history

Acoustic Communities in late-19th Century mills and mines

Posted on December 9, 2021 | by Maarten Walraven-Freeling

or what I learned about the importance of sound & listening when building community while convincing historians to think about sonic histories.

Audible history is often about hinting at the possibility of the impact of sound on issues surrounding class and gender or on the imagination of nations and smaller communities. Less is written about how exactly sound affects, something that is partially to do with the ephemeral quality of sound. The power of sound is instead analysed through the listener, talking about how sound is experienced in a variety of settings by different actors. Some of the most informed work on listeners has been done by Mark Smith whose work on nineteenth-century America demonstrates ‘how individuals experienced, understood, made sense of, and invented their environments and themselves in ways beyond mere seeing.’[1] By placing the human actor centrally, historians have been able to open up new ways of understanding how identities and relationships are constructed and negotiated. Like Smith, who has also written about time-discipline, I am inspired by the social history of E.P. Thompson who asked ‘but what of the internalization of [work-] discipline?’[2] Implying that power structures were not merely a top down affair. I am also inspired by the Alltagsgeschichte of Alf Lüdtke who worked with the concept of Eigensinn, which means self-will or sense-of-self. Lüdtke defined Eigensinn as ‘the attempt to create some welcome respite, at least for a few brief minutes, from unreasonable external (and shop floor) demands and pressures.’[3] It is the ideas and concepts of these strands of history that allow the listener to be drawn in to the moments where power, class, gender, politics etc. were negotiated. The factory discipline of Thompson was based on sound as much as it was on sight and Lüdtke’s Eigensinn, came about in often auditory actions.

Exploring the listener is not the same as understanding the role sound itself played in the negotiations of identity, power, and so on. The listener is necessary to understand the impact of sound on human experience, but here, I want to make the case that the acoustic context in which sounds were generated and perceived is equally important. Considering the role of acoustics brings sound itself centre stage and demonstrates that, in the workplaces explored by Thompson and Lüdtke, community was created and maintained through sound. Here, Eigensinn is used to demonstrate how the soundscape of the workplace made possible the micro-political negotiations of power and identity by the worker that is implicated in that concept. Thinking about workplace communities in the late-nineteenth century through the acoustic context of these sites ‘makes us re-think [the] relationship to power’ of the workers.[4] This paper demonstrates that the natural reactions of people to their sonic environment helped Eigensinn to be established.

By sound itself I mean those audible objects to which we can ascribe acoustic properties. To understand the difference between these audible objects and the spatially and temporally defined soundscape in which they were heard historians can draw on Albert Bregman’s ‘auditory stream analysis.’ According to Bregman, who studied audition – our faculty of hearing – for decades, ‘the word “stream” [stands] for a perceptual representation, and the phrase “acoustic event” or the word “sound” for the physical cause.’[5] A ‘stream,’ then, is an event in which multiple happenings occur, whereas a sound is a singular object which can be defined through its volume, pitch and so on. In any workplace there are multiple sounds that together make up the auditory stream from which the ears have to make sense. Barry Truax, the famous scholar of sound, has, quite successfully, claimed that ‘Sound signals are the most striking components of the acoustic community, and often such sounds are unique and of historical importance.’[6] What I will do here is to discuss what I argue are the most important sound signals with the auditory stream of the mine shaft and in the card room in the weaving factory.

The sound signals dominated the actions of the workers. This did not mean that these sounds were not internalised and adapted to, thus creating an acoustic community that made work more bearable and where there was a place for Eigensinn. When historians pay attention to the sounds within the sonic environments of the people whose experiences they want to contextualise they need to think about acoustics. Here, this will be done by using the acoustic properties of mines and factories in the Ruhrgebiet and Manchester. The acoustic context together with recorded sounds of workplace machinery demonstrate what the auditory stream was from which workers made sense. It was from that point that workers could start to perform micro-political acts of Eigensinn.

In the card room of Swindells’ Mill in Bollington in the south of Manchester (fig. 1) the carding engines were placed in the shed, on the right, separated from the other machines, mostly roving frames, by a partition.

