Cassette Tape 2.0 Media Plasticity in Underground Music Networks

A thesis submitted to the University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities

2021 James R. Vail

School of Arts, Languages and Cultures

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Table of Contents

List of Figures 5 List of Interviews 6 Location of Survey Responses 10 Abstract 11 Declaration 12 Copyright statement 13 Acknowledgements 14

Introduction The Cassette Tape: A Plastic Medium The Cassette Tape and Other New Media 17 Circulating Underground Music 22 Three Sites of Plasticity: Texts, Institutions, Publics 27 Out with the Old, Out with the New 31 The Power of Use 33 Research Methodology 37 Thesis Outline 40

Chapter 1 Beyond Old and New Media: Obsolescence, Temporality, and the Digital Age Introduction 44 Three Temporalities of Technological Change 47 Tape Time: The Symptom and the Cure 54 Digital Centres, Analogue Margins 59 After the Digital Age 64

Chapter 2 A Genealogy of Physical Media: Residual and Emergent Ways of Listening Introduction: Historicising Materiality 68 Copying and Transmission Networks 70 3

Deep Listening: Mixtapes, Playlists, Algorithms 80 Mobility, the Domestic Sphere, and the Event of Listening 93 Conclusion: Categorising Media 103

Chapter 3 Abundance and Curation: Residual and Emergent Intermediaries Introduction 105 The Dilemma of Democracy and the Fantasy of Abundance 107 The Ambivalent History of DIY 114 The DIY Avant-garde 121 Curation 128 Curation I: Distinctions 130 Curation II: Series 138 Curation III: Visibility 147 Conclusion 155

Chapter 4 Access, Artefact, Archive: Residual and Emergent Ways of Possessing Introduction 157 Property and Possession 160 The Public Sphere and the Digital Commons 166 Precarious Publics 173 Domesticating the Recording 176 The Fetish and the Boundaries of Possession 181 The Archive 185 Conclusion: Cassette Tapes Forever 195

Chapter 5 Work and Support: Residual and Emergent Economies of Value Introduction 197 The Autonomous Economy 201 The Calculative Economy I: Labels and Listeners 209 The Calculative Economy II: Bandcamp 214 4

The Support Economy 219 Platforms and the Support Economy 233 Conclusion 240

Conclusion The Politics of Plasticity 242

Bibliography 250 Discography 286 Filmography 286 Websites 286

Word count: 79,982 5

List of Figures

Fig. 1 - Music media used most frequently by label owners and listeners 79

Fig. 2 - Listener types by use of digital and physical media 96

Fig. 3 - Intermediaries regularly used by listeners 129

Fig. 4 - Label and artist relationships 134

Fig. 5 - Beat Happening cassette J-card 139

Fig. 6 - The Screaming Dukduks cassette J-card 140

Fig. 7 - CDR cover from Japanese noise artist Unbalance Neurose (2003) 141

Fig. 8 - Dinzu Artefacts cassette designs 144

Fig. 9 - Bandcamp label page for Never Anything Records 145

Fig. 10 - Reasons for downloading music without paying 172

Fig. 11 - Consumption patterns of downloaders and non-downloaders 224

Fig. 12 - Frequency of paid downloads 224

Fig. 13 - Bandcamp purchase prompt window 234

Fig. 14 - Bandcamp artist page for Dis Fig 236

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List of Interviews

Record Labels

Name(s) Name of City/Town Country Other Information Given Label(s)

David Tombed Visions Manchester UK Performs in Locean McLean

Alan and Jack Concrete Block Leeds UK Jack performs in Soft Issues

Rick Must Die Blackpool UK Records

Paul Fort Evil Fruit Cork Ireland

Paddy Tesla Tapes Manchester UK Performs in Gnod

Graham Fractal Meat London UK Performs as Graham Dunning Cuts Dunning

Britt Brown Not Not Fun, Los Angeles US Contributor at The 100% Silk Wire

Adam ACR London UK Contributor for Bandcamp Daily

https://www.discogs.com/Beat-Happening-Beat-Happenin g/release/https://www.discogs.com/Beat-Happening -Beat-Happening/release/62992762 9927 Matthew Patient Sounds Chicago, IL US

Steve Cruel Nature Newcastle UK

Andrew Eggs in Aspic Newcastle UK

Joe McKay Dinzu Artefacts Los Angeles US

Kazuya NEUS-318 Osaka Japan Performs as Kazuya Ishigami Ishigami

Ian Martin Call and Tokyo Japan Music journalist for Response Japan Times.

Brian Durr Diskotopia Tokyo Japan

Koshiro Hino BirdFriend Osaka Japan Works in Newtone Records. Performs in GOAT.

Hiroyuki Eerie Noise Sendai Japan Performs as Hiroyuki Chiba Chiba

Joshua Muzan Editions Nara Japan Performs as Stefane Endurance.

Andreas Muzan Editions Osaka Japan Holderbach

Anonymous Monorail Press Los Angeles US 7

Markus Econore Mönchen- Germany gladbach

David GALTTA New York US Performs in Synthetic Lackner Love Dream

Noel Meek End of the Auckland New Zealand Contributor at The Alphabet Wire Records, God in the Music

Phil Julian The Tapeworm Berlin/London Germany/UK Performs as Phil Julian

Silvia Yerevan Tapes Bologna Italy

D. Petri Aubjects Bloomington, US IL

Zach Neologist Omaha, NE US Productions

Jeff Never Anything Portland, OR US

Michał Czaszka Edinburgh UK

Stefan Faux Amis Utrecht Netherlands

Justin Front and Follow Manchester UK

Anonymous Maple Death London UK

Quintus Last Visible Dog Los Angeles US

Sean and Lee Burger Records Fullerton, CA US Run Burger record store.

Geng PTP New York US Performs as King Vision Ultra

Benjamin BLIGHT Washington US Performs in Luna DC Honey

Shane Sinneslochen Los Angeles US

Doug Verses Washington US DC

Gabe Lillerne Tapes Chicago, IL US

Dwight Crash Symbols Morgantown, US WV

Anonymous Conditional Berlin Germany Records

Pedro OTA Not given Portugal

Miguel OTA Helsinki Finland

Ryan Dais Records, New York US 8

Robert & Leopold

Philip White Anticausal New York US Systems

Bentley Decontrol New York US Records

Dylan Field Hymns Not given US

Record Stores

Name Record Store City/Town Country Other Information

Eric Thousands of Dead New York US Co-runs the label Gods Thousands of Dead Gods.

Trevor Jacknife Records Los Angeles US

Musicians

Name Artist Name City/Town Country Given

Tzu Ni Tzu Ni Tokyo Japan

Duenn Duenn Fukuoka Japan

Colin Colin Webster London UK Webster

Yves Malone Yves Malone Toronto Canada

Kota Cemetery Tokyo Japan Watanabe

Kyōsuke Obey Unit Tokyo Japan Terada

Journalists

Name Publication(s) City/Town Country

Tristan Bath The Quietus Vienna Austria

Mike Tabs Out Delaware US

Manufacturers 9

Name Company City/Town Country

Steve Stepp National Audio Springfield, US Company MO

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Location of Survey Responses

Location Number

US 56

Canada 8

Mexico 1

UK 53

Germany 7

Netherlands 3

Ireland 3

France 3

Spain 2

Denmark 2

Sweden 2

Finland 2

Bulgaria 2

Ukraine 2

Czechia 1

Australia 5

Japan 1

Total 153

Listeners were surveyed anonymously and are labelled from L1 – L153. 11

Abstract This thesis is concerned with the ways in which the cassette tape has been remade as a new medium through changing uses, social relationships, institutional arrangements, and industrial contexts. Declared a dead format at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the format has made a steady resurgence from the late 2000s to the present day. Drawing on in-depth interviews, survey data, listening diaries, and ethnographic fieldwork, this thesis examines the historically changing role of the cassette within contemporary underground experimental and electronic music networks that span North America, Western Europe, and Japan. It traces the multiple ways in which the cassette tape – as a phonographic media system – has become entangled with and distributed across various digital platforms. Expanding upon the work of Jonathan Sterne, I theorise a concept of media plasticity that is sensitive to the changing and overlapping boundaries of media systems as manifested within multiple historical layers of practice and circulation. Chapter 1 offers a review of the existing literature on the resurgence of analogue media. It provides a critique of the linear media-historical narratives that define the cassette tape as an obsolete technology. Subsequently, each of the four key chapters traces a genealogy of a particular aspect of contemporary music circulation. Chapter 2 examines the way that the category of media ‘physical media’ is produced through historically changing patterns of listening. Chapter 3 traces the changing role of the independent record label in a media environment characterised by an abundance of cultural material. It shows how many independent record labels have moved away from explicit political motivations and have become primarily curatorial organisations. Chapter 4 maps out the changing practices of ownership and cultural memory that characterise the release and consumption of recordings in contemporary underground music networks. It shows that the circulation of physical media has taken on an archival role in the context of precarious digital platforms. Finally, chapter 5 traces the emergence of a gift economy of support surrounding physical media. This thesis demonstrates that the contemporary cassette tape is inseparably entangled with the logics of several digital media platforms. As such, it is more appropriate to think of the contemporary cassette tape as a new medium. 12

Declaration

No portion of the work referred to in this thesis has been submitted in support of an application for another degree or qualification of this or any other university or other institute of learning.

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Copyright Statement i. The author of this dissertation (including any appendices and/or schedules to this dissertation) owns certain copyright or related rights in it (the “Copyright”) and s/he has given The University of Manchester certain rights to use such Copyright, including for administrative purposes. ii. Copies of this dissertation, either in full or in extracts and whether in hard or electronic copy, may be made only in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (as amended) and regulations issued under it or, where appropriate, in accordance with licensing agreements which the University has entered into. This page must form part of any such copies made. iii. The ownership of certain Copyright, patents, designs, trademarks and other intellectual property (the “Intellectual Property”) and any reproductions of copyright works in the dissertation, for example graphs and tables (“Reproductions”), which may be described in this dissertation, may not be owned by the author and may be owned by third parties. Such Intellectual Property and Reproductions cannot and must not be made available for use without the prior written permission of the owner(s) of the relevant Intellectual Property and/or Reproductions. iv. Further information on the conditions under which disclosure, publication and commercialisation of this dissertation, the Copyright and any Intellectual Property and/or Reproductions described in it may take place is available in the University IP Policy, in any relevant Dissertation restriction declarations deposited in the University Library, and The University Library’s regulations.

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Acknowledgements

First and foremost, I extend my warmest gratitude to all the hundreds of people that have participated in this research themselves. I wish I could name you all here but for the sake of brevity, l would particularly like to thank Joshua Stefane and Kyōsuke Terada for being so kind and welcoming while I was in Japan. I would also like to thank Tristan Bath and Mike Haley for being so helpful in sharing my survey.

I greatly thank my supervisor, Roddy Hawkins, without whose knowledge, expertise, and boundless enthusiasm, this project would never have made it to completion. I thank Rebecca Herrissone and Caroline Bithell for their advice, all- important critique, and support.

A huge thank you goes to David Scott. I’m sure you know that your influence extends far beyond this thesis, but I hope you will find yourself scattered amongst these pages too. You have been my greatest enabler and precisely because of this, I must thank Sam Flynn for never failing to remind me that my thesis is (despite my perpetual protestations) actually about cassette tapes.

Most of this thesis was written during the coronavirus pandemic and so I would like to thank all of my housemates during these long months. Particularly, thank you to El for getting me through lockdown number 1 and for all the late-night dancing to Kate Bush and Britney.

A big thank you also goes to Imogen King for being so supportive and wonderful.

Thank you to my parents, Alex and Graham and to all my wider family. Thank you to my brother Nick for all the van lifts so that I could safely travel home during the pandemic. I would also like to offer a special thank you to my grandparents, Barbara and John who have been so relentlessly supportive of my academic endeavours.

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Thanks to all my wonderful pals, Jack the dog, Lizzo the cat, and the boys at Khan’s Biriyani and Pilau for making the best £2 curry in Manchester.

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The record is simultaneously, indefatigably, what stays and what returns. Elodie Roy

The role of the imagination, or the mind which contemplates in its multiple and fragmented states, is to draw something new from repetition, to draw difference from it. Gilles Deleuze

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Introduction The Cassette Tape: A Plastic Medium

[I]t is as much of a mistake to write broadly of "the telephone," "the camera," or "the computer" as it is "the media," and of — now, somehow, "the Internet" and "the Web" — naturalizing or essentializing technologies as if they were unchanging, "immutable objects with given, self-defining properties" around which changes swirl, and to or from which history proceeds. Instead, it is better to specify telephones in 1890 in the rural United States, broadcast telephones in Budapest in the 1920s, or cellular, satellite, corded, and cordless landline telephones in North America at the beginning of the twenty- first century. Specificity is key. Lisa Gitelman, Always Already New: p.8.

The Cassette Tape and Other New Media

This thesis is concerned with the plasticity of media, with the ways in which media can be remade anew through novel uses, connections, cultural contexts, and economic structures. It takes as its case study the circulation of cassette tapes within contemporary underground music networks that span North America, Western Europe, and Japan. Declared a dead format by many just after the turn of the twentieth century (Curran 2016: 35), the cassette tape has seen a steady resurgence in use from the late 2000s to the present day within certain musical groups. The National Audio Company in the US reported selling over 18 million units in the year 2017 alone (Stepp interview).1 Drawing on original interviews, survey data, and ethnographic research, this thesis takes a genealogical approach to contemporary practices of cassette circulation. A historical perspective reveals that, even while the internal technological structure of the format has remained (almost entirely) the same, the cassette tape of the 2010s is a different medium from the cassette tape of the 1980s and 1990s. In particular, most cassettes today are sold through digital platforms such as Bandcamp and Discogs and the recordings on these cassettes circulate in parallel through digital music platforms and streaming services. By developing a genealogy that is sensitive to this central

1 These include blank tapes and duplicated tapes, most of which were purchased by labels. It is not possible to know from this figure alone how many of these tapes were sold on by musicians and record labels to consumers, but it suggests that the figure is in the millions. 18

difference, I argue that the sum of these multiple practices of circulation constitutes a new way of interacting with media; the cassette tape today participates very differently in the organisation, transmission, and storage of music and this produces effects at the level of music circulation within underground networks more broadly. Across the US and Western Europe, the cassette tape was popularised in the late 1970s and 1980s as the first affordable, domestically recordable technology. The format became embedded in practices of mixtaping and home recording (Fenby-Hulse 2016) and, with the arrival of the Sony TPS-L2 ‘Walkman’ in 1979, listeners could orchestrate the soundtrack to their everyday lives as they moved through the city. At the same time, cassettes became the medium of choice for underground artists producing demo tapes or do-it-yourself (DIY) self-releases. Labels such as K-records — founded in Olympia, Washington in 1982 — employed the format in order to get music out to a large audience on a shoe-string budget (Baumgarten 2012). International networks of postal tape trading emerged, particularly within hardcore, extreme metal, and noise music scenes in which strangers would circulate DIY cassette releases between different continents (Kahn-Harris 2006; Netherton 2014, 2015; Novak 2013). These practices, combined with the retaliation from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) (i.e. the ‘home taping is killing music’ public campaign) have contributed to the narrativisation of the cassette as a medium of renewed consumer agency and industry democratisation (Foster & Marshall 2015; Manuel 1993: 3). The cassette tape of the 2010s, however, is far removed from these cultures of circulation. In the context of digital abundance, the format is increasingly released as a limited-edition, high-design artisanal object. The cassette has become disarticulated from practices of musical discovery and everyday listening and has become instead embedded in an ethics of ritualistic album-oriented listening restricted to the domestic sphere. If the format in the 1980s was celebrated for its internal configurability and re-writability (Sinnreich 2010) — used as a technology for remixing the sounds of the culture industries (Foster & Marshall 2015: 165) — the cassette is used at present as an archival storage medium, dedicated to the preservation of immutable musical works in a context of increasingly precarious, privately owned access-based streaming media. If the 19

cassette once occupied an institutional and economic space somewhat antagonistic to the major label system, the circulation of cassette tapes has come into an alarming alignment with the value logics of digital platforms. Everywhere, the cassette tape has been altered by its interaction with, and distribution across, digital media. Yet, this relationship is not unidirectional. Platforms such as Bandcamp and Discogs would not exist as they currently are without these emergent practices of circulation. Furthermore, broader understandings of texts, institutions, and identities within underground networks are co-shaped by the circulation of physical media, both historic and contemporary. Put simply, whether or not underground music listeners purchase cassette tapes or physical media at all, physical media affect the ways in which individuals encounter and interact with music. This is what is meant by the plasticity of media, their capacity to be remade and redrawn through emergent and residual practices, institutions, and understandings. To focus on the plasticity of media is to take an approach that is rather different from much research on sound media. Plasticity is a possible condition of all media: the television and radio have gone through similar processes of change as they have entered a digital-dominated media landscape (Gazi et al. 2011; Spigel 2004). Nonetheless, media histories too often reproduce a linear narrative of progressive development, characterised by what Timothy Druckery describes as ‘a flawed notion of survivability of the fittest, the slow assimilation of the most efficient mutation, the perfectibility of the unadapted, and perhaps, a reactionary avant-gardism’ (Zielinski 2006: vii). As chapter 1 of this thesis demonstrates, research on the resurgence of ‘old’ media is similarly limited by the tacit acceptance of linear narratives of technological development in which the obsolescence of the cassette tape is taken for granted. Analogue media are understood to either form part of a nostalgic looking-back to the past (Bohlman & McMurray 2017: 20; Demers 2017; Eley 2011; Hogarty 2016; Reynolds 2011; Schrey 2014) or to take on an oppositional role towards putatively newer and more technologically efficient media (Düster and Nowak 2019; Glennon 2019; Graham 2016; Hayes 2006; Skågeby 2011). The so-called material turn within the humanities has arguably exaggerated these trends; the focus on material properties and affordances risks normalising the attribution of an atomistic and intrinsic technological logic to media. Crucially, plasticity does not disregard the 20

important observations of actor-network theory, ecological psychology, or sociological and anthropological theories of material agency. It does not figure media as limitlessly mutable nor does it empty them out as mere vessels of human intentionality: rather, it foregrounds the role of social practices in the boundary- making of media systems. The term plasticity as conceived here is derived directly from the work of Jonathan Sterne (2003: chapter 4), but also borrows heavily from the work of Lisa Gitelman (2006, 2014), Elodie Roy (2015) and others (Nowak & Whelan 2016; Prior 2014; Szendy 2001). Sterne’s research on ‘plastic aurality’ theorises the ways in which, in the late 19th century, phonography, radio, and telephony were far less distinct than they would come to be. Sterne traces the emerging and shifting boundaries of these different media through the changing industrial contexts of production and through emerging practices of listening and use. Sterne’s definition of media is instrumental here.

A medium is a recurring set of contingent social relations and social practices, and contingency is the key here. As the larger fields of economic and cultural relations around a technology or technique extend, repeat, and mutate, they become recognizable to users as a medium. A medium is therefore the social basis that allows a set of technologies to stand out as a unified thing with clearly defined functions (2003: 185).

Social practices and relations — or what Lisa Gitelman refers to as the ‘protocols of communication’ (2006: 7) — integrate constellations of technologies and devices into a unified medium. Examining the history of plasticity, then, requires a radical methodological agnosticism towards what media are — where they begin and end — and a detailed empirical attunement to what people do with them in specific historical and cultural contexts. This necessitates a sensitivity to the fluidity of technologies and the heterogeneity of use (de Laet & Mol 2000). ‘[I]n the flow of everyday life’, technologies are ‘porous, multi-faceted, expansive and flexibly actioned’ (Prior 2014: 30). They are ‘unstable and indeterminate artefact[s]’ and their ‘precise significance is negotiated and interpreted but never settled’ (Grint & Woolgar 1997: 21). Put simply, one cannot read the use of a technology from its design alone. 21

In Sterne’s work, the gradual divergence of radio, telephony, and phonography involves ‘internal’ technological developments and changes. By contrast, this thesis traces the changing circulation of a medium that’s internal technological makeup has stayed largely the same; the cassette tape, as a phonographic media system, has been redistributed and redrawn across, through, and against emergent digital platforms and other media. Understanding the plasticity of the cassette tape requires one to, literally, think outside of the box — to take seriously the format’s role as a communication medium, as a cluster of technologies that process, transmit, and store information (Kittler 1996). Crucially, to study music as communication is not to reduce the rich experiential qualities of listening to a dematerialised form of information transfer. Thinking of the cassette as a communication medium in fact sits with the commonplace understanding held by most underground network members in which media are understood as a way of discovering, accessing, listening to, storing, and circulating musical recordings. To study the cassette as a communication medium requires a consideration of the whole process of musical circulation (D’Acci 2004; Hall 1980; Novak 2013; Taylor 2018) that takes place across multiple media within a broader media ecology (Fuller 2005; Tabbi & Wutz 1997). This focus on the whole culture of circulation is often missing from both studies of analogue media and of DIY music cultures which tend to focus either on the politics of cultural production (Bartmanski & Woodward 2020; Dunn 2012; Hesmondhalgh 1998, 1999; Jones 2019; Lowndes 2016; Luvaas 2012) or the sensory and social practices of listening and consumption (Bartmanski & Woodward 2015). Analogue media become either signifiers of DIY difference and distinction (Eley 2011; Curran 2016) or they become sensuous, noisy objects (Bartmanski & Woodward; Glennon 2019; Kane 2019; Katz 2015). On the contrary, I theorise and locate the cassette tape object as an often- silent ‘in-between’. After all, it would seem unusual for a history of the telephone, to take one example, to isolate the handset within the receiver’s household as the sole object of study and not consider the thousands of miles of cables and wires that connect the listener to the speaker, or the political and industrial conditions of their production, or the changing relationships to other protocols of communication. Yet, it is common for studies of analogue sound reproduction media to take as their unit of analysis the individual object, held in the hands of 22

the listener. Understanding the cassette tape as a phonographic media system requires a process of reconnection, what José van Dijck describes as ‘reassembly’ (2013: 25). This process of tracing connections closely resembles aspects of actor- network theory (de Laet & Mol 2000; Latour 2005) where media are understood as distributed and relational constellations of actors. Unlike ANT, however, plasticity foregrounds use — the way that the boundaries of media are constituted and crossed through multiple historical layers of human practice and discourse. If the cassette tape appears to hold a self-evident objecthood, this is in fact the product of its remoulding and remaking within changing practices of circulation, of its plasticity and not its fixity. The remainder of this introduction is separated into six sections. First, I provide an introduction to underground music networks and briefly expand upon the history of the cassette within these networks. This section discusses the choice of the term network as well as the focus on circulation. Following this, I introduce three sites of plasticity that recur throughout this thesis: texts, institutions, and publics. I offer a brief overview of the media-theoretical context in which these three terms are used. I then offer an introduction to the genealogical approach taken here and define the terms residual and emergent. The fourth section deals with the importance of use and offers this as an alternative to the theory of ‘affordances’. After this, I expand upon the empirical methodology employed within this thesis before, finally, providing an outline of the thesis.

Circulating Underground Music

This thesis focuses on labels, musicians and listeners within international underground experimental and electronic music networks (from here on, simply underground music) who release and consume music on the cassette tape. ‘Underground music’ is used here in Stephen Graham’s sense of the term (2016); it represents a diverse array of marginal and fringe musics that include ambient, electronic music, experimental music, noise music, free improvisation and jazz, types of extreme metal and punk, and some types of hip hop. Some of these styles have particularly strong ties to the cassette tape: noise music, experimental electronic music, and ambient music. While many indie rock bands and pop 23

artists release music on cassette tape too, these form a very different social and institutional network and therefore these are not the subject of this thesis. The term network is used here rather than the term scene (see Shank 1994; Straw 1991, 2001) as it better captures the relationships between different participants and their geographic distribution. The labels, musicians, journalists, manufacturers, and listeners interviewed and surveyed for this thesis reside in North America, North-Western Europe, Japan, and New Zealand. Even as they interact regularly across multiple media, many of these individuals have never met face-to-face. The Manchester-based label Tombed Visions, for example, has released music from individuals based in New York, Toronto, Vienna, Lisbon, Nijmegen, and London alongside local artists. Although artists tour, and physical media circulate between disparate individuals, most connections are established and maintained across the internet. While important work has demonstrated that scenes are connected to other spaces (Bennett & Peterson 2004) and that communication technologies are a constitutive part of scene identities (Jones 2018), the term scene still tends to imply a specific form of spatiality based around proximity and the immediacy of face-to-face interaction. While this thesis does not take a quantitative approach to network analysis as does Nick Crossley (Crossley 2015; Crossley et al. 2015), the term network captures the relational nature of media and music circulation — the ways in which identities and relationships are produced through networked interactions rather than existing prior to them. The term network is closely linked to the idea of circulation. Naturally, focusing on the complete circulation of musical recordings across a distributed network leaves less room for thick contextual descriptions of particular locations and scenes. Yet, as Joanna Cook et al. write, ‘[w]e do not change the quantity or detail of the data we encounter merely by changing scale; we simply encounter different details’ (2015: 56-57). Circulation-based approaches to media stem from Stuart Hall’s theory of ‘Encoding/Decoding’ (1980) and have been expanded by Julie D’Acci (2004), David Novak (2013), and Timothy Taylor (2018). A focus on circulation — rather than studying production, consumption, or exchange in isolation — is concerned with the ways in which producers and consumers reciprocally ‘articulate’ media systems (D’Acci 2004: 435) through ‘circuits of feedback’ (Novak 2013: 140). Unlike the term scene, which often implies a 24

relatively shared set of understandings and contexts (Overell 2014), circulation leaves room for misunderstanding and miscommunication as well as the ways in which different roles, perspectives, and practices create emergent effects on the whole network. The term ‘role’ is important here as many ‘listeners’ in underground music networks are also producers of music. 78% of the listeners surveyed for this thesis state that they play a musical instrument and 79% state that they have released their own music publicly. Nonetheless, because levels of participation differ and some individuals spend far more time listening than they do producing music, circulation makes room for this diversity. For this reason, circulation is also more precise than the language of ‘scapes’ and ‘flows’ (Appadurai 1990) that risks decentring the differences between diverse decision- making actors (Taylor 2018). Despite the diversity of roles, musical styles, and geographic spaces, individuals who circulate cassettes within underground music networks are integrated through a number of shared aesthetic, cultural and institutional factors. First, many of these individuals come from similar socio-economic backgrounds. Most of the individuals who participated in this research were over the age of 30. The vast majority of individuals grew up in the 1990s towards the end of the period in which the cassette tape was still popularly consumed. The respondents were largely male. While the musicians who released music on cassette are far more diverse (with a range of women, trans, non-binary, and gender-queer individuals), record labels and record stores are almost entirely run by men. 83% of the listeners surveyed were also male. Most of the North American and European individuals who participated in this study are white. Even some of the labels located in East Asia discussed here such as Muzan Editions and SVBKVLT are in fact run my white expats from Europe and North America. The participants are not representative of broader underground music networks — the musicians who release music on cassettes occupy a much more diverse array of social positionalities. Nonetheless, label owners that release mostly on the cassette tape in North America and Europe are likely to be white. Second, these diverse styles share a common interest in aesthetic innovation; as chapter 3 demonstrates, generic categories are secondary to a shared focus on sonic experimentation. Third, despite the different histories of these types of music, the musicians, labels and listeners under examination here 25

position themselves within a common heritage of punk-inspired DIY cultural production with its concurrent focus on autonomy and institutional independence (Bartmanski & Woodward 2020). This distinguishes underground music not only from the mainstream music industry and larger independent labels but also from other forms of experimental music such as those that take place within the institutional structures of the university or from those that have (much stronger) roots in the history of dance music. All of the record labels interviewed here could be considered ‘micro-independent record labels’ (Strachan 2007) and the small scale of production is a key part of the identity of this musical network. This institutional heritage of autonomy and independence also manifests itself as a specific network of intermediaries and institutions (the subject of chapter 3). Key publications such as Wire or the Quietus (both based in the UK) and certain live music venues such as L.A.’s Zebulon, London’s Cafe Oto, or Tokyo’s Forest Limit function as key nodes within these networks. This infrastructure is disproportionately based in North America and Europe and, unsurprisingly, the institutions studied reproduce broader inequalities in terms of the exposure of artists outside of Europe and North America. While interesting research has been done into music at the fringes or even outside of this network (Luvaas 2012; Wallarch et al. 2011), this thesis does not attempt to directly redress this balance by discussing artists far outside of the (west-centric) dominant underground infrastructure (this would take a number of studies). Instead, chapters 2 and 3 trace the ways in which multiple media practices participate in the reproduction of these imbalances. Finally, and most important to the current study, underground labels, musicians, and listeners share similar ways of interacting with media. Physical media — the category used by members of underground music networks to describe vinyl records, cassettes, and CDs — have long held an important yet, crucially, changing role within the circulation of underground music recordings. Cassettes, specifically, have an established and varied history within underground music networks as well as other adjacent musics. Technologies such as the TASCAM Portastudio-144 four-track cassette recorder — released in 1979 and then reduced in price throughout the 1980s — enabled musicians to create multitrack recordings straight onto cassette tape at home (Grajeda 2002: 233). 26

This device was particularly important to the underground experimental and noise scenes that developed in North America during the 1980s. Artists such as If, Bwana and Viscera (Hal McGee and Debbie Jaffe) recorded tapes at home that combined electronic noise, improvised musical performances, and other sounds to create collage-like musical textures (Szava-Kovats 2010). Later, the device became bound up with a lo-fi aesthetic of production in which audible hiss from the tape recorder accompanied ambient room sounds and rough-and-ready musical performances. The early self-released cassettes by bands such as Sebadoh — particularly the 1987 tape Weed Forestin’ — or the early Smog records are indicative of this approach to musical production. International postal tape-trading systems emerged in the 1980s — parallel to the circulation of zines — particularly within networks of hardcore, extreme metal, and noise musicians (Kahn-Harris 2007; Netherton 2014, 2015; Novak 2013). Individuals who had never met connected via zines such as Op, Sound Choice, and Unsound which published detailed reviews and contact information for underground musicians releasing on cassette tape. Individuals would write letters to one another and then begin selling, trading, and gifting cassettes in a manner that preempted the distributed P2P digital networks of the late 1990s and 2000s. These networks were crucial to the increasing international constitution of certain music scenes and networks, particularly extreme metal and noise music. Operating within a very different sonic territory, record labels such as K records employed the cassette tape in order to release music on a shoestring budget. Their indie punk releases embraced a childlike naivety with hand drawn and hand-photocopied cassette J-cards that accompanied lo-fi recordings (Baumgarten 2012). Yet, their releases reached wide audiences and several of the bands went on to be successful acts (Beck, Beat Happening, Modest Mouse, the Microphones). Within the mainstream, the British music magazine NME released the C86 cassette compilation in 1986, featuring several indie bands that would go on to be successful. Additionally, these music-specific practices of circulation run parallel to broader practices of home-taping and mixtaping that have been much documented and romanticised (Fenby-Hulse 2016; James 1992; Moore 2005; Taylor 2016). 27

Since the early 1980s — from the uttermost margins to the more established indie underground — the cassette tape has participated in the sonic identity of sounds, the organisation of recordings, geographies of networks and scenes, relationships between producers and consumers, practices of listening, institutional structures, and the discursive politics of autonomy that accompany these. Throughout all of these different formations, the format has been associated with a narrative of opposition to the mainstream, of consumer participation, and of industry democratisation (Manuel 1993). As Rob Drew writes, throughout the 1980s, ‘the cassette served simultaneously as a practical instrument of music diffusion and as a token of intimacy, community, and accessibility-values essential to indie’s self image’ (2019: 3). These narratives of democratisation and oppositionality continue today. However, as this thesis demonstrates throughout, the practices of circulation are in fact remarkably different.

Three Sites of Plasticity: Texts, Institutions, Publics

Plasticity is about the changing boundaries and connections between different media systems. These boundaries and connections are articulated by multiple groups (label owners, listeners) that integrate different technologies and devices through discourses and practices (Nowak & Whelan 2016: 125). There are three main ‘sites’ (D’Acchi 2004b: 435) in which one can observe these emergent articulations and boundary crossings. The first is the internal organisation and framing of musical recordings. The second is the institutional formations and relationships that produce and distribute music. This includes the business structures and economic logics of platforms as well as the discourses that surround them. The third site is the social relationships and imaginaries that are enacted through multiple media. These three sites are inseparably interlinked and they recur throughout each chapter of this thesis. In order to map out the continuities and changes within these three sites, this thesis takes a broadly media-theoretical and media-historical approach. While the concept of mediation has arguably been a part of writing on music at least since the Frankfurt school, media theory and theories of mediation have slowly become more important within research on music (Born 2005, 2011, 2018; Born and 28

Barry 2018; Kane 2015, 2017; Kelly, 2018; Rehding et al. 2017; Magnusson 2019; Prior 2017, 2018; Roy 2015; Straw 2015; Thompson, 2017; Trippett 2017; Vallee 2020). As Georgina Born writes in 2005, music ‘is perhaps the paradigmatic multiply-mediated, immaterial and material, fluid quasi-object, in which subjects and objects collide and intermingle’ (7), or as Antoine Hennion suggests eleven years later ‘[m]usic is a network of crisscrossing mediations, the production of a disappearing object, and is always being remade through the artist’s performance or amateur activity’ (2016: 290). Sound and communication media are constitutive of this distribution, of the ordering of these practices and relations. As for the first site, it has long been understood that media are not neutral carriers or containers of information but rather set the preconditions for what can be communicated: as Marshall McLuhan wrote over 50 years ago, ‘the medium is the message’ (1964: 7). To take one example, music notation as a system of inscription — and its surrounding protocols of interpretation — shape what forms of information are conveyable through the score (Magnusson 2019). Media have an epistemological dimension and play a foundational role in the known (Gitelman 2014; Kittler 1999). ‘Media are so integral to a sense of what representation itself is’ (Gitelman 2006: 4). Accordingly, media play a role in the facticity and authority of information as well as the fixity or fluidity of texts: they are constitutive of communication’s textuality (Gitelman 2006; Hayles & Pressman 2013). Texts are not simply made through the material functions of the medium ‘itself’: Friedrich Kittler demonstrates with painstaking detail in his work Discourse Networks 1800/1900 how the literary ‘text’ as a static object, subject to hermeneutic interpretation, is the product of multiple and distributed practices of circulation and reading that emerge in the early 19th century. The mediated and distributed nature of musical works has received a similar treatment (Bohlman 1999; Cook 2001; Goehr 1992; Talbot 2000). As chapters 2 and 4 of this thesis argue, cassettes are intimately bound up with the increasing ascendancy of the album as a musical work within underground music that has become progressively disembedded from the context of local scenes and live performances and has become increasingly memorialised within distributed canonising acts. The second site of change is the institutional arrangements – as well as their economic logics – that work to produce and circulate music. This is linked 29

to the rise of digital music platforms — particularly streaming platforms — and the broader changes in the music industry that are associated with these platforms (Anderson 2014b; Mulligan 2015; Rogers 2013; Sun 2019; Wikström 2013). One such change, of fundamental importance to this study, is the institutional relationship between scarce goods and non-rivalrous goods; throughout this thesis, I show how these two logics have become inseparably intertwined, a process that is most clearly illustrated in the platform Bandcamp that offers streaming, digital downloads, and the capacity to sell merchandise. The second site of plasticity also includes the political economy and business models of digital platforms (see Couldry & Mejias 2019; Srnicek 2016; Zuboff 2019), particularly the power relationships between users and platforms — the ways in which platforms may exhibit Foucauldian neoliberal forms of governmentality (Bratton 2015; Chun 2011, 2016; Giraud 2015; Zwick et al. 2008). The relationships between platforms, user-generated content and labour have garnered particular attention within studies of digital media (Andrejevic 2009, 2012; Dyer-Witherford 1999; Fuchs 2013, 2014; Fuchs & Chandler 2019; Peterson 2008; Scholz 2012; Terranova 2000, 20004). This echoes a broader consideration of labour in the creative industries (Bank & Humphreys 2008; Banks & Deuze 2009; Banks 2010; Baym & Burnett 2009; Haynes & Marshall 2017; Hesmondhalgh & Baker 2011; McRobbie 2002; Morris 2014). Specifically, scholars have criticised the ways in which platforms increasingly rely on and reproduce autonomous, entrepreneurial modes of production that (potentially) discipline users into forms of self-exploitation. It is within this context that many of the musical institutions associated with underground music networks have shifted and changed. The structural role of independent music has been a topic of much consideration and a number of writers have rightly questioned the degree to which such labels can be considered independent or oppositional at all (Bartmanski & Woodward 2020; Dunn 2012; Hesmondhalgh 1999; Hesmondhalgh & Meier 2015; Luvaas 2012). As Nick Prior writes, ‘the DIY system hyped by punk rockers has moved beyond an activist ideology to become a structurally embedded part of digital modes of cultural production’ (2018: 90). While I expand upon this line of critique, I am particularly interested in the relationship between normative economic logics and other regimes of value without collapsing the latter into the former. As 30

Bennett and Bate write, ‘the [music] industry does not exist so much as it is performed, contested, enacted, negotiated, and recontextualized’ (2018: 8). Research on music media and the media industries too often relies on market- centric, economistic explanations to describe practices that are almost invariably understood as more-than-financial by those who participate in them (see Gibson- Graham 2006a, 2006b for a broader critique of ‘capitalocentrism’); to address this imbalance, I locate DIY practice as a site of tension between multiple regimes of value. The independent record label is exemplary of this ambivalence and chapters 3 and 5 deal extensively with the changing role of the tape label in a digital-dominated media landscape. The third site of change is that of the social relationships and imaginaries that are enacted and mediated through the circulation of cassette tapes. For some, phonography has historically been understood to engender a form of alienation; from Theodor Adorno’s theory of mass culture (1973 [1966]) to Walter Benjamin’s loss of the aura of the artwork (2008 [1935]), to R. Murray Schafer’s ‘schizophonia’ (1977), sound reproduction has been understood to break down organic relationships based on co-presence. For others, sound media co- constitute the formation of publics (Gitelman 2006; Hirschkind 2006; Kunreuther 2014; Sterne 2003), such that media participate in the drawing of the boundaries between public and private (Born 2013; Dean 2009; Fraser 1990; Habermas 1989 [1962]; Thompson 1995). Mediated publics and publicness are understood to produce both positive and more ambivalent effects. Earlier theorists understood print media to offer a positive space for rational political participation (Habermas 1989 [1962]; cf. Fraser 1990). By contrast, social media platforms are often singled out as particularly troubling in that they render the (formerly) personal public (John 2013; van Dijck 2007) while reducing the political territory of participation down to a ‘filter bubble’ or ‘echo chamber’ (Pariser 2011; Quattrociocchi et al. 2016). Media texts also participate in the formation of imaginary publics, what Benedict Anderson refers to as ‘imaginary communities’ (1983) and what Rick Altman calls ‘constellated communities’ (1999). Relationships of identification and of belonging are key to these imaginary social groups and they can produce both positive and negative effects. As chapters 4 and 5 of this thesis demonstrate, the circulation of cassettes enacts relationships of belonging between dispersed individuals. Digital platforms 31

variously render these connections and communities public, bringing individuals into contact with one another, often in order to stimulate commercial behaviours.

