. Both Sara and Jacky have led projects that engage with and support local organizations and communities, and examine music from the perspective of those involved. In fact, it was their shared interest in how ‘ordinary’ people engage with and experience music in everyday life that prompted them to join forces in 2014, and start working together on community engagement projects. At the same time, they have brought to these projects their own individual research interests and expertise. In this chapter, we discuss their recent collaboration on a project that explores the use of music to improve the wellbeing of older people in the UK, including people living with a dementia-related cognitive impairment and in nursing homes and health-care settings, and those who live independently but are cared for at day-care centres run by voluntary and community-based organizations. We situate this project within a selection of UK music initiatives or ‘interventions’ aimed at helping those living with dementia and age-related memory loss, and outline how specific projects informed our own approach and work.

This article reviews the quantitative marketing literature on artificial intelligence (AI) through an economics lens. We apply the framework in Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence to systematically categorize 96 research papers on AI in marketing academia into five levels of impact, which are prediction, decision, tool, strategy, and society. For each paper, we further identify each individual component of a task, the research question, the AI model used, and the broad decision type. Overall, we find there are fewer marketing papers focusing on strategy and society, and accordingly, we discuss future research opportunities in those areas.

The American Sociological Association Communication, Information Technology, and Media Sociology (CITAMS) section has long been concerned with the processes by which social connectedness and solidarity are created in a technology-rich, digitized society. In this chapter, the role of temporal symmetry in facilitating social synchronicity and digital connectedness is explored. Unity through simultaneity, which develops when spatially separated people focus on the same things at the same time, was conceptualized by sociologist Eviatar Zerubavel in a largely pre-digital age (1981) and coined as temporal symmetry. The concept has great relevance for the digital era and helps to explain why social media and digital technology have become so popular, consequential, and, indeed, indispensable in modern everyday life. The chapter explains how temporal symmetry is generated via digital technology in such activities as the viewing of live-streamed events, texting, and synchronous social media use. It examines how the temporal coordination of individuals’ streams of thought and internal rhythms can result in interpersonal similarity, like-mindedness, shared identities, and social synchronicity. Finally, it discusses the impact of these phenomena on digital connectedness, social life, and society in a digital age, contributing to the body of research CITAMS is committed to developing in helping the academy and the general public understand the impact of communication, information technology, and media on people’s techno-social lives.

Through the prism of intimacy, this chapter discusses how experiences of pain and loss in relation to bereavement by suicide is expressed in the black metal music and lyrics by Danish band Orm. Orm's 2019-album Ir ‘verdigris’, entangles the emotional complex and personal relations to the local, natural surroundings of the island Bornholm, including a named tree and lake, as well as local folklore and Norse mythology. As part of fieldwork, the author muddles with intimacy to define an approach sensitive enough to deal with strong and unspeakable emotions, including the idea of cultural intimacy and public embarrassment related to the issue of suicide. The author also reflects on how my participation in the pain of others informs the interpretation. The chapter suggests that Orm's black metal is doing important pain work, opening to listeners a path towards disembarrassment.

Purpose – This chapter observes the dynamics between various aspects of current pop music production, particularly in respect to digital culture, and the preservation and access challenges faced by a wealth of analogue sound artefacts. I argue for the need to consider the activity of ‘fringe piracy’ – that is online music distribution that specialises in out-of-print analogue editions and bootleg trading – as worthy of civic merit: as participatory heritage recovery, preservation and dissemination.

Methodology – I narrate and interpret a series of contexts pertaining to deep changes in popular music production and consumption in the last decade. I will do so primarily by focusing on online activity, while unravelling its relationships with traditional modes of music production, dissemination and consumption (i.e. the music industry as defined by vinyl records, cassettes and CDs throughout the second half of the Twentieth Century). I further contrast the mechanics of ‘grey areas’ of online music access against mainstream web platforms such as iTunes. The author has performed extensive participant observation throughout various online platforms in the last decade, particularly the ones mentioned along the chapter. Additional content has been developed as a consequence of both online and offline discussions, as well as conference panels and symposia (Codebits, 2010; South By South West, 2011; Syracuse University London, 2011).

Findings – I argue that the current, wide field of possibilities for music production and dissemination stands in radical contrast with an ongoing and strengthened orthodoxy on the part of media labels and distributors. I further argue that, in contrast with this orthodoxy that stems from consumer culture, an exponential availability of recording and editing tools is encouraging a discreet civic mission of digital transcription, and subsequent historical preservation, of analogue artefacts that would otherwise face the prospect of fading into obscurity and possible definitive loss. This, however, seems to be occurring in gradual oblivion of contextual placement, but rather in line with a culture of interchangeable sampling of a purely sensorial and/or affective nature.

Originality – Most debates on the subject of music piracy tend to focus on a polarisation of the underlying issues, while mainly addressing its legal and political aspects. There is a need to unravel the cultural, aesthetic and civic parameters that emerge from a phenomenon that is, ultimately, anything but polarised: instead, one finds it is paved with complexity and ambivalence.