Fig. 1. Card Room at Swindell’s Mill in Bollington. Source: Museum of Science and Industries MS 0631-180. Author’s photo.

While a single sound will be discussed, that of one carding engine, the plans of card rooms show that this sound was not heard in isolation. Too often, historians tend to neglect the cacophony in which sounds were heard. Using auditory stream analysis not only helps to understand how historical subjects made sense of their soundscape, but is also method to make the historian aware of this. The sound of a carding engine consisted of the hum of the leather driving strap and the rhythm of the carding rollers.

Arkwright Carding Engine, recorded 1 October 1979 at Helmshore Museum,
1979.0008, North West Sound Archive

Listening to the recording from the North West Sound Archive, the repetitive motion of the machine is immediately audible. The metallic sound that is heard throughout the recording – and which gives it an almost musical base falling on the two and the four of a 4/4 beat – is probably the shoes, which held the roller and clearer pedestals, slotting into the flanges, thus cleaning and disentangling the cotton.[7] It is this sound which gave the carding engine its most clearly defined rhythm. The other sounds were less clearly defined and therefore probably groupings of different processes within the machine. Understanding the qualities of the sound of the carding engine like this helps to understand what the mill worker was hearing. That, in turn, builds on historians’ understanding of mill workers’ experiences, which has often not taken the sensual experience into consideration. The auditory stream was filled with many different sounds, originating from different sources and locations. Working with the carding engines meant that workers had to be able to distinguish between the machines they attended and the ones they did not. The metallic sound, because it is so distinctive in the recording, may have been an important factor in making sense of the auditory stream within the card room. It has the acoustic qualities to be a sound signal. Picking up the metallic sound, a worker could let the rest of the sounds in the card room disappear into the background.

When thinking about sound and rhythm, especially in a closed space such as the card room, historians need to also be aware of acoustics. The rhythm of the carding engines and roving machines and the way they sounded within the card room was also dependent on the space’s acoustics. In most mills the card room was located in a large space on the ground floor.[8] The plans for New Bengal Mill in Manchester (fig. 2 & 3) show that the floors were covered in wood boards and the ceilings were made of concrete and that the windows comprised the largest part of the outer walls,. Because concrete has a very low absorption coefficient (table 1), meaning that it reflects nearly all of the sound waves that hit it, the floor and ceiling of the card room present surfaces that keep the sounds within the space itself. Glass has a much higher coefficient, meaning that more sound waves are being let through. The lower frequency ranges especially find their way through glass, while the higher ranges reflect off it.

Fig. 2. Details sections of floors at New Bengal Mill, Ancoats. MS 0631/34. Author’s photo.

Fig. 3. Details Sections of walls at New Bengal Mill, Ancoats. MS 0631/34. Author’s photo.

Table 1. Acoustic absorption coefficients of brick, glass, and concrete

Within the card room of a late-nineteenth century mill the carding engines mostly sent out lower frequency sound waves. The higher frequency metallic sound of the carding engine thus had another feature that made it stand out as it was a sound that reflected back into the room. Due to the close proximity of the reflecting surfaces the sound came back almost as soon as it was heard emanating from the machine. Only near the windows was there some loss of the volume that the machines created within the card room.

A similar analysis can be made for the mines in the Ruhrgebiet. Inside a mine, the enclosed space meant that sound reflected back from each direction without being able to escape into the air. Within coal mines, the absorption coefficient of the wall and floor areas have recently been determined to be the opposite of those of the glass windows in the cotton mill.

Tabel 2. Acoustic absorption coefficients within a coal mine shaft

High-pitched sounds were absorbed more than low-pitched ones. While the sounds were trapped within the shaft, the walls of the shaft did absorb some of the sound, meaning that the sonic environment gave the miners some relief from the sounds that filled the auditory stream around them. The sound of the Signalglocke, a bell which regulated the lifts bringing miners up and down, sounded like this:

Korbglocke at Zeche Zollern, recorded 1987, Schallarchiv des Ruhrgebiets of
Richard Ortmann

The lower pitch of the Signalglocke meant that its sounds did not get absorbed so easily and travelled far into the shafts, making it an important sound signal for the miners as they could not have visual contact and thus had to rely on auditory signals. They knew what the lift was doing through these signs and at each lift entrance there were signs called Schlagtafeln (fig. 4) that informed the miners of what the signals meant. When this communication went wrong, it could cost lives as this report in the Dortmunder Zeitung tells us. ‘After the given signals the operator believed that there were no people in the lift, while five workers were about to ride up. They went down to the bottom at full power and sustained significant injuries.’[9] Going down or up, there would have been a quietness in the lift, while when the signal was giving that it was stopped, the usual banter between the miners would be heard again.