Out with the old, Out with the New

It is through emergent historical articulations and novel connections within these three sites of plasticity — texts, institutions, publics — that the cassette has been remade as a new medium. However, to suggest that the cassette tape has been remade anew is not to evoke a linear temporality of evolution or displacement. Plasticity necessitates a decidedly more archaeological configuration of historical time that is sensitive to the multiple historical layers of practice that exist in the present (Jordheim 2017; Roy 2015). As Elodie Roy writes, ‘[d]ifferent musical media, far from erasing each other, interminably coexist and intersect, creating a heterogeneous technological ecology (2015: 1; see also Devine 2019: 135; Jenkins 2006; Nowak 2015). Shifting the historical gaze to that which remains changes the way in which the new is accounted for (Edgerton 2019); ‘[t]he fact that things and practices hang around long past their supposed use-by date confounds conventional ideas of historical progress, including how we make room for the new’ (Acland 2007: xvi emphasis added). This resonates with the critiques of linear media histories made by the so-called media archaeologists (Ernst 2012, 2016a, 2016b; Parikka 2012; Sterne 2012; Zielinksi 2006). While some chapters (chapters 2 and 3) have a deeper historical focus than others, this thesis takes a broadly genealogical approach to contemporary practices of circulation in order to break them down into their constituent layers and reveal their different historical temporalities. Genealogy here implies neither a comprehensive historical account of cassette culture since the late 1970s nor a search for the origins of any particular practice but rather a critical concern for the contingency of contemporary practices. For Foucault, the genealogical historical method unearths the ‘complexity, contingency, and fragility of historical forms’ (Smart 1983: 76). In order to achieve this, this thesis uses two different terms adapted from Raymond Williams (1977: 121-128): residual and emergent. The term residual media has been taken up by Charles Acland (2007) to describe the way in which old media reside in the present, often at the cultural margins and David Novak has used the term to describe the circulation of noise 32

cassettes between Japan and the United States (2013). Describing media themselves as residual, however, risks attributing media systems an internal stasis. Rather than think in terms of residual and emergent media, this thesis traces the genealogy of residual and emergent practices, and the ways in which the changing relationships between these practices remake and remould the boundaries of media. Drawing on sociological theories of practice (Bourdieu 1977; Reckwitz 2002a, 2002b; Schatzki 1999; Warde 2005, 2014, 2017) and media domestication theories (Silverstone 1994), Nick Couldry’s practice theory of media seeks to understand how publicly observable actions oriented around and toward media are ordered and relate to other practices within peoples’ lives (2004, 2012). Theories of practice — much like other critical realist sociological theories (Sayer 1992) — centre the ways in which individuals understand and order their own practices themselves. Within a practice approach to media, discourses, categories, and understandings work to produce the boundaries of practices and they often serve a rationalising role for individuals as much as they do a motivational role (Warde 2017). Such an approach to music and sound media is hardly without precedent. The work of Tia DeNora (2000), Michael Bull (2000, 2004, 2007), Jo Tacchi (2002, 2009), Brandon LaBelle (2010) and others (Bartmanski & Woodward 2015) examine the ways in which mediated music practices help structure and contest the textures and spaces of everyday life. This thesis extends this work by tracing a genealogy of the practices of cassette circulation and the meanings that help shape and distinguish them. The terms emergent and residual here signify the formation and reproduction of practices respectively. As Shove et al. write, ‘practices are provisionally stabilized when constitutive elements are consistently and persistently integrated through repeatedly similar performances’ (2012: 13). The term residual here denotes this (always provisional) stability. Unlike Williams’ use of the term, it does not signify a marginal position within practice but simply one that has crystallised to the point that it has been inherited by new individuals. As Elodie Roy writes, different experiences or practices ‘often coexist within one person. Each might possibly be sedimented in specific aesthetic, practical and bodily memories’ (2015: 10). This closely resembles Wendy Chun’s discussion of habit: those aspects of media practice that reside in the body long after the 33

original technologies have fallen out of use (2016). Emergent practices, on the other hand, are still in the process of formalisation and are yet to be passed down and reproduced. Emergent and residual thus describe a generational difference and not a spatial one nor a political one. It is not only components of practices that can be inherited and reproduced but also the design of technologies. Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin’s theory of remediation describes the way in which emergent media systems incorporate aspects of previous media into their design (2000). Similarly, Lev Manovich describes how early digital media integrate cinematic ways of seeing into their interfaces (2001). As Frances Dyson notes, digital music media are in fact an ‘accumulation of the auditive technologies of the past’ (2009: 3). Drawing on the words of Bandcamp advisor Andrew Dubber (2013), Hesmondhalgh et al. extend this notion to describe the ways that platforms attempt to produce ‘behavioural skeuomorphism’, integrating existing practices into the structure of new technologies (2019). Jonathan Sterne, however, is careful to note how theories of remediation can often reproduce linear, evolutionary theories of media history in which the more ‘desirable’ features survive into the next generation of media (2012: 9; see also Roy 2015: 157-158). Sterne instead uses the term ‘mediality’ to describe the routine cross-reference and interrelationships between different media. ‘The mediality of the medium’, Sterne suggests, ‘lies not simply in the hardware, but in its articulation with particular practices, ways of doing things, institutions, and even in some cases belief systems’ (ibid.: 10; see also Wolf 2011; Straw 2015). Remediation and mediality can be employed as complementary terms in the study of media plasticity; they show how media systems interpenetrate and stratify over time, how residual practices are interpolated into new media (remediation) and thus how existing media systems are incorporated, changed, and displaced (mediality).

The Power of Use

Focusing on practice — on use — is to take a perspective that is somewhat different from much recent research on DIY cultures as well as from a significant branch of media and material culture studies. Almost all research on punk and DIY cultures focuses on production and occasionally on exchange. The structures 34

of independence and interdependence, the discourses of autonomy, and the politics of cultural production have received much coverage. Because production is located as a site of resistance (or co-option), consumption is often assumed to derive directly from production. The perspectives and practices of listeners are conspicuously absent. However, uses are just as important within studies of marginal media as they are with any other. Reasons for releasing cassettes are not necessarily identical to the motivations for purchasing. Anticipated uses do not always equate to actual uses. This issue extended beyond studies of DIY culture. In the last two decades, there has been a steady rise within studies of technology in the application of Deleuzian theory (DeLanda 2006; Deleuze & Guattari 1980), (vital) materialisms (Barad 2003, 2007; Bennett 2009;), affect (Anderson 2014a; Blackman 2012; Massumi 2002, 2015), embodied cognition (Clark & Chalmers 1998), phenomenological anthropology (Ingold 2000, 2011), and perhaps most of all, ANT (Latour 2005) and ecological psychology (Gibson 1977; 1979). The aggregate effect of this intellectual ferment is a widespread re-centring of technologies and objects within the study of social life. The theory of affordances, particularly, has had a significant impact on research on technologies and media (Baym 2010; Bloomfield et al. 2010; Boyd 2010; Costa 2018; Davis & Chouinard 2017; Dohn 2009; Evans et al. 2016; Faraj & Azad; Hsieh 2012; Hutchby 2001; Ling & Donner 2009; Ling & McEwen 2010; McGrenere & Ho 2000; Nagy & Neff 2015; Shaw 2017; Trepte 2015; Turner & Turner 2002; Wellman et al. 2003). In earlier affordance theories ‘there is a tendency to treat the theoretical possibilities afforded by the new technologies as lived reality’ (Haynes & Marshall 2018: 1979) but more recent research offers a more sophisticated account of use. The affordance presents a very particular relationship between the user and the technology: rather than examining the way in which technologies determine human action and culture, affordances are the ‘action possibilities’ (Gibson 1977: 69-70) that limit and prompt forms of action. These are the result of the interaction between the subject and the object. For Nagy and Neff, affordances counter both the interpretation of rational deterministic uses of technology as well as accounts that see technologies as endlessly mutable (2015: 3). Shaw’s nuanced 2017 article applies Stuart Hall’s theory of encoding/decoding (1973) to the theory of affordances in order to understand the 35

relationship between hegemonic uses, negotiated uses, and oppositional uses of technologies (598; for a similar argument see Taylor 2001: 38). There is much merit in Shaw’s analysis. The focus on power relationships and hegemony — what Rip and Kemp refer to as ‘technological regimes’ (1998) — and the sensitivity to different forms of use is certainly applicable to the current study. Shaw’s proposal to fit affordances within a broader circuit of media also resonates with the current project. However, there are two problems with this perspective. First, affordances risk atomising technologies and there is not a consideration of the often- unexpected relationships between different technologies and different forms of use. Users employ multiple technologies for similar practices and affordances may cancel each other out. Additionally, users of media are themselves diverse (Prior 2014) and there are not simply designers and users, but a variety of positions who occupy diverse positions of power and have very different agendas. At an industrial level, it is important to remember the inter-sectoral relationships and antagonisms (Barnett & Harvey 2015; Hesmondhalgh 2018; Morris 2015: 31), as well as the roles of groups that may not design platforms but may have certain stakes in their design. Technological designers and users alike are constituted by heterogenous populations and they interact with a variety of other technologies and industrial structures that complicate the binary built into an encoding/decoding approach. The second problem concerns the history of different uses throughout shifting hegemonic structures. While Shaw’s analysis leaves room for diverse and divergent uses of technologies, there is an assumption that the more the use diverges from the intended hegemonic use, the more oppositional it is. This may be a reasonable assumption when tackling technologies that have recently emerged or that have a relatively short lifespan. By contrast, when technologies continue to circulate for several decades, there may be a slippage between their intended uses and the broader political contexts and technological regimes. In the case of the cassette tape, emergent forms of use and circulation differ from the uses anticipated by the designers of the technology in the 1960s. This does not mean, however, that these novel uses are resistant to broader trends in emergent media and the music industry. In fact, the logic of contemporary cassette circulation is in fact highly amenable to, and compatible with, the logics of many emergent digital platforms. 36

The theory of plasticity being advanced here is not totally incompatible with Shaw’s theory of affordances. Certainly, underground music listeners have taken up some technologies the way they were intended to be used (and this is perhaps most surprisingly the case with certain digital media). A focus on plasticity, rather, offers a different perspective and a different methodology. Instead of beginning with the technology and then working outwards to understand how uses derive from, differ from, or negotiate that technology and its affordances, plasticity begins at the level of mediated practice — understood on users’ terms themselves — and then seeks to understand how the complex of practices integrate a multitude of devices, technologies, institutions, and discourses. Unlike the work of Henry Jenkins (2006; Jenkins et al. 2015), however, the approach taken here does not invest user practices with any special form of agency or intrinsic emancipatory potential. Use does not have any a priori politicality. Practice is as much the site of the reproduction of power as it is the resistance of hegemony (Bourdieu 1990). As Jeremy Wade Morris suggests, use figured as ‘[i]nterpretative flexibility is not a blank slate; it depends on the nature and preexisting conditions of control and power that govern the commodity in question’ (2015: 136): emergent practices have to contend with the force of residual practices, institutions, technologies, and discourses. Most importantly, hegemonies are not only contested, subverted or undone through use: they can also be forged through emergent uses and the ways in which these interact with existing conditions. Practices are human-technological ways of acting with the world, and they are always social. As Brian Kane notes, it can often be difficult to ‘draw the line between a material property of some medium and the cultural practices that engage it’ (2017: 73). Objects are ‘dissolved in and by practice’ (Roy 2015: 20) and while they are experienced by users as ‘ready-to-hand’ (Heidegger 1977), there is still a historical nature to this: ‘objects are porous realities, which may simultaneously be remainders or traces of past human action and suggestive of other practices (Roy 2015: 20). This resonates with Elizabeth Costa’s more expansive theory of ‘affordances-in-practice’ in which technological functions ‘take shape only through specific material, […] social and cultural circumstances’ (2018: 3649; see also Davis & Chouinard 2017). This understanding of practice resembles Bernhard Siegert’s ‘cultural techniques’ (2015; see also Ihde 2002; 37

Ingraham 2019; Parikka 2012; Sterne 2003; Winthrop-Young 2013), the mediated forms of action that serve as the foundation for different types of knowledge; claims about the causality of action are secondary to an examination of the profound entanglement of knowing, meaning, and acting with media (see also Hodder 2012). This approach to practice resonates with actor-network theory (Latour 2005). It attempts to capture the spiraling connections and the distribution of media across multiple actors and a number of music and media studies have employed ANT in resourceful ways (see Piekut 2011; Prior 2018; van Dijck 2013). Unlike ANT, however, a focus on use and practice is necessarily action-centred. As Carl Knappett notes, ‘Actor-Network-Theory has paid relatively little attention to the spatial and organisational structures of these human-nonhuman networks and their effects upon network ‘behaviour’ or dynamics’ (2008: 139), or as Shove et al. suggest ‘actor network theory has inspired politically and philosophically intriguing debates about the relation between humans and non-humans with whom they share their lives, but has ironically done so in ways that divert attention away from more ordinary questions about what these cyborg/hybrid entities are actually doing’ (2012: 10). This is less a problem with the original texts of ANT itself and more with the ways it is so often employed in which technologies become mere nodes in a broader network. Plasticity does not presuppose the shape that media might take but rather understands how media systems are articulated through practices that exist as meaningful units of analysis not only from the researcher’s point of view, but from the point of view of actors themselves.

Research Methodology

The majority of the research for this thesis was completed between January 2018 and August 2019 with follow-up research taking place in September and October 2019. The research process involved 58 in-depth semi-structured interviews with label owners, musicians, journalists, store owners, and manufacturers. It also involved a 50-question survey for listeners that received 153 responses. Five of these listeners completed a week-long listening diary. In addition, this thesis involved two short ethnographic trips to Japan in October 2018 (Tokyo, Osaka, 38

Kyoto) and the United States in April 2019 (Washington DC, New York, LA) as well as sustained participation in local music scenes in Manchester and Leeds. The research began in Manchester, speaking with local record label owners and musicians. My initial interviews were with David McLean of Manchester’s Tombed Visions Records and Paddy Shine of the noise group Gnod and the label Tesla Tapes. Record labels were then chosen through a snowballing process whereby label owners were asked to identify other notable labels. In addition, I identified record labels through their recurring appearance in certain publications such as the Spool’s Out column in the Quietus, or blogs such as Tab’s Out. This dual process of locating labels drew me into a distributed network that spanned a number of countries. Though my research began in Manchester, I quickly found myself directed towards record labels and stores in North America and Japan. By ‘following the thing’ (Marcus 1995: 106) that is the cassette tape, the research site became fluid, ‘constructed through a play of social relationships established between [the researcher] and informants that may extend across physical sites’ (Coleman & Collins 2006: 12; see also Cook et al. 2009). While this process generated a clear picture of the most visible infrastructure and the most popular and prolific record labels that engaged with the cassette tape, I did not simply want to replicate these structures in my research methodology. In order to provide a richer contextualisation of the relationship between online networked activity and offline activity, I undertook two ethnographic trips. The ethnographic trips, to both Japan and the United States, involved attending experimental music gigs, visiting record stores, and talking to local scene participants. Informal conversations would lead in some cases to semi-structured interviews. This process enabled me to observe the relationship between the international circulation of recordings and local record stores as well as live performance cultures. It also enabled me to meet label owners and musicians who were less visible in international online spaces. Japan as a research site was first brought to my attention when I spoke to the band Kukangendai (who also run a live house in Kyoto) at the White Hotel in Manchester while they were on tour with the experimental band GOAT. Adam of the London ambient label ACR also mentioned an online connection he had made with the Nara-based Japanese label Muzan Editions. As there has been a historic culture of transnational cassette circulation between North America, some 39

European countries, and Japan since the 1980s (Novak 2013), I was interested in the legacy of this history and the ways in which it had changed with the emergence of digital technologies. Upon arrival in Japan, it became swiftly evident that the broader media ecology differs quite significantly from that of Western Europe and North America. Streaming services such as Apple Music and Spotify had only recently entered wider use (the penetration rate of streaming services is still significantly lower than other comparable music markets) (Manabe 2008, 2016). The CD has also had a much longer lifespan in Japan than in other music markets and many consumers still orient their practices around physical media. Unfortunately, a full consideration of the diverse media ecology of contemporary Japan would require a thesis of its own and Benjamin Düster’s work deals excellently with the multiplicity of the uses and meanings of the cassette tape in contemporary Japan (2020). While the mainstream industry of Japan has a high level of domestic music consumption – some estimate as high as 90% (Soundcharts 2019) – the experimental underground continues to be far more closely connected with North America, Europe, and Australia. Record stores such as Big Love in Shibuya, Tokyo or Meditations in Kyoto sell a large amount of Western music while only a box or two are reserved for Japanese acts. Significant artists such as Duenn or Merzbow often release on European and North American record labels. This is not in any way to undermine the vibrant musical life of contemporary Japan. This thesis, however, focuses on those labels, record stores, and musicians that participate within a particular network and who engage in similar practices of circulation. These are largely those labels that operate over platforms such as Bandcamp and sell to European and North American listeners. As Joshua Stefane of Nara’s Muzan Editions told me in our interview, ‘Japanese people don’t buy tapes [...]. 98% of our sales are abroad. The people who buy digital sales tend to be Japanese’ (Joshua interview 2018). Kazuya Ishigami too, owner of the Osaka-based label Neus-318, states that almost all of his customers are European and American (Kazuya interview 2018). Several of the label owners and journalists that I spoke to were in fact not born in Japan. Muzan Editions, Diskotopia, and Call and Response Records are all run by individuals born in North America and Europe who have been raised in very different music media environments. The other labels interviewed here — Neus-318, Birdhouse Records, Eerie Noise Records — 40

are run by Japanese individuals who heavily participated in international networks of underground music, through touring, running live houses, working at record stores, or through running their label. I also employed a 50-question survey for music listeners which received 153 complete responses. This survey examines the role of multiple media within the texture of individuals’ everyday lives. The survey combines granular questions concerning how listeners locate and listen to music with more open-ended questions around the issues of ownership and listeners’ reasons for purchasing particular media. Survey respondents were also asked if they would be prepared to complete a one-week listening diary. 5 respondents completed this diary which provided a high level of granular detail on individuals’ listening practices. The survey was shared on a number of online pages — on the Spool’s Out Facebook page and the Tab’s Out Facebook and Twitter page. The majority of the responses were from North American and European listeners. The survey only received one complete response from a person residing in Japan. This partly reflected the language barrier but more broadly is a confirmation of the fact that cassette tapes are not consumed as readily in Japan as they are in the US and Europe.

Thesis Outline

Chapter 1 offers a critical literature review of existing research on analogue media. Chapters 2 to 5 each discuss a different aspect of the circulation of cassettes as it interacts with a different dominant feature considered to be constitutive of the contemporary media ecology: the changing networks of music transmission (chapter 2), disintermediation and digital abundance (chapter 3), the changing ownership rights associated with digital music platforms (chapter 4), and the changing value structures of the musical commodity (chapter 5). Each of these four chapters traces the residual and emergent elements of contemporary practice and the ways in which the interactions between these different elements redraw the boundaries of the cassette tape as a media system. Ultimately, each chapter demonstrates how the cassette tape (as well as other physical media) is as much a part of the contemporary underground media ecology as digital technologies are. The conclusion then discusses the political implications for studying the plasticity of media systems. 41

Chapter 1 offers an overview of the existing literature on the resurgence of analogue sound reproduction media. It shows how a number of linear narratives of media history play out in the research on analogue media. It argues that the different definitions of obsolescence — and the normative histories of media and technological development that these are associated with — all reproduce the digital age as the dominant temporal periodisation and, tacitly, spatial designation of the 21st century. Positioned within or against the digital age, analogue media are either theorised as a nostalgic looking-back to an unreachable past or as an oppositional and marginal format that exists outside of the mainstream contemporary media ecology. This positioning of the cassette tape is possible because the critics privilege practices of mixtaping and home-taping from the 1980s that are taken to be coterminous with the format itself. This reification makes it difficult for researchers to theorise the ways in which the use of the cassette tape has changed. Contemporary uses, if acknowledged at all, are usually mistaken for disuse. Ultimately, I argue that this reification is a discursive boundary-making procedure undertaken by critics external to underground music networks. It runs contrary to any attempt to locate the plasticity of media — the emergent connections and changes in individuals’ practices. Chapter 2 traces the historical emergence of the category of media known within underground music networks as physical media — the term to describe cassette tapes, CDs, and vinyl records. Many underground musicians, label owners, and listeners orient their practices around distinctions between physical media and digital media as much as they do distinctions between individual formats. While many scholars ascribe physical media a normative materiality — understanding them to hold intrinsic technological similarities — I show that these media were in fact used in diverse practices and institutional contexts. This category emerges as a coherent category only in the 21st century within changing listening practices in which the cassette tape and the CD come to be used like the vinyl record. This convergence is bound up both with changing digital media networks of transmission and an emergent ethics of listening that centres the album as a musical text for disinterested aesthetic appreciation. The cassette, originally conceived as a mobile technology that enabled listeners to remix the sounds of the culture industries, is remade as a technology for disciplining these long-revered (residual) forms of listening. 42

Chapter 3 is concerned with the changing role of the independent record label within a broader media ecology increasingly characterised by what is perceived to be an overwhelming abundance of cultural material. For several academic commentators and label owners alike, this abundance is considered to be a direct product of disintermediation. This chapter critiques this causal connection, arguing that abundance is a condition of the political economy of digital music and social media platforms. It then traces a history of the changing meaning of autonomy within underground music networks from a concern for scene autonomy from the broader music industry to an emergent concern for the individual autonomy of the record label owner as an aesthetic curator. This chapter then demonstrates the way in which the curatorial logic of the record label is presented through both the changing visual language of the cassette tape as well as the way that physical media are remediated across digital spaces. I then show how other cultural intermediaries (including several digital music platforms) reproduce the curatorial logic of the record label. Through these changing institutional relationships, the cassette tape is remade as a high-design collectible artisanal object that participates in the reproduction of the curatorial authority of the record label owner. Chapter 4 is concerned with the way in which the cassette tape, long condemned as a fragile and unstable medium, is increasingly used as a medium of storage and cultural preservation. This has occurred through the changing relationships between access-based media, personal possession, and cultural memory. I show how music on digital streaming services is increasingly understood as a public good, situated within a cultural ethics of free public access that is premised, partially, on the devaluation of digital music. Simultaneously, residual forms of personal possession have taken on an emergent documentary or archival role precisely because the forms of public access take place on precarious digital platforms that are subject to obsolescence, failure, and alteration. I then demonstrate how personal collections are remediated through digital platforms that render public these archival collections. In doing so, personal collecting becomes a means for participating in a broader musical public that is concerned with the archiving of musical works as historicised and immutable texts. 43

Chapter 5 discusses the way in which the exchange of physical media has been remade as an act of support — as a voluntaristic act of giving on behalf of the consumer — rather than a necessary means to access a recording. Support, as a relatively coherent regime of value, mediates between, on the one hand, the medium of money and, on the other hand, the autonomous production of music in which physical media are increasingly seen to honour the work of musical production rather than simply operating as a means to ‘get the music out there’. The emergence of this regime of value is deeply entangled with the emergence of the platform Bandcamp. Bandcamp builds a language of gift-like support into its interface while also remediating communities of support and rendering them publicly visible. In doing so, Bandcamp is able to position itself on the side of listeners, supporting artists, rather than extracting value from underground music networks. Within this context, the circulation of cassette tapes is remade into a gift economy that produces value for digital capitalism rather than a form of circulation that is external to it. The conclusion discusses the politics of plasticity. Given that the cassette tape has been remade as a medium through novel forms of use, how can scholars theorise political resistance to hegemony through the use of media? I argue against any account that sees the residual or marginal as an a priori site of resistance. I also argue that media theorists need to abandon the dichotomy of intended or hegemonic uses (design) and negotiated or oppositional uses (often simply referred to as use). In this lies a tacit assumption that misuse is inherently liberatory. This is an inverted technological determinism, the reification of power within technologies. Instead, media can be made rendered instrumental to numerous political agendas, both hegemonic and counterhegemonic and these may involve intended uses, creative misuses, or in some cases, disuse.

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Chapter 1 Beyond Old and New Media Obsolescence, Temporality, and the Digital Age

I may use an electric drill, but I also use a hammer. The former is thirty-five years old, the latter hundreds of thousands. Will you see me as a DIY expert 'of contrasts' because I mix up gestures from different times? Would I be an ethnographic curiosity? On the contrary: show me an activity that is homogeneous from the point of view of the modern time. Some of my genes are 500 million years old, others 3 million, others 100,000 years, and my habits range in age from a few days to several thousand years. As Peguy's Clio said, and as Michel Serres repeats, 'we are exchangers and brewers of time' [...]. It is this exchange that defines us, not the calendar or the flow that the moderns had constructed for us. Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern: p.75.

Obsolescence is never a thing of the past. [...] [I]t reveals itself as a force in the present, and one that, for better or worse, will shape our futures. Babette B. Tischelder & Sarah Wasserman, Cultures of Obsolescence: p.10.

Introduction

On the support section of the Apple website, the tech giant offers a regularly updated list of what are referred to as its ‘vintage and obsolete products’. The company defines a vintage product as any product that has not been sold for over five years and an obsolete product as any one that has not been sold for over seven years, the latter of which will no longer receive hardware support from Apple. As of January 2021, the list features over 440 items, most of which fall within the obsolete category. By any measure, this is an impoverished definition of obsolescence. It suggests nothing about a piece of technology’s uses, any meanings or values that may be attached to it, or for that matter, its continued existence altogether. Instead, Apple is practicing a form of ‘mandated’ obsolescence (Uricchio 2015: 98): the discontinuation of production and repair of certain products disciplines consumers into purchasing new commodities. It is ironic that such rapid cycles of product discontinuation in the digital media economy are rendered virtually invisible to many (see Chun 2011; Sterne 2007: 17; Tischelder & Wasserman 2015: 6-7), whereas technologies such as the cassette tape or the vinyl record — both formats that continue to be manufactured 45

and consumed in large numbers today — are marveled at as retro curiosities from a bygone era. Many journalists take the cassette tape’s obsolescence as self-evident. Leonid Bershidsky, writing for Bloomberg, describes the cassette tape as ‘dead’, ‘killed’ by the CD in the 1990s (2019). Stuart Heritage, writing for The Telegraph, somewhat wryly compares the cassette tape to the kerosene lamp (2019), and Mark Beaumont, writing for NME, states that the cassette tape is ‘an obsolete technology that should STAY THAT WAY! [sic.]’ (2019). While it is perhaps not surprising to find this language in the realm of mainstream journalistic opinion — with headlines such as ‘Just like Brexit, the resurgence of the cassette tape shows we’re all pining for a golden age that never existed’ (Moore 2017) — a great deal of the academic commentary on the continued use of analogue sound reproduction media also takes at face value their status as old and obsolete technologies. Craig Eley makes reference to contemporary use of the cassette tape as a ‘turn away from modernity’ (2011: 50) while Joanna Demers states the cassette tape may as well have come from the Gilded Age (2017: 11). Calum Marsh, writing earlier in 2009 for Pop Matters, refers to the cassette tape as ‘decidedly obsolete’ and Simon Reynolds repeatedly describes the cassette tape as ‘dead’, a ‘relic’, and a ‘ghost’ that haunts contemporary popular music (2011: 350; see also Davis 2007: 223; Yochim & Biddinger 2008). For many of these critics, the resurgence of the cassette tape is seen as more than a handful of naive youths guided by a misplaced nostalgic yearning for a past they could never have known: the revival of putatively defunct technologies is taken as evidence of a society whose sense of historical time has broken down altogether. For other critics, analogue sound reproduction technologies represent a means for resisting — or at least, providing some respite from — the trappings of a hegemonic digital world characterised by conditions of ephemerality and abundance that threaten the integrity of meaningful cultural engagement. The cassette tape is almost unanimously understood as an object out of time and out of place in a digital world. The difference between, on the one hand, the mode of digital obsolescence mandated by Apple, and on the other, the obsolescence of analogue media described by academics reveals how terms such as ‘new’, ‘old’, and ‘obsolete’ operate not as neutral historical descriptors but instead as highly politicised 46

categories. These categories have the capacity to do work for actors that stand much to gain from consigning certain technologies to the past. In this chapter, I unpack the journalistic and academic discourses surrounding the resurgence of the cassette tape as well as those that surround the vinyl record (for there is a great deal of overlap). I argue that, by situating their critique of analogue media within ‘the digital age’, many authors in fact reproduce a temporality of obsolescence that is deeply rooted in the production cycles of the ‘media conglomerates’ (Negus 2019). As Jonathan Sterne writes, ‘[s]cholars often write about new digital communication technologies as if their mere presence demands that social life and social thought be remade. But this is advertising talk masquerading as academic discourse’ (2003: 336). By centring the digital age as a temporal and spatial frame of analysis, authors abstract the cassette tape from its contemporary uses and its specific musical and cultural context in which it functions as a medium that meaningfully participates in the organisation, transmission and storage of music. Critics instead privilege a particular set of historical practices and institutions that are taken to be entirely coterminous with the cassette itself — mixtapes, home taping, and 4-track home recording. Within this framework, new uses are perceived as misuse and sometimes as disuse (in the case of those listeners who do not make mixtapes or use cassettes as their primary listening medium). As a result, critics turn away from explanations based on technological use and instead offer more semiotic explanations for the cassette resurgence in which the format comes to signify a golden age of musical circulation. However, in these accounts, the cassette tape comes to occupy the contradictory position of being somehow external to the digital age, yet simultaneously a symptom of the digital age’s problems. Ultimately, the digital age, operating as a linear temporal periodisation, prevents any engagement with the nonlinear cycles of use and therefore of the plasticity of media, the ways in which they are redrawn through the interaction between emergent and residual practices. After all, old and new media as categories do not work to organise activity or meaning-making within underground music networks: they are external categories imposed by critics and academics. The term physical media — a term that includes CDs, cassettes and vinyl records — holds much more weight within these networks and this is the subject of the following chapter. In the following section, I outline three 47

temporalities of technological change. I trace the ways that these temporalities appear within the academic and journalistic response to the resurgence of analogue media. Subsequently, I discuss the way that the cassette tape is positioned outside the digital age as a hegemonic space. Finally, I give an overview of a recently emerging body of literature that is more sensitive to the cumulative cohabitation of media and the non-linear cycles of technological (dis)use.

Three Temporalities of Technological Change

The temporal relationship between the old and the new — in which temporality is understood as the ‘direction, speed, and rhythm of history’ (Jordheim 2014: 501), produced within particular power relationships (Sharma 2014) — appears in several different guises throughout the critical responses to the resurgence of analogue media. These temporalities do not originate in the discourse surrounding old media but rather in histories and narratives of new media. While a number of recent accounts acknowledge the significant structural continuities within the music industry (Guichardaz et al. 2019; Negus 2019; Rogers 2013), linear temporalities of technological change abound. Here, I outline three dominant temporalities that appear in histories and discourses of music media. The first temporality presents technological change as the continuous improvement or progress of technological utility. The second temporality is characterised by radical change and historical discontinuity. The third account, generally more critical, is characterised by historical stasis and breakdown amidst an accelerated pace of superficial change, ‘in which technological growth is not matched by a corresponding evolution in [cultural] content’ (Graham 2016: 118). This third temporality is particularly prominent in the critical response to the resurgence of analogue media. The first temporality of technological development is perhaps the most ubiquitous, especially outside of academic discourse. It presents technological development as the linear improvement of a particular technology’s functionality. Jonathan Sterne describes how the language surrounding the history of audio fidelity is indicative of this temporality.

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Histories of sound fidelity usually begin at the end, with the achievement of perfect fidelity and flawless sound reproduction. Narratives of technological change and the transformation of technical specifications are folded back into an aesthetic and technological telos: the latest technological innovation equals the “best-sounding” or “perfect” sound reproduction (Sterne 2003: 222).

Such use of superlatives can also be seen in the marketing of various digital devices such as the iPhone 11 that are advertised as having the ‘fastest chip ever’, the ‘best camera yet’, and the ‘easiest’ operating system (Apple 2019). Within this temporality, obsolescence is reducible to technological inferiority. In the words of architectural historian Daniel Abramson, ‘[o]bsolescence’s basic axioms were that architectural [read here technological] function and worth were quantifiable and necessarily decreased over time’ (2016: 3, emphasis added). Premised on the modernist idea of utility, obsolescence can be located in the material features of the technology itself (Sterne 2007: 21). William Uricchio is careful to note how this linear temporality is premised on the idea that new technologies will totally replace older technologies (2015): new technologies will offer only greater utility to consumers who will be willing to immediately dispose of their previous technologies to make room. The concept of successive improvement as replacement eliminates technological difference: technologies perform analogous functions with increasing efficiency (for example, audio fidelity). Unlike the first temporality, the academic discourse concerning the emergence of digital music media is characterised more by a temporality of discontinuity. The cluster of digital technologies emerging within the mid-to-late 1990s are understood as representing the beginning of the ‘digital age’. The digital age has become a common designation within writing on music, media, and the cultural industries within the last ten to fifteen years as a central (arguably the central) periodising designation (see Barney et al. 2016; Bartmanski & Woodward 2015; Baym 2010; Beer 2008; Fisher & Fuchs 2015; Holt 2010; Hracs et al. 2015; Klein et al. 2017; Meier 2016; Mulligan 2015; Nowak 2015; Rogers 2013; Savage 2011; van Dijck 2007). Like many periodisations that have come before it, the digital age proposes a historical rupture: a total change in social, cultural, and 49

economic organisation that arises as a direct consequence of the introduction of specific technologies. This kind of rupture can be seen in the opening words of Mark Mulligan’s 2015 book Awakening: The Music Industry in the Digital Age.

In June 1999 a software programme developed by a college dropout changed the music industry forever. It triggered a transformation that threw decades' worth of accepted wisdom out of the window and sent the recorded music industry into what at times appeared to be a death spiral. [...] Now, mid-way through the second decade of the 21st century, we are witnessing the first stirrings of a new music industry, one that is built on digital foundations rather than bound by the constraints of the CD and physical retail. [...] That single piece of software shook the music industry out of the hubris, complacency and arrogance that had come to define [it] during the 1980’s and 1990’s (1).

Mulligan’s words are characterised by an almost-Badiouan language of the Event (Badiou 2013) or a Foucauldian epistemic shift (1970 [1966]): the introduction of peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing networks is seen to be a technological singularity to which all following developments within the music and cultural industries are a direct response, whether positively or negatively. In wake of this event, an altogether-new music industry has emerged. The historical development and emergence of P2P technology, its changing history of use, and its diffusion across different types of users are eclipsed by a singular moment of technological arrival. In other cases, the digital age is not reduced to one specific technology or event but instead to a broader series of technological changes. Nicholas Cook, Monique Ingalls, and David Trippett begin their introduction to the 2019 Cambridge Companion to Music and Digital Culture by referring to this ensemble of new technological developments as the ‘digital revolution’.

It is hard to think of another field of cultural practice that has been as comprehensively turned upside down by the digital revolution as music. Digital instruments, recording technologies and signal processing techniques have transformed the making of music, while digital dissemination of music – through the Internet and earbuds – has 50

transformed the way people consume it [...]. The digital revolution has destabilised the traditional music business, with successive technologies reconstructing it in different forms, and at present even its short-term future is unclear [...]. Meanwhile digitalisation has changed what sort of thing music is, creating a multiplicity of genres, some of which exist only online – indeed, downloads and streaming have problematised the extent to which music can reasonably be thought of as a ‘thing’ at all. Technology that is rapidly pervading the globe is re-engineering relationships between geographically removed traditions (including by removing geography from the equation). Some see this near meltdown of so many aspects of traditional musical culture as a harbinger of fundamental social change to come (1).

While the agents of change in this passage are multiple, the collective noun of the ‘digital revolution’ has still had the effect of fundamentally altering (turning ‘upside down’) the ‘field of cultural practice’ that is the production and consumption of music. Once again, digital technologies mark out a historical rupture rather than progressive functional improvement. This break cleaves off the digital present from the immediate past. ‘Revolution’, ‘transformation’, ‘fundamental change’ on a ‘global scale’: the linear temporalities of modernism dominate here but this is less a language of continuity as it is one of radical difference. What remains of those media and practices that preceded the digital age is left largely uninterrogated: unlike the first temporality, the digital age implies total difference. Bruno Latour, writing of modernity more broadly, neatly sums up this attitude to the past.

The moderns have a peculiar propensity for understanding time that passes as if it were really abolishing the past behind it. [...] They do not feel that they are removed from the Middle Ages by a certain number of centuries, but that they are separated by Copernican revolutions, epistemological breaks, epistemic ruptures so radical that nothing of that past survives in them – nothing of that past ought to survive in them (1993: 68) 51

In this view, the digital revolution is one such break or rupture and it has abolished all sound reproduction media that preceded it. There is a third account of the relationship between technological history and digital technologies that is less marked by the temporality of radical, irrevocable change and more by an endless cycle of stasis and a breakdown in historicity amongst an accelerated cycle of superficial newness, what Lisa Gitelman refers to as the ‘oddly perennial newness of today’s new media’ (2006: 3). Giles Slade argues that towards the end of the twentieth century, the future- oriented temporality of ‘technological obsolescence’ – technologies falling out of use as and when new technologies are developed that better meet the needs of consumers – gave way to what Slade describes as ‘dynamic obsolescence’ (2007: 4). Dynamic obsolescence is more closely linked to the production cycles of the software and consumer electronics industries than to than the rhythms of technological discovery and innovation. The technology industries regularly make often-superficial changes — the so-called logic of the ‘update’ (Chun 2016) — to the design of products and suspend the introduction of new technological developments in order to encourage repetitive consumption (Slade 2007: 5). While earlier in the century, communication technologies were marketed as a ‘ticket to the future’ (Haigh 2014: 24), with the introduction of successive digital technologies, new products are now sold as a mark of the present: simply the ‘latest’, the most ‘up-to-date’. The future is superseded by the ‘now’ (Chun 2016) and newness no longer signifies the introduction of brand-new technologies but rather the ubiquitous upgrading of existing technologies (Sterne 2007: 18). This is what Mark Fisher describes as a ‘superficial frenzy of “newness”’ that marks out no discernible connection to a modernist future (2014: 6) – whether planned or imaginary – in which the present should appear as ‘the incessant ‘“before,” as the time that precedes itself, that anticipates its future’ (Nancy 2015: 15). Instead, this superficial newness posits a series of successive presents, each seemingly newer and more important than the last. As Charles Acland puts it, ‘the language of ‘game changing’ [technology] is’, on closer inspection, ‘another way to talk about business as usual’ (2010). For Fisher and many others (Berardi 2011, 2017; Graham 2016; Hogarty 2016; Reynolds 2011), this transition from a temporality of future-oriented progress to a succession of 52

endless presents is indicative of a much broader crisis of temporality stemming far beyond the realm of media and consumer electronics. Citing Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi’s After the Future (2011), Fisher suggests that with the introduction of neoliberal policies in the 1980s and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, one can witness a ‘slow cancellation of the future’ (Fisher 2014: 6). Lisa Gitelman notes how, for technological optimists, digital technologies participate in the rise of the ‘global “synergy”’ that is liberal democracy (2003: 3). Gitelman links this to the narrative established in Francis Fukuyama’s decidedly-utopian The End of History (1992). ‘This overdetermined sense of reaching the end of media history [...] lingers behind the notion that modernism is now “complete” and familiar temporal sensibilities are at an end’ (Gitelman 2006: 3). The age of digital communication media, for technological optimists, marks out the natural conclusion of modernist narratives of progress. However, for critics, the modernist project is far from complete. In the contemporary moment, both political and musical subjects alike are unable to imagine a future that is radically Other or revolutionary but instead feel themselves consigned to an endless extension of the present moment (Fisher 2014). This loss of a future is accompanied by a coterminous loss of historicity. François Hartog describes this as a presentist regime of historicity in which ‘[t]he present has [...] extended both into the future and into the past (2017: 201). For Fisher, it is ‘with the arrival of digital communicative capitalism’ that this temporal slippage ‘reached terminal crisis point’ (2014: 16). On the internet, one has instant access to the whole of the recorded past. Jean Hogarty suggests that this ubiquity of the past takes on a profoundly non-linear dimension as the digital subject ‘surfs’ through content, jumping from decade to decade in an endless mélange of unconnected historical moments (2016: 113). For Simon Reynolds, this ultimately has the effect of undermining the subject’s sense of history as they wander through an ‘overdocumented’ digital space that is distinctly anti- historicist (2011: 60), more of a ‘jumbled attic’ than an ‘ordered archive’ (ibid.: 62), giving way to the ‘brittle temporality of networked life’ (ibid.: 72). Ultimately, networked digital time produces a pathological sense of ‘dyschronia’ in the human subject (Reynolds 2006). For many writers, one symptom of this dyschronia is the nostalgia for certain versions of the past. As Katherina Niemeyer writes, nostalgia is not simply 53

a mere trend or fashion, but a relationship between time and space (2014: 2; see also Böhn 2007). Reynolds and Hogarty (among others) describe this presentist temporality of nostalgia as a culture of ‘retromania’: a proliferation of past objects and styles from popular culture in the present that are laden with nostalgia. Within the culture of retromania, the past is made ubiquitous, but only as it becomes decontextualised from its own original temporality in which it marked out something new, becoming infinitely exchangeable with other (recent) pasts (Guffey 2006). Ultimately, this ‘broken’ temporality, the proliferation of spectre- like pasts within a present that cannot imagine a future, undermines the subject’s capacity to interpret the present. To cite the title of the first chapter of Jean Hogarty’s book, ‘there is no now’ (2016), or to cite Fisher once again, ‘there is no present to grasp and articulate any more (2014: 9). This third temporality is predicated on the normative assumption that the trajectory of radical newness would and should continue indefinitely; it is an expression of a crisis of modernity and therefore it is an argument that aligns with the critics of postmodernism (Lyotard 1979; Jameson 1989, 2002).

The postmodernists retain the modern framework but disperse the elements that the modernizers grouped together in a well-ordered cluster. The postmodernism are right about the dispersion; every contemporary assembly is polytemporal. But they are wrong to retain the framework and to keep on believing in the requirement of continual novelty that modernism demanded (Latour 1991: 74).

As Bruno Latour states, total and continual (authentic) cultural novelty is taken here as a self-evident political and ethical necessity. Its faltering is a sign only of a society in crisis. These three temporalities frame the emergence of digital technologies in very different ways — continuous functional improvement, radical disruption and difference, stasis or crisis in unending change — but they all position some kind of unending linear technological and cultural change as a normative historical condition. This linearity is either present and observable or it is conspicuously absent, symptomatic of a broken temporality. The endurance of preexisting media systems is either entirely erased or problematised as such a breakdown in 54

time. In the academic discourse concerning the resurgence of analogue media, these three temporalities do not simply appear by themselves but in fact they often appear in the same accounts, producing contradictions and aporias. In the following section, I trace these temporalities within the discourse surrounding the resurgence of the cassette tape and the vinyl record in order to demonstrate how their status as old and obsolete technologies are produced. I argue that the contradictions produced by conflicting temporalities point to an underlying multiplicity of technological times.

