'music that actually matters'?

399 Pages·2016·4.15 MB·English

by  Michael Waugh

ANGLIA RUSKIN UNIVERSITY

‘MUSIC THAT ACTUALLY MATTERS’? POST-
INTERNET MUSICIANS, RETROMANIA AND
AUTHENTICITY IN ONLINE POPULAR MUSICAL
MILIEUX

MICHAEL WAUGH

A thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements of Anglia
Ruskin University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Submitted: October 2015
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS i

I would like to thank my supervisors Dr. Sean Campbell, Neil Henderson and Dr.
Martin Zeilinger for the huge support that they have provided throughout the course
of my research. I am particularly grateful for Sean’s efforts, given that he has shown
great devotion to and interest in the work that I have produced over the last three
years. Special thanks also to my friends and colleagues Dr. Noel McLaughlin and Dr.
Jamie Sexton, whose guidance, knowledge and assistance have been much
appreciated both during and prior to my doctoral degree. My supervisors and
colleagues have believed in my abilities and ideas from the beginning, and the
confidence that I have gained from that faith cannot be understated.

I also wish to show my appreciation for the musicians, artists and academics that
contributed significantly to this thesis through interviews and email discussions.
Thank you to Aaron David Ross, Adam Harper, Evian Christ, Fatima Al Qadiri, Finn
Diesel, Gobby, Holly Herndon, Jam City, Justin & Samia (18+), Lotic, Ryan
Trecartin, SOPHIE and TCF for taking the time to respond to my questions
eloquently and thoughtfully. This study has been greatly enhanced by your input.

I am incredibly grateful to Alejandro Ghersi (Arca) and Jesse Kanda, who have
shown remarkable confidence and interest in my studies to date. Your interviews,
support and willingness to collaborate with me have not only vastly improved the
quality of my research; they have also contributed greatly to my personal belief in the
value of my work. Thank you so much for the opportunities that you have afforded
me as well as the trust you have placed in my abilities.

Thanks go to the Department of English and Media at Anglia Ruskin University for
granting me the opportunity and funding to produce this piece of research, and to the
Film and Television department at Northumbria University for providing me with
skills and inspiration that I will continue to draw on throughout my academic career.

Finally, and most importantly, thank you to my family for always believing in my
talents and for looking out for me through thick and thin. Thanks must especially go
to my father Steve, mother Denise, brother Chris, sisters Victoria and Nicole,
grandmother Kathleen, grandfather Dennis, aunt Pat and uncle Stephen for the
boundless encouragement, support and advice that you all have always given me. I
sincerely and wholly appreciate it.
ii
ANGLIA RUSKIN UNIVERSITY
ABSTRACT

FACULTY OF ARTS, LAW & SOCIAL SCIENCES
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

‘MUSIC THAT ACTUALLY MATTERS’? POST-INTERNET MUSICIANS,
RETROMANIA AND AUTHENTICITY IN ONLINE POPULAR MUSICAL
MILIEUX

MICHAEL WAUGH
October 2015

This thesis is the first academic text to apply the notion of the ‘Post-Internet’ to music,
uniquely deploying the concept to stress the role that authenticity has played in
contemporary online musical milieux. Using digital aesthetics and themes, Post-Internet
art considers a symbiotic relationship between post-millennial youths and their
technological devices that has ramifications for contemporary identity and
communication. This thesis argues that Post-Internet musical cultures also exhibit these
motifs. Much academic analysis of post-millennial musical milieux is narrowly focused
on changes to the music industry that occurred at the turn of the millennium, or
maintains that the mass archives of the Internet promote retromanic musical production.
This thesis contrastingly analyses contemporary musicians that evince Post-Internet
themes in their music and self-representation. One of the thesis’ original claims is that
these musicians have developed an authentic representation of Post-Internet existence
due to their sensitive examination of post-millennial cultural and personal experiences.