Fig. 4: Anschlagtafel at Bergisches Museum für Bergbau, Handwerk und Gewerbe, Burggraben 9-21. Photographer: Frank Vincentz

For the mill workers and miners to have made sense of the auditory stream of their workplace, required them to be attuned to specific sound signals such as the metallic sound of the carding engine or the bell striking of the Signalglocke. Understanding the soundscape of the card room and the mineshaft like this, supports Mark Smith’s notion that for industrial workers ‘the sounds of the shop floor were deemed just that: sound, at worst noise that was necessary, but rarely simple, intolerable noise.’[10] Workers had to find a way to deal with the sounds in their work environment and acoustic qualities of the machines they worked with allowed them to do this, creating an acoustic community.

Conclusion

Bregman’s analysis revolves around creating a structure from the auditory input that people receive from the world around them. I have argued that this can help historians to understand how workers made sense of their environments through sound. So, going back to Truax and the acoustic community model: this has as its purpose ‘to define the environmental characteristics that promote effective communication within any environment under study?’[11] I hope you can agree with me, that by taking into account the acoustic context of the workplace, I have shown how workers used sound to allow for communication and thus created an acoustic community. Because workers adapted to the sounds of their workplace environment they were able to construct a shared identity based around Eigensinn. Through making sense of the auditory streams around them, workers enabled time and place for micro-political acts such as horseplay, banter and other social interactions which time-discipline aimed to prevent.

[1] Mark M. Smith, ‘Making Sense of Social History’ Journal of Social History 37 (2003), 165-186 (167).

[2] E.P. Thompson, ’Time, Work-Discipline and Industrial Capitalism’ Past & Present 38 (1967), 56-97 (86-87); E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (London, 1965); Mark Smith, Mastered by the Clock: Time, Slavery and Freedom in the American South (Chapel Hill, NC, 1997).

[3] Alf Lüdtke, ‘Polymorphous Synchrony: German Industrial Workers and the Politics of Everyday Life’ International Review of Social History 38 (1993), 39-84 (52). Alf Lüdtke, Eigen-Sinn: Fabrikalltag, Arbeitererfahrungen und Politik vom Kaiserreich bis in den Faschismus (Hamburg, 1993); Alf Lüdtke, ‘Cash, Coffee-Breaks, Horseplay: Eigensinn and Politics among Factory Workers in Germany circa 1900’ in Michael Hanagan & Charles Stephenson (eds.) Confrontation, Class Consciousness and the Labor Process (London, 1986), 65-95.

[4] Michael Bull & Les Back, ‘Introduction: Into Sound’ Bull & Back (eds.), The Auditory Culture Reader (Oxford, 2003), 1-18 (4).

[5] Albert Bregman, Auditory Scene Analysis: The Perceptual Organisation of Sound (Cambridge, MA, 1994), 10.

[6] Barry Truax, Acoustic Communication 2^nd ed. (London, 2001), 67.

[7] For more on the working process of the carding engine see: Evan Leigh, The Science of Modern Cotton Spinning (Manchester, 1873), 102-04; James Innes, The Cotton Spinner’s Pocket Book (Manchester, 1925), 25-33; William Murphy, The Textile Industries Vol. 2 (Manchester, 1910), 43-88.

[8] Williams, Cotton Mills, 112 describes how it was the exception to the rule to have the card room on the upper floor.

[9] Dortmunder Zeitung, 30 January, 1878.

[10] Smith, ‘The Garden in the Machine : Listening to Early American Industrialisation’ in Trevor Pinch & Karin Bijsterveld, The Oxford Handbook of Sound Studies (Oxford, 2012), 39-57 (41).

