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Continuity and Change in the Relationship Between Popular Music, Culture, and Technology: An Introduction

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Popular Music, Technology, and the Changing Media Ecosystem

Part of the book series: Pop Music, Culture and Identity ((PMCI))

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Abstract

The chapter outlines a culture-centered narrative regarding the co-evolutionary nature of music and technology. Focusing on the relationship between recorded popular music and digital technologies, the chapter inspects the following questions: How to approach the interaction of music production, distribution, and consumption, on the one hand, and technology, on the other? How do cultural meanings of music technologies change over time and across communities? The chapter argues that stories of the relationship between music, technologies, and culture are worth being told from a cultural perspective for two main reasons: first, because technological specifications tend to underdetermine the patterns of usage, and second, even the specifications themselves are inseparable from cultural traits and meanings in the technological ecosystem, as are the processes of innovation.

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Acknowledgements

This paper was supported by the Janos Bolyai Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

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  1. Department of Sociology and Communication, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Budapest, Hungary

    Tamas Tofalvy

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  1. Tamas Tofalvy
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology and Communication, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Budapest, Hungary

    Tamas Tofalvy

  2. Department of Sociology and Communication, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Budapest, Hungary

    Emília Barna

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Tofalvy, T. (2020). Continuity and Change in the Relationship Between Popular Music, Culture, and Technology: An Introduction. In: Tofalvy, T., Barna, E. (eds) Popular Music, Technology, and the Changing Media Ecosystem. Pop Music, Culture and Identity. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44659-8_1

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