Post-Internet themes and academic debates about authenticity are presented as a key
context for the textual analyses of these undertheorised Post-Internet musicians. The
thesis’ multi-disciplinary focus draws on posthumanism, queer theory, notions of
information overload, social media theory and representation politics. Academic works
by theorists such as Simon Frith, Simon Reynolds, Nathan Jurgenson, Mark Fisher,
Sarah Thornton, Richard Middleton, Adam Harper and Steve Jones are analysed. The
texts explored in this thesis include albums, YouTube videos, social media, live
performances, games and digital mixes. References to influential blogs and magazines
such as Pitchfork and The Fader illustrate online reaction to these musicians and
emphasise the authentic reputation that they have attained. I conducted fifteen
interviews with the key musicians, exploring the perspectives of these practitioners as a
means to illuminate their oeuvres.

The research spotlights, for the first time, music that self-consciously expresses Post-
Internet themes to explore digital technology’s impact on identity, culture and society.
One of the key original arguments offered is that these artists develop authentic
representations of Post-Internet cultural and personal experience through their output
and public personas. The conclusion notes that the aesthetic trend outlined here has also
informed mainstream musicians, with many commercially successful artists
appropriating from, and collaborating with, Post-Internet musicians in order to develop
a comparably authentic representation of Post-Internet culture and identity.

Key Words: Post-Internet; Retromania; Authenticity; Online; Popular Music; Identity
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION
Pages: 1-29

CHAPTER ONE: Theorising digital cultures

Section One: Retromania: a critique
Pages: 31-46
Section Two: The Post-Internet and DIS Magazine
Pages: 47-68

CHAPTER TWO: Musical authenticity online

Section Three: Authenticity: theoretical perspectives
Pages: 70-91
Section Four: Online fan cultures and the Post-Internet milieu
Pages: 92-111

CHAPTER THREE: Irony, critique and social media

Section Five: PC Music and irony versus sincerity
Pages: 113-129
Section Six: Social media, anonymity, narcissism and total transparency
Pages: 130-154

CHAPTER FOUR: Popular music and Post-Internet identity

Section Seven: Digital queering and personal posthumanism
Pages: 156-183
Section Eight: Vocal science, digital intimacy and embodying the virtual
Pages: 184-211

CHAPTER FIVE: Pan-global information noise and interactivity

Section Nine: Pan-global club music and information noise
Pages: 213-233
Section Ten: Post-Internet screens, interactivity and audiovisual music
Pages: 234-250

CONCLUSION: Mainstream appropriation of Post-Internet themes and aesthetics
Pages: 251-275

PICTURES
From Introduction – Pages: N/A
From Section One – Page: 277
From Section Two – Pages: 277-280
From Section Three – Pages: N/A
From Section Four – Pages: N/A
Michael Waugh
From Section Five – Pages: 280-281
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From Section Six – Pages: 281-283
From Section Seven – Pages: 283-284
From Section Eight – Pages: 284-285
From Section Nine – Pages: 285-287
From Section Ten – Pages: 287-288
From Conclusion – Pages: 288-291
From List of Appendices – Pages: 291-295

REFERENCES

Bibliography
Pages: 297-340
Discography
Pages: 341-350
Multimedia References
Pages: 351-358
Live Performances
Pages: 359-360
Interviews
Page: 361
Pictography
Pages: 362-372

BLOG APPENDIX (LINK AND ACCESS INFORMATION)
Page: 373

LIST OF APPENDICES
Pages: 374-393
Michael Waugh
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COPYRIGHT DECLARATION

ANGLIA RUSKIN UNIVERSITY
FACULTY OF ARTS, LAW & SOCIAL SCIENCES

‘MUSIC THAT ACTUALLY MATTERS’? POST-INTERNET MUSICIANS,
RETROMANIA AND AUTHENTICITY IN ONLINE POPULAR MUSICAL
MILIEUX

MICHAEL WAUGH
October 2015

Attention is drawn to the fact that copyright of this thesis rests with:

(i) Anglia Ruskin University for one year and thereafter with
(ii) Michael Steven John Waugh.

This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is
bound by copyright.