[11] Truax, Acoustic Communication, 70.

How I got over a quarter million plays on my Soundcloud

Posted on November 25, 2017 | by Bas Grasmayer

Building up a following as a DJ in the social web’s early days: a how-to for time travellers. 💫

Back when I was in college, my friend and I would go to a lot of parties. We also used to rap in a band together. Up until then, I had always been writing a lot of lyrics and would visit every hiphop gig in my city. When there was nothing better on, we’d go to student parties in a local club that gathered around 800 people every week, and in between dancing and chatting, we’d be rapping our lyrics over the beats of popular songs.

Then one day we stumbled upon the drum ‘n bass scene (with regular parties in my hometown being hosted by the renowned Black Sun Empire). I always thought electronic music was not for me, but it changed the way I looked at electronic music. Instead of trying to make beats on FL Studio, I started playing around with making electronic music. Then, one day, I stumbled upon a simpler tool that allowed me to mix tracks together. It carried the tacky name Mixmeister, but it is still my all-time favourite tool for making mixes from the comfort of (what was then) my bedroom.

I still wish a company like Native Instruments or Ableton would buy this firm, and release a better and renewed version of their software that hasn’t worked on my Mac for years. But I digress.

Up until then, I had been writing lyrics. Lots of them. Daily. I was involved in the “textcee” scene, which is how people participated in online rap back when it was still a little tricky to record and upload tracks. I participated in battles, topical challenges, wrote about complex (and often silly) subject matter, and really got my creativity out — all in text format. It was easy to distribute, light-weight, and it had its communities and forums.

Pre-Soundcloud

For DJs, it was harder. Bandwidth was not great, and back in 2006 or so, when I started, there were no good online communities. There was no Soundcloud, there was no Mixcloud, and YouTube only allowed videos of up to 10 minutes. My tools of choice, for hosting DJ sets, were YouSendIt, uploaded.to and MegaUpload. They were iffy and you always had to monitor that your files were not taken down, but they would do.

I thought a lot about the format. I never mixed over 80 minutes, because I wanted to make sure that fans (if I had any, and it was hard to tell pre-Facebook & Twitter) would be able to burn it to CDs and listen to it from their cars or home stereos.

I would write detailed information about my tracklists, for a number of reasons:

It’s only fair that the creators of the music get acknowledged – especially since I was sharing their music without permission;
If one of my listeners liked a track, I wanted them to be able to know what it was (there was no such thing as Shazam);
I put detailed time markings, so that people would be able to identify the transitions and the amount of work I’d put into blending tracks together.

I would post them to the forums where I was already going (as well as my MySpace), where I already had my fans because of my texts, together with the links. Here’s an example of such a tracklist:

Then I started a blog on Blogspot to post all the mixes. People would subscribe via RSS and get the posts through their RSS reader. I even added a way to get email updates when the RSS feed would be updated, by using a popular tool at the time called FeedBurner. When posting my mixes to forums, I would also always include download links but also a link to the blogpost, so I could build up my followers there, too.

I didn’t know it at the time, but what I was doing really helped with SEO. If people were Googling those tracks, they’d often find my blog, because not everything was on YouTube, today’s major streaming platforms were non-existent, and the underground was not represented well on iTunes. By sharing my mixes everywhere, I was also generating a lot of backlinks. I was publishing multiple mixes per month. Throughout 2007 I published as many as 35.

Then Soundcloud arrived on the scene

I’m not sure how or when I discovered Soundcloud, but it must have been in its early days back in 2008. I managed to register my first name as my username, which I have held on to ever since, despite people trying to hack my account and even being hit by a trademark claim by an American rapper (after I rejected offers to buy it).

This is where things really started taking off. Now I was able to collect streams instead of downloads. It was so incredibly convenient. No wonder DJs flocked to the platform. All fans had to do now was hit play, but the option to download and listen in high quality was there too. On top of all that, I was able to timestamp my mixes in a much more interesting way: by commenting the tracks.

Something else happened too. By tagging my mixes, it was possible for others to find my work. And by browsing tags, I was able to find other DJs. This was a first. Never before had there been as big a community of DJs. Never before had it been so easy to connect to others. Never before had it been so easy for producers and DJs to connect from the comfort of their bedrooms.

