Book: "Det Postdigitala manifestet" -- new forms of digesting music

This pamphlet argues that digital representation and dissemination of music creates new ways of consuming music, as an individual and as a collective experience.

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In 80 pages, consisting of numbered short paragraphs of text (anyone getting associations to Wittgenstein and Tractatus?) Rasmus Fleischer gives us a flow of thoughts about what the new ubiquitous form of digital music entails.

The full title of the book is "Det postdigitala manifestet - Hur musik äger rum" (Eng: "The Post-digital Manifest - How Music Takes Place"). We know what "manifest" means, and what "music" means.

What about "post-digital"? Not entirely clear. The practical interpretation in this context is that it identifies the state at which music achieves its total digitalisation ... fully digital representation at Hi-Fi quality; directly available on-line; every work of music is available; no cost or so cheap that cost is not a practical constraint; etc. But is this "post-digital"? Or is it rather the "digital apex"? I guess that the term Fleischer uses is inspired by the term "postmodern".Which will give some persons negative vibes, no doubt.

The "music takes place" part denotes an idea that, given the overwhelming amount of music that is available, we will not choose music based on its inherent properties, but rather on the way a work of music relates to a context, like a geographical location. Locations may be where music resides, and when we travel in geography, we will be passing through different musical regions and be exposed to its characteristics. The music at a locations is in itself the result of synergy between different persons musical tastes, persons who have has with that location to do.

And it does not need to be a geographical location. It can be any kind of situation or context where people encounter each other. Encounters in geography or virtual space. Encounters at the same time, or with delays. Perhaps even an encounter with myself from a different time period or a different social context.

Fleischer spins a web of thoughts out of the possibilities that digital music offers, out of the re-positioning of our human conceptualisations of what is needed, and out of new preferences and priorities in a social context.

There is no single point of argument that he makes. He paints a picture, using indirect means, of a future that is different from what we are in right now. But exactly what this future is, that is not so clear.

Author

Rasmus Fleischer (b. 1978) is active as a debater, as a writer, and as a student in contemporary history at Södertörn University (Sweden). Fleischer has since the early years of this century worked as a journalist, and regularly had his texts published in journals as Expressen, Arena, and Arbetaren. He became interested and actively involved in the issues of property rights  and file-sharing, and in 2003 he was one of the founders of the Pirate Bureau.

Fleischer is also running the Copyriot.se blog, where he is discussing philosophy, aesthetics and contemporary theory of culture. In his Ph.D. Thesis (in progress) he is investigating how the institutions of the Swedish musical sector has handled the problems that have popped up as new media appeared during the 20th century.

Publisher's author presentation

Remarks

The approach to thinking, arguing, and linguistically representing positions and reasons, all these things are influenced by the post-modern style. This makes the text elusive -- at least to the analytical mind, to someone that prefers statements that are clear and decidable, and spelled-out reasoning.

But nevertheless, this river of words does carry some identifiable images that we happily accept.

For instance that ubiquitous access to all created music will have interesting effects on music consumption. When there is a market of scarcity (my available means only permits me to consume a small selection of available music) I carefully choose what to consume, and remain un-impacted by what is beyond my means. I certainly have a specific emotional attachment (positive of negative) to the music I do consume. When all the world's music is at my disposal, I cannot enjoy music in the same way. I get over-fed. It is interesting to compare this to what marketing persons already know -- when there is too many alternatives offered to a prospective customer, the customer actually buys less!

Instead music will be something that happens in the social context. It serves a social role. Music will have impact on us, and we will have impact on music ... all in spaces with a social dimension.

Digital music obviously does depend on digital technology. When Fleischer in a few places does mention technology. the descriptions are sometimes not satisfactory. His way of differentiating downloaded media from streaming media is confusing ... and this confusion does support an argument he presents, so maybe the deficient technology description was intentional.

He also makes statements about tape recording technology. He has a point in that the movie industry did use editable recording media -- film strips that could be cut and pasted -- but that the audio industry did not get into editing recordings until after WWII, when German tape recorder technology became available to western countries. This is not entirely true. As an example, quite a lot of the early sound movies were in fact musical films, and there editing was done to create a music track that is the result of editing rather than slavishly reproducing  a full original performance.

But he has one important point in this context; that the music sector did not recognise re-edited recorded music as real music -- recordings should be faithful to a live performance. While the movie industry, on the other hand, officially rejected that they only were involved with recording performances -- in real life, on the theatre stage, etc. The movie industry made a unique creation of a performance.

All in all, in the chain of thoughts Fleischer offers, there are some real insights, interleaved with hard-to-nail-down statements about how people do relate to music, and how they will relate to music in the future.

Conclusion

This short book (or extended pamphlet) is a manifest, so it sometimes feels like listening to the voice of a preacher steeped in some mystical religion. But, what the heck, it is 80 pages, of short paragraphs, so ... get it and read it. You will certainly get some valuable insights out of it.

Data

Rasmus Fleischer: "Det postdigitala manifestet - Hur musik äger rum" (INK bokförlag, 2009); 82 pages, ISBN-10: 919735869X; ISBN-13: 9789197358699 (book at openlibrary.org)