This work may:
(i) Be made available for consultation within Anglia Ruskin University Library, or
(ii) Be lent to other libraries for the purpose of consultation or may be photocopied for
such purposes
(iii) Be made available in Anglia Ruskin University’s repository and made available
on open access worldwide for non-commercial educational purposes, for an indefinite
period.
Michael Waugh
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Introduction

What we do while connected is inseparable from what we do when disconnected. […]
There was and is no offline. [...] Our lived reality is the result of the constant
interpenetration of the online and offline. [We] live in an augmented reality that exists
at the intersection of materiality and information, physicality and digitality, bodies
and technology, atoms and bits, the off and the online (Jurgenson, 2012)

I’m more responding to the fact the Internet exists (SOPHIE, thesis interview, 2015)

The Internet and the computer are my school, my paints, and my gallery (Kanda,
thesis interview, 2014)

The Internet is no longer ‘new’. As emphasised in pieces by Jurgenson (2012; 2014),
Archey and Peckham (October 2014) and Harper (September 2014; 10 September 2013),
over twenty years have passed since it first became accessible to the wider public, and it has
been over a decade since high-speed broadband increased connectivity yet further. This is, of
course, not to suggest that the Internet is static and unchanging, or something that
revolutionised communication two decades ago and has remained the same since. Digital
technology evolves at a rapid pace, and each shift unquestionably brings about further
changes in culture and society. There is no doubt that the Internet1 has generated vast changes
in popular music, and this has become a critical aspect of contemporary popular music
studies. Yet much academic writing has focused on the ways in which the Internet has
restructured popular music without moving beyond specific events that occurred in the early-
2000s. For example, while leading journals such as Popular Music, Popular Music and
Society and The Journal of Popular Music Studies dedicate increasing space to discourse
about the evolving nature of the digitised music industry, debating the transformations in
distribution and communication brought about by the web, emphasis is primarily placed on
phenomena from the turn of the millennium such as the rise of the music website Pitchfork,
1 It is worth noting briefly from the outset that terms such as ‘Internet’, ‘net’, ‘web’, ‘digital’ and ‘virtual’ are
u s e d r e l a t i v e l y i n t e r c h a n g e a b l y t h r o ughout this thesis. They should be taken to mean the same thing: the notion
of online spaces. While these words were initially coined with slightly differing meanings in mind, their
ubiquity in contemporary culture has rendered them practically synonymous (hence the absence of
differentiation here). Only the concept of the ‘Post-Internet’, also employed throughout, is specifically separated
from these other terms.
Michael Waugh
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the success of file-sharing network Napster and the prominence of mash-ups enabled by the
Internet.2 i The focus is too often on the idea that these events and programs are still
culturally revolutionary. Indeed, celebrations of the configurability and ease-of-access that
define the web’s culture of sharing and downloading3 continue to proliferate, despite the fact
that these elements have increasingly become an everyday – even ‘passé’ – part of popular
music cultures (Scott, quoted in John, 2015). Many of the issues raised by these academics
are now so commonplace that they seem to be barely noticed by the generation that has
grown up alongside them; they apparently remain exciting, innovative and progressive
primarily to those that can recall a time prior to the Internet. Mash-ups, file-sharing and social
networking became, certainly by the early 2010s, ‘normal’ digital cultural phenomena
encountered on a daily basis by web users and have subsequently entered common lexicons
globally.4 With this being said, it is worth questioning why academic discourse regarding the
digital era is so preoccupied with changes that are no longer as impactful as they once were.
It raises the issue of whether contemporary music cultures and audiences are actually being
investigated in a way that adequately reflects the experiences of online musical milieux in the
2010s. This thesis aims to begin that discussion by introducing the concept of the ‘Post-
Internet’ into popular musical analysis for the first time.
As I have suggested, much academic work surrounding popular music in the 2010s
has been overly dedicated to studies of practices that are now so prominent in music cultures
that they no longer seem novel. Perhaps the most recognisable example of this has been the
continuing importance of canonical articles such as Steve Jones’ ‘Music and the Internet’,
2 For example Katz, 2008; Montano, 2010; Fairchild, 2007; Meier, 2011; Zagorski-Thomas, 2010; Guzman and
J o n e s , 2 0 1 4 ; S i n n r e i c h , 2 0 1 0 ; M a l o y, 2010; Serazio, 2008; Boone, 2013; and Brøvig-Hanssen and Harkins,