I started listening to other DJs. Commenting everywhere. I continued the same strategy of tracklists and tagging, which maybe also helped my SEO on Soundcloud. But I also didn’t give up on my website until many years later when Facebook was more established and it was getting hard to get people to visit websites. Owning your audience was important, and I always knew this. I needed to have my own place to keep the people who are interested in what I do connected to me.

Then in 2009, Soundcloud changed the rules of the game for DJs.

The first big DJ revolt on Soundcloud

When Soundcloud started, they allowed everyone to upload 4 tracks every month. Tracks could be of any length, or at least long enough to fit a DJ set, but if you wanted to upload more than 4 in a month, you would have to get a paid account. This was great for DJs, but it didn’t last.

In October 2009, Soundcloud switched over to a model with a maximum amount of minutes per account. Even if you’d upgrade to the most expensive monthly package there was no way to get rid of the maximum. It caused an uproar (link to discussion with participation of the founders – but layout is messed up, because it’s a cached page). I participated and tried to be understanding. The model made sense for producers, who were more likely to spend money on Soundcloud. It sucked for DJs though. I wanted DJs to think about what kind of model would allow for Soundcloud to monetize them and very actively participated in the discussion.

The people who participated in that discussion got lucky, and it’s really a token of how user-centric Soundcloud was in those days. A link was shared with the participants, where they could list their accounts, and they were given 30 extra hours. For me, that was about 30 extra DJ sets and it has lasted me to this day (I never matched my 2007 streak) — and I should have probably mentioned this in my ‘Benefits of Being an Early Adopter‘ piece. And props to David Noel, who was Soundcloud’s community lead. The email exchanges (and exchanges on Soundcloud’s support community) that I had with him stuck with me. I was writing my thesis at the time and when I graduated and got into music startups those exchanges were a big inspiration for my early career.

Life goes on

As Soundcloud grew into the giant it is today, I grew along with it. My taste grew, my following grew, my tactics and strategies evolved, and I saw new genres flourish on Soundcloud, such as moombahton.

Before all the download-gate bullshit, that make you jump through hoops, follow random accounts, like Facebook Pages, etc., it was pretty convenient to get free downloads from Soundcloud. I actually set up an IFTTT script that would automatically download tracks I favourited to my Dropbox. This way I could discover new music while I was working at Zvooq by day, in passive mode, and then by night play around with the files in my mixes.

I participated actively in the new, emerging online scenes. Commenting on tracks and connecting to amazing new talent emerging from the internet, rather than from a particular network of DJs. This got me a lot of listeners. I started making mixes in which all tracks were available to download for free. This had value in different ways:

I knew for sure that all DJs would be ok with me uploading this;
People would listen to them, because they knew they can find and quickly download new tracks through there;
I would link to all the tracks and afterwards comment on them to let people know I had featured their work. Sometimes they would share my music on their social media (this is before the repost function on SC).

If you’re not communicating your music this way, if you’re not networking with your inspirations, you’re not doing it right. This is probably how I got most of my plays from 2012 to now. Tactics and landscapes change, but some principles are true forever. Participate!

Other tactics not listed above:

Make playlists on 8tracks with the tracks of my mixes in order to promote my mix;
Try to win followers via social listening platforms like turntable.fm;
Make short mixes and post them on YouTube in order to find new audiences;
Facebook & Twitter accounts through where I would connect to segments of my audience.

My demise as a net-DJ

Then things got harder. It wasn’t any particular issue, but a lot of factors combined to halt me.

I switched to a Traktor S4 controller with Traktor software, so now I had to do all my mixes live. I’m a perfectionist, so this decreased my output. Digging also got harder: the communal nature of Soundcloud changed and a lot of DJs stopped offering their tracks as downloads (even when they’re not selling them). Others would put their stuff behind download gates, which just made it a pain in the ass to collect tracks and way more time-consuming. This also decreased my output.