Tape Time: The Symptom and the Solution

The journalistic and academic literature dealing with the resurgence of the cassette tape is less a unified space of discussion and more a collection of fragmentary accounts. Perhaps because of this, the different technological temporalities weave their way through these accounts in complex but often surprisingly similar ways. First, the temporality of continuous functional improvement is often employed in a humorous tone in order to dismiss the cassette tape as an inferior sound reproduction medium. James Moore in his polemic 2017 article for the Independent, describes the sonic hiss and fragility of the cassette.

My therapist said I relapsed, I said “perhaps I Freudian slipped in scwershlll hisssssssss.” Sorry. You don’t get to hear the second part of Jay- Z’s rhyme because the machine just ate your recording and you’re now going to have to somehow extract the spools of tape that have come loose and gummed it up (2017).

For Moore, the cassette tape is obsolete solely because of its potential material fragility. Rosecrans Baldwin also links the obsolescence of the format to its technological functionality. Writing in the New York Times, he suggests that ‘[o]ld technology can stage a comeback when it’s no longer needed. When sentiment, not function, authorizes its appeal. Maybe the cassette tape’s Achilles’ heel — its horrible audio — explains the resurgence’ (2015). The audio quality of the format has been superseded by higher fidelity audio and therefore it is not 55

only functionally redundant but no longer (meaningfully) functional at all. Its resurgence is purely sentimental. For the academic Joanna Demers, ‘in comparison with the ubiquity of digital music and its promise of ‘lossless’ fidelity, tape might as well have come from the Gilded Age. Tape in general, and cassette tapes in particular, are more vulnerable to damage than vinyl or compact disc, and are (arguably) acoustically inferior to other competing sound recording media as well’ (2017: 110). In a media ecology dominated by the circulation of lossy digital recordings such as the MP3, it is perhaps curious to see academics double down on linear narratives of technological progress. The technological function of the cassette tape is not measured against the actual circulation of digital recordings but rather an idealised digital functionality — Sterne’s ‘dream of verisimilitude’ (2012: 4): compared with digital media, the cassette tape is a considered lower fidelity as a sound reproduction medium and temporally less permanent as a storage technology (as will be shown in the following chapters, many underground music listeners would say precisely the same things of digital music media). A similar argument is made by Calum Marsh writing for Pop Matters. Listeners and musicians who take comfort in the pre-digital practices of circulating music on cassette tape, ‘invest the traditions and practices of generations past with the highly dubious gravity of nostalgia, particularly if those traditions seem suddenly and perhaps unfairly obsolete’ (2009). Marsh argues that the preference for limited-run cassette editions, rather than the use of putatively more democratic digital media, is ‘a confused, regressive cultural misstep more dangerous than most would care to admit’ (ibid.). The scarcity of the cassette tape is functionally inferior to the potential of digital technologies to transmit one’s music to a wide audience. Beneath the humour of these accounts is a sense of alarm and confusion. Under the temporality of functional improvement, critics ‘consider everything that does not march in step with progress archaic, irrational or conservative’ (Latour 1993: 72): it is a threat to the very idea of technological progress as societal progress. At the same time as declaring the cassette tape functionally obsolete, superseded by digital media, Joanna Demers finds in the contemporary use of the cassette tape an ahistorical act of forgetting. Demers makes a comparison 56

between the use of the cassette tape and the romanticisation of Gilded Age Portland by contemporary ‘hipsters’ in the television programme Portlandia.

The ‘dream of the 1890s’ may be alive in Portland, but it is certainly a dream, not an accurate representation of unsafe labour conditions, rampant disease, class and racial inequality, and the other blights with which Gilded Age citizens contended. The revival of 1980s tape culture does not go so far as to romanticize the abjection or suffering of the Reagan era, but it too skirts the issue of how and why certain people used to listen to tape (2017: 110).

The cassette ‘revival’ is thus a misrepresentation, ‘a fantasy of an older, inconvenient, and inaccessible past’ (ibid.: 116-117)’. As Andrea Bohlman and Peter McMurray write in the introduction to the special edition that features Demers’ article, this is a practice of ‘active forgetting and willful erasure of cultural pasts in the plural’ (2017, 20). The hauntological broken temporality of Fisher and Reynolds bears heavily on Demers’ short text: analogue media are not so much out of place in time, but rather time itself is ‘out of joint’ (Shakespeare in Derrida 1994: 20). If Demers’ cassette enthusiasts are driven by an irrational and directionless nostalgia for the past, Jean Hogarty suggests that contemporary musicians and listeners are conditioned more by a deep dissatisfaction with the present digital landscape of music media. Hogarty suggests that the information ‘glut’ characteristic of the digital age has had the effect of devaluing music (2016: 46). For Hogarty, the resurgence of formats such as the vinyl record are motivated by a desire to circumnavigate or make sense of this information glut.

[V]inyl is symbolic of the “good times” of the mid-to-late twentieth century. It is, after all, the format on which most of the older popular music that is so celebrated today was originally released. It therefore acts as a physical emblem of and a portal to the past. Artists have begun releasing their wares on vinyl again, and marketing strategies such as Record Store Day have become annual events. These initiatives have sought to reverse 57

trends induced by the Internet and to reinstate some level of financial and cultural value to popular music (ibid.: 47).

For Hogarty, the digital present has created a sense of loss that can only be remedied by reversing those changes, turning away from digital technologies to return to pre-digital technologies. In practice Hogarty argues that this can only take the form of the decidedly-hauntological concept of ‘vicarious memory’ (ibid.: 109). Furthermore, these ‘[t]wentieth-century material formats such as vinyl and CDs are seen as symbolic of the more futuristic and authentic prebiographical past’ (ibid.: 103). As Svetlana Boym writes, ‘[n]ostalgia itself has a utopian dimension, only it is no longer directed toward the future’ (2001: 1). Thus, this attempt at a reversal of time through the process of vicarious memory not only attempts to gain access to a ‘golden age’ but also to a lost future of increased consumer agency and media democratisation (ibid.: 109). Other writers position the cassette tape as a way of resisting the present. Craig Eley, writing on the cassette culture as part of underground and noise scenes in the US, points to the experiences of ‘anxiety’ and ‘ambivalence’ towards digital technologies felt by musicians and record label owners (2011: 49), although Eley does not clarify what these might be in more detail. Eley argues that musicians draw on the ‘radical’ and ‘democratic’ history of the cassette tape as a format associated with grassroots DIY home-recordings in order to alleviate this anxiety and to ‘make sense of the present’ (ibid.: 51). For Eley, ‘the physicality of the cassette is its most important characteristic as a subversive response to mainstream music culture’ (ibid.: 52), a strategy that combines the present with the radical potential of the past (ibid.: 49). Similarly, for Simon Reynolds, the use of the cassette tape – a format that is described as ‘distinctly hauntological’ (2011: 350) – marks out a similarly anti- modernist stance. For Reynolds, individuals release music on cassette in order to ‘put the brakes on technological progress’ and thus to avoid its allegedly alienating consequences (ibid.: 351). A similar argument is made by Dominik Schrey about the vinyl record. As a ‘dead’ medium that ‘haunts’ contemporary popular culture (2014: 27), it is seen as a means of ‘virtually accessing the past’ (ibid.: 29), but also a way of resisting the accelerating and alienating cycles of technological development and obsolescence (ibid.: 35). Jörgen Skågeby, too, 58

argues that the cassette ‘provides a way to slow cycles of both production and consumption down and emphasize aesthetics and social bonding value’ (2011: 11). While these narratives seem to suggest that analogue media can offer a means of resisting what are viewed to be the alienating aspects of digital communicative capitalism, they do so by virtually bringing subjects out of the present and into the past, closing off space for the imagination of new media uses. Hogarty, Eley, Reynolds, Skågeby, and Schrey diagnose a somewhat- antimodern resistance to the digital age. Antimodernism, Latour argues, is simply the other side of the modern temporality of progress, rupture and radical newness (1993: 123). It takes all of modernity’s totalising effects at face value but simply views them as ‘an unparalleled catastrophe’ (ibid.). Threatened by the cold technological ubiquity of a hegemonic digital age, antimodernists ‘take on the courageous task of saving what can be saved: souls, minds, emotions, interpersonal relations, the symbolic dimension, human warmth, local specificities [...], the margins and then peripheries’ (ibid.). The only option is to reverse time and go back to a period before this alienation. Yet, at the same time, the authors above suggest that such a search for old technologies is, in and of itself, a hauntological product of a broken postmodern temporality. Old media are supposed to be both the symptom of and the cure to a modernist time that is somehow both broken and working all too well at the same time. In critiquing these positions, I am not contesting the claim that the total incapacity to imagine radically new futures is a problem (where it is genuinely the case). Instead, I am arguing that the grounds on which the new is theorised should not require the total obliteration of all past cultural and technological forms nor should it necessitate an attitude to the past characterised by a specific modernist historicity. Specific to the cassette tape, normative linear temporalities prevent any recognition of the ways in which the cassette tape has been remade through new uses, whether positively or more ambivalently. After all, while all the above accounts position the use of analogue media within the temporality of the digital age, this periodisation manifests itself in contradictory ways. The cassette tape is both replaced by media superior to it yet holds within it an irreplaceable qualitative difference. The cassette tape both represents the means of resisting the alienating effects of technological progress and somehow the outcome of a crisis in this very same narrative of progress. As these contradictions reveal, there 59

is no unified technological time that can explain the contemporary circulation of the cassette tape within underground music networks. As this thesis demonstrates, the cassette tape operates both as a new medium with new practices and meanings and carries within it deep continuities.

Digital Centres, Analogue Margins

Despite the many aporias and contradictions outlined above, all of these accounts hold in common a collective sense of loss for a radical past. In order to produce such a rupture in time, these authors tacitly rely on a homogenised and hegemonic space. This space is both geographical and conceptual. Geographically, the space of the digital is one of global hyper-connectivity (Couldry & Mejias 2019; van Dijck 2013). Distance has been collapsed by the instantaneity of digital communication – David Harvey’s ‘space-time compression’ (1990: 260) – creating a networked ‘global village’ (McLuhan 1964: 5), or as Cook et al. suggest, geography has been removed from the equation altogether (2019: 1). Of course, this language of connectivity obfuscates a much more uneven geography in which digital technologies are concentrated in particular countries, cities, and specific spaces of production and consumption, thus rendering invisible those social groups that lack both the infrastructural and material means to gain (equal) access to the internet: the so-called ‘digital divide’ (Mihelj et al. 2019). Such a spatiality also assumes that users from diverse social groups and locations use digital media in the same way. This geographic space is coterminous with a more conceptual spatiality that centres those aspects of social practice that have been most bound up with the changes associated with the digital age, relegating those aspects of social practice that are apparently less digital to the margins of analysis and critical thought. In doing so, these spaces and practices are often designated not only as spatially marginal but also of the past, as ‘behind’, and yet to ‘catch up’. Even the emergence of the term ‘post-digital’ (Cascone 2000) – the prefix ‘post’ seemingly marking a temporal break – can be read as a spatial designation. In Florian Cramer’s words, ‘“[p]ost-digital” […] refers to a state in which the disruption brought upon by digital information technology has already occurred’ (2015: 12-13.). As Stephen Albrecht et al. write, ‘[t]he post-digital names a 60

technical condition that followed the so-called digital revolution and is constituted by the naturalization of pervasive and connected computing processes and outcomes in everyday life, such that digitality is now inextricable from the way we live while its forms, functions and effects are no longer necessarily perceptible’ (ibid.: 11). The post-digital not only reinforces the initial break of the digital – the ‘disruption’ in Cramer’s words – but it follows this break with a second, more insidious transition into a greater spatial totality or homogeneity in which the digital is ‘inextricable’ from every part of daily life (Cramer 2015; Mazierska et al. 2018). For critics, this spatiality – of a capitalist digital centre and the pre- or anti- digital peripheries – leads to a focus on the margins as the site of the human, the subject, and authentic social experiences (Latour 1993: 122-124). Within the critical commentary on the resurgence of analogue media, this spatiality dominates. Analogue media are understood as outside of the digital media ecology, the mainstream music industry, and capitalism more broadly. David Novak, in his work on contemporary Japanese noise music networks suggests that the cassette tape is employed as a way for scene participants to localise their relationships and also to bring the genre as a whole out of the international and instantaneous knowledge networks of digital technologies (2013: 202-203). The cassette tape allows noise musicians to reposition their music as a space of absolute alterity. Novak writes that ‘the audiocassette returned Noise to the underground with a vengeance. Through its persistent materiality, the cassette helped listeners imagine a participatory network that was not just socially and aesthetically divergent but seemingly incommensurable with online circulation’ (ibid.: 217). Novak suggests that these two spaces – the digital and the material – are pitted against each other; ‘[t]he social copresence of contemporary local Noise scenes is imbued with the ghostly traces of digital circulation. In the new cassette culture, independent media exchange is balanced against “virtual” online formations of knowledge’ (ibid.: 222). The cassette tape helps to establish an autonomous but precarious local space that is threatened by the digital. Benjamin Düster and Raphaël Nowak in their 2019 chapter also focus on the localisation of music scenes. While the authors rightly question whether the cassette tape has undergone a revival or a more continuous form of use, their ethnography of the Berlin cassette scene is based around record stores, live 61

events, and record fairs such as International Cassette Store Day. In doing so, the authors argue the cassette tape foregrounds face-to-face human relationships (2019: 154). A similar focus on local interactions can also be observed in Craig Eley’s work. Eley writes that ‘[i]t is in the physicality of the cassette – both in its form and in the relationships it fosters – that allows it to simultaneously serve as a site for creating new connections between people as well as a place for resisting mainstream music industry practices and dominant political ideologies’ (2011: 46). These ‘new relationships’ that Eley alludes to are largely focused around face- to-face tape trades between scene members and exchanges over the merchandise table at live events (ibid.: 45). A similar focus on the locality of cassette circulation is echoed by Jörgen Skågeby (2011) who suggests that the cassette tape facilitates ‘resistance towards “unlimited access” and “ubiquitous abundance” of music’ which was perceived as lacking any ‘significant social context’ (ibid.: 6-7). Cassette tapes, on the other hand, allow users to feel as ‘part of a scene’, having a ‘larger capability of conveying intention and effort, something that respondents interpreted as a sign of human investment’ (ibid.). ‘By being analogue, local, sequential and many times used for exclusive content [sic.]’, writes Skågeby, ‘the cassette re-displaces accumulative media’ (ibid.: 8). The use of the cassette tape carves this local space out both from the mainstream music industry but also the digital present. Kieran Curran’s 2016 article similarly focuses on the copresent localisation of cassette cultures. Curran describes an ongoing club night event in Edinburgh around which a particular type of cassette circulation emerged (2016: 37). While Curran’s respondents do note that the internet is a useful tool, the cassette tape is ultimately figured as a deliberately difficult or inaccessible technology, designed to pull listeners out of digital spaces, if only temporarily (ibid.: 47; see also Harrison 2006). For Mike Glennon, cassette tape labels function outside of the distribution channels of the major record labels. While Glennon acknowledges that labels such as Nyege Nyege, Fort Evil Fruit and the Tapeworm (the latter two of which have participated in the research for this thesis) do release digital copies and sell their physical copies online, Glennon still suggests that these record labels occupy a space outside of mainstream corporate capitalism.

62

Labels such as Nyege Nyege, Fort Evil Fruit, and The Tapeworm typically produce short-run cassettes (c. 100-200) which emphasise a strong visual aesthetic. Digital copies are usually made available and releases are often distributed and sold via online independent retailers such as Boomkat and Bandcamp. In shunning corporate distributors such as Spotify and Apple Music, contemporary cassette culture aligns itself with the mixtape ethos of bypassing or circumventing the mainstream music industry (2019: 169).

The notion that Bandcamp, an Oakland-based music distribution platform funded by millions of dollars of venture capital, is somehow outside of the corporate mainstream of contemporary digital music distribution is an idea shared by many individuals interviewed within this thesis. Several scholars have questioned the validity of this notion (Hesmondhalgh et al. 2019; Jones 2018), and this is discussed further in chapters 3, 4 and 5. At this point, it will suffice to point out that many record labels who release cassette tapes and other physical media in fact do put their content on Spotify, Apple music, YouTube and a host of other music media that are unanimously understood as falling within the mainstream music industry. Many labels also use digital media to connect with their audiences (Jones 2018). While these labels may operate on a small scale individually, as a broader network (including listeners), it is difficult to argue that they exist outside of the digital media ecology. Finally, the spatiality of the digital age can be seen throughout Dominik Bartmanski and Ian Woodward’s 2015 work on the vinyl record. In this book, the authors map out social practices of vinyl consumption and use that are strongly tied to specific scenes and cities (Berlin, Tokyo), digging in brick-and-mortar record stores, DJing at nightclubs, and ritualistic listening practices within the home. Digital media do not feature highly within these practices. Instead, the digital is an always-implied context to these practices.

[T]he widespread digitalization of music listening and music consumption has radically transformed the meaning of vinyl as a commodity, negatively, but also positively for some music listeners. Whether we like it or not, the digital reframes the analogue. The digital age is synonymous with consumer-friendly omnipresence, offering instant accessibility and 63

portability mediated by online electronic devices and the digitalization of material for cultural consumption, such as music. In this current era of music consumption, the possibility of downloading or streaming a song or album via a digital playing device means instant music listening. The experience of deferred gratification and investment of knowledge and time related to the search largely ceases to matter within the digital world [...] The ease of duplicating, distributing and sharing, and the identical nature of the digital music file means there is little opportunity for dimensions of rarity or uniqueness to be introduced. This is, of course, completely the opposite of vinyl, where in markets for second-hand vinyl facets of rarity, uniqueness, seriality and other special qualities are determined not just by the absolute rarity of any vinyl but by the factors of context, location and condition (Bartmanski and Woodward 2015: 103, emphasis added).

The analogue relates to the digital only inasmuch as it negates it and opposes it. Practices that involve digital media are given significantly less space; put simply, while the digital may ‘reframe’ the analogue, it is still very much not a part of the picture. All of these commentaries pit the international, hyperconnected, and instantaneous digital spaces against the local, face-to-face, and slower non-digital spaces. While some writers argue that there is a relationship between the two – whether this is resistance or the threat of enclosure – such interdependencies merely reproduce the two spaces as distinct. This spatiality is coterminous with the digital temporality described above. Analogue media are not part of the digital present; they are either obsolescent media from a bygone era consigned to an eternity of spectre-like hauntings, or they are confined to the local non-digital, or perhaps even anti-digital spaces that are understood as slower (Fleischer 2015; Graham 2016). This runs in direct contrast to the fact that most cassettes are purchased online from strangers who will never meet with musicians or label owners face-to-face. This spatiality enacts a form of reification. Continually referring to the cassette tape’s materiality as a graspable, tangible object reifies it as existing within a local, self-contained, and singular space enclosed within the plastic casing of the cassette tape itself. While this so-called physicality is often 64

understood as a site of resistance against a culture of instantaneous ephemerality (Eley 2011; Fleischer 2015: 262; Peraino 2019: 402), this denies the format’s role as a medium of sound reproduction: its connections, its remediations, and forms of movement and circulation. Digital media, on the other hand, are represented as mediated connections with little mention of their materiality; there is no account of the physical properties of touchscreens, chargers, headphones, hard drives, undersea cables, satellite dishes or server farms nor the political contexts and social practices that enable the meaningful assembly of these disparate objects (Sterne 2012). After all, as Paulo Magaudda states, ‘the social presence of musical objects and accessories’ has only increased in recent years (2011). This double reification of the cassette tape — within a series of historical practices and institutions and within a form of disconnected singular space — prevents any account of the cassette tape as part of the present, alongside and distributed across digital media systems. If digital music, as Nowak and Whelan suggest, is ontologically underdetermined as a performative boundary object – articulated at the intersection between different social groups with different needs and agendas (2016: 126) – the cassette tape could be said to be ontologically overdetermined, attributed a material fixity that flies in the face of the heterogeneity of practices in which the format finds itself. Ontology here is understood as Ann Laura Stoler’s conception of ‘ascribed being or essence’, the ‘identification of mutating assignments of essence and its predicates in specific time and place’ (2008: 4, emphasis in original; see also Hacking 2002; Stoler 2010). There can be no way of understanding the digital platforms Bandcamp nor the continued function of the independent record label without physical media and it would be difficult to deny that these platforms or institutions are a part of the present moment. That is, situating analogue media outside of the digital media ecology as a site of resistance renders invisible both the positive and the potentially troubling ways in which the circulation of analogue media has become aligned with the logics of certain digital platforms.

After the Digital Age

In recent years, researchers have begun to explore histories of sound reproduction media that are more geographically uneven, cumulative, nonlinear 65

and centred on practice and use as much as on production or innovation (Bartmanski & Woodward 2020; Devine 2019; Graham 2016; Roy 2015). Both Stephen Graham’s 2016 book Sounds of the Underground and Bartmanski and Woodward second book Labels (2020) examine the cohabitation of multiple media. By decentring media from the study and instead focusing on broader musical practices, these scholars make room for multiple forms of technological use. Both risk locating the circulation of analogue media outside of digital distribution networks and link this to a space of musical alterity. There is too little examination of the granular differences between different specific digital media. Furthermore, analogue media are attributed a supplementary role in Graham’s account (2016: 125), mitigating — in a rather reactionary way — the putative superficiality of digital music consumption rather than being situated within practices of their own right. Nonetheless, supplementation implies a logic of accumulation or cohabitation more than it does one of linear replacement. The work of Elodie Roy and Kyle Devine similarly focus on the accumulation and cohabitation of media in the present. Elodie Roy’s work Media, Materiality and Memory takes an archaeological approach to the study of analogue media. Roy’s focus on the role of memory within vinyl rereleases and multimedia archives foregrounds the complex interactions between multiple media and multiple temporalities. Central to her argument is the role of sound reproduction media in the repetition and storage of musical recordings (2015: 157-158): centring the staying-power of media as documents of historical and personal memory disrupts the linear temporalities of progress that would render such media obsolete. If analogue media do have a spectral quality — as Simon Reynolds maintains — this is a feature of all sound reproduction and it is a testimony to their continued presence and use rather than their absence or death (ibid.: 84). ‘There can only be phantoms if there are witnessing bodies. This means that phantoms cannot be perceived or identified outside the realm of the living. Phantoms recall bodies reciprocally’ (ibid.: 89, emphasis in original). Such an emphasis on modes of witnessing or hearing suggests that these media may, within certain social assemblies, be heard anew. Kyle Devine’s book Decomposed similarly focuses on the accumulation of media rather than the replacement. Devine’s study focuses on the distributed material presence of sound reproduction media as he traces the ecological and 66

political economic conditions of their production and distribution. Oldness, pastness, or obsolescence means little to the workers who tackle the dangerous working conditions of PVC production in order to produce vinyl records. Similarly, distinctions between materiality and immateriality are rendered meaningless when one considers the CO2 produced by digital server farms in the desert or the results of the disposal of plastic sound media in the ocean. Rather than reifying analogue media within the singular space of the collector’s record cabinet, Devine dismantles them, tracing their flows and connections. Finally, Benjamin Düster’s 2020 chapter on the multiple lives of the cassette tape in 21st-century Japan traces the multiple meanings and temporalities of the cassette tape within different music and social groups. Düster documents how the cassette tape represents to many consumers a new technology rather than an old technology (2020: 173). Düster positions this newness as constituted across national borders — as a format primarily manufactured and produced in Northern America and imported later into Japan — and across gender differences — from male-dominated indie and underground scenes to new women consumers. As he writes, ‘besides their nostalgic traits, cassettes are prevailing and their increasing contextualization within online culture through music platforms such as Bandcamp shows that they do not exist in conflict with digital technologies but in correlation with them’ (ibid.: 178). While this newness is defined largely as the economic consumption by new social groups rather than more specific forms of use and circulation, it nonetheless opens up the possibility for the format to have multiple lives and temporalities. These accounts of analogue media all situate them within the present. As Jonathan Sterne writes, ‘[i]nstead of a clear chronology and a unified movement of history over a single coherent temporality, [...] the history of sound contains multiple temporalities and a variety of intersecting chronologies’ (Sterne 2003: 341). Residual practices, institutions, technologies, social networks, and bodies of knowledge interact with those just emerging, producing new relationships and assemblages. To return to Bruno Latour’s words that open this chapter, ‘[i]t is this exchange that defines us, not the calendar or the flow that the moderns had constructed for us’ (1993: 75). After all, as the historian David Edgerton opens his work The Shock of the Old, ‘[b]ooks still exist’ (2019: vii). As does the FM radio and terrestrial television. As does the cassette tape. All of these media have also 67

changed profoundly since their inception. The plasticity of media, their capacity to mutate and change, requires that one dispense with the old and the new and turn to the language of participants themselves. The next chapter traces a genealogy of the category ‘physical media’, a term that organises musical and media practice within underground music networks. 68

Chapter 2 A Genealogy of Physical Media Residual and Emergent Techniques of Listening

[U]nlike the once startling power to capture, to materialize and differently commodify sound, what often seems so startling about digitization and distributed networks is their supposed power to dematerialize and differently commodify information. But like invisibility, dematerialization exists only in keeping with its opposite. Any putative dematerialization, that is, can only be experienced in relation to a preexisting sense of matter and materialization [...]. Lisa Gitelman, Always Already New, 86.

Introduction: Historicising Materiality

This chapter is concerned with the emergence of the category of sound reproduction media that is widely referred to as ‘physical media’. Unlike the terms ‘old media’ and ‘new media’ discussed in the last chapter — terms that are largely used by critics and academics external to underground music networks — the term physical media is used by members of these networks themselves to describe CDs, cassettes, and vinyl records. While the cassette tape today has its own specific forms of use, it is impossible to understand the circulation of the format without examining its proximity to other formats within the category physical media. As subsequent chapters will show, musicians, label owners, and listeners are just as likely to structure their media practices around a distinction made between physical media and digital media as they are differences between individual formats. I argue that this category of media has emerged through the relationship between residual and emergent practices of listening, and their embeddedness in shifting institutional arrangements and textualities. Through changing listening practices, the cassette tape has been redrawn as a phonographic media system. The cassette tape was first introduced as a duplicable and rewritable technology that became embedded in practices of home taping, mixtaping, and mobile forms of listening. Today, digital media have 69

largely displaced the cassette tape from these practices. Instead, the cassette tape is bound up with disciplined listening techniques that take place within the domestic sphere and privilege the album as a holistic work. The cassette, alongside the CD, has converged with the techniques of listening traditionally associated with the vinyl record. This emergent technique of listening is far from the only practice of listening within underground music networks. Nonetheless, this practice has increasingly become dominant and ethically weighted. This chapter focuses on three layers of mediated listening practice: networks of transmission and copying, the interior organisation of the musical commodity, and the spaces of listening practice. For each of these components, I begin the historical investigation before the introduction of the cassette tape in the 1960s before focusing on historical uses of the cassette tape and then moving on to discuss contemporary listening practices among underground network members. This is not a search for the origins of a particular practice but rather a method used to decentre the cassette tape from the investigation of practices that the format has long been associated with. By examining the history of these three components of practice, I show that physical media are far from technologically or functionally equivalent: their contemporary categorisation is a provisional and emergent historical articulation. This runs contrary to the fact that many writers ascribe a normative and uniform materiality to all physical media (Devine 2019: 137-140). Philip Auslander writes that ‘[t]o look at the progression of the material forms of music media – from shellac or vinyl discs to CDs to direct downloading from the internet or the Celestial Jukebox – is to witness the progressive dematerialization of the musical object’ (2001: 82). Timothy Taylor, writing nearly fifteen years later, suggests that streaming has removed ‘music as a tactile object from [people’s] lives. Physicality and tactility – the sound of the cellophane, the smell of the cardboard liner, the feel of the disc, whether digital or analog – are gone’ (2015: 18; see also Sonnichsen 2017: 237). It is ironic that in an era characterised by the ubiquity of the touchscreen, one might consider music dematerialised or lacking any tactility. As Lisa Gitelman suggests in the passage opening this chapter, what appears as dematerialisation should be viewed instead as an expanding network of media that participate in multiple material and economic configurations of sound — none of which should be assigned ontological primacy. 70

I theorise listening here as a historically contingent technique. To study listening as a technique is to attune oneself to the ways in which listening is constituted only through its mediations (Kassabian 2013; Sterne 2003) and is embedded in historically and culturally contingent practices (Becker 2004; 2010; Szendy 2001). Figuring listening as a technique centres the way in which listening requires the cultivation of both cognitive and bodily competencies (Bartmanski & Woodward 2015) that take place within institutional contexts and relationships of power (Bourdieu 1977). It denies the body and the senses an originary or natural authenticity (Classen 2004; Haraway 2000; Howes & Classen 2013; Mauss 1973), instead embedding the body within its technological and cultural environment (Clarke 2005; Hagood 2019). This chapter traces each of the three layers of practice in turn. First, I trace the disarticulation of the cassette tape and the CD from techniques of copying by charting the changing networks of music transmission from the late 19th century. Second, I show how the cassette tape and the CD become increasingly inseparable from the album as a work that is invested with ethical and aesthetic value. Third, I demonstrate how the CD and the cassette tape move from mobile listening techniques to the modes of listening that are confined to the domestic sphere and increasingly to a temporality largely separated from that of everyday life. Ultimately, I argue that the physicality of physical media does not exist within the technologies themselves nor does it exist prior to the emergence of certain digital technologies. Rather, it is the product of an emergent mode of use, residual to the vinyl record, yet new to both the CD and the cassette tape. That is, the physicality of the cassette tape is a product of its plasticity.

Copying and Transmission Networks

The cassette’s status as the first affordable and widespread domestic technology capable of recording sound is arguably one of the most important and politically contested factors in the format’s history. As I argued in the last chapter, the format is often strongly tied to the practices of home-taping and the creation of mixtapes that characterised the use of the format in the 1980s and 1990s. The format today, however, is rarely used within practices of copying. In order to understand this transition, it is necessary to situate these changing practices 71

within a broader genealogy of transmission. Transmission is one of the three functions of communication media named by Friedrich Kittler (1996; see also Straw 2015). To mediate is to ‘come between’ two (or more) things, a process that always contains a spatial dimension of some sort. Copying can here be defined as the forms of transmission enacted specifically by consumers and it is deeply implicated in the logics of scarcity and non-scarcity that characterise the changing structures of the recording industry and its attempts to control the circulation of music within the broader media ecology. The emerging phonograph market in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century relied on a very particular type of transmission. Centres of production maintained both real and artificial scarcity, allowing them – to a relatively high degree – to control the movement of musical commodities. Real scarcity can be observed in the consolidated ownership of manufacturing technologies by a few large institutions (Chaffee and Metzger 2001: 366; Peterson & Berger 1975). Artificial scarcity, on the other hand, involved the copyright regulations that provided certain legal protections for those publishers who had the property rights for certain compositions (Gillespie 2007; Vaidhyanathan 2001). These conditions meant that, within the sheet music market as well as the phonograph market, musical commodities moved out from centres of production, through established and controlled distribution chains to consumers. Consumers could, of course, then transfer these objects to other individuals but only by sacrificing their own enjoyment of the object. In the 1920s and 1930s, the emergence of mass radio created a new relationship between musical recordings and transmission. Broadcasting, or what has long been referred to as ‘mass communication’ (Chaffee and Metzger 2001), established a new movement of content from centralised media institutions to consumers. This ‘one-to-many communication’ (Napoli 2008) involved a near-instantaneous and unidirectional movement of a signal from a centre out to any compatible receiver. As David Hesmondhalgh and Leslie Meier have demonstrated, these new business models presented a challenge to the phonograph industry. Radio stations were either public institutions such as the BBC in the UK or they were commercial stations that sold airtime to advertisers (2017: 1560). Unlike the scarcity of the phonographic industry, the business and funding models of radio were based on the non-scarcity of communication; the 72

use by one individual did not deplete the capacity for others to receive a signal and, from the perspective of commercial broadcasters, only made their commodity more valuable. Despite these differences in scarcity, both the phonographic industry and radio monetised networks of transmission in which music moved from centres of production out to consumers. With the introduction of domestically recordable media in the early 1960s such as the compact cassette – as well as its now lesser-known contemporaries the Stereo-Pak, the Stereo 8, the RCA tape cartridge, and earlier the domestic reel-to-reel machines (Bijsterveld and Jacobs 2009) – consumers could transmit music from device to device and to other consumers without sacrificing their own use. Throughout the late 1970s and the 1980s, as the cassette rose in popularity, consumers were able for the first time to record material from the radio and to duplicate music from other media (LPs, other cassettes). Consumers’ home taping practices were used in a variety of consumption practices: for personal consumption (Glennon 2019; Taylor 2016), for mobile consumption (Bull 2000; Weber 2011), to circulate within interpersonal gift economies (Fenby-Hulse 2016; James 1992; Moore 2005), or within informal and unauthorised ‘bootleg’ economies (Hilderbrand 2009). Certain industries emerged to meet this demand for home-taping; for example, in the late 1970s, LP stores started renting out LPs by the night and radio stations began playing albums without a single break with the knowledge that consumers might want to make home recordings (Drew 2014: 225). Through practices of copying, the cassette tape participated in a complex and multidirectional network of sound media that enabled the transmission of content from centres of production to consumers, from device to device, and from consumer to consumer. At the same time, from the early 1980s, an underground distributed network of postal tape trading began to emerge, particularly within experimental, noise, and metal music scenes. These centred on particular publications such as Op, in which Graham Ingels published cassette reviews and musicians’ addresses, organised alphabetically in a series of issues from 1979 to 1984 (McConnell 2006; James 1992: 206). Individuals would write to one another and then begin sharing their own music, the music of others, mixtapes and compilations, as well as occasional copies of studio recordings. DIY Micro-independent labels such as Sound of Pig and Swinging Axe Productions emerged that duplicated cassettes at 73

home and distributed their music to other tape traders through this new transmission network. This created a decentralised network of music sharing and discovery, constituted through a combination of intimate (yet physically distant) one-to-one connections combined with centralised lists of artist information in publications such as Op, Sound Choice, UnSound, and others. In many ways, these networks preempted the P2P digital networks such as Napster, and they were crucial to the formation of underground experimental and electronic music as a primarily recorded form of music-making. The cassette tape not only facilitated practices of home recording and sonic experimentation, but it became a foundational part of the circulation of musical knowledge and recordings through decentralised transmission networks that operated on a far smaller scale than broader commercial networks (Novak 2013). The recording industries, represented by the RIAA and the BPI, did not welcome these new practices and the industries that supported them; the configurable function of the cassette challenged the record industry’s economics of scarcity. The RIAA condemned practices of home-taping, holding them responsible for declining record industry sales. The BPI responded with the ‘home taping is killing music’ campaign, running an aggressive public information campaign while the RIAA attempted (unsuccessfully) to instate a royalty tax on all blank audio and VHS cassettes (Bottomley 2015). However, there are multiple factors that cast doubt on this causal link between the decline of record sales and practices of copying (Sterne 2012: 185). Information from several surveys conducted in the early 1980s by music industry organisations all showed that the heaviest home-tapers were the most active consumers, purchasing the most LPs (Drew 2014: 256). Furthermore, the Electronics Industry Association responded to the claims made by the RIAA around record sales, pointing to declining sales in audio hardware and software, changing consumer demographics, competition from a rising non-domestic bootleg industry and the rising video game industry, as well as a larger economic recession as important factors for the decrease in record sales (Widdows and McHugh 1984: 319). Jonathan Sterne states that the illegitimate bootlegging economy significantly outweighed home taping (2012: 210) and as Heikki Uimonen has demonstrated, many consumers used home taping to supplement existing listening and consumption practices (2011: 247). In other words, the 74

emergent transmission networks did not replace producer-consumer modes of transmission but instead supplemented them, integrating new spaces as well as flexible temporalities of listenership into the movement of musical recordings. In the years 1996 and 1997, a number of important technologies were released in close succession that increased the capacity of consumers to move their music around from device to device. While the MP3 format was released as early as 1994, it was not until 1997 that the popular freeware Winamp was released that allowed users to easily rip CDs to the computer (Morris 2015: 36). Although Winamp was not the first PC music player, it was initially one of the most popular. With the combination of the introduction of ID3 tags in 1996 – a database of track metadata created by the free labour of thousands of users – the musical commodity for the first time acquired a digital container to match its internal digital content (Morris 2012). 1997 was also the year in which the first portable digital media player was released, as well as the year in which CD-R burners became slightly more affordable (Perenson 2001). This cluster of digital technologies allowed the musical commodity to be moved around more readily than before, creating for the first time a closely integrated ecology of digital media of which the CD formed a critical part (Morris 2015: 75). For many people, the fall in price of CD-Rs towards the end of the 1990s and early 2000s displaced cassettes as the technology used to duplicate and move material from device to device. This was not only true of broader consumers but also the consumers within underground music networks. Charles Rice Goff iii – avid cassette trader, and member of 1990s experimental group Herd of the Ether Space – describes this transition.

People were releasing things on the cassette within the electronic and avant-garde underground all the way up until the year 2000 on a regular basis and right around that time is when CD recording became more available and less expensive to the general public. As a result of that, there has been a great switch away from [home] cassette recording [to the CD] (Szava-Kovats 2010).

One of the listeners surveyed describes this process of replacement. 75

I used to primarily purchase blank cassette tapes to record on. This continued until the late 90s when I bought a computer that had a CD burner installed (L36).

As cars were increasingly fitted with CD players throughout the 1990s and 2000s, the need to keep blank cassettes around to make copies to play in the car also decreased.

My cassette usage waned from maybe 2004 to roughly 2011. My car had a CD player instead of a tape deck and it was getting harder to find blank tapes. I also stopped making copies of CDs to tape to listen to in the car as I could listen to the discs (L14).

At present, only two listeners out of 153 surveyed (1.3%) state that they still use cassettes to duplicate material from other media. If the cassette tape in the 1980s and early 1990s formed a highly connected node in a transmission network — used to transfer musical content between producers and consumers, between consumers’ own devices, and between different consumers — in the late 1990s and 2000s the cassette was gradually disarticulated from an emerging network of digital media (including the CD). The cassette tape became, for many individuals, a terminal point within an emerging transmission network. The cassette’s function within techniques of copying was replaced by the CD-R and digital media players. In this way, the cassette tape began to enter into the same logic of scarcity that the vinyl record had always participated in. Until 1999, for all but the few individuals involved in tape-trading networks, this movement within the digital ecology was largely a lateral movement between individuals' devices and between different consumers. However, with the emergence of the first major peer-to-peer network Napster, users could in theory circumvent the initial purchase of a CD, copying MP3s straight from the network onto their MP3 players and onto CD-Rs. In doing so, a network of reciprocal gift-like relationships between strangers emerged as they shared files between one-another (Andersson Schwarz 2014; Cenite et al. 2009; Giesler & Pohlmann 2003; Giesler 2006; Lessig 2004; Leyshon 2014). The 76

industry backlash from the RIAA again, in many ways, echoed the controversy around home taping. The 2001 case A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc. was ruled in favour of the record industries, holding Napster liable for the unauthorised content on its network. In compliance with the injunction, Napster shut down later that year, although several other P2P networks later emerged that operated without a central database such as Gnutella, Freenet, and Soulseek. As Mark Mulligan demonstrates, much like the home taping case (and in spite the rhetoric of the RIAA) there exists limited evidence to suggest that the use of P2P networks was the sole or main factor in the declining profits of the industry. The industry had ballooned off super-profits from CD sales throughout the 1990s and had expected to continue doing so indefinitely (Mulligan 2015: 5; see also Eijk et al. 2010). The music industry in the US and western Europe had failed to replace the CD with successful new formats despite trying with the minidisc (taken up far more in Japan) in 1992 and the HDCD in 1995. Accordingly, the industry was unable to rerelease their back-catalogue in a new format as they had done with the CD (Rogers 2013: 17). As some have argued, the industry also neglected to invest in innovative digital distribution systems and technologies until it was ‘too late’, leaving the innovation to other actors outside of the record industry such as Napster (Dolata 2011; Knopper 2009; Mulligan 2015: 29; Negus 2019: 368; Sun 2019: 3). Furthermore, Mulligan’s research suggests that many consumers were using Napster to sample new music, much of which they would later purchase on CD or another format (2015: 29). Even in 2005, the US still reported 705.4 million CD sales, a significant decrease of 25% from 938.9 million sales in 1999, but still a long way from the mere 52 million units sold in 2018. Once again, emergent transmission networks both supplemented but also altered residual networks. Decentralised forms of movement occurred across P2P sites just as users continued to consume CDs, vinyl records, and cassette tapes. Users copied material across different digital devices and between one another. Yet, throughout this period, the cassette tape became largely disarticulated from networks of copying. Furthermore, the CD gradually began to stop being used as a primary means of discovering or accessing music for the first time. Despite the diversity of consumer practices, the industry responded to the ‘crisis’ as if Napster and music ‘piracy’ were solely to blame. One of the industry’s 77

first responses was the introduction of digital rights management (DRM) to a number of products in order to prevent the movement of digital files from user to user as well as to restrict the movement between devices. This, in part, was achieved through a far closer integration between software and devices within the digital media ecology, particularly the Apple iPod (2001) and the iTunes store (2003) (Mulligan 2015: 36). While the earlier integration of the digital media ecology was achieved through a mixture of open-source, freeware, and proprietary software (Napster, Winamp, ID3, MP3), the second integration was almost-exclusively proprietary software and products. DRM can be understood as an attempt by the recording industry to transpose or remediate the real scarcity of the vinyl record and the CD (pre-CD-R) into the digital marketplace by artificially controlling the movement of files through integrated and proprietary distribution systems (Arditi 2014; Burkart & McCourt 2006: 119). At the same time that DRM was restricting the flow of music between users and devices, Last.FM introduced a new model of music transmission and with it a new business model. Similar to radio the content moved from a centralised server out to listeners instantly. However, unlike radio broadcasting that sent the same signal out to all users, Last.FM allowed users to listen to personalised streams. This ‘narrowcasting’ began what would become an established lineage of music platforms based on access. While the music moves from distribution service to user much like the iTunes store, the music does not stay with the user after it stops playing. The music remains in ‘the cloud’.2 This pattern of transmission was taken up by subscription streaming services such as Spotify, Tidal, and Apple Music among others. While Spotify, at least initially, offered ‘free music’, the platform actually controlled the movement of music far more tightly than DRM does. The user only has access to music through the software, and is thus subject to the rules and tariffs set by it. While users can share playlists and send links to their peers, all users must still go through the same gatekeeping mechanisms as other users in order to access the content. Streaming therefore remediates both radio broadcasting and the proprietary control of DRM.

