Histories and Industries: Music and Research in the Age of Digital Reproduction

Humanities and the Arts in the Integrated Knowledge University Conference

HAIKU, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, September 13, 2013.

Abstract

In general, while humanities scholars—not just those of us in the music subdisciplines—do good research in the history of music and its performance, production, and reception, we have not been as strongly concerned with articulating the history of music mediation and distribution. Instead, we tacitly leave the task of historical narrative to the music industry itself. The music industry is really only interested in its history to the degree that it can sell that history back to its consumers, repackaged into slightly distinct commodities that are essentially identical, over and over again. The major solution that I propose—and this is hardly a new idea—is that a greater, more comprehensive historical understanding of our music industries can both increase our potential as scholars to enact and affect real change outside of the academy and our students’ potential to succeed in whatever area of musical inquiry, performance, or mediation they choose.