As the number of mixes I put out decreased, so did the growth of my followers and my exposure to my audiences that were not directly connected to me. Followers ‘churn’ even when they stay part of your follower count. This means that followers go inactive on the platform they follow you on, so the follower count no longer translates to playback or other forms of engagement. This doesn’t matter so much when you’re new, but if you’re working on something for over a decade, it matters.

All of this compounded. It’s been about 5 years since I had a mix that got ~5k plays. And 8 years for 15k. But the lesson here is: to rack up following & plays, you can get lucky with a hit or just be insanely productive.

I’m at peace with what happened and now that I’m in Berlin, with talented friends as producers, plus friends in companies like Ableton and Native Instruments, I’m slowly getting back into DJing and producing. I haven’t put out a track in a decade, and no mix in 2 years, but I’m surrounded by the right people to get back into it… and do things right with all the experience I’ve collected plus that surrounds me. (if I actually end up having enough time — the irony of working in music)

Key takeaways

If I had to distill this into key lessons (and I do, because I owe it to you after reading 2000 words), these would be my main takeaways:

GET THERE EARLY. I got really lucky with being early to Soundcloud, but it also helped that what I was doing back then was not as common as it is now. Stay on top of developments in sounds and genres, and be slightly ahead of the curve, so you can shine a spotlight on up & coming talent. It will pay off when someone blows up.
BUILD YOUR FOLLOWING. Don’t trust in platforms: own your following. Connect them to your presence in many places, get their email addresses. Make sure your following is loyal, build trust, be consistent. If you’re slightly ahead of the curve, they know they’ll always discover new artists through you.
ALWAYS CREDIT PEOPLE. Scenes are small. Help each other. If you play someone’s music: list it. Don’t have time to provide a tracklist? Then you don’t have time to be a DJ. Sorry.
BE HELPFUL. This is connected to crediting: help people to understand the music they’re listening to. They’ll connect to you for this.
BE CONSISTENT & PRODUCTIVE. My best days were when I was a student. I don’t know how I found the time in between college and 12-20 hours of side jobs per week, but often I’d get home and get to mixing. I’d be doing stuff with music almost every spare minute. That’s the only type of dedication that really works.

I’ve had my run. Maybe I’ll do it again, but in a different way. I still like DJing, but prefer to do it live now. Besides, I have other ways to enjoy music now, such as my day job at IDAGIO, as well as MUSIC x TECH x FUTURE.

But to the generation that’s out there, on the cyber highways, hustling: best of luck & I hope this piece helps you.

Our changing relationship with music and its new practical function

Posted on August 18, 2016 | by Bas Grasmayer

back in my day music players

Music executives need to understand how shifting context and function have changed music consumers and their expectations.

Guest contribution by Thiago R. Pinto.
Portuguese version.

Part I

So, the music industry has changed. If you haven’t been living in a cave for the past 15 years you probably noticed. For those who need to catch up, here are the 3 main points that summarize it:

increased access to the means of production;
increased access to information;
democratization of distribution channels.

But some things remain unchanged by this digital revolution. Royalties distribution, for example. The correct distribution of copyright royalties is still a headache for composers, musicians and labels. Despite music having been practically dematerialised and living on networks where everything is trackable. Companies like Kobalt are trying to change this game, but we still have a long way to go until we get this right. This is an issue that deserves its own article, so I’ll leave it for now.

Among the lasting habits that have been practically untouched along these 15 years, my personal highlight goes to a mantra I hear in every conference, article and talk about music. It goes something like this: people’s emotional/behavioural relationship with music hasn’t changed. We still love music the way we always did.

Part II

A couple of weeks ago I was reading a report published by Vevo where in its introduction Erick Huggers, Vevo’s CEO, once again repeats the mantra:

vevo report

Well, I don’t know where Huggers and others are looking, but I can’t believe that they still don’t see something that it’s in everyone’s face. This relationship has changed! C-H-A-N-G-E-D. I would write it upside down if I could.

Before we move on with the subject, I just want to make one thing clear: yes, music still moves crowds of people. Yes, it is more listened than ever. And yes, artists still have a lot of influence. However that doesn’t mean people still relate to music the same way they used to.