2 Despite the image of the music remaining in ‘the cloud’, all streaming involves the music being downloaded onto the user’s device, but usually within a piece of encrypted software that hastily deletes it after listening has finished. 78

Subscription music services were not the only forms of platforms that emerged in the digital media ecology throughout the late 2000s and early 2010s. Several platforms emerged that were based on user generated content (UGC) such as MySpace, YouTube, SoundCloud, Bandcamp and others. Unlike the more heavily regulated content on Spotify and Apple Music, these UGC platforms enable users to upload original (as well as other musicians’) content. While unauthorised major label content will usually be taken down by the platform, older recordings and independent music is far less policed. All of these platforms allow music streaming of some sort, although Bandcamp also allows for artists to sell downloads and physical items as well, facilitating several forms of transmission. Nonetheless, these services are still based on the same logic of music in the cloud in which music is stored on and accessed through centralised servers that are owned by the platform. Even for the musicians, record label owners, and listeners who participated in this research, access-based digital music has become a significant mode of consumption. Fig. 1 demonstrates the medium used most frequently on an everyday basis by label owners and listeners within underground music networks respectively. 61% of label owners and 69% of listeners use access-based listening as their primary form of music media. If one includes downloaded digital content, 76% of label owners and 84% of listeners use digital media as their primary listening medium respectively. Of crucial importance here, 79% of listeners state that they use access-based media in order to find and listen to music they had not heard before. Until the dominance of access-based music media, the CD remained an integrated part of the digital media ecology (Rogers 2013: 47). Even after Napster in 1999, many individuals still purchased CDs in order to move the music onto other devices. It was several years before cheap broadband enabled high-speed file-sharing, and many individuals still used CD-Rs to share music face-to-face. Only with the rise of digital platforms based around ubiquitous access, combined with the fact that after the year 2012 many computer companies stopped selling laptops with optical drives, the CD became disarticulated from the broader digital ecology.

79

Fig. 1 - Music media used most frequently by label owners and listeners

Medium used most frequently Percentage Percentage of Label of Listeners Owners

Subscription streaming platforms 40% 35%

Non-subscription streaming platforms 21% 34%

Downloaded digital content (authorised 15% 15% and unauthorised)

Vinyl 10% 5%

CD 2% 5%

Cassette 12% 5%

Radio 0% 1%

One listener describes this whole process succinctly.

I was born in 1980. My dad made mixtapes for me when I was a kid recorded from his vinyl records. The first album I bought was on cassette when I was 13 (Björk’s Debut) and I collected a handful of cassettes then. I got into CDs as a teen and in my early 20's. I stopped buying CDs when MySpace came along. I started ripping CDs of new artists from the library into my computer. But ever since the CD player in my laptop [broke], I stopped doing that. I usually only buy CDs or cassettes at live concerts (L48).

A similar process is described by several record label owners.

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I stopped listening to CDs. I don’t actually have a CD player anymore. I did have one in my laptop, but I got a new laptop and I don’t have a CD drive anymore so I don’t actually have a way of listening to CDs at the moment (Graham interview 2018).

I don’t really have a relationship with CDs. I have a laptop that doesn’t play CDs. I don’t have a CD player (Adam interview 2018).

The CD, initially a key part of the digital media ecology, became largely disarticulated as it was no longer necessary to transmit content from producers to consumers via some kind of intermediary storage medium. In other words, listeners stopped using cassettes and CDs as a primary means of accessing music. As subsequent chapters will show in much greater depth, the purchase of a cassette tape happens after the listener has become familiar with a recording using digital media and it is much more associated with practices of music storage and archiving (see chapter 4). Overall, the cassette tape and the CD — both at separate times embedded in practices of copying — have become terminal points within transmission networks. Subsequently, listeners stopped using both the cassette tape and the CD as their primary medium for accessing music. Through this double disarticulation, the cassette tape and the CD now participate in the logic of scarcity that has always characterised the vinyl record. These media still hold the capacity to duplicate content but are no longer the primary medium for techniques of copying and sharing music for listeners, both within and outside of underground music networks. Instead, most underground music label owners and listeners access music through centralised streaming platforms (i.e. streaming). As chapter 4 will show in greater depth, physical media are embedded in very different culturally specific techniques of storage and memory much more than they are used for the discovery of new music.

Deep Listening: Mixtapes, Playlists, Albums

The capacity to copy music did not only enable consumers to move music around between devices but also to disaggregate and reorganise the musical commodities 81

they consumed in the process. Listeners would tape music from the radio or from other media and create mixtapes for themselves and others. In contemporary underground music networks, however, listeners rarely use the cassette tape to create mixtapes or to reorganise musical content from other media. Instead, the cassette tape — alongside other physical media — is tied to disciplined and putatively ‘active’ techniques of listening centred on the album as a unified work. These active listening techniques are positioned by both label owners and listeners in opposition to the single, the user-created playlist, and algorithmically generated playlists which are all perceived as inducing a passive way of listening. As the following section on listening spaces will show, ‘active’ album listening does not represent the most common mode of listening but rather a dominant and aesthetically (ethically, even) privileged form of listening. In order to understand this transition, it is necessary to trace the different practices of musical organisation that existed prior to the introduction of the cassette tape. I then show how the cassette tape has become disarticulated from practices of reorganisation before discussing contemporary underground music label owners’ and listeners’ techniques of listening. Radio and the phonograph industry — the two major modes by which recorded sound was transmitted in the early 20th century — organised information very differently. Popular-music radio in the US prior to the introduction of the cassette tape was mainly based around playing singles, interwoven with commentary and advertising (on commercial stations). From the early 1950s onwards, radio DJs presented singles in the top-40 format, created by aggregating the most-played singles from jukeboxes across the US (Fong- Torres 1998). Other music programming options were common, and outside of the US, popular music would not be played commonly until the late 1960s. Nonetheless, as Susan Douglas writes, ‘[n]o longer would one station offer a variety of formats—soap operas during midday, children’s programming right after school, drama or comedies for the family at night. Rather, with the enormous success of Top 40, which offered the same programming all day and all night, stations increasingly went to one format targeted at a particular demographic segment’ (2004: 221). This ordering of content not only created a relationship between different pieces of music – a hierarchy of popularity that centred the single as the basic unit of music listening – but it also established a 82

temporal trajectory for the single over time. In Will Straw’s words, popularity charts ‘transform the often erratic commercial life of a musical commodity into a curve of ascendant and descendant popularity, so as to endow that life with the legibility of both narrative and tabular form’ (2015: 129). While the distance through the charts and the time taken to make this ‘curve’ varied from single to single, individual tracks rarely made a second rise to fame (ibid.: 132); singles generally had a lifespan of less than a year. The phonographic industry, on the other hand, organised musical material quite differently. While vinyl singles have remained popular to the present day within some genres, after the introduction of the long play record in 1948, playing at 33 ⅓ rpm, record companies and musicians began more frequently to organise content into the longer unit of the album (Osborn 2012: 87). Material was organised long before 1948 into albums (ibid.: 87-115), but while in the 1930s and 1940s the album functioned as a way for record labels to package heterogenous pieces of music into larger commodities (Keightley 1996a: 65), throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s the LP was elevated to the lofty aesthetic level of the intentional and unified work by musicians and audiences alike (Bartmanski and Woodward 2015: 10-11). The work concept has existed for centuries within western classical music in one form another, depending on which historical account one subscribes to (Bohlman 1999; Cook 2001; Goehr 1992; Strohm 2000; Talbot 2000). Within popular music, however, the work concept developed only in the 1960s. Alban Zak (2012) and David Brackett (2016: 154) demonstrate that the emergence of the work concept within rock music is linked to experimentation with recording technology that led to the emergence of a recording-specific ‘sonic aesthetic’ that could not be reduced to a notated text or a live performance. For many audiences, the LP became the established format of this new sonic aesthetic. This was reinforced through the canonising heritage acts of rock journalism, particularly lists of ‘classic albums’ undertaken by music journalists from the 1970s onwards. These lists were largely authored by white middle-class men, eager to secure the rock album as the most elevated form of popular music. Andy Bennett and Sarah Baker argue that the elevation of the LP took place in relation to the debasement of the popular charts as a format associated with young audiences and commercial music. 83

The sanctity of the album as an artistic statement was further assured through the emergence of the ‘new’ journalism of music critics such as Greil Marcus and Lester Bangs whose writing centred on a discursive positioning of rock music as distinct from pop and chart material [...]. Important in forging such an aesthetic separation was a focus on the album as opposed to the single […] as a key medium for the rock artist. The single was regarded as the purview of the chart–orientated artist, targeting the teen audience with accessible, radio friendly music. The album, on the other hand was considered the mainstay of the rock artist – a sonic tapestry on which the latter’s more invested interest in music as a form of creative expression could be fully exercised (Bennett & Baker 2010: 43).

The repetition of such discursive acts not only inscribes the album as a dominant format for the consumption of popular music, but also endows specific albums with a much longer temporality than the top-40 charts (von Appen & Doehring 2006: 21). As chapter 4 will show in much greater depth, the recording as an album has become the locus of cultural memory for underground music networks. However, it was not simply the production and circulation of rock music that encoded the status of the album as a holistic work. In combination with the emergence of hi-fi stereo culture among middle-class families across Europe and America, practices of listening emerged and, more importantly, were validated in both rock journalism and hi-fi publications in which the motionless, usually white male body – often both spatially and acoustically isolated from the noisy distractions of family life – would perform focused acts of listening to albums in their entirety as a quasi-ethical act of reverence (Björnberg 2016; Keightley 1996a, 1996b; Perchard 2017). Technologies like record changers (and later auto- reversing cassette players and CD changers) emerged in order to further facilitate these continuous forms of listening (Powers 2014: 8). Even while vinyl records afforded the possibility of skipping between tracks by moving the needle, culturally esteemed listening practices established the internal order to the album as an aesthetically privileged order of material, with a single break in between. 84

Unlike LPs, critics historically associated 45 singles more closely with teen audiences, popular chart music, and modes of listening based around dancing and other social activities (Keightley 1996a: 65). As the 1960s progressed, the record industry began to use such singles as loss-leading advertisements for the larger commodities that were the albums (Powers 2014: 7), and later in the 1970s with the expansion of FM radio, rock-based stations began playing albums in their full, eschewing the single as the basic unit of radio play (Hilmes 2010). Jeremy Wade Morris writes that ‘[a]lthough a long line of technologies, such as jukeboxes, 45-rpm singles, recordable cassettes, and radio, has challenged the “age of the long play,” these technologies often supported, rather than opposed, the more economically and symbolically dominant album format’ (2015: 64). In other words, other technologies and business models would come to align themselves with the dominance of the album. Despite the differences between the LP and radio, in both cases the aggregation of music was undertaken solely by producers. With the introduction of the cassette tape to the US in 1966, and its subsequent rise to popularity throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, consumers were able to have a far greater role in the re/ordering of material. As the creative product of consumer labour (Bottomley 2015), practices of mixtaping enabled consumers to appropriate the products of the music industries in order to create personal messages that co-produced relationships and identities as they were exchanged between different individuals (Drew 2016). As well as challenging the record industry’s logic of scarcity, home taping also challenged the integrity of the industry’s highest-selling and most expensive commodity (ibid.: 263). Industry concerns about the effects of this disaggregation were somewhat resolved with the introduction of the CD in 1982. The CD, initially, resembled the vinyl record in that it was a non-configurable format. As Mike Glennon writes, ‘[i]f tape [...] represents an era of creative freedom and exploration across the spectrum of music lovers – creator and consumer, professional and amateur – the compact disc can more readily be associated with a period of unparalleled consumption and a reassertion of the music industry’s control over the form of recorded music’ (ibid.: 167). The introduction of the CD enabled the recording industry to leverage existing copyright ownership, rereleasing their back- catalogue. The format was championed as the latest in fidelity (Rothenbuhler 85

2012: 39), a discourse of technological obsolescence that legitimised the gradual phasing-out of vinyl records from some new releases (Hesmondhalgh and Meier 2017: 1561). By reestablishing the album as the central commodity of the recording industry, the period from 1992 to 2007 was characterised by the highest profits ever seen (Rogers 2013: 16). While the practices of making cassette mixtapes continued throughout the 1990s, it was in 1997 that a series of technologies vastly expanded the capacity of consumers to reorganise musical information. In 1997, the Winamp programme became the first piece of popular software that allowed the user to create playlists, remediating the mixtape approach to content reorganisation. With the addition of ID3 tags the year earlier, this allowed users to break down CDs into individual tracks and reorganise them. This reaggregation of music based on the ‘modularity’ of the individual song was taken into new, algorithmic territory with the release of the first iPod in 2001 that offered listeners a ‘shuffle’ function (Powers 2014: 14). The iTunes store also offered customers the capacity to purchase playlists – many of which were user-created – as well as singles and albums. Apple capitalised on the packaging of music into multiple forms, as well as the sale of devices that offer multiple forms of organisation. Jeremy Wade Morris describes this multiplicity.

Playlists, then, are metacommodities. [...]. Each playlist puts old commodities into new contexts, offers consumers multiple ways to purchase the same product, and gives users another chance to participate in the process of commodification. [...] Hardly a case of the death of the album, the splintering of the digital music commodity into single tracks has created a multitude of repackaging options for music. Single downloads and playlists have not supplanted the album as a means of ordering music, and why should they? All of music’s various aggregated forms can invariably coexist as complementary avenues that support the purchase of digital music (2015: 162).

Much like emergence of complex and overlapping transmission networks, from the early 2000s, one can see a multiplicity of musical configurations: singles, playlists, and albums. 86

Last.fm’s Audioscrobbler took algorithmically curated music organisation to a higher level of sophistication. Last.fm created a dynamic system in which the Audioscrobbler algorithm would collect information on the user’s listening choices and then create intelligent recommendations. Algorithmically curated listening suggestions were further developed by streaming services such as Spotify and YouTube (Eriksson et al. 2019: 117). With Spotify, these come in the form of the ‘Discover Weekly’ playlists and the ‘radio’ function. Spotify also offers service-curated playlists that may be tied to specific genres or based around specific emotional and affective states (ibid.: 122; Kjus 2016). However, while the cassette tape of the 1980s was separated from album-centric media – and was sold by competing industrial sectors – services such as Spotify fold users’ reorganising practices back into their own business models, generating more data which can be used to distribute more tailored music recommendations and sell ever-more specific data to advertisers (Scherzinger 2010: 124). Thus, while streaming services remediate the ‘mix’ function of the cassette (Drew 2005: 544), they build this service-controlled reaggregation into the structure of their business models. These forms of aggregation, unlike the album or top-40 radio, are highly transient for the listener. They are not inscribed in any tabular or graphical form — such as a top-40 or a classic album chart — but instead they are made up of dynamically-evolving user data that the service keeps and the user cannot gain access to. While streaming services still allow for the sequencing of user-created playlists and standard albums, the algorithmic recommendations take on a greater asymmetry, or at least opacity, of information (Beer 2009). This transition marks out only one trajectory within a complex emerging media environment. Many digital services also afforded users increased control over their organisation of content. The rise of music websites based on user- generated content such as MySpace, Bandcamp, Mixcloud, Soundcloud, allowed users to upload and reorganise their own music. Furthermore, while Spotify’s services may have tried to nudge consumers into certain consumption patterns, many empirical studies have demonstrated a variety of listening practices that involve multiple forms of musical organisation (see Hagen 2015a, 2015b; Hagen and Lüders 2016; Johansson et al. 2018; Kyus 2016; Maasø 2018; Maasø and Hagen 2019; Sinclair and Tinson 2017). Listeners integrate a variety of musical organisations into their daily lives, during work, commuting, exercise, socialising, 87

dancing, and sex. Listening is situated and performative process that can never be reduced to binaries of ‘background’ and ‘concentrated’ listening (Herbert 2011: 2). Despite this diversity of listening practice, many underground music label owners and listeners feel that the sanctity of the album is under threat by technologies like streaming services that offer alternative modes of organisation and listening. This suspicion is not new. Devon Powers demonstrates that, from the late 1990s, rock critics such as Gerald Marzorati mourned the loss of the album, undermined by MTV and commercial radio (2014: 253). Nonetheless, while media based around the single have existed long before the rise of streaming services, many underground music network participants single these services out as particularly problematic. Graham Dunning, a London-based musician and the owner of the label Fractal Meat Cuts, describes his dissatisfaction with subscription streaming services.

For me, the thing that I’m not keen on with streaming and Spotify and playlists is that there is a tendency to just favourite the tracks you like into a big compilation playlist and never really listen to the whole album. I dunno if it's maybe a bit of a nostalgic thing, but I like the idea of spending time with the whole album. I like to think that artists put time into the flow of an album and how the songs fit together, rather than every song is a number-one single potentially. I think, what's really nice about [...] different formats is, for example, if you’re playing records you can easily skip to the next track or know where the track you want is by just putting the needle down at the right place. With a tape that is much more difficult to do and definitely difficult to do precisely so you’re more likely to listen to a whole side of a tape. I think it changes the way people listen (Graham interview 2018).

The order of songs on an album is endowed with an aesthetic intentionality that is intrinsic to its worth. The capacity to change tracks is described by Graham as a kind of temptation, with tape posited as a medium that better disciplines the listener into the self-contained continuity of the album. 88

For others, it was not only user-created playlists that posed a threat to the album but the capacity to easily skip tracks more broadly. D. Petri of the Normal, Illinois-based label Aubjects suggests that the capacity offered by most digital media to intervene in the order of the tracks has a detrimental effect both on the artistic value of the album and on the listener.

I think there is usually a different psychology going on when listening to each medium. Tapes and vinyl are typically played full sides at once — the entire program is to be sat through. There are certain requirements of the listener in this circumstance, and the listener is often considering the music differently in this circumstance than with streaming. There's sort of a throwaway or casual attitude with streaming or other digital file playback where you can just skip the track, that at any moment of lulled attention you can check out or "change the channel" or thumb deeper through the feed to find something more immediately of interest. There's a wonderful convenience to this, but I think there's something a little insidious as well in that this is one more thing that we have to erode our already goldfish- level attention spans (Petri interview 2019).

Digital media, in contrast to physical media, have a detrimental effect on the attention span of the listener. This ultimately contributes to the devaluation of music, lending it a disposable character. Geng of New York’s PTP feels that shuffle, user-generated playlists, and algorithmically generated playlists are all equally responsible for ‘dumbing down’ the ‘listening muscle’.

All this streaming and I mean [...] MP3 players and iPods and randomising listening experiences and algorithms now taking that over from the iPod and going into this even more sort of random shuffle of sounds and narratives. It dumbs down the listening muscle. It makes for a less... I wouldn’t say [less] literate but it sands down those edges and the challenge of listening through to a single narrative or a single story. I have these albums that I still cherish to this day or that I might have even purchased for the first time on cassette recently, that are albums that are to me, 89

perfect listening experiences where there's no skips, start to finish. You can just kick back, you don't have to press the fast forward or skip. Just let it play, every skit, from intro to outro. It's a cohesive statement and that's how I approach building and collaborating with the artists who are on PTP now. We could honor and cherish that tradition and not just do this shit for Spotify. I personally never use Spotify. I don't have a Spotify account. So the cassette is king to me because it really does lend itself to that tradition of having to listen from start to finish and dedicate [time] to learning to appreciate the music. It's not this microwave thing where it's like, “oh, well, I don't like that, throw it away!” and just be this massive consumer (Geng interview 2019).

It is not only the temporal linearity of the album as an aesthetic statement that is under threat but also the cultivated techniques of listening that sustain the integrity of the album. The album is presented both as a challenge and as a tradition that takes work on behalf of the listener. Digital media undermine this history of listening, subjecting music to a commercial logic of instantaneity and ephemerality that is concerned more with the constant consumption of new content. This idea is echoed by Tzu Ni, a Tokyo-based Taiwanese sound artist and musician.

I mean with digital, on the internet there are so many tracks and I listen to Spotify or YouTube and you finish one song and then they’ll give you something related. I feel like it's kind of [overwhelming] and not so necessary. If you listen to someone’s tape, and maybe after you listen to [another] one, your brain will [better] digest the information. Those kinds of knowledge systems are more steady (Tzu Ni interview 2018).

The notion that the digital media ecology is so overwhelming that it has a detrimental effect on the attention span of individuals is now a common trope in debates around the internet, as seen in Nicholas Carr’s 2010 book The Shallows. The use of album-based media, on the other hand, is positioned as a form of 90

deliberate self-discipline used to help reduce this sense of distraction in which listening is understood as a cultivated technique that requires maintenance. For several label owners, modes of listening that involve the reaggregation of music are considered to be passive forms of listening. Passivity is conceived in two different ways for label owners. For Andrew of the Newcastle, UK-based label Eggs in Aspic, passivity is understood as the intervention of the listener into the order of play.

If I put a record physically on the turntable, that would be an active experience while if I’m listening digitally it’s more of a passive experience. It’s more of an event if you’ve got vinyl on. Tapes would be the same. It’s more of an event because it’s not particularly easy to skip from track to track most of the time you end up listening to an album in its entirety (Andrew interview 2018).

Regularly changing the track is considered to undermine the temporality of the event required for the proper comprehension of an album (more on this below). On the other hand, several label owners consider service-curated and algorithmically curated playlists to represent a form of passive listening.

[Streaming services] are good for [...] what I like to call lazy listeners, people that are not super interested in music necessarily and they want to just have something curated and played for them based on some algorithm that a company has decided (Joe interview 2019).

I listen to some stuff digitally if I'm trying to find an old album on YouTube but not Spotify or Pandora. I just can't stomach the thought of curated non-active listening (Jeff interview 2019).

Spotify [...] feels too passive for me, like algorithms telling you or suggesting things and it feels a little too passive (McLean interview 2018).

To listen to a playlist curated by a streaming service or an algorithm is to passively surrender control over the listening experience and over the content one is 91

consuming. Passive listening occupies the position of being understood as the intervention of both the listener and of a streaming platform into the ordering of musical material. Contrary to digital media, the discipline taken to listen to an album in its entirety is understood by many record label owners to be an active act of participation. Activity has two meanings here. First, it is understood as the physical activity demanded by the design of cassettes and vinyl records. Ian Martin, a Tokyo-based journalist, author, and label-owner describes this reciprocity within the listening act as conversation-like.

I think the thing that cassettes have in common with vinyl is that they force you to listen in a different way to the way you’d listen to a CD and certainly to the way you listen online. You’re forced to listen to each side in turn as its own thing. It constantly interrupts you by forcing you to turn it over in the first place. You can’t just leave it running forever and it automatically runs onto the next thing. So you can’t just put it on while you’re cooking or doing something because it’ll stop and interrupt you, and it constantly drags you back, and brings your attention to it again and do maintenance on it. In that sense, you’re in a conversation with it somehow. It communicates with you, it demands your attention, it shouts at you, sort of “click, I’m finished, deal with me.” Which is annoying but I think people should be annoyed (Ian interview 2018).

Specifically naming vinyl and cassette, the break within the middle of these media requires active maintenance in order to continue playing. This physical activity is then seen to induce a second form of activity at the level of cognition and consciousness. Stefan, co-owner of Utrecht-based Faux Amis describes this relationship.

If I put on a record or if I put on a cassette, I have the physical act of putting it on and then when side A has run out, I have to flip it and put on side B. So it's so there's more there's more investments in listening to it and that allows me to to bond with music more so it has a different role in my life (Stefan interview 2019). 92

For Stefan, the physical activity leads to a greater level of intellectual and emotional investment in the music. Shane, the owner of LA-based label Sinneslöschen, similarly suggests that he chose to release music on physical formats as he ‘wanted to get people to actually stop for a little while and just participate in the listening experience’ (Shane interview 2019, emphasis added). The cassette tape engenders active listening because it requires maintenance during the listening event and yet at the same time, because it is difficult to change between tracks. Some of the listeners surveyed also express a similar concern for the relationship between listening, attention, and sound media.

I struggle to focus on digital-only music, as I don't feel compelled to sit in front of a computer for music listening (L71).

I listen more attentively when streaming from YouTube or Spotify, but I am more impatient. I skip tracks more (L95).

Digital sometimes goes unnoticed in my attention spam (L108).

Steaming can be background noise/throw-away music that I'm vaguely interested in whereas vinyl & cassette is a format I reserve for genres & releases that are specific to me (L90).

Listeners link the capacity to reorganise musical material with the same language of disposability — i.e. attention ‘spam’ — that can be seen in those of the label owners. Ultimately, this is understood to undermine the attention span of listeners as well as their emotional investment in the music they listen to. However, while some listeners did express concerns about their ability to concentrate while listening to digital media, far fewer listeners were concerned about the integrity of the album. Listeners were less likely to take ideological issue with the curatorial role played by streaming services and algorithms. Furthermore, listeners were less likely to see digital media as a threat to the album 93

or to their other listening practices while label owners were far more likely to express frustration at streaming services. As will be shown in the next section, listeners engage in diverse listening practices that often involve playlists or other forms of continuous listening that are not based around the album as a discrete unit of music. The distinction between passive and active listening made by label owners and listeners alike reveals concerns about who and what are considered to be legitimate curators of musical content. It is primarily the artist — and tacitly, the label — who’s curational and creative energies are prioritised above those of the listener or a third party streaming service. The cassette tape functions here as Foucauldian technology of the self (1982). It is used to help cultivate a technique of listening that reproduces the album as a work. As the next section will demonstrate, these techniques of listening reproduce a mind/body distinction in which the ear is privileged over the moving or dancing body. For many, the body must be removed from the busy distractions of daily life in order to engage in this mode of listening.

Mobility, the Domestic Sphere, and the Event of Listening

The third listening practice most closely associated with the cassette culture of the 1980s is the practice of listening on the move. While far from the first mobile medium of sound reproduction, the Sony TPS-L2 (the ‘Walkman’) was introduced to the market in 1979 and became one of the most widely used mobile sound reproduction media for much of the 1980s and 1990s. However, in contemporary underground music networks, the cassette tape is almost entirely reserved for listening practices that take place within the domestic sphere. Instead, digital media have largely taken over the role of mobile music media. In the words of Benjamin Düster and Raphaël Nowak, ‘the mobile consumption of music is now concentrated on digital devices like smartphones, whereas the cassette appears as a material and aesthetic format that belongs to the household’ (2019: 155). This stratification is linked to the residual and emergent social spaces of work and home — to the ways in which media practices participate in the production of the ‘routine, habitual, tacit, normally unspoken sensitivities of everyday life in the home’ (Pink & Mackley 2013: 678; see also Silverstone & 94

Hirsch 1992; Silverstone 1994; Tacchi 2002, 2009). In this section, I trace a genealogy of listening spaces before focusing on the spatial practices of label owners and listeners within contemporary underground music networks. Voices and musical instruments have long been mobile but the first sound- reproducing media were certainly not. Gramophones and early radios of the 1920s were restricted to the domestic sphere. While the gramophone was originally intended by Edison as a way of assisting business communications, Lisa Gitelman demonstrates how sound reproduction media quickly became a key part of the texture of everyday domestic life, much like the piano had before it (Vorachek 2000).

Figurative representations of phonographs and records underwent a particularly important change as part of the redefinition of recorded sound as a form of domestic amusement. The metaphors of inscription and personification that had initially helped to define the medium were gradually displaced, and then replaced by richer metaphoric identifications of the phonograph with existing discourses surrounding music and home in U.S. life (Gitelman 2006: 69).

From the early 20th century, sound reproduction media formed a constituent part of the making of the living room as an emergent space in the middle class domestic sphere. Unlike the 19th century parlour — a room that served the entertainment of those outside of the household — the living room was increasingly characterised by a familial insularity that was co-formed around mass communication media (Sterne 2003: 204-207; see also Bowers 2007). The radio throughout the 1920s and 1930s similarly became a medium closely associated with the domestic sphere. Maggie Andrews demonstrates how public radio programmers throughout this period ‘domesticated’ the airwaves, shaping the radio listener as an essentially female subject, establishing an emergent route for the public to enter into the domestic sphere (2012: 16). Unlike the cinema or the loudspeaker that were largely based around a copresent publicness, the phonograph and the radio followed on from print media in their formations of distributed publics, premised upon the privacy and insular domesticity of the home (Berland 1998: 138). Through their temporalities of 95

continuous audio texture, radio was shaped by and helped shape the domestic temporalities of the working day and week (Scannell 1986; Tacchi 2009). During the 1950s, sound reproduction media became far more portable. FM-radios were introduced into automobiles in 1952 and 8-track cassette players were first sold as an option for automobiles in 1962. The first pocket transistor radio was released in 1954. Michael Bull argues that the impact of automobile listening allowed the sounds of the cultural industries to become a constituent part of the ways in which people navigate the city as a privatised public space (2004: 245). The car created an acoustic envelope, a way of allowing subjects to maintain a degree of autonomy and privacy – Raymond Williams’s ‘mobile privatisation’ (1974: 26) – while moving through the potentially overwhelming spaces of urban life (Bull 2004; LaBelle 2010). In doing so, listeners were able to block out the potentially unwelcome aspects of urbanity, a process that was as political (and often exclusionary) as it was acoustic (Bull 2000; Hagood 2019). Listeners were also able to ‘remix’ the city, modulating and aestheticising their experience of the world around them while also reclaiming spaces of ‘neutral’ transit as personal and habitable (Beer 2007). By the time the Walkman arrived in 1979, consumers were well accustomed to listening on the move (Gopinath & Stanyek 2014: 7). Nonetheless, the mobile cassette player combined the mobility of a sound reproduction device with the internal configurability of magnetic tape. While the CD-Walkman added to the list of mobile media, it was far less configurable until CD-R burners came down in price towards the end of the 1990s. Instead, the MP3 player extended both the configurable and mobile functionality of the cassette Walkman, allowing listeners to carry far more content around with them in their pockets. With the introduction of fast mobile internet connections and streaming services, by the end of the 2000s, most individuals with a smartphone could, in theory at least, access most musical content and services from their mobile phone anywhere with an internet connection. It is this capacity to access anything anywhere that characterises what Anahid Kassabian describes as ubiquitous music: the combination of portability and miniaturisation with access-based distribution systems (2013). This new media function – the ubiquity of media content through the digital ecology of smartphones, mobile internet networks, and centralised servers – to a large 96

extent displaced the mobile forms of listening that characterised the use of the cassette tape in the 1980s and the CD Walkman in the 1990s. This is true more broadly of listeners but also of the listeners surveyed within this musical network. While 57% of listeners state that they own a portable cassette player, only 44% of these listeners (25% of the total listeners) state that they actually listen to cassette tapes outside of the house. Even with many automobiles continuing to play cassettes and CDs until the present day, only 18% of listeners suggest that they listen to CDs or cassettes while driving. On the contrary, 52% of listeners suggest that they use their smartphones or portable digital media players while on the go, with 38% of all listeners suggesting that they used some kind of digital media at work. Listeners within underground music networks engage in highly diverse listening practices. In order to analyse this complexity, listeners were categorised into four groups: digital listeners, physical listeners, stratified listeners, and media omnivores (see fig. 2). Digital listeners almost entirely listen to digital media, both in and out of the home. Physical listeners only listen to physical media, either in or out of the home. Stratified listeners listen to physical media in the evenings within the home and digital media in the daytime and whilst they are out of the house and at work. Media omnivores use multiple media for multiple practices with no regular spatial or temporal stratification.

Fig. 2 - Listener types by use of digital and physical media

Listener Type Percentage

Digital 7.2%

Physical 13.1%

Stratified 41.8%

Omnivore 37.9%

As the table suggests, the majority of listeners participate in mixed media listening practices: 79.7% in total. The largest group is the stratified listeners who reserve physical media for particular times of day and particular spaces. Many of 97

these stratified listeners describe how their media practices reproduce several spatial and temporal distinctions. The most prominent of these distinctions is that between inside and outside of the house.

I listen to DAB at work (I’m a community nurse, lot of driving). I use streaming at the gym. I listen to music from my hard drive/laptop, cassette and vinyl at home (L144).

I listen to my smartphone on bike commutes, to Spotify at work, cassettes in the kitchen, and then vinyl in the living room (L21).

When commuting, I stream on my iPhone (Spotify or Bandcamp). At work, I stream from my Laptop. At home, I listen to vinyl mostly (L105).

For these listeners, ubiquitous digital media have replaced the cassette tape within mobile listening practices that take place outside of the house. Digital media are used to accompany spaces of transit — particularly, the daily commute — while physical media are largely reserved for the home. Many individuals use particular types of listening practices that are based around non-album continuous listening at work.

I often listen to digital formats while working as a designer, so I can control the sound while working [...]. If I put on a digital album or playlist while working, I'm using the music as a tool to accompany my energy level or to relax and zone out while working. I often listen to drone music while working (L112).

When listening to digital or radio it is often background noise while I'm doing something else, I leave it running nearly all day (L125).

Streaming often is just a background to work and to block out office sounds (L102).

98

As Nicola Dibben and Anneli Haake note, music is commonly used within working settings like this to maintain a sense of personal identity and to establish control over one’s acoustic environment within the postindustrial workspace (2013; see also Hagood 2019). These listeners use playlists, streaming, and radio to accompany working tasks, to manage and insulate oneself from a potentially hostile acoustic environment, to induce concentration, and to modulate affective states and energy levels. While digital mobile media based on continuous temporalities of playback are used outside of the house within the working day (as well as the spaces of transit between home and work), physical media are largely reserved for inside of the house. For some listeners, physical media are used within diverse practices that all take place within the domestic sphere.

Each medium seems to be attached to specific conditions relating to ongoing activities: cassettes require less supervision than records, and are better suited to active tasks (cooking, cleaning) as they are mostly 40 to 90 minutes-long, allowing uninterrupted playback for the typical duration of such tasks. Mp3 and other digital files allow for quick browsing/checking, although I also spend at least one or two hours a day in rather attentive listening in front of or near the computer. Vinyl is certainly the most social of my music listening occasions, as it is on display in the living room — like an invitation to be handled and played - by myself or others. I play records when socializing, from mere atmospheric background to conversations, to complete prominence when dancing (L45).

I use my Laptop, for streaming and digital files, when I'm working on my laptop. Television for digital radio, when I'm working away from my desk, reading, or snoozing. CD (including digitised versions of cassette and vinyl), cassette and vinyl on hi-fi when relaxing and socialising (L81).

For the first listener, the home stereo participates in collective interaction, whether for dancing or conversation. It is a part of the sonic texture of the home, as a space of leisure. Much like the television (Silverstone 1994), it helps establish 99

the home as a centre of collectivity and socialising. For the second listener, the home stereo also provides a broader acoustic texture to other activities such as cooking, reading, and relaxing. For both of these listeners, the home stereo forms a constituent part of middle-class yet post-industrial domesticity, helping to modulate the transition between the time of work and the time of leisure. In the words of Brandon LaBelle, the use of the home stereo in this way is a technique for the ‘cultivation’ of the domestic sphere as a space of privacy (2010: 48), that regulates the ‘ebb and flow of everyday life’ (ibid.: 49). However, these listeners are in the minority. A far greater group of listeners describe the use of physical media outside of the temporalities of communal or family activity.

I’m usually more attentive with my tape player as it is in the living room and I'm usually alone (L76).

I mostly listen to cassettes, vinyl, and CD in the evening and late at night after the rest of the family has gone to bed (L150).

For many listeners, sitting down and listening to a vinyl record or a cassette is a deliberate and rather infrequent act that requires high levels of focus.

Physical media requires more personal investment. Choosing and readying yourself for the experience is almost ritualistic.

I listen to vinyl and cassette albums all the way through, often multiple times and tend not to have them on in the background while talking.

I feel like putting on vinyl or cassette displays a level of intention that's lacking when just listening to digital formats. If I put an album on, it's with the desire of intently listening to it (L112).

Listening to vinyl is a more focused experience, and I am more deliberate in my choice and attention while listening (L125).

100

Listening to an album on physical media becomes a discrete act of directed attention separated off from broader listening practices. It takes on a ritualistic dimension. Bartmanski and Woodward, in their discussion of the vinyl record, detail the way that ritualistic forms of listening are afforded by the properties of the format.

[The] analogue record affords a set of typical ritual practices in domestic spaces and amateur contexts. It demands attention and ritualizes listening to music [...]. The convenience of digitalization is in the possibility of reducing music to the background. Vinyl is always physically present and you will sooner or later be reminded of that. It invites one to ritualize and celebrate the act of listening. One way this can occur is that it can effectively compel one to focus on the minutiae of composition and thus delve deeper into the carefully delimited structures of the LP [...]. Importantly, these aspects of the vinyl as an attention-riveting medium and artistic message are explicitly appreciated by the youngest groups of contemporary music consumers, not just those who grew up with records as the main medium (2015: 58).

However, the cassette tape has not always participated in such forms of listening. It is not simply its material affordances that lend it to ritualistic experiences of listening, but its displacement within spatial practice. Nick Couldry, in his work on media rituals, argues that media events are habitual and formalised actions that are structured around categories which encode or stand in for the underlying values that media institutions represent as a transcendent authority (2005: 65; see also 2002). As Bourdieu suggests, these ‘rites of institution’ naturalise the ‘arbitrary boundaries on which the possibility of the rite depends’ (Bourdieu 1991: 117-118 in Couldry 2005: 66). Much like the ‘gaze’, this ritualistic listening is a particular habitus of listening that requires cultivation and work. It is bound up with ‘rhetorical and institutional structures and beliefs [...] intimate notions of personhood and identity’ (Becker 2010: 130): listening as ritual reinforces the notion that the artist (and the label’s) aesthetic intentionality is the primary subject of listening. 101

For some, finding the time and energy to commit to such ritualistic patterns of listening is difficult.

I feel that when I am listening to a physical medium, I'm more attentive to the music as opposed to putting on background music. However, physical also feels like more of a chore sometimes. Like something you have to put on and be there for it (L58).

Vinyl lends itself to more attentive listening. I don't have a ton of free listening time at home where my turntable is and when I do find the time I really want to get the most out of it (L69).

The effort described to listen in this way has the potential to be a chore. Listening in this way is an act of work. Despite the fact that many label owners vehemently criticise forms of listening based around digital media, many label owners also listen infrequently in this way.

Jeff: There are probably three different main phases of listening in my life. One would be a casual passive listening at work while I'm writing or doing graphic design stuff. The other would probably be an even more passive listening when my wife and I make dinner or I'm making dinner before she comes home. And then the other category would be pretty intense listening. When I put something on and I want to sit with it and think about it.

James: How much of the latter category do you think you do?