2012.
3 For example Stephen Witt’s How Music Got Free: The End of an Industry, the Turn of the Century, and the
Patient Zero of Piracy (2015); Aram Sinnreich’s Mashed Up: Music, Technology and the Rise of Configurable
Culture (2010); Kembrew McLeod and Peter DiCola’s Creative License: The Law and Culture of Digital
Sampling (2011); Austin Kleon’s Steal Like An Artist (2012); and Mark Amerika’s remixthebook (2011).
4 This is argued by Eisentraut, 2013; Scott, 2015; Jones, March 2002; Ayers, 2006; and Mewton, 2001.
Michael Waugh
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which remains a keystone for discourse about online music in 2010s popular music studies
despite having been published in 2000. In what was effectively a set of guidelines for
academics at the time struggling to write eloquently about the industry transformations
brought about by the web, Jones (understandably and eloquently, given the date of his work’s
publication) argues for the same methodological and theoretical approaches to analysing
music on the Internet that, I argue here, are now incompatible with a musical milieu that has
changed immensely in the fifteen year period since the piece’s publication. He maintains, for
instance, that there should be a critical separation of the categories of ‘production’,
‘consumption’ and ‘distribution’ to make it more straightforward to ‘aid analysis of the role
network technologies play in each’ (Jones, 2000, p. 217). As is argued throughout this thesis,
as digital technologies have become increasingly commonplace and their systems are
internalised by those born in the new millennium that grow up alongside them, attempts to
differentiate between these three processes actually inhibit the potential for an acute
contemporary study of the more malleable manner in which music is created and consumed
online in the 2010s. However, academia continues to follow the industry-focused blueprint
established by early Internet music theorists such as Jones. There is no doubt that Jones’
article was innovative and significant when first produced. His progressive assertion that the
‘potential for connection to a wide variety of music broaden[s] the scope of listening
possibilities, but also potentially overwhelm[s] the listener with choice’ (Jones, 2000, p. 218),
for instance, resonates with ideas highlighted in this thesis regarding information noise5 and
retromania.6 Despite these useful elements, however, the article is generally very much ‘of its
time’ in its simultaneously celebratory and cautionary overview of then-contemporary
changes in the music industry. Comments such as ‘network technologies disrupt routine
commercial practices’ (Jones, 2000, p. 227) and frequent references to the ways in which the
5 See Sections Two and Nine in particular.
6 R e t r o m a n i a i s a c o n c e p t t h a t i s c r i t iqued in Section One.
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late-1990s/early-2000s music industry responded to the Internet’s promotion of file-sharing
are factually accurate, but the revelatory tone of the article is unreflective of how much these
issues have ultimately become accepted parts of the musical milieu in the years that have
followed.
To the detriment of popular music studies’ progression through the early twenty-first
century, this has not prevented many of Jones’ (and similar critics’) sentiments and
frameworks from enduring in academia today despite their failure to encapsulate the
substantial changes that have occurred in the interim. Colloquially, drawing extensively on a
fifteen-year-old framework constructed when the Internet was a new phenomenon is the
temporal equivalent of using academic analyses regarding the changes brought about by tape
recording in the mid-1980s to describe the nuances of musical distribution at the turn of the
millennium. The Internet’s creation was correctly regarded by academics as an event that
marked vast initial change to the industry as a whole, but for some inexplicable reason it has
been assumed in the time since that those changes (that occurred two decades ago) remain
novel for younger audiences that never experienced the same culture shock that the
introduction of the web inspired in the 1990s. This thesis moves away from the considerable
and well-worn emphasis in academia on the impact of digital technologies and file-sharing on
the music industry. This has dominated discourse from post-Jones theorists such as Katz
(2008), Fairchild (2007), Meier (2011), Zagorski-Thomas (2010), Sinnreich (2010), Maloy
(2010) and Boone (2013), who maintain a focus on the ways in which the industry changed
during the Internet’s infancy (through file-sharing etc.) instead of drawing attention to the
continuing shifts that the new millennium has brought about. This thesis proposes an analysis
of popular musical milieux in the 2010s that is far more malleable than this. It contrastingly
analyses the ways in which the digital milieu and its technological shifts have engendered
aesthetic changes in the creative work of musicians that have grown up alongside them, as
Michael Waugh