Probably there is no other cultural activity that is so universal, that permeates, affects and shapes human behaviour as much as music, said Alan P. Merriam in The Anthropology of Music. However, music’s own definition evokes a variety of philosophical, cultural and even political questions. Musicologists suggest that its definition is directly related to the social context and function of certain behaviours in a particular culture. In my opinion, these two words — context and function — define a fundamental element, so many times forgotten, of the discussion: the formation of our musical preferences.

The changes in the way we build our tastes and preferences are the things that should be analyzed, so that we can understand why today music has a new function and also why we can no longer blindly support ourselves on arguments like the one above by Huggers, especially if it is presented in an music industry context. To understand context, function and how today these issues have altered people’s relationship with music, we must go back in time.

Part III

Music always had context and function. In the early days, when we were still just tribes, music used to have spiritual functions. Variety didn’t exist, neither was music entertainment. One’s tribe music was all that there was to listen to and it was directly related to celebration of the tribe’s beliefs. In other words, music was attached to religion. In this context, forget about music preference. People will listen to what the Chief says.

We evolved into more complex societies where we began to be divided into social classes. There were the nobles, the bourgeois, and the clergy. Then came everyone else. At this time the culture each one of these groups had access to, was a fundamental tool for social distinction. For the rich there were good instruments, good musicians, and concert halls. There was classical music. For the rest there were rudimentary instruments, self-taught musicians and taverns. There was folk music. In that context, musical preference was a status symbol and it showed to which social class one belonged.

2 hippies at a festival — Music had a fundamental roll in the formation of the hippie culture, being a tool for the creation of a collective identity.

During the 20th century the development of consumer societies gave new meaning to all goods produced. Especially after World War II, we started living in a society where for the first time supply was greater than demand. At this point there were a great number of companies offering very similar products and services. The technical differentiation between these goods gave space to brand personality construction and so we began consuming products not only for their quality but also because we identify with them. We started to use consumption as a way to build individual and collective identities.

In this process, cultural goods — specially music — were extremely important. Musical preference was a key element in defining ones personality, particularly among the youth. It was what defined which group a person belonged to, which ideology he or she followed, and in what values he or she believed in, independent of what was his or hers social-economical background. In that context, music preference was about identity.

Part IV

We arrived at the beginning of the 21st century and all these functions — spiritual, social and identity building — still exist. The difference is that now they’ve lost strength and no longer are the pillars that define our musical preference. The 3 key elements of the digital revolution (access to the means of production, access to information and democratization of distribution channels) created a new context to music consumption having a direct impact in the way new generations are building their musical preferences.

Never before in history have we had access to so much music, for such a low cost and at such a high speed. The access difficulty, which in my opinion was a key element in keeping our preferences so narrow, was eliminated from the equation. At 15 (in 1998) I had a proud collection of roughly 100 CDs as a result of the musical choices I made. Today a teenager with the same age has access to humanity’s music library only a few clicks away.

Part V

The platforms in which we consume music have also changed. The introduction of the iPod started transforming music consumption into a private experience which allowed people to try out new music genres without worrying about their social image.

Listening to music on the metro — Music consumption habits were strongly impacted by the introduction of digital portable devices and headphones.

Through the ease of access and popularization of new platforms, music started being ubiquitous. The frontiers to experimentation were then opened and brought new tastes and the permission for listeners to break up the social identity chains of each genre allowing the free flow between a variety of different styles of music. It was the beginning of the process that freed music from its function as an identity building tool. At this point a new function for music emerges: the practical function.

Part VI

Music started to be used according to the activities and tasks that listeners were performing during their daily routines. Like this, music preference that before was an almost immutable passion built through context, today looks like a chameleon changing from moment to moment.

We are living the age of “I love this music, but at the right moment”, we see the creation of a generation of eclectics that use music in very practical ways, a generation where the mood related to an activity is more important than genre. Need to study? Downtempo or classical. Going to the gym? EDM or hip-hop. Time for cooking? Indie folk or jazz. Going to a party? Techno or trap. In other words, the experience is not in the music itself, but in what we do while while listening to it. In this context it is interesting to realize how we can look at today’s music services with new eyes. Last.fm is a great example.