Jeff: Probably two to three times a week I'll have a serious listen and it's usually also self-serving in the sense that I'm trying to hear how somebody's doing things, composing, putting things together for my own work for inspiration. So probably at least two to three times a week I will sit down with an album that I admire or I am just discovering and I will literally sit down and listen to the entire thing (Jeff interview 2019). 102

Many other label owners only commit to the forms of listening that they validated a few times a week or less. While there may be a distinction between label owners’ discursive statements and their actions, this is not necessarily a contradiction. The comparative infrequency of this kind of listening is key to its special status as an event. It is separated from ‘everyday’ forms of listening in which music serves as a background to other activities and this distinction is key to its experience which is felt to produce a special, more profound encounter with music. The domestic space and time enacted through this ritualistic form of listening is tacitly gendered; after all, 83% of the listeners surveyed identified as men. In its uninterrupted solitude, rituals of listening to physical media are drawn in contradistinction to the space-time of the everyday, of housework, and childcare. While Sterne suggests that the modern living room is characterised more by ideals of ‘portability, modularity, malleability, [and] access’ than by aesthetic contemplation (2012: 239), in the present context, ritualistic album- based listening continues to provide an act of aesthetic transcendence and reverence — a masculine ritual of aesthetic surrender that cannot coincide with these more profane responsibilities. The spatiality of this ritualistic listening is more akin to the kind of listening expected within a concert hall at a Western classical music concert than the texture of everyday life (Cressman 2012). This form of listening is also separated from the moving, dancing body. Accordingly, this form of listening produces a distinction between the body and the mind (ear). Music that may have been intended for dancing to, or at least has its roots in dance cultures, is subjected to the same mode of contemplation that is expected in a concert hall. For several commentators such as Simon Reynolds (2011) and Stephen Graham (2016), analogue media present a slower temporality of consumption based around the logic of the Event. Here the event can be interpreted both as the release of a new album but also particular listening events.

In this analogue time the frantic nature of digital communication and consumption is replaced with older patterns of exchange, affect, and cultural engagement, with what Reynolds has called “a particular sense of temporality, structured around delay, anticipation and the Event.” The 103

sense of temporality has been framed by Reynolds and other writers in a desirable way as a “slow” mode of cultural engagement [...] (2016: 125).

This notion of analogue media creating a slower sense of consumption and listening also resonates with much of the discourse described above from label owners and listeners, particularly Tzu Ni’s comment about steadier knowledge systems. However, in the context of the broader listening practices described here, it is difficult to see how listeners’ overall practices are characterised by delay, anticipation, and the Event. As stated above, most listeners use digital media in order to find new music (a process discussed in far greater detail in the next chapter) and the majority of listening practices and consumption methods take place through digital channels that are not characterised by such slow temporalities. The cassette tape has been displaced, separated off from the broader ecology of digital media and the multiple spatial practices of everyday life. The cassette tape functions as a voluntary mode of cultivating the body, reproducing oneself (however temporarily) as the subject of an aesthetic authority. Through this cultivation of listening, the artistic intentionality of the album is (co- )produced, even when it may not have been intended as such by the original creator. Overall, one can observe a stratification of listening spaces and temporalities, a rhythm of media practices that follows and shapes the spaces and times of the working week, punctuated by occasional rituals of high- concentration listening. These spatialities, in turn, produce the category of physical media as a group of technologies bound up with the album through a particular ethics of use.

Conclusion: Categorising Media

All physical media are equally as stupid as one another in my opinion (White interview 2019).

The years since 1997 have been characterised not by a logic of technological replacement and obsolescence but one of displacement. The cassette tape has been displaced from certain practices precisely because certain digital 104

technologies have extended practices historically associated with the cassette tape in the 1980s, integrating them within the emergent technological and economic logics of access-based media. The cassette tape has been displaced into residual practices of listening historically associated with the vinyl record. Physical media as a category have become increasingly bound up with the textualities of the work; the cassette has become embedded in a history of listening as a disciplined bodily technique that requires active work and cultivation in order to appreciate the album as a unified and autonomous work of art. The cassette tape, the CD, and the vinyl record have no integral functional similarity. Only through deeply contingent practices of use have these technologies converged. The materiality (or physicality) of physical media, then, does not lie solely within their individual technological affordances. A single cassette is not intrinsically more ‘material’ than a smartphone. The cassette tape appears as a discrete object now because it has been disarticulated from an emergent transmission network and because it has been stratified within spaces and times of listening. For many of the critics discussed in the last chapter, this might seem like a contraction of use, or even a form of disuse. Yet, such an absence is not felt by the label owners and listeners described above. The cassette tape has an ethically-weighted presence within the everyday lives of label owners and listeners and it participates in the ways in which individuals navigate music media beyond the format themselves. Ritualistic acts of listening ground and validate other forms of background listening that may not be understood as acceptable in isolation. If there is a felt physicality to the cassette tape at present, it is a product of its changing distribution and connections as a media system — of its plasticity and not its fixity. 105

Chapter 3 Abundance and Curation Residual and Emergent Cultural Intermediaries

[T]he materiality of music invites us to think of recorded sound as a territory and as a terrain whose layers can be archaeologically or media-archaeologically investigated. Elodie Roy, Media, Materiality and Memory: p.184.

Introduction

This chapter is concerned with the changing nature of the underground record label — specifically, the tape label — and its changing relationships to both residual and emergent cultural intermediaries. In the 1980s, the independent record label was often understood as a potential vehicle of democratisation and resistance that provided a platform for (often amateur) artists to reach wider audiences. As David Hesmondhalgh writes, [t]he core of punks’ democratization efforts were decentralization and access based on sub-professional activity’ (1999: 44). In this context, the cassette tape was used as an affordable DIY necessity that could be produced readily at home in large numbers. However, in contemporary underground music networks, the tape label operates more often as a curator and sometimes a gatekeeper of musical culture. In this context, the cassette tape is often elevated to the lofty aesthetic status of an artisanal art object. Many labels pay to have their cassettes manufactured and duplicated professionally, resulting in high-design, limited editions that rarely exceed 100 tapes per release (and often in significantly smaller batches of 30 or 50). This emergent logic of the underground record label is deeply embedded in the contemporary digital media ecology: a number of cultural intermediaries — both residual and emergent, both digital and otherwise — rely on and reproduce the record label as a central organising mechanism within the circulation of underground music. This change in the role of the tape label is partly a result of the feeling shared by many — both within and outside of underground networks — that the 106

digital media ecology is characterised by an overwhelming abundance of cultural material. Although this abundance is understood to be the result of the increasing participation of people in cultural production — a fact that on the surface might seem to align with the democratic politics of DIY production — many label owners raise anxieties about the potential effect this profusion of new material might have upon the value of music. Benjamin Hracs et al. describe this anxiety as a ‘dilemma of democracy’ in which the increase in (amateur) cultural production ‘crowds out’ more professional releases (2013; see also Bartmanski and Woodward 2020; Benhaïm 2019; Fleischer 2015). From this (decidedly economistic) perspective, positioning the record label as a cultural curator offers a way to reintroduce scarcity into the recording market while also adding brand- value to the musical commodity. By addressing these anxieties and positions, this chapter shows that there is a surprising confluence between, on the one hand, the language of underground record labels and other network participants, and on the other hand, academic critics who point in some way to a dilemma of democracy. Specifically, label owners and academic critics suggest that residual cultural intermediaries such as the record label offer a potential solution to digital (over)abundance. The term intermediary is used here to describe those institutions and actors that are not the primary creative actors (i.e. musicians), but that still have a mediating effect between producers and consumers (Barna 2018; Bourdieu 1984; Negus 2002; Hesmondhalgh 2006). Intermediaries are individuals and institutions that select, order, and frame cultural products, in the process reproducing their own authority to do so. Since the introduction of digital music media, many commentators have prophesied the end of cultural intermediaries. The digital age was supposed to be an age of ‘disintermediation’ in which cultural producers could communicate ‘directly’ with their audiences (Collins & Young 2014; Hasted 2005; Hracs 2012; Hracs et al. 2013; Sinclair 2006; Wikström 2009). However, it has become clear in recent years that emergent intermediaries such as digital platforms have not rendered their predecessors redundant. Instead, one can observe the proliferation of emergent intermediaries alongside and within existing intermediaries and practices (Bennet & Bates 2018; Rogers 2013: 164; Suhr 2012: 20; Sun 2019: 6). 107

While many writers and underground members identify the curatorial role of residual intermediaries as the solution to a digital ecology characterised by abundance, this chapter shows that there is in fact a co-constitutional relationship between the practice of releasing limited editions of physical media and a digital media ecology characterised by non-scarcity. In fact, some labels lose money (or struggle to break even) producing physical editions while they sustain themselves financially through revenue generated by digital media such as download sales or, in some cases, from streaming services. Within this emergent media ecology, the cassette tape has increasingly become a way for label owners to bestow cultural legitimacy upon a particular release. This legitimacy is a product of the way that the contemporary underground record label, operating as a textual frame, is remediated through a number of other intermediaries, both digital and otherwise. The changing aesthetics of the cassette tape are an artefact of these shifting institutional arrangements. That is to say, they are a product of the cassette tape’s plasticity. The next section discusses the belief, shared by some academic critics and many members of underground music networks themselves, that the problems associated with abundance are a direct result of the lowering of barriers to engage in cultural production. Following that, I contextualise the changing aims and ethics of DIY cultural production within this context of digital abundance. After this, I show how the contemporary, curatorial logic of the tape label is produced and reproduced through multiple media. I discuss the role of record label owners as cultural curators before discussing the visual language of contemporary cassette production and the ways in which the record label is remediated within digital platforms, particularly Bandcamp. I trace the way that cultural intermediaries such as record stores and online publications reproduce the cassette tape’s curatorial authority, cementing the contemporary tape label as a primarily aesthetic – rather than political – formation.

The Dilemma of Democracy and the Fantasy of Abundance

Benjamin Hracs, Doreen Jakob, and Atle Hauge, in their 2013 article ‘Standing Out in the Crowd’, propose a direct causal link between, on the one hand, the increasing participation of individuals in musical production, and on the other 108

hand, the rising challenges facing musicians who seek a market for their music. It is necessary to dwell on this argument in depth here because it resonates with widely held ideas about the changing roles of intermediaries in the contemporary media ecology. These ideas hold currency both within and outside of underground music networks and they affect the ways in which underground labels position themselves in a media ecology increasingly characterised by abundance. I argue that there is a slippage in the use of the term democratisation that obfuscates the role of digital media platforms in many of the challenges facing many independent musicians today. For Hracs et al., the logic of abundance that characterises the contemporary digital media ecology is viewed as a problem as it increases competition and lowers the economic value of music, ‘curtail[ing] the ability of cultural producers to command monopoly rents for their “unique” goods and services’ (ibid. 1144). Abundance is entirely reducible to the ‘democratisation’ of musical production and the lowering of barriers to distribution. In other words, overabundance is the inevitable outcome of disintermediation, the notion that artists in the digital media ecology are now able to circumvent the gatekeeping role that record labels and other intermediaries have historically held, instead interacting ‘directly’ with their audiences. This relationship between abundance and disintermediation is described by the authors as the ‘dilemma of democratization’ (ibid.); while the authors nominally celebrate an increase in cultural participation, it is understood as problematic as and when it threatens the value of musical commodities. This argument is echoed by Mark Mulligan.

More people making more music does not mean more quality, the opposite in fact. For all of the positive impact of DIY — and there is plenty — the movement has removed a crucial quality hurdle. Record labels — for all their faults, and indeed there are plenty of those too — act as crucial arbiters of quality and taste (2014: 10).

For Mulligan, disintermediated DIY cultural production circumnavigates the ‘crucial arbiters of quality and taste’ that make those all-important distinctions between ‘real’ musicians and those deemed less professional, less talented, illegitimate, or even malicious. The only logical response to this dilemma is the 109

reintroduction of (largely residual) intermediaries that add curatorial brand- value to music (Hracs et al. 2013). According to this argument, the sale of physical media introduces scarcity to the circulation of music that helps to recuperate some of the value lost by overabundance (ibid.). Any critique of abundance is premised on a normative view in which a certain speed of consumption is considered to be necessary for consumers to properly comprehend and appreciate cultural products (Sterne 2012: 218): Reynolds and Grahams’ ‘slow’ temporality of consumption discussed in the last chapter is a prime example of this normative view. However, as the last chapter shows, listeners engage in diverse practices, and only occasionally participate in ritualistic acts of aesthetic contemplation. Even if, for the sake of argument, one accepts the superiority of this slower form of consumption, there remain multiple problems with the ‘dilemma of democracy’ argument. The first is that it takes at face value the highly doubtful claim that disintermediation can meaningfully describe the contemporary media ecology. Second, it ignores the role played by digital platforms in the cultivation of competitive behaviours that generate very specific forms of abundance. Third, these authors uncritically conflate the increased participation in competitive market behaviour with the democratisation of the contemporary media ecology. I deal with each issue in turn before investigating the way in which underground record labels position themselves against and within this ‘dilemma’. The notion that certain digital technologies have resulted in the widespread disintermediation of music circulation is a widely held idea (Collins & Young 2014; Hasted 2005; Hracs 2012; Hracs et al. 2013; Sinclair 2006; Wikström 2009). Benjamin Hracs describes how home recording software and changes in digital music retail have lowered the barriers to enter the production and distribution of music. He writes that digital technologies have ‘not only served to free musicians from the support of major labels but [have] also created a new geography of music production, one in which musicians are no longer tied to the established centers of music production’ (2012: 456). Disintermediation enables musicians to circumvent not only the ‘hard’ infrastructure — record labels, distributors, record stores — but also the ‘soft’ infrastructure of emplaced music scenes and social networks that have historically centred on large cities such as Berlin, London, and New York (Stahl 2004). As Steve Collins and 110

Sherman Young suggest, ‘[s]uccess in the market still requires talent, persistence and sheer luck but at least any musician can now set up a stall in the bazaar’ (2014: 110). Certainly, digital audio workstations and affordable personal computers have made music production more accessible (Leyshon 2014; Strachan 2017). UGC-based platforms and streaming services are much less expensive to access than the distribution apparatus of even the smaller record labels, even after one takes aggregator fees into account (Vonderau 2015). However, uploading music to these platforms far from guarantees that anybody will hear it (Azenha 2006). Within subscription streaming services, most uploaded content receives little attention. In 2013, Spotify announced that 20% of its content (some 4 million songs) have not even been played once (Abonalla 2013). As the last chapter suggested, these services rely on a logic of non-scarcity (Fleischer 2015). Yet, these services often simultaneously combine the distribution of an enormous catalogue of material with selective promotion, almost always for major label artists, and often in ways that juxtapose bespoke algorithmically generated recommendations with broadcasted promotional strategies (Morris and Powers 2015: 113). Recently, some critics have accused Spotify of a form of payola as the platform offers users the chance to exchange reduced royalty fees for greater exposure (Yoo 2020). While these services may seem to democratise access, they often promote and treat major label content more favourably. In combining the roles of distribution and promotion, subscription streaming services reproduce the very conditions of asymmetrical visibility and coverage that independent artists faced before the emergence of these platforms (Marshall 2015a). Other commentators suggest that a form of disintermediation can be observed with the rise of social media platforms that have allowed musicians to foster stronger connections with their listeners as well as widen their listenership without investing in expensive marketing strategies (Baym 2012; Beer 2008). Nancy Baym suggests that independent musicians establish ‘direct’ and ‘intimate’ personal relationships with audiences over social media that can lead to forms of additional financial support and mutual cooperation (2012: 293). Later studies, however, have shown how these new forms of intimacy can have more ambivalent effects. Jeremy Wade Morris discusses the ways in which the increased proximity between fans and artists more easily enables fan activity and fans’ (unpaid) labour 111

to be enfolded into the process of production (2014; see also Baym & Burnett 2009). The performance of additional labour traditionally undertaken by PR companies and record labels alongside normal creative activities and live performances can become ‘gruelling hard work’ in and of itself (Taylor 2015: 124). It can also induce entrepreneurial forms of subjectivity that legitimise musicians undertaking ‘venture labour’, despite any (initial) lack of financial returns (Baym 2018: 16). The resulting abundance of freely produced music sustains a healthy pool of talent for increasingly risk-averse major labels to dip into whenever they see a secure investment (Morris 2014). Furthermore, as Nancy Baym has argued, social media encourages artists to be permanently accessible and perform often- intense emotional labour as they market themselves as social individuals (2018: 11). However, while these critiques rightly acknowledge the complex and ambivalent politics of digitally mediated communication between artists and listeners, they nonetheless presuppose a certain level of successful connectivity. Artists that serve as common case studies for the success of using social media or music platforms usually have existing audience bases such as Jarvis Cocker (Beer 2008), Imogen Heap (Morris 2014), or Radiohead (Bourreau et al. 2015). Jo Haynes and Lee Marshall, on the other hand, demonstrate how for most independent artists attempting to establish new audiences in the first place, the efficacy of social media is highly limited. Instead, social media serve here more as a resource for maintaining and managing existing connections that have been established through other avenues such as live performances or the use of more traditional intermediaries such as record labels, music publications and radio stations (2018). This is exacerbated by the fact that cultural intermediaries have proliferated in the last two decades (Barna 2017; Suhr 2012): existing radio stations are joined by digital radio and podcasts, print publications find their way online next to blogs and online journalism, and the avenues for advertising have multiplied (Taylor 2015). As Jim Rogers writes, there are ‘more angles for people to have to exhaust’ than ever before (2013: 161). If artists want to reach mass audiences, the support of a major label is as important as ever (ibid.: 145). If cultural intermediaries play as important a role as ever, abundance is not solely reducible to the increased participation of individuals in cultural production. Instead, it is conditioned by the operation and structure of digital 112

platforms. This takes place in several ways. First, targeted metrics further discipline users into competitive, entrepreneurial behaviour. Social media platforms such as Facebook are structured to stimulate this entrepreneurial activity of the self by offering artists detailed feedback and audience metrics to encourage more specialised strategies of communication (Baym 2013; Beer 2016; Jakobsson 2010; Jones 2018). These may be public metrics such as likes and views or they may be more specialised metrics that other users cannot see, sometimes sold to content creators for a price. Metrics play a role in disciplining users into a ‘stream logic’ of communication that necessitates constant updates and posts, increasing the amount of content on digital platforms (Bucher 2012; Kaun & Stiernstedt 2014). Together, these forms of communication further the interests of platform owners who profit from this ‘culture of connectivity’ (van Dijck 2013; see also Gerlitz 2012; Gerlitz & Helmond 2013). Second, platforms encourage users to buy advertising space. These platform structures are well understood by many of the underground label owners. Stefan of Faux Amis, discusses the ways that the Facebook algorithm has changed over time.

When we started the label, we used a Facebook page mostly for communicating with the people we normally sell to. Since we started, Facebook had a few changes in the algorithm that make it hard to reach an audience organically without paid advertisements. Facebook doesn’t really have any organic reach anymore for the people that actually like our page. So if we want to do proper online promotion, we would have to choose to pay for adverts which would enable us much better to actually reach the people that we normally sell to (Stefan interview 2019).

As Stefan suggests, Facebook’s algorithm makes it difficult for label owners to communicate with individuals who already follow their pages, let alone to establish new audiences (Kaun & Stiernstedt 2014). While digital platforms offer the (apparent) possibility of connecting users with a seemingly infinite number of niche tastes, interests, and preferences, they are highly centralised pieces of infrastructure – owned by a small number of individuals and financed by venture capital – that control and monetise the means by which particular users can 113

elevate themselves above this ‘crowd’. Contrary to Collins and Young’s suggestion that ‘the internet makes the invisible visible’ (2014: 101), digital music platforms and social media monetise access to the means of visibility. In doing so, social media serve the interests of larger companies such as the major record labels who can afford to purchase the targeted advertising and whose content is treated favourably as their audience bases are higher and the increased levels of connectivity generate more valuable data for platforms. Combined with the increasingly promotional role of music streaming services, these platforms work to consolidate existing asymmetrical power relationships between major label artists and independent artists. What is commonly referred to as disintermediation, in the words of Martin Scherzinger, ‘paradoxically facilitates the accrual of ultimate economic power in the hands of monopolistic intermediaries’ (2014: 92). Disintermediation clearly does not accurately describe the contemporary media ecology or the music industry in the 21st century. Those who mistakenly understand the problems of abundance as inherent problems of democratisation articulate what Jacques Rancière refers to as the liberal critique of democracy in which democracy is figured as the ‘reign of excess’ (2006: 8) — the proliferation of individual (and individualistic) desires that undermine the ‘necessary’ sacrifices needed in order to pursue the greater social good. While a nominal democracy is celebrated as long as it remains within the purview of legitimate voices and operates within established market logics, continued democratisation is seen as a threat when unruly voices are suddenly allowed to speak or when these new voices challenge the authority of the market as sovereign (2006: 4; see also Mouffe 2005: 2). Such a critique is only meaningful because these authors wrongly conflate the logic of abundance exhibited by emergent digital platforms with democratisation. By contrast, David Hesmondhalgh’s productive definition of media democratisation includes not only increased participation, access, and diversity — the features identified by the ‘dilemma of democracy’ narrative — but also decentralisation combined with a greater degree of collectivism and cooperation (1997: 256). These latter processes of democratisation — crucially processes that presuppose some challenge to, or a critique of existing market logics — are absent from the concept of abundance. 114

Abundance, alone, is an impoverished, neoliberal definition of democracy in which communication alone is seen as meaningful democratic participation. Jodi Dean refers to this as the ‘fantasy of abundance’ (2009: 26).

Optimists and pessimists share the fantasy of abundance. Those optimistic about the impact of networked communications on democratic practices emphasize the wealth of information available on the Internet and the inclusion of millions upon millions of voices or points of view into “the conversation” or “the public sphere.” Pessimists worry about the lack of filters, the data smog, and the fact that “all kinds of people” can be part of the conversation (ibid.).

Both optimists and pessimists understand media democratisation in terms of the number of messages or voices rather than the (in)equitable distribution of the ownership of infrastructure, the establishment of reciprocal relationships of cooperation and support, or of new forms of listenership, fandom, and consumer participation (other than in cultural production). Hracs et al., Mulligan, and many of the labels discussed in the next section can be understood as pessimists in this sense, defending residual curatorial tastemakers against the ‘smog’ of cultural production. Either way, abundance is (problematically) understood as the inevitable outcome of increased cultural participation. While the dilemma of democratisation and the fantasy of abundance are observable discursive tropes beyond underground music networks, they hold particular significance within these networks precisely because they have historically been understood to celebrate the inherent worth of cultural participation. Crucially, their presence in underground music networks has implications for the changing role of the independent tape label.

The Ambivalent History of DIY Production

In my interviews with label owners who release music on cassette tape, several individuals express anxieties about the abundance of cultural material similar to those expressed by critics above. D. Petri of Aubjects describes this abundance as a ‘glut of material’. 115

The problem is that there is such a glut of material out there, it may be a little difficult sometimes for things to be noticed. It's hard […] to get distinctive work noticed amidst an ocean of activity (Petri interview 2019).

In language reminiscent of Mulligan’s comments, the problem with this glut is figured as a matter of distinction, the authority of which is undermined by the dilution of content in a faceless ‘ocean of activity’. Doug, co-owner of the DC- based label Verses Records, also calls on the dilemma of democracy trope: despite his concerns about the negative impact of abundance, he too tries to reconcile these with the empowering potential of cultural participation.

[Digital media are] super healthy and put the power in the individual. But once again, the other side of it is the flood of the market. In three years of our press, there’s been a 60% turnover in writers. 60% of people from day one that write [music reviews] have stopped. The reason they do is they are overwhelmed. They can’t keep up with it. It’s too much work and it’s too hard. They can’t make a living either because everything has become free. There’s been a diluting of the arts in a very harsh way. There’s more quantity, but the quality is… we have to dig further. There’s more quality too because more people in the world are making music. But it’s harder to find because there’s so much of everything (Doug interview 2019).

In his view, abundance and the consequent dilution of content has led not only to the decrease in value of music as a commodity, but also the capacity of other professionals — here music journalists — to continue to make a living. It follows that, while increased participation is positioned as empowering, Doug also feels that filters and intermediaries are as important as ever.

I don't like gatekeepers but there should be a bullshit filter (Doug interview 2019).

Phil of the London/Berlin record label the Tapeworm, on the other hand, more openly celebrates the enduring role of the gatekeeper. 116

I'm quite a fan of actual gatekeepers. I'm quite a fan of old-school journalists who would say “if you like this, listen to this” (Julian interview 2019).

These kinds of statements occur throughout my discussions with label owners; intermediaries are positioned as important filters of content that help consumers manage the drawbacks of a media ecology understood to have such low barriers to entry that it has reached a point of disorder. This emphasis on gatekeepers and distinction presents a challenge to the widespread definition of DIY cultural production as a straightforward grassroots politics of democratisation, participation, and empowerment. DIY has often been seen to enact a form of resistance against the major label system by increasing participation and widening access (Benhaïm 2019; Bennett 2018; Bennett and Guerra 2019; Dale 2008, 2012; Dunn 2012; Fairchild 1995; Lowndes 2016); by producing more honest and authentic cultural products (Dale 2012; Thompson 2004); and by establishing forms of sociality based around cooperativism, mutual support, and unalienated labour (Cuffman 2015; Fairchild 1995; Goshert 2000; Lowndes 2016; Thompson 2004). In recent years, a number of accounts have questioned the degree to which DIY cultural production can offer a form of resistance in a media ecology dominated by digital music and social media platforms. Hesmondhalgh and Meier argue that major label co-ownership of streaming platforms undermines any claim to independence (2015). Ellis Jones (2018) and Brent Luvaas (2012) demonstrate how the emphasis on autonomy and self-actualisation through DIY cultural production resonates with neoliberal modes of governmentality that rely on flexible, autonomous, and unpaid workers. Nick Prior states that, in the context of digital abundance and risk-averse major labels, ‘the DIY system hyped by punk rockers has moved beyond an activist ideology to become a structurally embedded part of digital modes of cultural production’ (2018: 90). All of these accounts, however, are premised on the notion that resistance and oppositionality are the defining features of DIY cultural production. By contrast, Patryk Galuszka and Katarzyna Wyrzykowska state that, for the contemporary micro-independent labels that they interview, ‘political and 117

ideological motivations play a secondary role for [the] respondents, who do not aim to challenge the mainstream music industry’ (2018: 46; see also 2015). Micro-independent labels are more interested in establishing smaller-scale (though not necessarily local), intimate relationships with listeners and other producers while attempting to release and archive what is understood as aesthetically significant music (ibid.: 41). While many of the label owners interviewed here position themselves within a lineage of DIY cultural production, they too articulate a move away from a discourse of resistance and oppositionality. Nonetheless, as chapter 5 will show, they have inherited many of the reciprocal and cooperative financial relationships and practices associated with DIY record labels in the 1980s and 1990s. It is necessary to briefly trace a more complex and ambivalent genealogy of DIY cultural production in order to unearth the contingency of, and the hidden continuities that lie within contemporary attitudes to DIY. The discourses and practices associated with DIY cultural production have variously involved different configurations of participation, expansion and structural challenge, autonomy (both group and individual), and marginality. Labels such as Rough Trade (founded in London in 1976) and Dischord (founded in 1980 in DC) were crucial to establishing the ways that punk music was produced and distributed. Artists were allowed to record wherever they pleased and there was little to no intervention into the creative process on the part of the label (Hesmondhalgh 1999). Artists typically kept their intellectual property rights for their music and deals between the label and the artist operated along the axis of a profit share, usually splitting the profit from record sales 50-50 down the middle (instead of the typical 5-10% royalties of the major labels) (Fairchild 1995). According to the owners of these labels, choices of release were not based around the likelihood of generating a profit or finding a hit but based on criteria that were aesthetic, social, and political all at once. This attitude to releasing music was seen by many individuals as an attempt to widen access to cultural production, allowing more artists to release music than could do so on the major labels. Geoff Travis, the owner of Rough Trade records, spoke in 1979 about the label’s attempt to ‘include as many people’ as possible.

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Rough Trade aim[s] to break down the barrier between the consumer and the consumed. What’s important, obviously, is to get rid of the idea that it’s important to be a star, and to make the funnel wider, so as to include as many people and ideas as possible. Rough Trade aims to release the kind of records we felt were worthwhile — not only aesthetically — but also in the motivation that lay behind them. I don’t ever want to see or like to see music simply existing in some kind of artistic void. It’s always been to me part of a social relation (Birch 1979).

Travis links this increase of participation to a breakdown of the hierarchical structure of the ‘star’ system, seen to be part of the mystifying, spectacular apparatus of the major labels. Artistic autonomy, what Travis refers to as the artistic void, is also positioned as mystificatory. Instead of purely aesthetic distinctions, Travis professes that Rough Trade is more concerned with social relationships, political motivations, and participation. The aim of the independent record label is ultimately to break down the barrier between the producer and consumer, increasing participation, diversity, and access within a media environment that is less hierarchical. Of course, these music scenes were never as inclusive or accessible as they might seem to suggest, still today dominated largely by straight white men. Inclusion is understood here more in terms of participation outside of mainstream popular musical styles than on the basis of social positionality. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, several independent labels such as Rough Trade attempted to expand and present a genuine challenge or alternative to the major labels (Jones 2019: 8). Rough Trade transitioned to using more of a star-based system, at least financially, placing more investment in certain artists to cross-subsidise others (Hesmondhalgh 1999: 39). This attempt was ultimately unsuccessful in that many of these labels went bankrupt (Rough Trade) or sold shares to major labels (Sub Pop), compromising their independence. In Hesmondhalgh’s analysis, there was an inherent incompatibility between an attempt to maintain a participatory roster that was not based (solely) around generating profit while simultaneously expanding large enough to offer a genuine challenge to the mainstream (ibid.). Similar narratives of expansion, contradiction, and collapse can be witnessed in other labels such as One Little 119

Indian (Hesmondhalgh 1999) or Crass Recordings (Thompson 2004). Despite these ‘failures’, participation still featured as a prominent feature in later DIY scenes. The DIY ethic of participation was crucial to the Riot Grrrl Scene in the 1990s (Downes 2012; Dunn & Fransworth 2012; Jones 2019: 13; Kempson 2015). This could be seen in the live performance culture that held women-only live shows or the exchange of zines that made regular discursive calls to participation (Duncmobe 2008; Thompson 2004: 107). While Riot Grrrl established a translocal network of participants, there was less of a concern with taking up the same cultural space that the mainstream occupied and more of a concern with creating autonomous spaces. This focus on group autonomy was not unique to Riot Grrrl. The hardcore, post-hardcore, and American indie music networks of the 1980s placed a heavy emphasis on building and maintaining independent scene infrastructure (Jones 2019: 10-12). As Bob Mold of Hüsker Dü claims, ‘it wasn’t so much about “smash the system” but “make our own system”’ (Azerrad 2001: 160). This included both a network of live music venues as well a number of established college radio stations that were dedicated to playing underground indie and hardcore music. While this group autonomy was initially a necessary institutional measure to enable musicians and labels to get their music out to wider audiences, it gradually became a more conscious political stance, seen as a form of opposition (if not a structural challenge) to the mainstream (Fairchild 2015; Jones 2019: 11). In 1991, K Records – which had begun as a DIY tape label in the early 1980s – held a music festival entitled the ‘International Pop Underground Convention’. The festival was a formative event in the history of Riot Grrrl and the festival’s advertisement foregrounds the situates independence as a stance of opposition against both the extractive logic of corporate capitalism (‘indentured servitude’) and the ‘myth’ of the star system.

As the corporate ogre expands its creeping influence on the minds of industrialized youth, the time has come for the International Rockers of the World to convene in celebration of our grand independence. […] Because the corporate ogre has infected the creative community with its black plague of indentured servitude. Because we are the gravediggers who 120

have buried the grey spectre of rock star myth. Because we are the misfits and we will have our day (Baumgarten 2012: 168).

Independence as both group autonomy and as a signifier of distinction from the mainstream are here combined with a deconstruction of the ‘myth’ of the star system and a supposed flattening of the hierarchies associated with it. While there is less of a concern with presenting a structural challenge to the major label system, independence is understood to counter or to ward off the problems associated with the mainstream. However, not all DIY movements have understood autonomy as oppositional. Noise music and underground experimental networks have long defended marginality as a source of authenticity (Novak 2013: 217). Al Margolis – musician, head of the 1980s cassette label Sound of Pig, and so-called ‘godfather of cassette culture’ — has a decidedly more avant-garde understanding of DIY. ‘[T]here is no overt political […] agenda’, Margolis states in a recent interview. ‘Making music/sounds/art […] that reject the mainstream commercial “culture” is I think the statement – the act of rebellion’ against the ‘American way’ in which value is ascribed only ‘by its commercial success’ (Electronic Cottage 2019). The role of the record label here is to help connect artists with other like-minded individuals through the system of postal tape trading and the key publications that integrated these disparate individuals (Op, Sound Choice, etc.). The commercial logic of the mainstream is still posited as an Other but there is less of a concern with participation or of fending off the influence of the ‘corporate ogre’ over the ‘minds’ of network members. Long gone was any attempt to storm the charts or to generate widespread exposure for artists. The history of DIY production is made of up diverse configurations that include discursive calls to participation, attempts to present a structural challenge to the mainstream, positional opposition to the mainstream, group and scene autonomy, and marginality. Despite this diversity, there exists a shared attitude towards gatekeepers among all of these different historical iterations of DIY. Mike Watts from the Minutemen articulates this attitude towards gatekeepers.

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There’s always been the idea of the gatekeeper, the tollbooth, the middleman. The idea of being able to record your own record [without these gatekeepers] was very powerful (Taylor 2016).

Regardless of its stance towards the mainstream, historical discourses of DIY production have foregrounded the empowering potential of circumventing institutional gatekeepers. In striking contrast, the contemporary independent record label functions increasingly as a gatekeeper of aesthetic content. While these labels have diverse affiliations with different strands of DIY history – whether in a lineage descending from Rough Trade and Dischord or from the underground experimental and noise networks – they often draw more heavily on the avant-garde leanings of underground experimental and electronic networks of the 1980s than on the aspirations of punk, hardcore, or Riot Grrrl. The next section shows how contemporary tape labels define their own relationship to DIY cultural production using distinctly avant-gardist language.

The DIY Avant-garde

In contrast to earlier forms of DIY production, contemporary underground label owners define DIY by a particular scale of production, a focus on the individual curatorial autonomy of the label owner, and a celebration of artistic risk. DIY has also been disarticulated from the aesthetics of lo-fi production associated with earlier forms and, as the following sections will show in more depth, the label has increasingly come to represent a curator of aesthetically innovative music, understood in decidedly avant-garde terms. Label owners do not articulate any direct attempt to maintain marginality in the way that noise networks historically have. Nonetheless, the small scale of production is still seen to be a defining factor of DIY cultural production. Adam, of the London-based ambient label ACR mentioned scale in his definition of DIY.

DIY is when you do stuff yourself and when it’s not on a massive scale and when you don't make much or any money off it (Adam interview 2018).

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Compared with the ambitions of many earlier independent record labels, DIY is here articulated as operating on a small scale by definition and this is linked to the lack of profit generated from this form of production. This feature of small- scale production is particularly true of cassette-only labels who frequently produce less than 100 tapes per release. Vinyl manufacturing plants, on the other hand, require a minimum order of 250 or 300 and many micro independent vinyl labels release in batches of 1000 or higher. Scale, rather than scalability (to borrow a decidedly neoliberal term), defines DIY for contemporary underground tape labels. The success of a record label is therefore defined neither in terms of presenting a structural challenge to the major labels nor in reaching a wide audience but instead by the more modest aspiration to remain solvent. Matthew of Patient Sounds describes his expectations for the label.

I don't want to try and pay my mortgage by selling tapes (it wouldn't happen anyway). I have a day job, as a part-time college professor, to make the money I need to live, and use my free time to do this thing that I love, which is making and distributing limited editions of objects. The label is self-sustaining, financially speaking, and that means it is as successful as I could have ever wanted it to be, which makes me feel content (Matthew interview 2018).

This labour of love is directly concerned with producing ‘limited editions’ rather than Rough Trade’s concern with ‘getting the message out’ (Jones 2018: 12). Success is defined in terms of sustainability rather than expansion or the ability to reach new listeners, what Stephen Lee has described as transition from a discourse of expansion to a discourse of survival (1995; see further Bartmanski and Woodward 2020). Not only is there a narrowing of the expected audience, but the discursive ‘call to action’ that can be found in earlier iterations of DIY discourse is conspicuously absent. Instead, there is a greater emphasis on aesthetic interest and innovation when it comes to selecting releases. This runs in contrast to earlier DIY scenes that placed an emphasis on what Ellis Jones refers to as an ‘aesthetic of access’ (2018: 83): forms of creativity that place value on the rough and ready, 123

the unprofessional, the amateur, and failure (Thompson 2004: 108). While Sarah Lowndes describes these features as an ‘aesthetic of necessity’ (2016: 2) — a direct result of the limited means of production — it is more apt to think of this aesthetic as a mixture of both performativity and necessity since this accounts for the combination of a politics of participation and a culture of appreciation that values the amateur as authentic or resistant (Harper 2014). In any case, with the falling costs of music production equipment, out-of- house cassette duplication, as well as graphic design software such as Adobe photoshop and access to good quality printers, the element of ‘necessity’ gradually waned. Andreas of Nara’s Muzan Editions describes the way that the DIY aesthetics of music production have changed accordingly.

Things look a little bit more professional now. Same with music nowadays. So many people know how to use pro tools perfectly, logic — it’s still kind of DIY — you’re doing it in your home, but production-wise it’s just insane what you can get now and it’s way cheaper (Andreas interview 2018).

For David Lackner, of the New York label GALTTA, the changing availability of professional-grade production means that the aesthetics of low fidelity no longer hold their political weight.

If DIY means literally doing it yourself then I guess I am DIY but if it's tied to any kind of aesthetic thing like low fidelity, I feel that personally I'm tired of low fidelity. I think that high fidelity is a phenomenon and it's a colour and I understand why in the past it was very associated with big record labels and consumerism and capitalism and all the things that people are rebelling against. And now I think we have these tools that are very consumer level that can create extremely hi-fi recordings. So to me, it's no longer political and it's not something that I feel embarrassed about. Whereas I think that's kind of a thing of the DIY community that maybe fidelity and musical education [still] hold some political weight for people. They’re proud that they don't do these things. For me, I don't have any of that (Lackner interview 2018).

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For contemporary underground label owners, DIY production is less concerned with subverting the aesthetics of major label products and more about using the tools available to create meaningful art (Bennett and Guerra 2019). This shift from an ‘aesthetic of access’ to an increasingly professional aesthetic is mirrored by the shifting understanding of autonomy within DIY scenes and networks. Fairchild, in his discussion of the DC hardcore scene, describes the scene as characterised by ‘group autonomy, non-coercive relations, mutual aid, voluntary cooperation, and non-coercive advocacy’ (1995: 30). Autonomy was understood as a collective scene’s autonomy from the major labels but also from the market logics of competitive behaviour and this can be seen too in the Riot Grrrl movement. The autonomy described by contemporary experimental and electronic participants, however, is a somewhat more avant- garde definition of autonomy, closer to that of the 1980s experimental tape networks. Tristan Bath, the journalist for the Quietus describes control as purely within the artistic and aesthetic realm.

[DIY] is about control. Entirely your thing. I’m not saying you have to have a manager telling you what to do. But if you are thinking about, if you’re crafting your music for a purpose other than itself — like I want this to chart, I want this to sell well then that’s also an element of control being taken away from you. There’s an element about where you are basing your decisions not entirely on artistic merit (Tristan interview 2018).

This language of pure artistic control resonates strongly with the modernist avant-garde understanding of creativity. Pete Dale in his 2012 book Anyone Can Do It outlines a history of punk culture as a series of events in which participants ‘recoil’ away from previous sounds and styles in order to temporarily establish a sense of the new (see also Haddon 2020). Dale’s sense of recoiling away from existing styles and sounds can also be seen in the language of other label owners. Brett of Not Not Fun describes this sense of recoiling to an ‘inner compass’.

I feel that on some level, [DIY] is supposed to be culture — like organic human culture — that isn't governed by the commercial aspirations that 125

govern all of the proper business from this industry higher up the ladder. We're involved with humans who we respect what they make and are inspired by what they make regardless of sales, or financial incentive. There are hype cycles and up-surges of trendiness and even the most avant-garde unlistenable music and so I think ignoring those as much as possible and following some more like inner radar and have that be a little bit dictated by your relationships with people. That's what DIY is to me.

Rather than seeking to create a platform for a scene (Fairchild’s collective autonomy) or creating the infrastructure for others to pursue their own musical experiments (as in the case of the 1980s underground tape networks), autonomy is positioned here at the level of the individual creative curatorial voice. This marks a shift from the record label acting as a ‘protective shield’ between the corporate and the broader underground scene (Hesmondhalgh 1999: 44) to the record label operating as the creative voice of one individual attempting to remain autonomous from trends and cycles, even within the underground itself (Bartmanski and Woodward 2020: 86-88). This ideal of aesthetic autonomy also surrounds the lower costs associated with manufacturing cassettes. Steve of the Newcastle, UK-based label Cruel Nature Records discusses his departure from a previous label Distraction that released on the vinyl format.

One of the reasons why I stopped being involved with Distraction is that, due to the cost of producing vinyl, you couldn’t take so many risks with the music that you were putting out. In essence, you were having to put something that you knew was going to recoup the costs (Steve interview 2018).

