Page 232 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

The Tunes Effect | 11

Unlike earlier forms of recording, digital files have no physical presence un-
less they are burned into CDs. Since they have no physical form, we view digital
files as inherently less valuable than LPs or CDs. This lack of physicality under-
mines the notion of intellectual property, which in part accounts for the wide-
spread copying of software and public support of file sharing. At the same time,
digital files enable us to sample, collect, and trade music in new ways. While
these files lack physical presence, possessing them in many ways is more intense
and intimate than older “hard goods” such as LPs and CDs. For example, digital
files enable us to contain huge amounts of data in small devices. We also can sort
and regroup these files effortlessly, which transforms the listening experience.
A collection of digital files in a hard drive becomes what one writer termed “an
ocean of possibility [in which] daily life gets a different kind of soundtrack, end-
lessly mutable and instantly reconfigurable” (Moon 2004).
Older forms of copying recordings required substantial time and attention,
while digital files allow for easy copying and customization. We simply “grab”
cuts and “drag and drop” them into personalized collections. The popularity of
digital files, as well as music in the form of telephone ring tones, indicate that
access and convenience are increasingly important to listeners. Music becomes
“less about an artist’s self-expression than a customer’s desire for self-reflection”
(Goldberg 2000). In cyberspace, people collect lists rather than objects. As the
physicality of recordings fades away, the playlists posted by customers of iTunes
and other services may replace the mix CDs currently traded among friends.
These playlists may be geared to a theme, an event, an experience, or a relation-
ship. They also serve as a sort of “branding” for the creator.
The disappearance of hard goods, in the form of physical recordings, height-
ens the transition from a world of cultural goods to a world of cultural services.
The result is that “value” is not an inherent character of the product, but the
manner in which it reaches the consumer. The popularity of song files and playl-
ists indicates that digital value is created through process, rather than products.
In cyberspace, the old market-based economy of buyers and sellers is replaced
by a new network-based economy of servers and clients. Rifkin claims that “in
markets, the parties exchange property. In networks, the parties share access
to services and experiences . . . based on network relationships, 24/7 contractual
arrangements and access rights.” As music loses its physicality, value must be
created through networks and “experiences” like iTunes, which tether listeners
to companies through proprietary hardware and restrictions on use. Ultimately,
digital formats may cause music to return to an intangible essence altogether, in
which it “would stop being something to collect and revert to its age-old tran-
sience: something that transforms a moment and then disappears like a trouba-
dour leaving town” (Pareles 1998). We no longer will “own” recordings; instead,
we will access them in fleeting ways on corporate terms.
see also Digital Divide; Internet and Its Radical Potential; Mobile Media; On-
line Digital Film and Television; Piracy and Intellectual Property.
Further reading: “Apples Are Not the Only Fruit.” The Economist (July 8, 2006): 75;
Austin, Ian. “Objects in Ears Are Not as Full as They May Appear.” New York Times,