Last.fm was one of the first social networks to use music to establish connections between users based on their music preferences. It identifies all tracks and the related artists played by its users and utilizes this data to build a personal music history. The initial goal was that from this list of most played artists the user’s musical preferences would arouse. If a person listens to Beethoven, Mozart and Bach a lot then classical music must be his or her preference.

But following the aforementioned argument, that music today has a practical function in people’s life, we can not accept this conclusion so fast. Classical music today is consumed a lot by people while they work and, in this case, we have to also consider that classical may not be their preference, but just the genre that follows her main daily activity: work. If the tasks we perform during the day are what are going to define what we will listen, and not our musical preference for a specific genre, than we can say that today, Last.fm does not present the musical preferences of its users, but a list of the activities they engage the most in.

While in Last.fm’s case we can consider that this data is generated “accidentally” as a service sub product, to Spotify the perception of the new practical function of music was fundamental to the development of its UX.

Spotify was one of the first major services to understand that to this new generation of listeners, the stars of streaming services are not songs and artists, but playlists and moods. Spotify’s user experience is built around these two elements, because the company understood that its users do not solely use the service for contemplation, but use music as a fuel for another activity. It was the first time I saw a service put together moods and genres side by side, presenting a perfect mirror for this profound change in music consumption behaviour.

By focusing on moods and playlists, Spotify helps its users to quickly find a perfect selection of music to whatever activity he or she is engaging in, without having the headache of searching through 30 million songs to find the perfect ones for the moment.

Spotify workout playlists

Spotify mood playlists — Spotify and its long list of mood and activity playlists.

Part VII

Now that we‘ve gone through the new practical function of music, how it changed the formation of our musical preferences, how it changed our relationship with music and finally how we can have a new look on services and business strategies, I want to go back to the focal point to this article which is the mantra “we still love music the same way we always did”. I’ll once again quote Vevo’s CEO Erick Huggers to present my counterpoints:

“Music creates transformative experiences. It has the power to connect people in personal and meaningful ways unlike any other medium.”

No, it is not music that creates the experience. Music is the background that helps to set the mood. The activity which people are engaging in is what connects people (with themselves or others). It is the Saturday lunch with friends, the picnic at the park, the music festival with 40.000 people in the middle of the desert.

“For music fans, it’s an essential part of how they live their day-to-day lives.”

I believe this statement is true only if we understand that music is an essential part of this new generation of listeners, because it gives the key to the activities they will engage in and not because — like in the past — it was used to build their personal and collective identities.

“Finding the songs and melodies that speak to them directly and reflect their unique personas isn’t so much a desire, but a need.”

Here is the big issue. Music for new generations is not about reflecting their unique personas, but a mirror of the activity he or she is performing. Music was once a question of loyalty and identity. Today it’s a good consumed according to moments. So the musical preferences of these listeners is much more flexible and no longer the reflection of their identities.

Part VIII

Whether this new perspective is something bad or good for music is not up to me (or especially to this article) to say. What is important here is that this revolution cannot be stopped. It is a continuous process of gradual transformation where the individual is in charge. It is a self regulating revolution where it is not up to industries and businesses to control it, but to really understand its culture, values, rules and players. We should not perceive this new listener from a conservative viewpoint or as an enemy to the music establishment. We should analyze it from an evolutionary standpoint where the listener is the transformation agent in a radical change in the social consumption relations.

Futurism is a science that usually gets its predictions wrong because it is done in large by people who look at technology and numbers (and because it is just damn hard to see what’s coming). Technology can change people’s behaviour, but only if it is the right time for it, in the right context. Numbers can sometimes be misleading. If you only look at the big numbers you might miss the small ones which are the real indicators of transformation. The real challenge in futurism is to predict how our behaviour is going to change. Borrowing from Tom Vanderbilt’s excellent article:

“When technology changes people, it is often not in the ways one might expect.”

Technology changed the way we listen to music and as a result we changed the way we feel about it. We should start considering that people are no longer loving music, but that they just like it. Or are even just using it. But what is more important is that only when we understand these changes, will the music industry be able to create services, products and business models that are in tune with this new listener.

This is a guest contribution by Thiago R. Pinto.