The focus on risk is echoed by other label owners.

Part of why I like releasing on tape is that there is no risk. It doesn’t matter if I don’t sell all the tapes because it’s only £50 or so (Graham interview 2018).

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Cassettes are a lot cheaper to produce than vinyl so you can take a risk on an artist and you’re not going to lose much money if it doesn't sell (Andrew interview 2018).

This is just as well because after paying for manufacturing, transactions costs, sending copies to the artist and to reviewers, many record labels will often make a loss, even on such small runs. In their work on independent record labels, Bartmanski and Woodward argue that the ascendancy of creative autonomy is inseparable from the valorisation of financial sacrifice and risk (2020: 90); placing aesthetic concerns above all else requires one to disavow economic considerations. Cassette labels articulate both a discourse of economic risk and a language of survival that work together to position their labels as individual and autonomous creative projects. As Luvaas (2012) and Jones (2018) have demonstrated, this concern with risk is also valorised by post-Fordist forms of work in which individuals are disciplined into being semi-autonomous and entrepreneurial workers, although this has long been a part of the creative industries to a certain extent (Hesmondhalgh 2007). Nonetheless, there is still an enduring concern with building qualitatively strong social (rather than financial) relationships with other like-minded individuals.

My solution to this is to focus on building relationships. A good relationship built on mutual respect and common interests [and common] causes is more valuable than any amount of plays or purchases, and good relationships can bring about wonderful experiences more valuable than any amount of plays or purchases (Petri interview 2019).

However, these forms of sociality are far from incompatible with the logic of larger labels. Jeff Lane of Seattle, Washington’s Never Anything was in fact happy for artists to go on to larger labels and enter into more market-based production.

If you're making very far-out shit, its hard to find an audience and it can be a wonderful thing to be on a label where people will have eyes looking at it and to hopefully be a steppingstone to people to be making vinyl 127

records and making money or something. If you can even do that. It’s a difficult industry (Jeff interview 2019).

Autonomy, thus, has little to do with creating a cultural space completely separate from broader market logics in which experimental and electronic musicians can release and circulate music. Instead, the independent cassette label operates as a (putatively) autonomous creative voice within a much broader music market. Ultimately, this more individualistic form of autonomy — at the level of the label rather than the scene — is far more important to DIY producers than challenging or opposing major labels. Dwight of the Morgantown, Virginia label Crash Symbols got to the heart of this broader transition away from the antagonism and opposition of earlier DIY labels.

I don't really think there's a fundamental difference between a well-run tape label and a well-run larger label. It's just different relationships, different routines, different networks, and a different scale (Dwight interview 2019).

The different relationships that Dwight describes are less motivated by a critique of capitalism and more ‘inherited’, bound up in the mode of cultural production.

I feel like our “business structure”, quote unquote, if you want to call it that, is more inherited than anything else. I learned through releasing my own tapes that this was a part of like the transactional form that comes with releasing a tape is that you get copies of your tape and that is the compensation for releasing on the label (Dwight interview 2019).

Cassette labels typically ‘pay’ the artist with a portion of the cassette tapes — anywhere between 10 and 30% — and then anywhere between 50 and 100% of profits (after costs) are transferred to the artists. These transactions are built into the way that musicians enter into a particular musical network as they follow labels, release their own music on other labels, and then start up their own. Bartmanski and Woodward are correct to note that these economic relationships are very far from the instrumental rationalism of the major labels 128

(2020: 200) and chapter 5 investigates these alternative financial relationships and other forms of mutual support in greater depth. However, these relationships are not motivated by an anti-capitalist critique. While the financial conditions and relationships of DIY have not changed — and in certain ways they have become tougher — there has been a broad shift from participation for participation’s sake to art for art’s sake. This is not to suggest that participants are parochial in their outlook or that they are apathetic towards the potentially exploitative structures of the major labels. Rather, anti-mainstream or anticapitalist politics do not feature discursively or ideologically as motivating factors in the way they did for Rough Trade, Dischord, Crass, or the participants of Riot Grrrl scenes. This follows on from the avant-garde language of artistic autonomy and experimentation observable in the context of 1980s underground tape-trading networks, yet (as the next sections demonstrate) the contemporary label functions less as a means of connecting disparate individuals and getting music out into the world, and more as the curatorial voice of one individual. This is important because it shapes the ways in which labels position themselves as curators and how the focus on aesthetic autonomy plays out as the cassette label is remediated through digital space.

Curation

Curation, of course, is not the sole preserve of DIY record labels. Elodie Roy, in her analysis of digital music archives, describes the consumer as a digital flâneur in which the internet ‘can be used as a place for nearly infinite drift’ (2015: 170). Roy’s flâneur, however, risks reproducing an ideal of the ‘sovereign consumer’ (Olsen 2019), ‘who, relatively autonomously, reflects on his/her lifestyle, in light of available money and time, and selects goods and services entirely voluntarily to match preferences and values’ (Warde 2017: 184). Even with the emergence of digital platforms that offer content in abundance, consumption patterns remain institutionally embedded. As fig. 3 shows, listeners within underground music networks continue to consult a variety of intermediaries, residual and emergent, digital and otherwise.

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Fig. 3 – Intermediaries regularly used by listeners

Type of intermediary Percentage of listeners who regularly use intermediary

Non-subscription streaming services 79%

Radio 75%

Social media websites 70%

Journalism 69%

Physical record stores 48%

Discogs and collecting websites 42%

Subscription streaming services 41%

Online record stores 40%

In the contemporary media ecology, the curatorial role of cultural intermediaries has become both more widespread and more economically valuable (Barna 2017, 2019; Bhaskar 2016; Hendricks 2015; Hracs and Jansson 2017; Jansson and Hracs 2018; Strachan 2018: 3). The term curation stems from the Latin curare which means to take care of or to preserve. Throughout the late twentieth century, however, ‘the role of curators has shifted from preserving and archiving art to selecting, evaluating, displaying and framing pieces’ (Hracs and Jansson 2017: 4). Residual intermediaries such as record labels, record stores, distributors, and radio stations are increasingly coming to see their own role as curatorial. Digital music platforms too are increasingly incorporating curatorial functions into their services. While these services rely on an abundance of material, digital streaming platforms are at the same time competing to select, present, and ‘package’ music (Eriksson et al. 2019). As Jansson and Hracs suggest, ‘with similar music catalogs and price structures, competing firms like Spotify, Apple and Deezer have started a curation arms race to attract and retain listeners by investing heavily in their proprietary platforms and recommender systems, but also in human music experts’ (2018: 1607). Bandcamp, similarly, 130

commissions regular journalism for its online editorial Bandcamp Daily; the managing director, Jes Skolnik, wrote as a music journalist for Pitchfork, the New York Times, as well as a number of independent punk zines. Both residual and emergent media, within underground networks and beyond, are taking on increasing curatorial roles within a context of abundance. The following sections deal with three different dimensions of curation in underground music networks: distinction, the series, and visibility. Jansson and Hracs suggest that curation involves three stages (ibid.: 1611). The first stage involves the curator searching for and discovering material. The second stage involves the evaluation of material that allows the curator to sort, filter, and select content for inclusion. The third stage involves arranging, displaying, organising, and in the process, determining the value of the curated set. The next section begins by discussing the first two of these stages within the context of micro- independent record labels. The following section discusses the third stage of curation within the context of the record label. Following this, I discuss the way in which over intermediaries remediate the record label within their own curatorial practices. I show that the cassette tape increasingly participates in a serial logic of releasing music that centres the record label and the label owner’s tastes as the central organising frame of underground music, above genre or scene. This serial curatorial logic of the record label is distributed across other cultural intermediaries — most significantly, those digital platforms that also rely on a logic of abundance in order to maximise their revenue.

Curation I: Distinction

Anyone can self-release, but from an audience’s perspective, a label can act as a filter or curator for a certain style or aesthetic (Colin interview 2019).

These words come from my interview with Colin Webster, a London-based saxophonist, and they get to the root of what a curator does: curators make distinctions. As Elodie Roy writes about music collecting, ‘[t]he collection is an operation of reduction rather than inclusion’ (2015: 134) and the same can be said of the record label. Any distinction involves a form of exclusion based upon 131

particular criteria. These criteria may be based around style or genre or they may be based upon a broader framework of perceived aesthetic merit (however defined). Regardless of the nature of the criteria, these distinctions always take place within particular social networks. Label owners are embedded in social and knowledge networks and draw on these connections in order to find music to release. In the process, the act of making distinctions reproduces those relationships and social distinctions as well as the social positioning of the label owner (Bourdieu 1984). An analysis of the different forms of distinction reveals that the record label increasingly functions as the central textual frame within the circulation of underground music. Some label owners work to curate a well-defined sonic aesthetic for their label. Much of the music on Manchester’s Tombed Visions records, run by David McLean, can be categorised as experimental improvised music that places an emphasis on the compositional process.

I’m interested in doing records that have a very strong contextual element. I released a record by a saxophonist called Sam Andreae. He did a solo saxophone record, but instead of it being just melodic improvisation, he mic’d the saxophone up with certain contact mics and had certain distortions on some of the mics. It was all close-mic’d so he’d have a mic right by his mouth and it’s like a weird techno record. You can hear the mechanics [of the instrument]. Stuff like that really interests me, if there’s a really detailed conception of how the record came about (McLean interview 2018).

The artists on the label may come from many different musical and pedagogical backgrounds — contemporary classical music, jazz, electronic music, or a background in punk and noise music — yet they are brought together as sonically similar under the banner of the label. Other labels focus on specific sounds or genres. Both Muzan Editions (Osaka and Nara, Japan) and ACR (London) release ambient electronic music. Most of the music on these labels not only shares significant sonic features but the artists themselves use similar genre terminology. In these cases, these labels operate to enact genre distinctions and boundaries by regulating what music is considered representative but also what 132

music is considered to be innovative and challenging within the context of genre descriptions. These tape labels described above, however, are in the minority. The vast majority of record labels do not proactively release music that shares such similar sonic characteristics and generic descriptors. For the Danish label Posh Isolation’s ‘label of the month’ feature in Resident Advisor, the label owners describe their discomfort around the category of noise.

[Posh Isolation] sh[ies] away from genres. "They're impractical," says Rahbek. He uses the term noise reservedly, for "practical" purposes, even though it fails to properly cover much of Posh's output. "We never wanted to be a noise label," he continues. Stadsgaard prefers "electronic music," in the widest possible sense. "I always say 'electronic music,' or 'electronic dance music' if it's danceable," says Rönnberg. To compartmentalise the label's sound misses the point (Dicker 2017).

Rahbek’s use of the term noise is citational in David Brackett’s use of the term (2016: 12); genre here does not designate a series of sonic descriptors or a common compositional attitude. Instead, it establishes a link between a particular social network that centres on the label and a particular lineage of music. Dwight makes a similar connection to genre.

We see ourselves as focused on quote unquote psychedelic music. We try not to define it deliberately. When I say it, I use air quotes so people know it can mean almost whatever they think or want it to be (Dwight interview 2019).

Dwight establishes a performative connection to a particular lineage of music while at the same time distancing the label from the fixity of such generic descriptions. Instead, the curatorial oversight of the label transcends the generic terms it cites as the primary organising structure of music. Los Angeles’s 100% Silk enacts a similar relationship with genre. The label, run by Britt and Amanda (also the heads of Not Not Fun records), releases dance music that is not primarily intended for a club setting. 133

We would listen to certain dance music but it was a field we had never really connected with before. As some musician friends started experimenting with raw outsider approaches with it, it just started to seem very full of potential and exciting to come to dance music with no particular background in it and without a well-versed historical understanding of it, but just this idea that it would be some rhythmic thing. We’re not even thinking about a club. We’re just thinking about it as opposed to something purely textural, something churning and psychedelic. It would just be this rhythmic pulsing state and I felt more of a lineage with the more straightforward types of krautrock than I did dance music. In the early days of silk, most of the music we were being sent or that we were dealing with wasn’t ever intended to be played in a club (Britt interview 2018).

As Britt suggests, 100% Silk imagines an audience more acquainted with guitar- based music and more embedded in practices of deep (static) listening that were discussed in the last chapter. The releases are dictated by social networks — peers of Britt who are largely dance music ‘outsiders’ — far more than they are by stylistic categories. Some labels make these social networks explicit. The Shanghai-based label SVBKVLT, run by the Manchester-born Gaz Williams, releases experimental club music from China — both native (e.g. 33EMYBW) and U.S. expats — and other countries in East and South-East Asia, such as Indonesia’s Gabber Modus Operandi. Gaz met many of the artists, whether they were local or international touring artists, within the Shanghai underground club scene (Junaini 2020). Labels are deeply embedded in translocal music scenes and networks, often with close associations to particular venues, stores, or a social network of musicians (Bartmanski & Woodward 2020: 91). Many of them perform live music and tour themselves. Label owners are often involved in booking and organising events where they will regularly contact other artists. Kazuya Ishigami, owner of the Osaka-based label Neus-318, ran in the past an experimental music venue in Kobe. Additionally, label owners are often very active music consumers, spending a great deal of time locating new music. Label owners may build up connections 134

with other labels through regularly consuming their releases. These social networks are crucial to the distinctions that label owners make. Fig. 4 demonstrates the frequency of different types of relationships between artists and record labels. The top two categories represent strong ties formed before the release and these are the most common forms of relationships. The bottom two categories indicate relationships that were formed through the process of releasing music on the label. Many labels find themselves inundated with submissions on a weekly basis and 34% of record labels release demo submissions from total strangers, almost always submitted online, although a quarter of this group suggest that demo submissions make up a minority of their catalogues. This leaves 26% of labels who regularly release submissions from strangers. Only 20% of the labels directly approached artists who they did not previously have some personal connection with. Label owners are highly connected nodes in underground music networks. Releasing music strengthens these connections and reproduces label owners’ authority within a particular network.

Fig. 4 - Label and artist relationships

Type of connection between label and Percentage of labels who release music artist from these connections

Met face to face 59%

Established a relationship through an 57% internet platform

Demo submissions 34%

Approaching strangers for releases 20%

This is important: while some labels make distinctions along genre lines and others seek to release and make visible music from very specific networks, the distinctions made by most label owners are based to a large degree on their own personal taste. Paul of Fort Evil Fruit, based in Cork, Ireland, explicitly describes the label as an extension of his own music taste. 135

It’s really just my own taste. I suppose at a certain point, a lot of other labels are very specialist. At a certain point I decided not to go down that route. I like a lot of very disparate types of music. I suppose one of the things I enjoy doing is putting unlikely things together. I just wanted to be able to put out whatever I like. I wouldn’t expect anybody to like everything I put out but if people are paying attention to the label, there will be something they like every now and then (Paul interview 2018).

Emília Barna, in her study of 22Tracks curators, found a similar ‘emphasis on personal choices and preferences’ that ‘override strict genre boundaries’ (2017). Even within labels that do curate a more specific sonic aesthetic, personal taste is often still the guiding force for making distinctions. They reproduce what Barna refers to as a ‘legitimate eclecticism’ (2017) that combines various genres, all recontextualised out of their various performance and recording cultures into the culture of appreciation and listening described in the last chapter. David of GALTTA describes his favourite labels as curators guided by personal taste but at the same time, voices an anxiety around this issue.

Some of the record labels that I really like, I think they are basically curators and they have a sound and they really pride themselves on championing a certain sound or a certain type of music. I tell you as a musician, it's almost a little unapproachable because often your music has to really fit into this very very very small niche of one particular person's taste (Lackner interview 2019).

This anxiety points to a broader issue with contemporary cultural curators. As Maguire and Matthews suggest, cultural intermediaries operate on the basis that ‘the personal is necessarily professional; that is, all cultural intermediaries rely more or less on personal dispositions and cultural capital as the basis of their professional credibility’ (2012: 556). As label owners become more deeply connected within social networks and their labels garner more followers and listeners, they may become (often unwittingly) important gatekeepers within the music network (ibid.). It is important to note here that setting up a cassette tape 136

label is not, in and of itself, a particularly difficult undertaking and artists always have the ability to release their own cassettes. Nonetheless, for a label to become successful, it is important to establish meaningful social relationships with other intermediaries that are geographically and socially embedded. Many Japanese musicians, attempting to establish audiences in North America and Europe feel that they must release on labels based in these areas rather than Japanese labels. Duenn and Kota Watanabe (Cemetry) both informed me in our interviews that this was their reason for approaching tape labels such as Opal Tapes. While the barriers to setting up a tape label are relatively low, successful labels crystallise and reproduce social networks that can at times have a gatekeeping role. As labels become more entrenched within networks, their personal tastes are woven further into networks of circulation. Most label owners are white men with strong roots in (punk) rock and rock-adjacent music, rather than dance music or hip hop. Doug, quoted above for his appreciation of ‘bullshit filters’ speaks at length about the need to reflect the diversity of musicians.

There’s a huge conversation happening about race and sexuality. These are very important things and those aspects that I think really helped break down the walls of some of that scenester cliqueness that got so insular — that got so white and male with the influence of hardcore punk culture in the 1990s — because it’s got to (Doug interview 2019).

I ask Doug whether he feels that the disproportionate presence of white male label owners was part of that conversation. ‘That’s why we did a collective’, Doug tells me, ‘to make sure we have a good swath of input from different gender identifications and races’ (Doug interview 2019). Other labels such as BLIGHT function as collectives with a number of creative voices. Nonetheless, the majority of experimental labels are run by a small group of white men. Other label owners express discomfort with their role as gatekeepers. Adam of ACR describes his discomfort with having to make selections from the work of friends and peers.

We have to say no to a lot of friends as well. It’s quite alienating at times. They do often take it the wrong way. It’s a very strange way to be. It's kind 137

of isolating because in some ways people view you as a critic (Adam interview 2018).

Adam’s discomfort with this role shows a trace of the residual importance of a more participatory logic of DIY cultural production. Adam speaks at length about generating a sense of translocal community within the label. ‘I’ve been trying to keep it to acquaintances, and friends of friends’, Adam tells me, ‘so the label has a kind of a family feel’ (Adam interview 2018). Zach, of the Omaha, Nebraska- based Neologist Productions similarly describes the label as a form of community.

I mean a label in itself is essentially a community. But as far as my output, my own personal output, I’m pretty much just releasing stuff that I would like to own on tape and just putting my own art. But yeah, I think that a label — even if there’s five artists, ten artists, a hundred artists — that’s definitely a community thing (Zach interview 2019).

For Zach, an imagined community is established through the process of releasing yet this community is still based around the label owner’s personal tastes. Overall, curatorial distinctions inevitably involve a combination of both exclusion and elevation. The scale of production allows labels to mark themselves as both independent of market logics while the curatorial language of the label simultaneously transcends generic logics. If genre or meta-genre once operated as the primary mode of distinction within electronic and experimental music networks (Demers 2010: 137), the label increasingly performs this role in order to establish a legitimate eclecticism. These factors, combined, produce a pronounced language of aesthetic autonomy that is, upon closer inspection, usually reducible to the taste of the individual label owner, drawn from a pool of connections and peers. The result of these changing institutional positions is that the micro-independent record label is increasingly seen as the primary textual frame for the organisation of music rather than the scene, location or genre.

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Curation II: Series

This section focuses on the way in which label owners’ distinctions are displayed and presented through multiple media. As Antione Hennion suggests, taste ‘result[s] from a performance by the taster’ (2007: 108) and as Bartmanski and Woodward state, labels materialise these tastes through the production of physical editions (2020: 8). However, this materialisation not only takes the form of physical objects, but also how these objects are organised within both online and offline spaces, as well as the ways consumers reproduce these organisational logics. The tape label as a textual frame increasingly takes on a serial form, particularly as it is remediated across digital spaces and other intermediaries. The record label thus becomes a site for the overlapping and intermingling of media systems. Although labels often present diverse types of music together, drawing from a variety of styles and genres, they typically present a far more concentrated visual aesthetic. Compared with previous iterations of DIY cultural production, the visual design of many contemporary cassette labels is significantly more polished and professional. This is particularly true of labels that release only on cassette tape (and digital) such as Dinzu Artefacts or the Tapeworm. In order to understand this new visual language, it is necessary to briefly examine the changing history of the visual aesthetics of the cassette tape within DIY cultural production. Fig. 5 shows an early release from the band Beat Happening on K Records. The cassette J-card — handwritten, hand-drawn, and photocopied — revels in its brazen naivety and amateurishness. Fig. 6 shows the first release from Swinging Axe Productions, the Northbridge, California cassette label. While it uses photography rather than illustration, this cover similarly incorporates the felt intimacy of handwriting. These releases were usually hand duplicated rather than professionally manufactured (Baumgarten 2012: 15) and such processes of production often left indeterminate traces on their products in the form of both audible and visible noise, reflecting the often-low fidelity methods of music production (Azerrad 2001: 481; Baumgarten 2012: 124; Harper 2014: 246-267). For some academic commentators, many drawing on the work of Adorno (2002), the noisiness of these modes of production holds political importance as it 139

discloses the mediated nature of the artwork, in the process demystifying the commodity fetishism characteristic of the products of the culture industries (Dolan 2010, Hertz 2013). For others the handmade quality of these releases bespeaks an intimacy that was missing from the products of the major labels (Drew 2019: 3). Certainly, these visual and audible cues continue to signify a marked alterity in comparison with the contemporaneous products of the major labels and the larger independents. Within noise, extreme metal, and hardcore punk networks such residual practices of production remained well into the 2000s, and in some cases, to the present day. The production of this music typically places an emphasis on feedback and noise, and in the case of harsh noise music, on technological failure and indeterminacy, using broken and repurposed consumer electronics and music equipment such as transistor radios (Novak 2013). Using techniques such as collage and photocopying, the images on noise tapes retain the almost situationist sensibility of earlier punk art (Nehring 2006), often taking them a step further by staging acts of extreme transgression (almost always sexual or violent) (Novak 2013: 242). While the visual language of these two DIY styles differs significantly — with cartoonish naivety of K records on the one hand and the confrontational or pornographic on the other — these releases both presented an ‘aesthetic of access’ that foregrounds noisy processes of production and inexpensive materials.

Fig. 5 – Beat Happening cassette J-card 140

Fig. 6 – The Screaming Dukduks cassette J-card

While many of these signifiers were employed within releases on vinyl records and CDs, the comparatively lower cost of cassettes meant that the low fidelity, handmade style of production was more common and considered to be strongly tied to the cassette tape throughout the 1980s and 1990s. In the early 2000s, as CD-R burners became more affordable, these processes of production for many were transposed onto the CD-R. Fig. 7 shows a CD-R from the year 2003. Many of the contemporary owners of tape labels participated in CD-R circulation or ran CD-R labels earlier in the 2000s. Kazuya Ishigami’s Osaka based-label Neus-318 began as a noise music cassette label in 1990, and then switched to CD-Rs throughout the 2000s, then to CDs in the 2010s and then in 2017, back to cassette. Arguably, this transposition of handmade DIY production onto the CD-R intensified the non-professional and rough aesthetics. CD-Rs would be folded up in simple paper packaging or packaged in small plastic bags. During this period, the preference for amateurish aesthetics began to wane for some labels. David McLean, whose first release was on the CD-R format, describes his present disdain for the format.

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Between 2005 and 2012 there was this whole CD-R scene but all of the releases just look fucking awful. They looked cheap and they were not presented well. Somebody gives you a CD-R and it’s folded in a bit of A4 printed paper, whereas having a cassette, you [can] package it quite interestingly (McLean interview 2018).

While earlier DIY production reveled in the noisiness and performative amateurishness of its production, the word ‘cheap’ here is used to signify something far less glamorous. Similarly, Markus of the Mönchengladbach label Econore, mirrors this language of disposability, describing the CD-R as ‘such a throwaway product’ (Markus interview 2019). From around 2012, the use of the CD-R began to drop within DIY networks, and with it the transposed practices of rough handmade production receded. Instead, many contemporary cassette labels use a far more professional and polished visual language. While hand drawn artwork may be used, it is usually incorporated within a graphic template that is digitally produced. In other words, designers rarely embrace the more holistic hand-drawn approach of the Beat Happening cassettes or the rough collage of punk and noise aesthetics.

Fig. 7 – CDR cover from Japanese noise artist Unbalance Neurose (2003) 142

As demonstrated in the previous section, contemporary DIY participants are less concerned with maintaining claims to alterity or generating large-scale alternatives as they are with maintaining the autonomy of musical creation within a network where others embrace a certain marginality of circulation. Within this context, the production of cassettes has shifted from that of an amateur and homemade practice of production to something resembling more of an artisanal craft production (Graham 2016: 133). For Graham of Fractal Meat Cuts, the production of ‘small art editions’ maintains a continuity with DIY history.

I feel like some of the earlier editions are more like small art editions rather than a tape release. I like having the idea of having something handmade. That’s a very DIY thing. It’s quite personal. It’s like when someone makes a mixtape and they’ve put the time into it and personalised it for you (Graham interview 2018).

Graham continues to use the language of handmade when comparing the cassette tape with previous DIY practice and the mixtape. However, the comparison with the mixtape is curious for two reasons. First, as I established in the last chapter, contemporary cassette circulation is deeply embedded in practices of listening and consumption that celebrate the album rather than the consumer’s combination of individual tracks. Second, Fractal Meat Cuts, as well as 78% of labels that I interviewed, have their tapes duplicated and printed professionally out of house. While Graham makes a discursive connection to a past characterised by amateur creativity, the production of cassette tapes is perhaps more professional and certainly more outsourced than ever. This increased professionalism can be seen in the design of the cassette tapes as well. Both The Tapeworm and Dinzu Artefacts make use of white space in their releases (see fig. 8). The spines of the cassettes are white with plain text and the cassettes are presented within white space on the label’s websites. This use of space gives the label the impression of a gallery or a museum space and the language of the gallery is specifically used by a number of label owners. Matthew links the curatorial work of the label to the image of the gallery.

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I think of record labels almost like art galleries; label's work entails curating artists work, showcasing that work, and getting that work to an audience the label has built (Matthew interview 2018).

Joe, of Los Angeles’s Dinzu Artefacts, makes repeated reference to the label as a kind of museum.

I wanted to create a label that had that same feel as going into a museum. The collection of all the cassettes that I was aiming to put out would be sort of an auditory museum (Joe interview 2019).

The design of Dinzu Artefacts uses photography that rarely draws from the human form, instead preferring abstract textures and mute colours. Never Anything, on the other hand, uses block colours and simple geometric shapes. Both of these labels decentre written text; the artist and album name do not feature on the front cover of Dinzu Artefacts’ releases but are only on the spine while Never Anything uses very small text. The spine of each cassette bears the label name and logo as well as the edition number. This minimalism of design draws far more from the white label aesthetic of 1990s techno vinyl records than it does from the kinds of 1980s and 1990s tape labels (Bartmanski and Woodward 2020: 180). These choices of design, however, are not merely aesthetic. While earlier DIY productions resulted in singular, idiosyncratic artefacts that drew on a common aesthetic language, contemporary tape labels establish an overarching serial identity for the label. As Maguire and Matthews suggest, cultural intermediaries such as record labels frame goods, placing them in relationships with other goods while also scripting the consumption and understanding of such goods (2012: 555). Elodie Roy, similarly, describes the record label as a frame.

Record labels constitute a symbolic ‘frame’ to contextualize (and perhaps even appreciate) the music, as well as to generate a certain microcosm or context [...]. Once it has been ‘labelled’, a recording enters a particular dwelling which marks it as part of a broader territory of works. Such a territory is equally symbolic and mental (the label, as a name, forms a 144

central element of discourses about music) as it is physical (the record, as tangible object, occupies a distinct site) (2014, 4).

Roy’s description of the territory of the record label encompasses different spaces, both online and offline, as well as the discursive and visual links between the different releases.

Fig. 8 – Dinzu Artefacts cassette designs

The platform Bandcamp, perhaps more than any other music platform, incorporates and makes visible the territory of the record label. Fig. 9 shows a 145

typical label Bandcamp page. The different releases are positioned side by side under the banner of the record label. While artists hold individual pages themselves, when the user clicks on a particular release, the platform will often direct the user to the label’s page. As Fig. 9 demonstrates, the primary referent for users is the cover art of the album, rooted in the residual frame of the square vinyl record cover (remediated into the CD; see Roy 2015: 150). Often, the digital net of the cassette J-card is folded out to fit into this square. This practice of presenting the cassette tape remediates its visual form into the already- remediated digital space of square album artwork so that it may unproblematically occupy the same digital space alongside vinyl records, CDs, and digital albums.

Fig. 9 – Bandcamp label page for Never Anything Records

While many micro-independent record labels would not use the term, the framing function of the label works in ways similar to a brand, a ‘a set of relations 146

between products or services’, that function as a ‘platform for the patterning of activity, a mode of organising activities in time and space’ (Lury 2004: 1; see also Aronczyk & Powers 2010; Arvidsson 2006). Bartmanski and Woodward describe the brand as a mode of aesthetic belonging and classification.

Labels fix and objectify that elusive and yet irresistible sense of aesthetic belonging and desire to classify. They do so by acting as rather rigorously unified brands, but — critically — they also achieve this effect through the indispensable act of concrete materialization that building a recorded catalogue affords (2020: 53).

As Timothy Taylor has noted, branding has become increasingly important within the music industries (2015: 54-62). Music stars increasingly function as brands, engaging in co-branding strategies with audio equipment companies (Beats by Dre), fashion companies, and a whole host of other companies (Meier 2016). Simultaneously, independent artists are increasingly encouraged to engage in entrepreneurial practices of self-branding that focus on performing uniqueness and realness (Pagis and Ailon 2017) within a context of marketable emotional intimacy. The branding of tape labels, on the other hand, decentres the artist as a social subject and body while elevating their creative acts as works. The curator’s selections and aesthetic presentations constitute the framing function of the brand here. While the personality of the artist is downplayed, the ‘legitimate eclecticism’ of the curatorial distinction is elevated. The territory of the record label is not simply established through online platforms. It is also established through the archiving practices of consumption. Mike, who runs the cassette review podcast Tab’s Out, discussed the differences between the ways he orders his records from his tapes.

My LPs are ordered alphabetically by artist but my tapes are all grouped together by label because I feel with cassettes the spines are wide and prominent and a lot of labels have an aesthetic. They have a look and they handle their own art. I’m staring right now at my Astral Spirits tapes and there’s this massive black and red block all along my wall. And my NNA tapes are this long white blotch with simple text going across it. I don’t 147

think tape labels are trying to put out the next big hit. Labels are trying to create their own identity (Mike interview 2019).

As Mike suggests, the identity of the label supersedes, or is at least as important as, the identity of the artist. Phil of The Tapeworm describes the cassettes his label released as ‘small art editions’ that constitute ‘an affordable way of creating collectible editions’ (Julian interview 2019). All of the labels interviewed state that they have multiple repeat consumers with many labels suggesting that a handful of completist consumers have purchased a copy of every release. The seriality of these curated releases is thus only fully constituted through serial consumption practices that reproduce the authority of the record label’s curatorial function. Overall, the curatorial function of the label has become a vital resource for many listeners navigating a media ecology felt to be overwhelming, and the serial framing of recordings helps to establish strong affective ties between label and listener, ties that are vital to the label’s financial survival (see Chapter 5). However, for some members of older DIY scenes, this emergent collectability is derided. Ian MacKaye, member of Fugazi and co-founder of Dischord records, critiques this emergent form of collectability.

I make music for the people and that [contemporary cassette labels] is a boutique item (Taylor 2016).

Although MacKaye’s words are perhaps overly dismissive, they demonstrate the historical distance between the aspirations of independent record labels in the 1980s and the aesthetics of smaller scale, professional, and curated contemporary DIY record labels. As the next section shows, this historical change is not only located at the level of the record label: several other intermediaries reproduce the serial curatorial authority of the label.

Curation III: Visibility

Record labels, on their own websites, on Bandcamp, and on Discogs, curate and perform authoritative acts of taste-making by housing music within elevated 148

visual frames that serially archive themselves for contemporary and future consumption. While for many of these labels, the majority of their sales take place through the platform Bandcamp, labels still feel that it is important to make their physical editions visible within the curated spaces of other residual intermediaries. Some of these intermediaries such as record stores directly interact with physical media. Others, such as radio stations or music publications, do not so obviously ‘require’ physical editions. While physical media are not always essential to the functioning of intermediaries, many of these intermediaries reproduce the logic of the record label. In doing so, they remediate physical media as part of their curatorial practices, participating in a specific ethics of visibility. Visibility and publicness have their own histories within DIY networks (Chrysagis 2016; Straw 2019). Evangelos Chrysagis, in his study of DIY promotional materials in contemporary Glasgow, describes the play of invisibility and visibility in constituting what he refers to as the power of opacity, techniques of publicity that document events in plain sight while remaining largely invisible to a general public (2016: 294). In contemporary cassette labels there is too a politics of visibility, but it is less about trying to hide away in plain sight, as much as it is concerned with avoiding particular types of visibility. I briefly outline label owners’ frustrations with certain types of publicity before discussing record stores and music publications in turn. Naturally, many labels were keen to reach as wide an audience for their music through any mechanism. Silvia of Yerevan Tapes, based in Bologna, describes the role of the record label as a ‘megaphone’.

I think the role of a record label is to be a kind of platform, a megaphone. I’ve been doing this for 8 years […]. It takes most of my spare time, and in all these years I’ve cultivated some kind of network made of personal/professional relationships that the music I promote can circulate through (Silvia 2019).

This point of view was a common one. However, there are certain types of publicity that are considered objectionable to many label owners. 149

Many labels vehemently oppose paying for public advertising or publicity. Matthew of Patient Sounds describes his opposition to the use of paid advertising. ‘Patient Sounds has been very rigid with sticking to our "renegade spirit" roots’ he tells me, ‘and we have never paid for advertising, press, or PR’ (Matthew interview 2018). This kind of publicity would undermine the artistic autonomy of the label, demonstrating a concern for popularity or attention rather than the release of aesthetically innovative music. Other labels express a similar disdain for the use of social media.

I just think it's a muddy pit. I bought a couple Facebook ads maybe three times in my life and all it really gets is [Facebook] likes. I just try to stay away from social media because I just think in today's state, it's just ridiculous. It’s all just clicks and likes and stuff and people sometimes will share things just to share it and just to be like “oh look what I put on my wall”. It's some sort of popularity contest. I just don't really care about it at all (Zach interview 2019).

Our account on Facebook never made any sense and I wish we never lost any time with it, even if we barely did. We are aware how strong these platforms are for expanding connections, but I personally do not believe they carry any value. [Their content is] depleted and it just comes and goes (Pedro interview 2019).

56% of labels state that they use social media to reach and maintain audiences with some positive outcomes — whether this is increasing or maintaining connections with audiences. Nonetheless, many of these labels are keen to minimise their use of social media, avoiding daily updates and intimate or personal forms of communication, instead simply announcing new releases and sales information. On the other hand, 44% of labels express some level of discomfort with social media or find it unhelpful altogether. Of these 44%, nearly half (19% of the total labels) do not use social media at all or use it very little. Despite the differences in approaches, most label owners share the view that aggressive marketing and promotional strategies that hinge on the personalities of artists or label owners compromise artistic integrity in some way. Instead, 150

labels often seek to make their curated editions visible in other respected (mostly residual) intermediaries such as record stores and music publications. Record stores, much like record labels, have come to increasingly see their role as curatorial. Trevor, owner of the store Jacknife Records located in Los Angeles, describes his role as an editor.

The record store is like a community — everybody comes and we hang out — but [its role] is also to be an editor, to share discoveries (Trevor interview 2019).

Much like label owners, store owners are embedded in knowledge networks. These stores often proliferate within busy music cities such as LA, Berlin, Tokyo, and London that have a high density of music network participants. The curatorial role of the record store takes place both in store and online and these two spaces create two very different forms of visibility. For some labels, it was important to make releases visible in the same city that they lived in. Stefan discusses the positioning of cassettes in local record stores and coffee shops.

We bring a small box of our cassettes to some local record shops. One of them is a coffee shop which has a profile of a music-loving place so they sell a few of our tapes and we have some actual music shops that sell the cassettes as well. We don't sell a whole lot of them over there, but I guess it's more of an exposure thing — the fact that our tapes are visible there. Also if they are visible at gigs we put on, that can really help (Stefan interview 2019).

Placing copies in this coffee shop is less about increasing sales as it is about a particular type of visibility, about embedding the label within particular cultural spaces within the city. Through the presence of physical editions in stores, venues, and cafes, labels are weaved into the social topology of local music scenes. They become part of a process of musical place-making, and they contribute to the formation of a musical public around specific spaces and stores. 151

On the other hand, many label owners send their cassettes to record stores positioned very far from the cities that they reside in. Waltz, located in the fashionable neighborhood of Nakameguro, Tokyo stocks a wide variety of tapes from North American and European labels, far more than from Japanese record labels. Waltz and other Japanese stores such as Meditations, Big Love, or Newtone records position themselves as internationalist institutions, their owners deeply embedded in transnational and mostly digital knowledge networks. On the central table in Waltz, the cassettes are organised according to label. Each release is accompanied by a small card written by the owner, giving a brief editorial introduction to the music contained within the cassette. Waltz is highly selective with what they choose to sell. Several Japanese tape labels (who prefer not to name themselves) express difficulty getting their tapes sold in the store or report the owner asking for very specific selections and quantities of particular releases. As a gatekeeper (alongside other putatively international record stores), Waltz thus participates in the reproduction of a European and North American bias within underground music networks, while also embedding itself within a particularly cosmopolitan image of the Tokyo music scene. The curatorial function of the record store is remediated across a range of digital platforms. Waltz’s Instagram page selects and highlights particular releases and offers a description for each release. Like other record stores internationally, Waltz’s approach to social media differs from that of many record labels. Less concerned with aesthetic autonomy and more concerned with generating income (justifiably so), many record stores engage in exactly the kinds of promotional strategies that labels seek to avoid. Daily posts and updates are common and stores are keen to demonstrate their cultural capital by focusing on a mixture of popular releases and rare finds. While labels might find engaging with these promotional strategies undesirable themselves, they often rely on these record stores for the legitimate visibility that they provide, both offline and online. While brick-and-mortar stores like Meditations, Waltz, and Jacknife do stock a large range of cassettes, many record stores are more concerned with stocking vinyl records. Many stores will only take on a small number of cassettes on consignment or deal with the same few established record labels. Online record stores, on the other hand, are often able to stock a far greater range of 152

cassettes. Boomkat and Bleep, particularly, stock a wide variety of cassette labels’ releases. Boomkat reproduces the integrity of the label through their organisation of recordings on the website. The website itself can be navigated by format, genre, or record label. Boomkat often stocks a copy of every release by important labels and the collectible logic of the record label is key to their customer base. Kudos, an online distributor, runs a number of press and distribution deals (P&D) with record labels, mainly those labels that release on vinyl records. Labels will perform their curatorial role but then Kudos will pay for the pressing of the records, keep all the copies, organise the distribution, and have a final say on what gets released. Financially, a store or distributor that runs a press and distribution deal becomes very much like a traditional record label in that it fronts the risk, performs all the accounting, and keeps all revenue until costs have been recuperated. However, press and distribution deals essentially outsource the A&R as well as the branding to a micro-independent record label. These relationships can be opaque and micro-independent record labels can be discrete about whether they are financed by a P&D distributor which allows the service to profit off of the independent curatorship of a label while the label mitigates the risk of producing large numbers of records. Unsurprisingly, these P&D-financed labels often find themselves promoted by these services, finding themselves on the front page of the website. In other words, the label operates as a key organising mechanism around which distributors are able to sell music, so much so that some of these distributors and stores make an intervention into the initial process of production and label curation themselves. Journalists also perform an important curatorial role. While music journalists are certainly highly active within knowledge networks, many labels suggest that connections with journalists had to be built slowly.

As a label, a large portion of time spent on social media is building relationships with blogs, play lists, writers, and building an environment of interested parties that will help network the art (Doug interview 2019).

Curiously, while these relationships are often built through the internet, many labels will send physical copies to journalists, even if the music is available online and even when the cost of sending free copies makes it difficult to break even. 153

Tristan, writer for the Quietus, suggests that a physical release brings an element of seriousness and legitimacy to a release.

It feels like [the label] has taken it more seriously and that [the label] thinks it’s worth more than just a digital release (Tristan interview 2018).

Not only are physical releases a key way in which the branded curation of the label is presented, but they materialise the risk and investment placed into this music (this is discussed in far greater depth in chapter 5). In this way, cassettes and other physical editions mediate the relationship between labels and journalists as a token of aesthetic legitimacy. A number of cassette-specific blogs, podcasts, and columns have emerged in the last ten years such as Tristan Bath’s Quietus column Spool’s Out, the podcasts Tab’s Out and Norelco Mori, and the blog Cassette Gods. Mike (who had run the label 905 tapes in the past) describes how his podcast Tab’s Out began as a way of reviewing his own cassette collection but soon he became inundated with physical copies submitted by other labels.

We started getting tapes in the mail, it would be like maybe one or two a week and then after a few years, it was like six or seven a day. We definitely didn’t anticipate there even being that many tapes out there (Mike interview 2019).

There is a huge demand among label owners to have their editions made visible in other curated spaces. These blogs and columns, particularly, articulate an imagined public of collectors and enthusiasts that seek the legitimacy of a favourable review. Publications such as Resident Advisor and Bandcamp Daily run ‘label of the month’ segments and BBC Radio 6’s Gideon Coe also runs a segment entitled ‘Label of Love’. RA’s label of the month often interweaves photography, stylish graphic design, and album artworks with interviews and embedded music players that enable the reader to listen as they read. Other publication’s websites — like that of the Quietus — often contain links to record stores (Norman Records, in this case) at the bottom of their reviews as well as embedded musical digital 154

media players from Bandcamp or Soundcloud so that one can listen to and purchase the record while reading the review. Digital reviewers therefore remediate and integrate both the (digital) non-scarcity of streaming platforms as well as the capacity to buy curated physical editions into their webpages. In several ways, music journalists and record stores rely on the curatorial authority of the record label and reproduce the serial nature of the tape label as a central organising mechanism within underground music in order to review music. This is particularly observable in the case of Bandcamp Daily. As chapter 5 will demonstrate in much greater depth, Bandcamp’s business model operates by maximising the number of users making transactions through the platform and thus the abundance of content on the platform. At the same time, Bandcamp Daily offers curated features that help users navigate the website including a ‘label profile’ segment. Curiously, some of the larger record labels in fact make a loss or near-loss producing physical editions such as cassettes, especially when combined with a few larger vinyl releases (as is sometimes the case). After transaction costs, production costs, mailing copies to reviewers, artist copies, aggregator fees, and any other costs, labels often struggle to break even on these releases. For labels such as Dias Records, Front and Follow, Not Not Fun, and Diskotopia (all labels that use multiple formats) as well as some cassette-only labels, they are only able to stay solvent through revenue generated by digital sales and streaming. As for digital sales, these almost exclusively take place through Bandcamp. The music is available to stream for free and labels and artists can set the price of digital sales. As for streaming, unless the label has one very successful artist, this almost always involves getting on a playlist of some sort. These playlists may be popular playlists curated by other service users such as John Cotter’s Spotify playlist ‘Ambient Electronic’, currently with over 35,000 followers. They may, on the other hand, be genre-specific playlists curated by services themselves, for example the ‘Women of Experimental’ playlist on Spotify. Compared with the kind of curation that takes place through record labels and other residual intermediaries, these playlists are far more structured around genre conventions and, as the last chapter demonstrated, based around the logic of the track. Yet, while these forms of curation may in fact generate income for several larger 155

labels, they are considered to be insufficient alone as they do not create the forms of visibility and legitimacy that are valued within underground music networks. A very particular type of imagined public is generated by the sum of these intermediaries. It is a specialist public of collectors and connoisseurs, consumers who digitally traverse multiple genres, styles, and geographic locations in search of aesthetic innovation and new, obscure discoveries. As the next chapter demonstrates, this imagined public does not fully represent the consumers and users of cassette tapes. Nonetheless, the proliferation of intermediaries is an important part of the wider music media ecology that is characterised both by a logic of abundance and by curatorial voices that carry authority and legitimacy and that help users navigate through the content on platforms such as Bandcamp. Through the reproduction of the serial logic of the record label, the label becomes the primary textual frame for recordings within underground music network. In doing so, it can be understood as a site of plasticity, of shifting and overlapping media systems.

Conclusion

The cassette tape has been remade as a high-design, professional, and collectible object that is produced in limited edition releases. This is not simply a change in the aesthetics of the cassette tape as a series of isolated individual objects; rather, it is a product of changing institutional relationships and the political discourses that guide practices of releasing and displaying musical recordings. The cassette tape participates in the emergent, serial logic of the independent record label that is, more than ever, positioned around the individual curatorial autonomy of the label owner rather than group autonomy (or oppositionality) of a scene. The cassette tape is distributed across emergent digital spaces and across other (largely residual) intermediaries that reproduce this curatorial authority as one of the central textual frames within the circulation of underground music. To be clear, this emergent curatorial logic is the product of label owners and other intermediaries negotiating a challenging and rapidly changing media ecology and it is a highly effective way of building (all-important) meaningful relationships with listeners. Nonetheless, while this curatorial framing is understood by label owners (and many writers) to function as a buffer against the ever-increasing 156

abundance of cultural content within the digital media ecology, it is upon closer inspection, deeply entangled with the institutional conditions that produce this abundance (Kim 2012; Morris & Powers 2015). If DIY record labels once held a desire to democratise and decentralise the production and distribution of music, contemporary record labels that release on cassette tape are, by contrast, embedded in the institutional logic of many (highly centralised) digital platforms such as Bandcamp that generate revenue from an abundance of content while also trading on the authenticity of tailored and curated content. The cassette tape, as a media system, has been redrawn across digital media and thus participates — alongside other physical media — in the ordering of musical recordings beyond the circulation of the format itself. Once again, the physicality of the cassette tape — here manifested in the scarcity and collectability of its design — is a product of its plasticity, of its historically changing connections and changing boundaries as a media system.

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Chapter 4 Access, Artefact, Archive Residual and Emergent Ways of Possessing

[A]ll new media emerge into and help to reconstruct publics and public life, and [...] this in turn has broad implications for the operation of public memory, its mode and substance. Lisa Gitelman (2006) Always Already New: p.26.

I enjoy the ritual of acquiring. Ownership brings me closer to the event (L7).

Introduction

This chapter is concerned with the ways in which underground music listeners, label owners, and musicians participate in shared structures of possession directed towards musical recordings and how, in the process, individuals enact shared techniques of cultural memory that produce a sense of belonging to a broader musical public. Individuals within underground music networks participate in a precarious and privately controlled digital public sphere in which music is expected to be made available to listen to for free. At the same time, individuals invest their own collections of physical media with intense experiences of personal possession as they imbue their recordings with autobiographical and interpersonal significance. These two parallel practices are connected by the role of the archive that operates as a shared technique of cultural memory in which personal collections are felt to be, in part, documents of contemporary musical currents that are subsequently remediated and archived publicly online. Through this multimedia archive, I argue that listeners, label owners, and musicians alike enact a relationship of belonging to a public in which musical works are historicised and memorialised for future consumption. In this context, the cassette tape is remade as an archival storage medium directed towards the future. This longevity is certainly not a direct product of the intrinsic technological makeup of the cassette tape: the format is widely understood to be degenerative by nature. In chapter 1, I demonstrated how many 158

academics and journalists point to the tendency of the cassette tape to degrade over time as a sign of its technological obsolescence (and thus, pastness). As Rosecrans Baldwin writes, ‘[t]he cassette is the embodiment of planned obsolescence. Each time you play one it degrades. Bad sound gets worse. Casings crack in winter, melt in summer’ (2015). Furthermore, cassette tapes have often been associated with ephemera such as mixtapes, recordings of live music, demo tapes, and a variety of other more fleeting forms of sonic inscription (Taylor 2016). Instead, this emergent temporality of storage and memory is the product of the cassette tape’s distribution across and alongside multiple media systems: the cassette’s emergent longevity is a product of its plasticity. In my discussions with underground label owners, musicians, and consumers, many individuals air anxieties around the changing role of ownership rights within music platforms and the ways in which these changes affect the ability of individuals and groups to claim music as their own. Similarly, many scholars writing on music and consumption have examined the relationship between experiences of possession or ‘psychological ownership’ and the changing structures of legal ownership (Arditi 2018; Burkart 2010; Danckwerts & Kenning 2019; Hagen & Lüders 2017; Marshall 2014a; McCourt 2005; McCourt & Burkart 2006; Molesworth & Denegri-Knotts 2012; Mulligan 2015: 53; Prior 2018: 33; Rifkin 2000; Sinclair & Tinson 2017; Watkins et al. 2016; Watkins & Molesworth 2013). The question of ownership rights has played a central role within wider debates around the changing nature of music circulation in the last two decades. Many commentators point to a (putative) transition from an ‘ownership’ paradigm of music consumption to an ‘access’ paradigm (Arditi 2018; Belk 2014; Burkart 2010: 127; Hagen 2015a, 2015b; Kirk et al. 2018; McCourt 2005; Morris 2011; Mulligan 2015; Prior 2018; Roy 2015), sometimes via a ‘theft’ paradigm of widespread copyright infringement (David 2010; Dörr et al. 2013; Sinclair & Green 2016). However, debates over ownership rights are often at risk of reproducing normative understandings of ownership based around physical media and possession is often understood as directly deriving from this type of relationship. Instead, it is important to remember that property rights constitute a diverse array of historical, economic, and political articulations; particularly, the legislation surrounding intangible goods and intellectual property (IP) — of 159

which music is a prime example — has been subject to constant revision, debate and lobbying. Possession is far from reducible to these changing legalistic definitions and certainly from liberal notions of private property as individual, excludable, and exchangeable on a market. Drawing on the work of material culture studies (Appadurai 1986; Belk 2013, 2014; Denegri-Knott et al. 2012; Denegri-Knott & Molesworth 2010; Jenkins et al. 2014; Kopytoff 1986; McCracken 1986; Miller 1987, 2008, 2010; Watkins et al. 2016), possession is understood here as an emotional experience produced by particular mediated ways of being, doing, and knowing with musical recordings. Yet, as Russel Belk writes in 1988, humans are also possessed by their belongings; humans inhabit their possessions as they are themselves inhabited in a relationship of mutual belonging in which objects become extensions of the self, tokens of relationships and shared experiences, and external markers of autobiographical, social, and communal continuity (141). Possession is inseparable from memory, and in the context of sound media, it is intrinsically linked to the function of storage. So-called access-based business models (i.e. subscription streaming services) offer users temporary access to a centrally stored database of recordings. Not only must the consumer continually renew their subscription in order to access this database, but these services hold the possibility of closure, replacement, or obsolescence. For many critics, as well as many underground listeners and label owners, this precarity presents a threat to users’ capacity to invest recordings with personal memories and it raises broader anxieties around cultural legacies. Nonetheless, while media may play a central role in individual and shared memories (Bennett & Rogers 2016; Bijsterveld & van Dijck 2009; Hosokawa & Matsuoka 2004; Landsberg 2004; Nora 1989; van Dijck 2007), Wendy Chun is careful to note that techniques of memory are not reducible to the storage systems of media (2008, 2011, 2016). Cultural memory is instead a technique sedimented in shared practices that are multiply mediated. In underground music networks, forms of circulation are seen to take on an archival dimension. Both personal collections and the remediation of these collections become mediated memory practices that document contemporary musical currents for future consumption. In the process, listeners enact a ‘social imaginary of potential circulation’ 160

(Gitelman 2006: 136) that is tied to a future-oriented temporality of physical media. The next section provides an overview of the academic literature concerned with ownership, possession, and streaming media. I focus on streaming media specifically as this has attracted the most academic attention and is at the centre of widespread anxieties surrounding the relationship between ownership rights and digital media. While a number of scholars have produced sophisticated and critical accounts of the relationship between ownership rights and experiences of possession, I argue that these writers reproduce the methodological individualism at the heart of intellectual property law. The following section describes the way that many individuals experience a shared right to access music digitally, premised on the metaphysical subordination of digital music to physical media. ‘Precarious Publics’ shows that this digital public sphere, however, is problematised by the contingency and precarity of privately owned digital platforms that are prone to failure and rapid obsolescence. After this, I discuss the ways in which individuals invest physical media with immensely personal experiences of possession by domesticating and interpolating them into their everyday lives. Following this, I discuss anxieties among participants that physical media might be invested with too much significance and fetishised as objects. ‘The Archive’ then details how these two parallel practices are linked through a form of circulation that historicises and memorialises recordings. I demonstrate that, despite its status as a degenerative and fragile technology, the cassette tape is in reality increasingly used as an archival storage medium.

Property and Possession

Many scholars and journalists have pointed to a transition from a primarily ownership-based model of music circulation to an access-dominated model. There are two broad approaches to this transition. The first — which is largely based on the structural criticism of digital platforms — focuses on the sense of precarity and contingency that results from ‘rented’ or access-based models. For such authors, these conditions reduce the capacity of listeners to invest musical recordings with social and personal meanings, encroaching on listeners’ ability to 161

experience a relationship of possession towards musical recordings. Below, I discuss David Arditi’s 2018 article as it is representative of this argument. The second approach — characterised more by empirical and user-centred research — suggests that digital streaming services are still able to afford a sense of personal possession or ‘psychological ownership’ that falls in line with prior understandings of possession. The sophisticated analysis of Watkins et al. (2016) is exemplary of this; by denaturalising property relations more broadly, Watkins et al. are able to make room for an understanding of possession that is distinct from legal definitions of ownership. However, Watkins et al. and others — many of them using the term ‘psychological ownership’ — fix experiences of possession within the individualistic frameworks of IP law and ownership. Digital platforms are presented as only constraining the potential for forms of belonging and possession. This renders invisible forms of (multimedia) use that establish emergent and public ways of possessing and belonging to musical recordings. In terms of the first approach, many critics of subscription streaming services suggest that the emergent access-based paradigm is representative of a form of precarious listenership: a prolonged state of contingency, control, and financial expenditure. Streaming services create ‘contingent cultural commodities’ that can be withdrawn or changed at any moment (Neiborg and Poell 2018). They require ongoing financial transactions that create an enduring relationship of contingency between the consumer and service providers and the platform can change the terms of service or the subscription price at any point (Burkart and McCourt 2006). Furthermore, music consumption is forced to take place within an enclosure that subjects the consumer to forms of surveillance and data extraction that many understand as an infringement on user privacy (Arditi 2018: 312; Zuboff 2018) while simultaneously folding user activity back into the value structure of platforms in ways that some critics find exploitative (Fuchs 2014). After the subscription ends, the consumer is left with nothing to show for their financial expenditure, nudging consumers into what David Arditi refers to as ‘unending consumption’, whereby listening can never be separated from the proprietary and financial contexts of consumption (2018). For many authors, access-based models of consumption alter consumers’ relationship to music. Elodie Roy describes a transition from a ‘culture of stockpiling’ to a ‘culture of flow’ (2015: 2). This flow means that music is sold as 162

a service (Styvén 2007: 55) or as a ‘utility’ (Morris and Powers 2015: 109), a continuous flow of social moments and affective experiences rather than individual songs and albums with their own identities. Patrick Burkart suggests that a culture of flow renders the music collection proper impossible (2008: 127). Critically, David Arditi argues that, due to these changes, streamed music is not able to be possessed in the same way as physical media (2018: 305). Possession is tied to the so-called materiality of the artefact, the slower social rituals of acquisition, its longer temporalities of availability (as opposed to temporary access), and its ability to be transferred to another party (ibid.). This lack of possession infringes on the ability of users to invest music with personal and social meanings.

‘[T]he capitalist characteristics of digital music limit the social character of record collection. What was once a social/cultural aspect to listening to music has been curtailed by allowing access to large databases of recorded music (ibid.: 304).

This stands in direct contrast to the artefact.

[W]e possess the musical artifact. Since we possess the music, we can listen to it for as long as the recording will continue to play and we can play the music for or give it to whomever we want; there have been few limitations to what we can do with our music (ibid.: 305).

Unlike streamed media, consumers have few meaningful limitations to what they can do with musical artefacts. There are two problems with this line of argument. First, accounts that posit a total transformation from full ownership to rented access often render ideal those prior forms of ownership based around physical objects. Second, in doing so, many authors conflate these normative forms of ownership with the notion of possession itself (or at least the conditions necessary for any meaningful experience of possession to emerge). This conflation means that access-based music platforms necessarily pose a threat to the listener’s experiences of possession. In critiquing this conflation, I am not suggesting that the concerns 163

raised about streaming models are invalid; in fact, many of them are shared by members of underground music networks, as will be demonstrated below. The problem is that this argument is rooted in a normative ethical claim that certain types of musical ownership are better than others. It implies that listeners necessarily desire to engage with emergent digital media in identical ways to physical media rather than foster emergent modes of possession and belonging. In their 2016 article, Watkins et al. demonstrate that the writers who point to a total transition from ‘ownership’ to ‘access’ rely on an understanding of ownership as ‘full liberal ownership’. Instead, ownership should be understood as a bundle of fragmentary rights that varies between different historical periods and between different types of goods (Attas 2005, 2006; Frith 1988; Grey 1980; Munzer 1990; Rahmatian 2011; Watkins et al. 2016). Liberal private property, as excludable, belonging to an individual, and exchangeable on a market only emerges with the formation of agrarian capitalism in the early 18th century (Meiksins Wood 20102: 115; see also Thompson 1993: 135). Copyright law relating to music emerges only in the late 18th century (echoing an earlier process that took place within literature) and is bound up with a shift from a patron- dominant music economy to an increasingly market-dominant economy. ‘The age of artificial scarcity privileged a commodity form for music that resided in liberal notions of property, alienable labor, and ownership’ (Sterne 2012: 224). IP law emerges as a form of state-enforced artificial scarcity whereby certain producers (artists and publishers) have control over the reproduction and circulation of a work for a set period of time (ibid.). As Jessica Litman suggests, there is nothing natural about this system (2006); it is simply the product of a political struggle between competing interests (Blackburn 2004: 197) and it has been subject to countless reforms and subject to lobbying and resistance by multiple groups; thus, it is better to think of ‘intellectual policy’ rather than property (Vaidhyanathan 2001). The owner of a (legitimate) copy of a work holds only a historically contingent bundle of rights, and this was just as true in the so-called era of ownership-based music consumption as it is of a period dominated by subscription streaming services. Furthermore, the circulation of music always exists both inside and outside of copyright law. Media technologies both reproduce and enable the contestation of existing copyright structures; as chapter 2 showed, home duplicated tapes and 164

mixtapes were circulated without fear of legal intervention. Only after peer-to- peer file sharing in the late 1990s did the state, prompted by the RIAA, intervene to prosecute individual music consumers. This new level of policing was matched by a series of technological responses to the ‘problem’ of Napster that built proprietary forms of music consumption into the design of services themselves (Lessig 1999), beginning with DRM and eventually coming to shape the design of most digital streaming services (Gillespie 2007: 59). As Wendy Chun suggests, ‘[c]ode as law is code as police’ (2016: 82). Streaming services thus operate as proprietary enclosures in which users can only operate in ways that are authorised by the copyright holders. Nonetheless, peer-to-peer networks such as Soulseek continue to operate in which music still circulates largely outside of the constraints of copyright law. Other major platforms such as YouTube hold a complex and inconsistent relationship to unauthorised content; while they will take down recent content from major labels, they will not check the copyright restrictions of older material or smaller labels, and will only intervene upon the receipt of a complaint. Platforms such as Mixcloud allow DJs to upload mixes of copyrighted material, almost always unauthorised, which are rarely removed by copyright holders. While the record industry might be justifiably thought of as the ‘copyright industry’ (Wikström 2009), it would be a mistake to see the broader digital music media ecology as driven solely by copyright when platforms such as YouTube generate profit from hosting unauthorised content. Rather, authorised content is simply one type of content as part of a broader business model of bringing multiple types of users and uses together with advertisers. This more historical understanding of property enables one to tackle the second point of contention in Arditi’s argument: the conflation of ownership with possession. If one accepts that property is only ever a fragmentary and partial bundle of rights (in operation only when they are enforced), one would expect to only ever find partial experiences of possession. Instead, a variety of empirical research shows that people report strong feelings of possession towards musical recordings in a variety of different media contexts, some of them on the very streaming services that many commentators view as a threat to experiences of possession (Danckwerts & Kenning 2019; Kibby 2009; Sinclair & Tinson 2017). Watkins et al., as well as numerous researchers working in material culture 165

studies and consumption studies, argue that experiences of possession are the result of multiple rituals and practices. Practices frequently highlighted in the literature include practices of acquisition (Bartmanski & Woodward 2015; Shuker 2010); practices of singularisation in which mass-produced objects are interpolated into individuals’ lives and environments and rendered individual (Belk 2013; Denegri-Knott & Molesworth 2010; Denegri-Knott et al. 2012; McCracken 1986; Watkins et al. 2016); domestication and incorporation (Bijsterveld and Jacobs 2009; Silverstone 1994; Silverstone & Hirsch 1992); maintenance (Belk et al. 1989); modification (Epp and Price 2010; Lastovicka & Sirianni 2011); organisation and archiving (Grayson & Schulman 2000); forms of transfer such as gifting, bequeathing, sharing or borrowing (Belk 2010; Jenkins et al. 2014; McCourt 2005) among many others. By centring the socially embedded and mediated practices of possession, it is possible to decentre the analysis of ownership rights that all too often obfuscate broader experiences of belonging. In their work, Watkins et al. describe the way that digital platforms affect the capacity to exercise the practices outlined above (2016). The authors pay particular attention to the temporal instability of practices of possession, the restricted ability to properly transfer and move goods, as well as the ‘contamination’ of goods by advertising and other service ‘intrusions’ (ibid.). They are careful to note that these contingencies do not prevent the ability to form relationships of possession but they do present a threat or constraining factor (see also Danckwerts & Kenning 2019; Hagen and Lüders 2016; Sinclair & Tinson 2017). While cognisant of the structural contingencies of music consumption within streaming platforms, this research highlights the capacities for forms of use to produce strong experiences of belonging and possession that are both social and personal. There are, however, limits to this research. In a manner reminiscent of affordance-based theories of media, digital platforms are seen only as constraining or restricting modes of possession that are largely still based on expectations of possession produced by residual media. The distinction made between formal ownership and psychological ownership operates simply to extend the normative modes of possession into a space in which formal ownership does not legally exist. These writers focus on single platforms rather 166

than multiple media and they render possession an individualistic phenomenon between singular consumers and services. While Hagen and Lüders rightly consider the role of the public and the social in the constitution of one’s personal experience of possession (2017), there is no discussion of the reciprocal relationship — of the ways in which personal practices of consumption may offer the potential to constitute emergent modes of possession or belonging, or shared experiences of possession. As Bollier and Helfrich suggest, this focus on individual rights and obligations is a product of property law itself.

Because property law privileges the idea of the lone, disconnected individual and property as an object, it has trouble grappling with the relationships that lie at the heart of commoning and, indeed, life itself (Bollier and Helfrich 2019).

Even while these researchers rescue a notion of possession from the machinations of IP law, they reproduce the methodological individualism at the heart of copyright. As the remainder of this chapter demonstrates, many members of underground networks experience shared modes of possession and belonging that are the result of multiple forms of circulation. In order to unpack these alternative forms of belonging, I centre the ways in which multiple media practices constitute the boundaries and crossings between the social and the personal and between the public and the private.

The Public Sphere and the Digital Commons

The relationship between music and exchange has long held an ambivalent yet much-documented place within underground music networks and DIY cultures (Thompson 2004; see also the next chapter). The notion of making music available for free, on the other hand, is considerably less accounted for in histories of DIY music. In the experimental tape networks of the 1980s, it was just as common for individuals to trade music as it was for individuals to purchase music from one another (Svaza-Kovats 2010). Although these exchanges took place within decentralised networks, they were still characterised by one-to-one relationships between individuals who established intimate personal connections 167

via letter writing and cassette circulation. With the emergence of digital P2P networks, music began to circulate and access music for free at a greater rate between individuals who did not know each other. Particularly, the P2P network Soulseek – beginning operation shortly after Napster – has long been used by many underground musicians and listeners (Whelan 2008). Musicians would often upload and circulate their own music for free. This was particularly common within underground dance music networks and recordings would often circulate in parallel to chat rooms in which participants would discuss and debate issues relating to different music styles and genres (ibid.). Unlike these historical antecedents, however, at present there is increasingly a shared sense that digital music constitutes a public good. In my interviews with label owners and musicians, many individuals describe the importance of making music easily accessible for free. This takes two forms. First, label owners make the music released on their own labels available to be streamed (and sometimes downloaded) for free on Bandcamp, SoundCloud, and other platforms. Second, individuals upload music released by others to platforms such as YouTube. Listeners also regularly access music for free before making a purchase, often using unauthorised forms of circulation. Together, these practices of circulation constitute a form of public sphere or imperfect digital commons in which digital music circulates as a public good. This is premised, however, on the partial delegitimisation and devaluation of digital music. For label owners making their own releases available for free audition, this is often articulated negatively, taking the form of an opposition to financial barriers or gatekeepers. Gabe of Chicago’s Lillerne Tapes describes financial barriers as a form of ‘holding music hostage’.

Everything on the label’s Bandcamp is streamable for free. I would never want to hide some of the music and hold it hostage and say you have got to buy this to hear the rest of it. I think people should be able to listen to it for free (Gabe interview 2019).

This practice is very common on the platform Bandcamp even though it allows users with premium accounts the option to remove free streaming from their page. 168

In a similar vein, Zach of Neologist Productions describes his current attitude to making music available for free on digital platforms, describing financial barriers as ‘limiting’ the listener.

Why should I limit people if somebody wants to listen to it digitally because all the physical copies are sold out? Because physical copies do degrade over time with each play. You’re essentially damaging your product. If 30 years down the road, this [digital] technology is still around, and somebody really likes something I released on the label and they want to hear it [...] they’ll be able to listen to it digitally. [...] So all digital sales are free. If the artist would rather handle their own digital sales, then on the labels Bandcamp page you can only purchase physical copies. I always have the release available to stream unless the artist wants control over that themselves (Zach interview 2019).

The practice of releasing music here for free via digital download and free streaming is understood ethically as running in opposition to such limits, and it is discursively linked to the temporality of the slowly decaying cassette tape as well as the scarcity of the limited-edition physical media release. Quintus, an experimental music aficionado who works with the LA-based label Last Visible Dog, uses a similar language of enclosure. For Quintus, music should not be ‘caged’.

I’ve been uploading a lot of [experimental music from] New Zealand to YouTube for the past decade, actually longer than that. I’m happy with music being as available as it can be. I do not like it being caged. [...] People usually make a commitment to buy something when they’re already aware of what it is and I don’t want to drive people towards a blind purchase with artificial scarcity (Quintus interview 2019).

Like Zach, the idea of public availability for Quintus is linked to the potential for ‘artificial scarcity’ within underground physical-only music releases. Quintus actively uploads the music of others that he has acquired on limited edition vinyl or cassette to YouTube to make it available for others to hear. In the language of 169

David Bollier, this practice of uploading music can be understood as a process of commoning, of actively rendering goods available for common use as a form of community self-provision and stewardship (2014; see also De Angelis 2003, 2017). Many other collectors like Quintus see part of their role as collectors of niche music to make this music available. Eric of the New York cassette store and noise music label Thousands of Dead Gods engages in similar practices of making music public on his YouTube channel, digitising rare and old records and tapes.

I’m a firm believer that only the people that get the cassette should get to have it but that the content on [the cassette] should be available to everybody. The music should exist independently, but the delivery method should be the product of the ownership of the person that strived to get that (Eric interview 2019).

Here, Eric makes a clear metaphysical distinction between the music as a work and the specific delivery method. This metaphysical distinction resonates with the liberal idea of the ‘public sphere’. As Jane Ginsburg states, the modern idea of the ‘public domain’ of ideas and works as an imaginary did not exist prior to the establishment of early copyright law nor, in fact, did it exist during the early years of copyright law (2006). John Thompson argues that the public sphere as an imaginary space — understood as the meeting of non-mediated ideas — becomes more prevalent as mediated forms of publicness become ubiquitous; only with the emergence of a mass market for print media — proprietary forms of circulation of copies on a hitherto-unprecedented scale — does the text or work become a disembodied public good that circulates through an imaginary public sphere (1995: 63-69). Of course, digital streaming is a delivery method but it is one that operates on a logic of non-scarcity and temporary storage rather than the one-to-one transmission and the longer storage of a cassette tape or other forms of physical media. The partial erasure of this mediatic function of the digital is significant in that the commoning of underground music is, at least in part, premised on the devaluation and denigration of digital music as less real than the physical artefact. Britt of Not Not Fun articulates this attitude clearly. 170

It could totally be age or my personality, but I don’t think [a digital release] is a release then. I think you made a track public and you put a JPEG next to it. I don’t think it fully exists. I don’t think that was unveiled to the public with the same reality [as a physical release] (Britt interview 2018).

While the digital is public, it is not of the same order of reality as physical media. Alan, of the short-lived Leeds, UK label Concrete Block, strongly expresses the belief that digital music is of a lower order of reality than music released on physical media.

I have never paid to download music. Never. Not once. Because I don’t want to pay for nothing (Alan interview 2018).

Digital music is without value, literally ‘nothing’. Contrary to digital releases, several label owners describe how releasing on physical media makes a release feel real.

[Releasing on physical media] just makes the whole thing real. You are a musician if you have physical copies of your work (Gabe interview 2019).

It makes it reality. It’s tangible. It’s not made-up. It’s all real but at the same time, if everything was washed away and it was gone, there’s nothing to show for [digital music]. There would just be a memory. But [cassettes] will be forever (Lee interview 2019).

While many label owners would see it as wrong to deny public access to their releases, digital music is rendered a lesser order of reality than a physical release. As Lee from Burger Records suggests, this reality is linked to the temporality of digital storage media as part of a broader concern for the preservation of music (and this will be discussed in greater depth below). This practice of circulating digital music for free is also observable in listeners’ consumption practices. As stated in chapter 2, 79% of listeners use a streaming service (subscription or otherwise) in order to find new music. 171

Additionally, 73% of listeners suggest that they download music without paying for it, a third of which state that they do so more than once a week. Listeners offered five reasons for this (see fig. 10). First, listeners download music without paying when the artist or label offers it willingly for free. Second, individuals download music without paying for it — from either a P2P network or an authorised source — because the artist is no longer alive or the recording is no longer considered new music. Third, individuals download music that is not available on any other format, including streaming services. Fourth, listeners download music in order to sample the music, before it was considered to be a part of a personal collection. Finally, listeners download music that they already own on a physical format. These different practices of downloading share two common ideas. First, all music should be able to be accessed and listened to without a financial commitment, regardless of the scarcity of the original medium it was released on. This can be seen in the language of listeners.

[I download music without paying for it] all the time, to get digital backups of releases on analogue media or to obtain out of print material (L143).

[I download music without paying for it] if something has gone out-of- print or it is not otherwise easily available (i.e. affordable used copies, streaming etc.) (L150).

Music should be easily available for all and if it is not made available legitimately, it is reasonable to access music illegitimately in order to listen to it. Second, while listening to music on digital media comes before a financial transaction in time (because one is still only sampling or trying the music), it is considered secondary to the physical artefact, to be obtained only after the physical editions are no longer available, or in lieu of a future purchase.

[I download music without paying for it] for music I've purchased physically and it didn't come with digital, or for older/rare music, or for music I would like to check out (L75).

172

As the next chapter will show in greater depth, many of these same listeners simultaneously participate in ethical acts of financial support. These, however, take place after the free sampling of music, whether by legitimate or illegitimate means.

Fig. 10 – Reasons for downloading music without paying

Reason for downloading music without Percentage of listeners paying

Music offered by artist/label for free 34%

Old music or artist no longer alive 10%

Music not available on any other format 34% or platform

Sampling new music 17%

Already own on physical format 5%

There is a noticeable absence in the survey responses. While in the case of legitimate free downloading, the music is legally owned by the listener in the same way that one owns a copy of a physical medium, very few listeners use the language of either ownership or personal possession when discussing this music. Instead, listeners discuss downloading music for free as a form of access, analogous to streaming music. Several listeners even delete downloaded music after several days. This is not the case for all listeners. 12% of listeners state that they do not feel a difference between experiences of possession directed towards digitally downloaded material and material owned on physical media. Nonetheless, for the vast majority of listeners, experiences of possession — or rather, the lack thereof — actually run in direct opposition to the ownership rights relating to digital downloads and, as will be shown below, individuals instead invest physical media with a sense of personal possession. The commoning discussed here then can be understood as occupying a liminal space between on the one hand, a public domain exempt from copyright regulations (exempt largely because this music is not actively policed by the 173

regimes of copyright of the major labels), and on the other hand, what Vangelis Papadimitropoulos refers to as a liberal commons (2017: 564): a commons that runs parallel to other forms of property and ownership. While both label owners and listeners rarely describe it as a positive structure of possession, it is experienced as a shared right to access the content of music produced by individuals within the network. Digital music is experienced as public content and this public criss-crosses intellectual property rights, occurring through both legitimate and unauthorised means, and through centrally stored platforms (streaming services), P2P networks, and on individual hard drives.

Precarious Publics

Although participation in the digital commons is premised upon the devaluation of the digital, the digital commoning outlined above is, of course, no less mediatic than the circulation of physical artefacts; like the circulation of cassette tapes or other physical media, the circulation of digital music is itself a particular configuration of movement, access, and storage between numerous (and indubitably real) devices and systems. It is deeply embedded within the structure of platforms such as Bandcamp and YouTube, and their business models of maximising user participation from content creators, uploaders, and consumers. Both label owners and listeners articulate a strong sense of anxiety around this contingency, or what Bollier refers to as the ‘perils of open platforms governed as corporate fiefdoms and not as user-accountable commons’ (2014: 115). Some individuals have already lost music to the closure of digital platforms. Benjamin of the DC-based BLIGHT describes losing music to the platform MySpace after it accidentally deleted all uploaded music prior to 2015 — approximately 50 million songs — during a server migration (Kreps 2019).

I became really interested in the idea of the artefact, especially after what happened recently where MySpace just lost all those songs and like what happened with Faux Fetus where the server crashed and all that music just got lost. This is really ephemeral and we think about the fact that things in the digital world just have a shorter shelf life than anything else. It’s a good idea to archive things (Benjamin interview 2019). 174

Ben points to what Wendy Chun refers to as the ‘enduring ephemeral’ of privately owned digital media, the paradox between the need for digital storage to undergo constant regeneration and computational maintenance in order for data to endure, while simultaneously, digital technologies are perpetually rendered obsolete by upgrades and new platforms (Chun 2008, 2011: 137; see also Kirschenbaum 2008). Within privately owned digital platforms, the maintenance of data is undertaken solely by the platform. If the platform closes, is outcompeted by other platforms, or simply chooses to stop holding data, music discographies and the collections of millions of individuals can be instantly lost. Furthermore, platforms cannot be held to account for losing or withdrawing this information. Listeners, on the other hand, are more likely to raise concerns over subscription streaming services which often edit or remove content due to changing licensing agreements or business models.

I don't like streaming services. Some content does not exist on them, some is censored, some will disappear. (L6)

Rights issues are complicated and labels/distributors are shady and unconcerned when 'content' has to disappear. I find this appalling. (L114)

Virtual collections e.g. with streaming are volatile as they are based on the existence of private entities (companies, streaming servers etc.). (L119)

Digital music vanishes with time and devices become obsolete all the time. (L108)

Not only is storage highly centralised within subscription-based streaming services, but the content made accessible is subject to constant revision due to changing proprietary licensing agreements. These forms of precarious, ephemeral yet highly centralised storage lead both label owners and listeners to anticipate the future obsolescence of 175

contemporary platforms. David of GALTTA anticipates the possible closure of Bandcamp or Spotify.

Bandcamp could just take their website down or Spotify can go out of business. These things to me seem just not concrete enough. You put so much work into making a record and then to see it just vanish is all really sad (Lackner interview 2019).

Listeners, too, describe a worry about future platform obsolescence.

I constantly worry about platform elimination so I want to keep my music in a condition I can rely on. (L24)

I'm concerned about digital legacy planning (streaming music does not pass to your heirs after you die), and obsolescence of existing platforms. (L70)

These anxieties are all versions of what Watkins et al. refer to as the temporal instability of digital platforms. As digital virtual goods (DVGs) are often ‘highly appropriated possessions (facilitated by the ability to access, use, transform and manage these items)’, the loss of these DVGs ‘due to technology malfunction, account termination or service closure’ has the ‘potential for significant “lessening” of the self’ (2016: 61). Because of this instability, individuals surveyed and interviewed here are less likely to invest music on streaming services with personal and interpersonal significance. More so, this instability presents a threat to the public ethics of access outlined above. For Ringo Ossewaarde and Wessel Reijers, the belief that privately owned digital platforms can provide the space for the emergence of a form of digital commons is an illusion based on a false equivalence between the equitable provision of resources and the offering of resources for ‘free’ on platforms that charge service fees and extract data from users for profit (2017: 615). As Martin Scherzinger asks, ‘[h]as a new anthropological reality—a generalized creative communism (or communalism) within capitalism—become a kind of communism for capitalism?’ (2014: 99). While it may be incorrect to think of the 176

public right to access as a true digital commons (as the next chapter will show in greater depth), it would also be wrong to suggest that underground network members share a ‘false consciousness’ regarding the circulation of music on digital platforms for free (Ossewaarde & Reijers 2017). The sense of contingency created by forming a public on these platforms is known all too well by many underground label owners and listeners. In fact, it is partly in response to this temporality of uncertainty, that many underground music network participants continue to engage in residual consumption practices oriented around physical media and the longer temporalities of the artefact.

Domesticating the Recording

Running parallel to the circulation of music as a free public good are practices of personal music collection oriented around physical media. These practices can produce strong experiences of possession yet they can also create anxieties about object fetishism. Individual modes of possession are deeply linked to the process of domestication (Silverstone & Hirsch 1992) and singularisation (Kopytoff 1988). Whether on digital media or physical media, recordings begin their cultural biographies in the public sphere. They are (usually) purchased on a market as a commodity before making their way into the listener’s private domestic space. They then undertake a transformation where they become singularised as individual objects imbued with specific experiences. Domestication involves practices of acquisition, (re)organisation, display, search, access and listening, transfer, and occasionally, disposal (Bartmanski and Woodward 2015; Maalsen & McLean 2018; Shuker 2010). As there already exists an extensive body of research on record collecting, here I outline only those practices that are most closely related to experiences of possession within underground music networks as articulated by the listeners surveyed. Compared with forms of music consumption based around instantly accessible digital media, listeners often imbue the acquisition of physical media with a language of work. For these listeners, this work involves keeping up to date with specific labels and imprints, reading reviews and following publications, digging in record stores, and searching for rare releases online.

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I cherish physical music more, not only because of the thrill of the packaging, but also because there's a sense that you've worked for it. It's too easy to download an album that you might have spent years tracking down physically (L55).

The additional work taken to acquire physical releases considerably slows down the overall consumption process. One listener describes how it may take as long as a year in order to listen to the cassette tape itself, while they may listen to the digital file instantly.

It means that I will seek out and purchase hard-to-find, limited cassettes (specifically) knowing that I may listen primarily to the digital file over the tape. I return to the same labels again and again, or seek out oddities I find while browsing Bandcamp or Mixcloud. It may take me over a year to getting round to playing these (L105).

This listener emphasises the work of locating rarities and oddities. Half of the listeners surveyed state that at least 25% of their collection is made up of secondhand material. These listeners are more likely to spend significant amounts of time digging through secondhand record stores and on websites such as Discogs than those for whom secondhand material makes up less than a quarter of their total collection. Such labour-intensive processes of finding music and acquisition are the first step in bringing physical media into the home environment of the listener and set the conditions for strong possessive experiences. For many listeners, the process of acquisition also has a curatorial role. Just as in the previous chapter, this curatorial role is often structured by an overall aesthetic identity within the framework of individual taste.

To be a collector is to appreciate the value of music in the form of a physical entity, and to have an overarching aesthetic to one's collection. (L27)

To be a collector is to curate one's own music and use these to develop one's own musical understanding and personality. (L140) 178

I value having instant access to a deeply personal curated collection of music, with enough scope and variety to cater for all moods and to always provide thrills and surprises (L55).

As Sophia Maalsen and Jessica McLean note, collecting as curatorship is linked to connoisseurship — to the displays of expert forms of specialist knowledge of musical currents and styles (2018: 43; Moist 2013: 232). As the last chapter suggested, these forms of specialist knowledge are institutionally embedded, linked to the forms of taste and knowledge that are circulated through labels, publications, record stores, and other intermediaries. Listeners reproduce and reshape these forms of expert knowledge through their own consumption — through a constant process of acquisition and reorganisation. Several listeners report reselling or gifting on records that no longer fit their tastes or no longer ‘feel right’ in their collections. Through the manipulation of specialist knowledge, recordings mediate the relationship between the self and institutional tastes (ibid.). While acquisition as curation is a process of internalising and reproducing expert knowledge around music, this process of curation is as much a process of curating the self, a process of self-narration.

I think of it both as an interface with actual or potential discoverers of my own collection, and a vehicle of personal pleasure and self-discovery. I think of my music collection, physical or digitized, in a way similar to photographs. They relate to memories and identity (L45).

Much like family photos (Holloway & Green 2017; Keightley & Pickering 2015; Vivienne & Burgess 2013), souvenirs, or family heirlooms (Hallam & Hockey 2001), the acts of displaying recordings are key to both the employment of specialist forms of knowledge as well as processes of self-narration.

I enjoy having my tapes on display in the living room, always a good conversation starter with guests. There's still a part of me that feels like the 179

teenage part of me where my music collection reflected part of who I was/am (L34).

I see it and interact with it more frequently. It changes my environment (L11).

If I’m invested in music, if I want to buy a record I want it to take up space in my everyday surroundings. [...] It is incredibly important for me to own the music I cherish. It creates a tangible link between me and the artist. It takes up psychological and physical presence in my living space (McLean interview 2018).

Physical media accumulate as tokens of biographical moments, previous tastes, and relationships. Memory, as Wendy Chun notes, is always reenactment (2011: 99; see also Keightley & Pickering 2012). Searching through one’s own music collection and unarchiving recordings constitutes a way of staging a dialogue with one’s past self as well as enacting the continuity of selfhood (Bijsterveld & van Dijck 2009). ‘[W]e ‘keep’ and ‘preserve’ our memories almost as though they are objects in a personal museum. We choose when to disclose or display our memories to others [...] in the form of personal narratives’, (Hallam & Hockey 2001: 3). Pierce et al. also note the importance of ‘giving objects a place’ in forming relationships of psychological ownership or possession (2001, 2003; see also Danckwerts & Kenning 2010). Displaying records on shelves makes them highly visible within one’s domestic space. As one invests music with personal meanings, a reciprocal process of investment takes place as records become part of the lived habitat of everyday life. While listening may take place often outside of the temporalities of everyday life (see chapter 2), collections of physical media still contribute to the making of domestic space as an interpersonally meaningful site of continuity. Finally, experiences of possession are generated through acts of transfer, or the possibility of transfer. Zach describes the continuity of a collection within his family.

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I just love how a collection grows over time and physical music collection can serve as a diary of your life because it documents the things that you were into in different phases and chapters of your life and you can remember purchasing that album and what phase I was in my life, things that I was thinking and feeling. It can evoke memories browsing through my catalog. It's got countless memories associated to different records are different tapes and 70 years down the line, your offspring and your family can enjoy it as well (Zach interview 2019).

Not only does the collection hold great personal meaning and importance for Zach, but the ability to pass this on reinforces those personal meanings. As Jenkins et al. have demonstrated, it is often through acts of transfer (no matter how temporary), that the provenance of an object is (re)produced — the history of its previous ownership or possession (2014). Even if transfer only exists as an imaginary future possibility, this can create strong feelings of attachment in the present, something that is much more difficult to imagine in the context of centrally stored digital music that cannot be transferred. Practices of acquisition, organisation, display, and transfer for many individuals generate a strong experience of personal possession towards physical media.

It gives a feeling of belonging to it as much as owning it, a sort of mutual commitment that is absent or faint with digital music. It grounds me in the physical world (L45).

I feel a much stronger connection to music that I own physically. I feel more justified in talking about it as my music (L123).

88% of listeners suggest that they feel far stronger personal experiences of possession over physical media than they do over digital music, downloaded or otherwise. Many of the 12% who do not distinguish between physical and digital media in terms of possession state that they engage in digital practices of acquisition, organisation, and disposal that generate similar experiences of possession. Some of these individuals are DJs and experiences of possession are 181

generated through the use and performance of digital recordings. Nonetheless, for the majority (88%), practices of consumption directed towards physical media create reciprocal experiences of belonging and possession. These experiences of possession are the product of relational practices of transmission and storage in which recordings begin in a public imaginary and are subsequently domesticated into the texture of individuals’ biographical, social, and domestic lives.

The Fetish and the Boundaries of Possession

The process of domestication outlined above is largely a process of projection, of imbuing objects with aspects of selfhood. For many listeners, however, the acquisition and curation of a collection of recordings holds within it the risk of investing too much value in the physical object and thus allowing physical media as objects to become fetishised. The fetish, it is important to note, is always described as the object of somebody else’s desires; no listener ever describes their own practices as fetishistic and thus the fetish works to set the ethical boundaries to what good listenership involves. In order to unpack this process, the word ‘collector’ serves as a fruitful intervention into individuals’ practices of music consumption, often producing polarising perspectives on what the word is held to represent. Collecting is understood by some to be the only acceptable form of consumption (Benjamin 1968; Belk 1995), and long pathologised by others within both academic and journalistic criticism as well as collectors’ own language (Maalsen & McLean 2018; Pearce 1995: 3). The figure of the record collector has come to be associated with a certain image of the music consumer: the so-called High Fidelity stereotype characterised by an obsessive fetishisation of physical objects and a characteristically male public demonstration of expert, categorical forms of knowledge (Shuker 2004). When asked if the term ‘collector’ feels to be an appropriate description of their consumption practices, there was a slight difference between label owners and listeners. Only 41% of label owners state that this term felt appropriate while 65% of the listeners surveyed consider themselves collectors. While there are slight differences in consumption practices between the two groups, label owners, and listeners from both groups in fact express a 182

similar disdain for certain types of collecting which are understood to represent a form of fetishism. Many listeners who reject the label ‘collector’ do so because the word is associated with a form of completist collecting, in which listeners simply purchase every edition by a particular label or artist, particularly multiple releases of the same recording.

A collector is someone who self-consciously builds a collection of music, whether that is a completist of a particular band or label or a collector of in a genre (L102).

[A collector] wants complete catalogues regardless of how much they like the records (L95).

I think [collecting] requires a devotion to buying a lot of music and is maybe more about the product than anything else — it could be everything by one artist or label, in every format, or simply purchasing such a volume of product that the principal purpose isn't actually to listen to it but simply to own it (L63).

The collector, for these individuals, is seen as synonymous with the High Fidelity stereotype, in which the need to catalogue every release and every format trumps one’s personal tastes. Curiously, many self-identified collectors vehemently maintain that their collections too are not completist.

For me collecting is about discovering new and exciting things. I'm not interested in reissues of classic albums: I want to collect releases by underground artists or find odd records that have been forgotten about. I'm not a 'completist' or into collecting for its own sake. My collection is all over the place, disorganised, and very eclectic (L132).

While many individuals — both self-identified collectors and otherwise — rely on the curatorial role of the record label, to simply reproduce it through a completist 183

collection is seen as something to be avoided as it subjugates one’s individual tastes to the serial logic of the label. Completist-collecting aside, many non-collectors articulate a broader anxiety about the fetishism of the physical artefact.

I find collectors to be mostly the kind of people who buy music they rarely listen to solely because it's rare, or multiple copies of the same thing released in different territories mostly with no actual difference in the musical content (L116).

[A collector is] being more interested in the object than the sounds (L65)

[Collectors] fetishize the object rather than it being simply a medium with intrinsic pros and cons (L98).

[A collector is] someone for whom music is the secondary purpose of buying it (L22).

Similarly, Paul of Fort Evil Fruit expresses a concern over fetishism within music collecting, even after describing to me his extensive personal collection of physical media.

At the end of the day, it’s the music that is the motivation. That’s what is important rather than overly fetishising the physical product (Paul interview 2018).

Koshiro Hino – DJ, musician in the band GOAT, and owner of the Osaka-based label BirdFriend – makes a similar point.

A collector is not a music lover. They just like the object. I’ll sell my records if I don’t listen to them anymore (Koshiro interview 2018).

The fetishising of physical media places undue emphasis on the nature of the release and disregards the musical content that is primarily to be listened to. The 184

collector, particularly the completist, for those who reject the term, renders both the music and one’s individual appreciation of the music (through listening) subordinate to the physical medium that is considered to be the true object of the collector’s desire. It is important to note that many of the individuals who reject the term collector still hold collections that exceed 1000 releases (on various formats). Here one can observe a double negation. First, the mediatic functions of digital media are erased; digital media are seen to enable the formation of a (contingent and precarious) public imaginary enacted through a common right of access, while at the same time, digital music is rendered less real than music on physical media. Second, the physical medium as an object is negated as a potential fetish, distracting one from what should be the true object of the listener, the musical work itself that should exist beyond the media it is stored on. Digital media are not material enough to be possessed and physical media are at risk of becoming too material that they obfuscate the work. In Slavoj Žižek’s psychoanalytic reading of Marx’s commodity fetishism, the fetish conceals the lack (absence) around which the network of symbolic relations is articulated (1989: 49). In the present context, the object fetish of physical media ultimately conceals the absence at the heart of the metaphysics of the ‘work’ at operation in underground music in which a piece of music is transformed into a metaphysical ideal irreducible to its mediatic functions as the movement and storage of multiple ‘copies’. Accordingly, digital media and physical media are both subject to this fetish, to the double erasure of the mediation of the work. This fetish is raised as an anxiety by both self-identified collectors and non-collectors. It acts not as a way of being with objects but as an ethical boundary to the forms that listenership might take. Yet, as stated in chapter 2, the majority of listeners within underground networks do not use physical media as their primary listening media on a daily basis. Most listeners acquire physical media primarily in order to possess an object that may very well spend most of its life sat silently on the shelf. In this sense, a cynic might suggest that all of these listeners are in fact fetishists. To do so, however, would negate the second role of the artefact that operates within underground music networks, as a particularly historicised mode of cultural 185

memory that weaves its way through the public imaginary and the private domain of the personal collection.

The Archive

The process of domestication outlined above is not total; while the work makes a journey from the public sphere to the personal and private collection, a trace of the public remains. The consumption of physical media is not understood purely as a personal pursuit but also as a way of participating in a broader public, and of ensuring the continued existence of that public. As Dominic Bartmanski and Ian Woodward write, ‘the act of releasing music independently is essentially an artistic statement — geared more towards forming a “public” rather than gathering “followers”’ (2020: 195; see also Roy 2015: 13). Participating in this public, I argue, is not limited to the release of music but also involves certain forms of consumption that lend underground music releases a degree of historicity. Recordings are rendered artefacts as part of a shared cultural technique of the archive. Sophia Maalsen and Jessica McLean discuss the role of personal music collections as a form of archival work; ‘collections of music produce personal realities of a musical past and specific versions of musical cultural heritage’ (2018: 41). ‘[R]ecord collections do important work in producing people’s own version of music history’ (ibid.: 51, emphasis added). The archive of underground music exists as a series of practices that form a complete circuit of circulation, from the release by the label, the consumption by the listener, and then the remediation of collections into various digital spaces. There is a long history of music circulation taking on an archival role in underground music networks. ‘Let’s document ourselves’, says Ian MacKaye in the year 1980, speaking of the recording of an EP by MacKaye’s short-lived hardcore band the Teen Idles (Azerrad 2001: 58). MacKaye’s infamous DIY label Dischord continues to use this language of documentation today. As of May 2020, their website states that ‘Dischord Records was created in 1980 to document the music coming out of the Washington, D.C. punk community.’ In a 2015 interview, MacKaye was asked about the importance of maintaining the legacy of himself and the label.

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I’m not interested in legacy in terms of my reputation. I am however interested in leaving a trail. I feel really clearly that the work that I’ve done – that we’ve done – was about kids doing something they wanted to do and showing that it’s possible despite what the corporations say. Leaving markers, or breadcrumbs, so that people know this is a possibility – I hope that inspires other people who inevitably will come along to do the same. So, yes, I am interested in documentation – I build archives precisely because I have a sense of custodial responsibility (Kurland 2020).

MacKaye speaks of the importance of archiving the event of music-making in order to open up a space of possibility for future generations who are looking to make music through similar modes of DIY cultural production. As Jacques Derrida writes in his text Archive Fever, ‘the archive is a pledge to the future, it is not an issue of the past: it is a question of the future, the question of the future itself, the question of a response, of a promise, and of a responsibility for tomorrow.’ (1995: 27). The word responsibility here is particularly important. It appears in both MacKaye and Derrida’s statements. This responsibility to document musical scenes is conditioned by two factors for MacKaye. First, it is a condition of the ephemerality of musical performance, of music-making, and of the participation in a particular music scene or network at a particular historical moment. To document a scene is to produce a form of cultural memory. For Derrida, memory work as inscription is always an expression of originary loss (1995: 14). Elodie Roy describes this relationship between the transience of cultural participation and the recordings left behind by a label.

[T]he material document may validate life. Yet, as it provides an evidence of life [sic.], the document also removes the spontaneity of life and therefore offers a remaining monument or homage rather than an immediate access to life. That is to say that the artefacts mediate and monumentalize the fleeting existences of the label’s founders (2015: 54).

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Many cassette labels have short lifespans. Several of the labels interviewed here have already stopped releasing music or their owners have gone on to form new labels. Loss and ephemerality are an intrinsic part of releasing music within underground networks. Ellis Jones argues that the (post-)hardcore scenes (of which MacKaye was a part of) prioritised the live performance as an event of co- present immediacy and authenticity. The musical recording functioned as a document of this live performance (2019: 9). The contemporary underground archive, on the other hand, is more concerned with memorialising the work itself and it makes no reference to any originary live performance. Cultural practices and moments are increasingly memorialised in inscriptions and thus shared memory becomes artefactual from the outset (Derrida & Stiegler 2002) — constituted entirely through a series of artefacts or documents. The second feature of MacKaye’s expression of responsibility is concerned with the question of visibility (or audibility) of music. The music Dischord hopes to document is, compared with mainstream popular music at least, marginal (as I demonstrated in chapter 3, the music is by no means socially marginal). The label as archive makes for a form of visibility that discloses the marginal for the future as a field of possibility. As Nora suggests, memory work results from the fear ‘of a rapid and final disappearance [of the past] combin[ed] with anxiety about the meaning of the present and uncertainty of the future’ (1989: 13). Memory work has to be reiterated for it to work; archives need a mechanism of iteration (Stoler 2002). Within the mainstream and more broadly within neoliberal capitalism, it is the market that serves as one of the main mechanisms of iteration; the artwork exists as long as it continues to remain in demand (Eichhorn 2013). MacKaye thus holds a ‘custodial responsibility’ toward the future of the scene in which he is held as representative precisely because the market will not preserve this music. For MacKaye, it is primarily the record label that serves as the site of the archive, or what Derrida refers to as the ‘space of consignation’, the space in which documents are gathered together and made public (1995: 10). Publicness defines the archive as it must be recognised (if not accessed) by all in order to maintain its authority (Foucault 1989 [1969]). Migel, co-owner of the cassette label OTA (based between Portugal and Finland), describes the label as an archive. 188

We think of it ultimately as an archive that keeps these efforts together. The internet on it’s own is too vast and this way you can carve yourself a little corner (Migel interview 2019).

Duenn, the acclaimed Japanese noise artist, describes the role of the record label in similar terms.

The record label is important. The reason is that the [label’s] objects leave behind a memory (Duenn interview 2019).

Benjamin used a similar language of the archive (quoted above in the context of platform obsolescence).

I became really interested in the idea of the artefact, especially after what happened recently where MySpace just lost all those songs and like what happened with faux fetus was the server crashed and all that music just got lost. This is really ephemeral and we think about the fact that things in the digital world just have a shorter shelf life than anything else. It’s a good idea to archive things. [...] I think to me, BLIGHT is somewhere between a community and an archival system (Benjamin interview 2019).

The artefact as a storage mechanism is positioned in opposition to the ephemerality and precarity of privately owned, highly centralised mechanisms of digital storage such as Bandcamp or Myspace. However, for Britt, releasing on physical media is more than just a different, more decentralised form of storage; it attributes the physical release a degree of historicity.

[Releasing on physical media] is when you enter the historical record on some extremely small level. It is a relic for the future (Britt interview 2018).

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The temporality of the archive looms large here. The ‘relic’ opens up towards the future just as it becomes historicised as part of the historical record. David Lackner of New York’s GALTTA uses similar language; physical media are ‘a relic’, he tells me, ‘and I think it gives the work a longevity that makes sense to me’ (Lackner interview 2019). The term relic has two resonances. It is an object surviving from an earlier time, particularly one of historical significance. The relic is also an object belonging to a holy individual of reverence. To describe contemporary physical releases of music as relics is to memorialise them, offering them historical weight while also it is a gesture to the ephemerality of participation in underground music networks, as if a new release is almost- already-gone. The label operates both as an imaginary public space or record of works but also as a mediated space that is constituted across multiple media. It is constituted in the decentralised storage of physical releases belonging to multiple individuals but it is also presented together on digital platforms. As I stated in the last chapter, the label is presented and remediated through platforms such as Discogs and Bandcamp that reproduce the serial logic of the label as a key organising criteria for musical inscriptions. The Bandcamp discography page of a label operates as a way of reproducing the publicness of the label as an archive, placing all of the recordings side by side in chronological order. This documentary role of the label imbues label owners with a certain power as custodians of the archive (Steedman 2001); when the recording is rendered a historical document, it makes a claim on reality (Gitelman 2014). When shared histories are understood as a series of recordings or documents, shared forms of memory become archival or artefactual (Derrida 2002). As any archive is characterised as much by its absences as its presences, the label as an archive shapes what is utterable about the history of a particular musical network (Foucault 1989 [1969]: 90). The gatekeeping role of the record label discussed in the previous chapter thus becomes the potential power over shared memory, reproducing the gendered and racialised forms of exclusion that can at times occur within these networks. However, the label is not the only space of consignation, not the only gathering of documents; the archive as a space of shared memory is also produced 190

through consumption and circulation. One listener describes their music collection as a for-use archive.

I'm a librarian by trade, and consider the materials in my orbit something closer to a functioning for-use archive/library, which admittedly is a variation on a collection, but not so inwardly-focused and object-fetish oriented (L71).

For this listener, the role of the personal collection as an archive is understood as direct opposition to the potential for a collection of physical releases to become fetishised. For David of Tombed Visions, the music collection represents, in his words, a series of ‘totems to the pursuit of knowledge’.

Some formats really enrich the music experience. I like having a library of music – I see no difference between a book collection and a record collection – both are totems to the pursuit of knowledge (Mclean interview 2018).

The metaphor of the library, rather than the personalised collection, suggests that physical media still hold a trace of the public imaginary of the work. This trace of the public wards off against the objectifying and self-gratifying gaze of the fetish. For several others, collecting physical media is understood as having a documentary role.

I collect new music released on tapes, trying to gather newly appearing music that represents the immediate currents and ideas in music of current time, especially more experimental and radical genres (L57).

[Collecting] means I love music and the documentation of it (L6).

I run a cassette label, so collecting to me is largely about maintaining an archive and having a reference point for time and place as well as housing music that doesn't get a lot of attention (L24).

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Much like the language of MacKaye, these listeners view their collecting as holding a custodial responsibility to document current musical trends within underground music networks, particularly those that do not receive much attention. These archival collections are often subsequently remediated through various digital platforms. This takes two forms. First, this movement is enacted by the digitisation of physical media, or the uploading of music to a digital platform by the listener. Quintus describes his use of YouTube (mentioned above) as distinctly archival.

Though I acknowledge now that it is, I never thought of [YouTube] as a streaming platform for some reason. I never thought of it as a thing that people would specifically use to throw all the music up there and then listen at their convenience from some remote location or on the go. I know that that’s how it works but when I started doing it, it was a way of archiving things and making them accessible with the least effort (Quintus interview 2019).

Quintus admits that rather than see YouTube as a private streaming service that profits from extracting data from user behaviour and selling it to advertisers, he imagines it as a large publicly accessible storage facility. Eric (also mentioned above) uses the language of the archive to describe YouTube.

I’ll take the tape and then I’ll clean out the tape problems, the dubbing issues with the tape hiss, that kind of thing, and put it up on YouTube as a good kind of way to archive the material (Eric interview 2019).

Making music digitally available is not just viewed as an ethics of accessibility for the present, but also a future-directed custodial responsibility to record present and past music. The experience of YouTube as an archive marking out a transition from the private to the public can be seen in this short exchange between the two owners of Concrete Block.

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Alan: YouTube is a great unifier. It gets that Italian power electronics 7” out of the hands of the greasy collector, and into the hands of the people who are actually interested in it.

Jack: I think the weird greasy collectors are the people who have YouTube channels and are posting loads of weird power electronics and stuff (Alan interview 2018).

For Elodie Roy, YouTube is a ‘precarious’ and unstable archive (2015: 163). YouTube advertises itself as a space in which users can express themselves while simultaneously material can be flagged by other users and removed as individuals police one another according to copyright law (Garde-Hansen 2011: 105), although this is generally of a lesser concern for many underground music listeners and labels. Nonetheless, this transition from the private collection to the public sphere is a precarious one, and as such, it is premised only on the stability and authenticity of the artefact, kept safe in a personal collection. Kazuya Ishigami of the Osaka-based label Neus-318 describes this relationship to me clearly.

Why not only digital? With records, the sound is physically marked on the record. Cassette tapes are magnetic. If the internet went down, the record can still play. It’s an archive (Kazuya interview 2018).

The archive is thus co-constituted by both centralised precarious storage and decentralised personal custodial forms of storage. While material may disappear and move within these centralised databases, it is still considered important to render it publicly visible in order that the collectors’ archival personal work is to be publicly recognised. Second, many listeners make the metadata to their collection available on platforms such as Bandcamp and Discogs. Just over a third of listeners (35%) make their collections visible online. On Discogs, the user can surf through not only the archival repository of metadata for each artist and label, but also any collector who chooses to make their collection visible. These are linked in such a way that if one searches for a particular recording, one can find the pages of all 193

users who have made it public that they own a copy, as well as all users who would like to own a copy. Bandcamp performs a similar function except it automatically archives all purchases made through the platform. On the page of an artist, one can see those who have already ‘supported’ the artist through purchasing a copy. The Bandcamp collection page for a user also lists the user’s ‘wishlist’ alongside their current collection. Both Bandcamp and Discogs, then, remediate the collections of listeners by creating (voluntarily or automatically) systematic archival metadata. However, these platforms do so in a way that prompts further purchases and transactions to take place across their platforms. They bring the private into the public not only to create a centralised, dynamic repository of information, but also to bring individuals’ collections into a P2P marketplace. If the process of collecting holds a documentary role, bringing together recordings into a curated private collection, both of these forms of remediation mark out a reciprocal movement of the recording from the private back to the public, both as a digitised copy and as metadata. Alongside the role of the record label, these circuits of movement constitute the archive of underground music, a shared technique of memory that crosses both the public digital domain and the private collection. In this way, experiences of individual possession of recordings are always shaped by the way that many individual listeners see their personal collections as playing an ethical role in broader, decentralised forms of storage, memory, and preservation. Both the label’s personal tastes and subsequently listeners’ tastes are enfolded into shared structures of memory that historicise the recording from the outset as a document, an artefact, or a relic. Unlike McKaye’s attempt to document the event of musical performance in the recording, the archive of contemporary underground music is concerned more with the memorialisation of musical works as texts. The place of consignation of this archive spans multiple media — both residual physical media and emergent digital media — and multiple sites of storage — both those understood as ‘private’ and those understood as ‘public’; it resembles less the ‘memory spaces geared to eternity’ (Ernst 2012: 86) that are the classical archive, and more a decentralised, networked form of memory. The multiple media archive as a cultural technique of memory ameliorates the anxiety of platform obsolescence and the erasure of present musical participation. The cassette tape is given a longevity not because technologically or materially it is 194

any more stable than digital storage but because the constant movement of music between the public and the private works to co-constitute the individual recording as both personally meaningful as a personal possession while also publicly meaningful as part of a public domain of works. Nonetheless, this archive is still rooted in the authenticity of the object, the desirability of the artefact. Collecting becomes a form of what Jean Burgess refers to as ‘cultural citizenship’ (2009): to hold a documentary collection within this musical network is to participate in a musical public, and to engage in an ethical act of its preservation. As Lisa Gitelman notes, the difference between a group of users and a public is that the latter involves a relationship of identification to a ‘social imaginary of potential circulation’ (2006: 136), or to put it more simply, a relationship of belonging. Physical media such as the cassette tape mediate the relationship between the public and the private only through their circulation within and alongside digital media. As they are felt to be possessed, they become a mode of belonging to a broader public. This public holds a particular temporality. It is historicised for the future. As the quotation at the beginning of this chapter states — ‘owning brings me closer to the event’ — personal possession brings individuals into a felt proximity with the event of musical performance or participation. ‘[D]esire for the archive is presented as part of the desire to find, or locate, or to possess that moment, as a way of possessing the beginning of things’, writes Steedman on Derrida’s archive fever (2002: 2, emphasis added). Yet, if Dischord functioned as a way of documenting live music scenes in the 1980s (Jones 2019: 8), the event of music making now takes on an imaginary form; the recording no longer points back to an original live music setting but to the work as a text itself. As Wolfgang Ernst writes, ‘[t]he real media archive is the arché of its source codes; arché as understood in ancient Greek is less about origins than about commandments’ (2012: 57). Platforms that have an archival function, while the content on them may circulate free from the restrictions of liberal property law, extract value from the movement of content between users. Their structure, their code, is ultimately the law of the market. It could be said that these platforms — Bandcamp, Discogs, YouTube — operate on a logic of post-intellectual property and they are able to do so precisely because they depend on the logics of 195

individual and collective possession discussed above in order to motivate users to upload and exchange content.

Conclusion: Cassette Tapes Forever

For those critics of the resurgence of the cassette tape discussed in chapter 1, the cassette tape is understood as technologically obsolete because of its capacity to degrade and demagnetise. Its obsolescence stems from its function as an individual storage technology. This is premised on the false belief that digital media are timeless and indestructible. However, as I have demonstrated in this chapter and in the last chapter, digital media threaten the fixity of the text in a different way, as many worry that the abundance, the (potential) ephemerality, and the rapid cycles of obsolescence characteristic of digital sound media undermine the stability and meaningfulness of the musical text. As part of documentary practices of consumption, in parallel with a precarious digital public sphere of music, the cassette tape has been remade as an archival storage medium, invested with personal memories and communal futures. It is used as a technique for reasserting the fixity of the musical work within a public imaginary of circulation and belonging. The use of the cassette tape here as a storage format is not solely reducible to the technological functions of the format. Listeners and label owners are more concerned with the public documentation and archiving of music as a historical fact than they are with the ‘dream of verisimilitude’ (Sterne 2012: 4), the need to preserve a perfect individual copy of a recording. Instead, this emergent use of the cassette tape is the product of its distribution across and relation to multiple digital spaces as well as its convergence with other physical media. Material objects are used to stabilise and challenge temporal identities (Trentmann, Shove & Wilk 2009) and here this takes on a collective function. Far from a form of disuse, this emergent storage function of the cassette tape (alongside other physical media) is a product of its deep entanglement in the way underground musicians and listeners navigate digital platforms such as Bandcamp, Discogs, and YouTube. Even those listeners who are not personally collectors of physical media would struggle to navigate underground music on the internet without encountering the archival role that physical media play. The archive sits at the 196

intersection of all three sites of plasticity: between changing institutional arrangements and conditions, social imaginaries of circulation, and emerging textualities. Digital media and physical media overlap and intermingle, producing emergent and co-constitutional effects irreducible to either media system in isolation. It is, once again, the plasticity of the cassette tape that enables it to participate in both residual and emergent forms of possession and belonging. Only through the redistribution of the cassette tape within digital space can it be remade as an eminently public format even as it is collected personally.

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Chapter 5 Work and Support Residual and Emergent Economies of Value

The commodity occupies a privileged place in punk, because it mediates between aesthetics and economics, between punk and capitalism. It is in the form of the commodity that punks’ cultural products must circulate, meaning that the commodity is simultaneously aesthetic and economic in nature. Sarah Thompson, Punk Productions: p. 120.

The ease with which people can redistribute digital music files has savaged music’s value as a commodity, yet in some ways increased its potential as a gift. Nancy Baym. The Swedish Model: p.22.

Translation [...] is the drawing of one world-making project into another. While the term draws attention to language, it can also refer to other forms of partial attunement. Translations across sites of difference are capitalism: they make it possible for investors to accumulate wealth. Anna Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World: p.62.

Introduction

This chapter discusses the way in which the purchase of cassettes and other physical media (largely taking place through the platform Bandcamp) is increasingly seen as a voluntaristic act of support — as an act of giving on behalf of the consumer rather than as a necessary means to acquire a recording. Listeners state that they purchase cassettes not simply out of a particular desire for the format but often as a way of giving money to — and demonstrating their support for — particular artists and labels. As I stated in chapter 3, many label owners lose money or struggle to break even releasing music on physical media and are only able to stay financially solvent due to revenue generated by digital sales and, in some cases, streaming. Label owners instead release music on physical media as a way of bestowing onto the music they release a legitimacy and a specific form of visibility (chapter 3), a historicity (chapter 4), and as I show in this chapter, a performative aesthetic worth. Nonetheless, as this thesis has demonstrated throughout, the circulation of cassettes is deeply embedded in the 198

logic of certain digital music platforms and these platforms extract value from the circulation of recordings, both digital and physical. The language of support and giving is built into platforms such as Bandcamp. Bandcamp uses this language to both mask its role as a financial intermediary and position itself on the side of consumers supporting artists, rather than extracting value from them. The changing value of musical recordings has long been a contentious issue both within underground music networks and in the wider music industry, in very different ways. Throughout the history of punk music there has existed a ‘formative opposition between aesthetics and economics that is embodied [...] as the opposition between punk as a would-be wholly aesthetic form and capitalism as an economic one’ (Thompson 2004: 120). Musicians have long positioned their creative work as a ‘labour of love’ that is putatively autonomous from market forces (ibid.: 122). As I demonstrated in chapter 3, the importance of aesthetic autonomy has only increased within underground music networks. Simultaneously, an ethics of supporting one’s local scene has long resided within underground music networks (Bernhard 2019: 124). Attending local live performances and purchasing records at local independent stores has often been understood as more than a leisure pursuit: it is seen as a responsibility for all invested listeners to materially contribute to the infrastructure of local scenes (Gaines 1994). On the other hand, the music industry has borne witness to significant changes in the value of musical recordings. In the late 1990s, it was common for a major label CD release to be priced at $20 (a little over $30 in today’s money) while today one can access a vast amount of music legitimately for free (YouTube) or at a monthly charge of around $10 (subscription streaming services such as Spotify). As chapter 2 demonstrated, industry representatives unanimously blamed P2P networks and widespread copyright infringement for this drop in value (Rogers 2013: 27; see also IFPI 2011; RIAA 2011). However, the factors affecting this change in value of the individual recording are in fact multiple: they include also the disaggregation of albums into singles by iTunes, supermarkets undercutting traditional music retail (Rogers 2013: 61), the rise of online retail such as Amazon, and the rise of streaming services (Marshall 2015b), as well as a global financial crisis that took a serious toll on disposable incomes. 199

Artists and labels – both major and independent – have embraced a variety of new strategies in response to this. Many labels now use recordings as loss-leaders in order to sell live music tickets and merchandise (Baym 2011; Fabian 2010; Williams & Wilson 2016). New forms of patronage have emerged such as crowdfunding (Galuszka & Bystrov 2014; Gamble et al. 2017; Thorley 2019). Platforms such as Kickstarter and GoFundMe allow a large number of listeners to contribute money before musical production has even begun, often in return for special rewards. Some artists have also turned to using the platform Patreon through which listeners become monthly patrons of artists. Timothy Taylor argues that these forms of financing can be understood as the outsourcing of the cost of musical production from the recording industry to listeners (2015: 125). In an industry characterised by increasingly risk-averse major labels, the responsibility to finance upcoming artists has been placed on the consumer. More broadly, paying for music has become a choice that the consumer can make, or as Mark Mulligan puts it, an ‘honesty box for the conscientious music fan’ (2015: 42). It is in this context that the purchasing of cassette tapes — largely across Bandcamp — comes to be an optional and supplementary act of support. While on the face of it, the exchange of money and cassettes may seem like a normative commodity transaction, this does not capture the diversity of motivations and expectations bound up in such an exchange. Consumption, figured as support, sits at the intersection of multiple regimes of value. It is able to accommodate the production of music as an autonomous aesthetic project; yet, it is also highly amenable to the logics of value extraction exhibited by the platform Bandcamp that charges rent on such transactions. Rather than trying to collapse these diverse expectations, understandings, and relationships into a single type of value, it is more interesting to map out the distinctions between these different perspectives as different economies of value. As Timothy Taylor writes, ‘[c]apitalism is not total, even in the West, and hegemonies […] leave plenty of room for alternatives and resistances and insurgencies, other regimes of value that are not economic (2015: 52; see also Morris 2014: 47). Nonetheless, as Nancy Baym notes, ‘[i]n practice, gift and market economies operate simultaneously and in complex, interdependent ways’ (2011: 25). Anna Tsing refers to this interdependency as ‘pericapitalism’, the intertwining of the circulation of 200

commodities and gifts, between capitalist and non-capitalist forms (2015: 63). For Tsing, value extraction takes place not through the disciplining of subjects to behave solely in market ways but through leveraging the interactions between different motivations and expectations (2005, 2016; see also Butterworth 2014: 212; Ong 2006). It is through the process of translation across different ethical regimes that enables platforms to position themselves on the side of artists while simultaneously extracting value from them. Drawing on a variety of ideas from social anthropology, sociology, and political economy, I understand value as existing in multiple regimes or orders (Appadurai 1986; Boltanski & Thévenot 2006; Bourdieu 1977), that are embedded in social relations (Mauss 2011 [1925]). Value is performative — rooted in action (Arnould 2014; Callon 1998; Graeber 2001; Mazzacato 2017) — and distinct from, although ultimately related to, monetary value (Boltanski & Esquerre 2020: 73). Yet, valuing practices still take place in a field of power relationships and structural conditions (such as the inequitable distribution of private property) that limit certain actors’ capacity to contest or claim ownership over the valuation of things, actions, or modes of exchange (Gibson-Graham 2006a, 2006b; Marx 1976). While several existing theories foreground the interaction of multiple orders of value — Bourdieu’s different types of capital arguably represents the most common use of this approach (1984) — common theorists such as Bourdieu and Appadurai (1986) risk centring a rational, utility- maximising homo economicus that seeks to accumulate one type of value or another (Graeber 2001; Warde 2017). This methodological individualism is insufficient in the face of two forms of relationship that are present in underground music networks: debt and generosity. Both debt and generosity are fundamentally relational and they can be seen in the circulation of physical media and money between label owners, musicians, and listeners. This chapter deals with three economies of value, each with their own relationship to monetary value. The first is the autonomous economy in which music is understood by musicians and label owners to be inexpressible in monetary value. Releasing music on cassette takes the form of a debt, understood by label owners as a way of bestowing value onto the artist’s work. The second economy is the calculative economy in which certain labels, listeners, and platforms make specific monetary claims on musical recordings as they are 201

exchanged. The third is the support economy in which cassette tapes mediate and memorialise the act of giving money from the listener to an artist or label. While the first two economies have longer histories within and outside of underground music networks respectively, the support economy is an emergent order of value that mediates between the two, while at the same time, integrating listeners into a ‘constellated community’ of support (Altman 1999: 161-162). These gift relationships often take place between strangers but they are integrated and made public on the platform Bandcamp. These different regimes of value sit at the intersection of shifting institutional arrangements and changing social relationships in which physical and digital media systems overlap and intermingle; ultimately, the emergent status of the cassette tape as the medium of a monetary gift is a product of its distribution across digital platforms, of its plasticity.

The Autonomous Economy

For many label owners and musicians, the relationship between, on the one hand, the work of creating and releasing music and on the other, monetary value is articulated only in the negative: the prospect of generating revenue above the costs of production is considered to be entirely irrelevant to the process of cultural production. In some cases, creative production is represented as autonomous from the circulation of money altogether, the true value of a musical work considered inexpressible in the medium of money or sales. In other cases, label owners hold low expectations for generating significant revenue from releasing music on physical media, resulting in a de facto separation between the circulation of recordings and their expression in monetary value. Instead, the production of cassette tapes acts as a way for label owners to bestow a non- monetary form of value onto the musical work while also participating and contributing to the infrastructure of a scene or network. This is represented as a gift or an ongoing debt-like responsibility from the label towards the artist and their work. In chapter 3, I discussed the long history of autonomy within underground and DIY networks. I discussed a shift from a politics of scene or group autonomy to a language of individual curatorial authority. It is necessary here to revisit a 202

passage from my interview with Britt of Not Not Fun, quoted originally in chapter 3.

[DIY is] not about how it sounds. It’s about the actual ethics of how it operates, which is to say, we’re involved with humans. We respect what they make and [we] are inspired by what they make regardless of sales or financial incentives. There are hype cycles and upsurges of trendiness in even the most avant-garde unlistenable music so I think ignoring those as much as possible and following a more inner radar and [for] that [to] be a little bit dictated by your relationships with people, that’s DIY (Britt interview 2018).

To respect the work of a musical artist and thus act in a way that is understood as ‘ethical’ is to select releases without considering trends, financial incentives or the prospect of sales. Amanda, co-runner of the label 100% Silk with Britt, states that their label represents an Other to the commercial logic of the mainstream.

We don’t want to be a smaller version of the mainstream. We are Other. We are based on passion. We are based on diligence, we are based on curation, we are based on relationships. [...] We are not a machine behind an artist. We are not trying to commodify them (cited in Bartmanski & Woodward 2020: 32).

Releasing music here is not positioned as a process of commodification but instead as an artistic process of curation situated within human relationships. David of GALTTA also describes the relationship between his label, the market, and artistic autonomy as a space outside of American capitalism.

I put no pressure on the music or the artist for their music [to be] bent towards making money in any way. I’d rather put out a tape that I think is good and that I can stand behind. I just wouldn’t want to put something out just because it would make money. Like I said before, I play music for money so definitely I engage with capitalism. I’m not an island, but this particular label in this facet of my life, I do try to keep it very pure. If 203

nobody bought [a single copy] of the whole tape, I wouldn’t be upset with an artist or expect them to reimburse me or anything like that. So I think that [the label] exists outside of a normal American capitalist way of running a record label because I don’t put expectations on it to sustain my life in any way (Lackner interview 2019).

For David, the label does not function along a capitalist model because there is no imperative for a release to generate money or in fact sell a single copy. Again, artistic production is considered to be totally autonomous from the circulation of money and the intrinsic value of artistic creation is premised directly on the renouncing of the audience as expressed in the form of sales or monetary success (Bourdieu 1993 [1980]: 74-111). As many researchers have stated, this negation of the (putative) commercial logic of the mainstream has long been key to the discourse of independent music (Bartmanski & Woodward 2020; Dunn 2012; Hesmondhalgh 1999). Bartmanski and Woodward state that independence entails ‘a disinterested and genuine pursuit of an aesthetic value’ while ‘eschew[ing] the chase of profit maximization’ (2020: 1). In chapter 3, I demonstrated how the fact that cassettes tapes were significantly less expensive to produce than vinyl records is bound up with a discourse of artistic risk, and the lower cost of the format validates the curatorial role of the label. In an industry environment in which the prospects of generating personal income from music are waning — at least for independent artists (Haynes & Marshall 2018: 1989) — this language of autonomy has shifted from the rejection of profit to the rejection of the expectation or the demand to even break even. For some labels, these changing expectations create a de facto separation of music and the circulation of money (or at least, surpluses). Rick of Must Die Records describes this attitude.

James: What are your hopes for the future of the label?

Rick: I think to just carry on. I am under no illusions that we’re gonna make money from it, just because it’s a niche market. It’s not profitable (Rick interiew 2018). 204

In chapter 3, I argued that scale takes on a definitional role within contemporary underground experimental music networks. Tape labels, particularly, operate at a very particular scale and there is rarely an expectation for this to expand beyond releases of 200 cassettes per batch. At this small scale, the ability to generate meaningful surpluses above the cost of production is limited. For some labels, the cost of releasing music on cassette tape exceeds the total revenue from sales. Noel Meek is losing money on his Auckland, New Zealand label God in the Music.

We're actually losing money on the new label. I'm not worried about that at this stage. We'll see how long I can keep going with it losing money, but [...] the whole point of the label is just to put copies in the hands of the artists that they can then get it out to the world (Noel interview 2019).

For Noel, the fact that the label is losing money in order to release music on cassette tape is not considered a failure of the label. Instead, the label is performing exactly the role that Noel expects it to perform, to put physical copies in the hand of the artist and to get the music ‘out to the world’. Here, one can observe the establishment of a hierarchy: the label functions to serve the artist — to perform the curatorial work of finding and releasing music and to invest money in the production of releases that may very well never break even. This hierarchy is bound up with a particular understanding of the labour undertaken by label owners. Overall, only 18% of labels make a net loss on releasing music, while 15% of labels make a net surplus, here meaning that the revenue generated from sales exceeds the cost of production (but rarely the labour). The overwhelming majority of labels (67%) report that the revenue from sales was roughly equal to the total costs of production. Only two label owners report keeping any money for themselves from the label. This means that 90% of label owners perform the labour of running a label for free. Several label owners describe the role of running a label as a ‘labour of love’.

205

It’s a labor of love first and foremost. We definitely have put in many hours of work both intellectual and physical over the years so in short, I consider it work (Brian interview 2018).

One might call it a labour of love (Joe interview 2019).

It used to be a hobby. We always used to say “label last” when we have obligations. I did the move to just work part-time shitty jobs to pay the rent and I have other income. So it feels more like work but without the shitty parts. When I don't feel like I can, I don't have to so it's like hobby work (Markus interview 2019).

The idea that creative labour is undertaken for its own enjoyment has a long history in underground music networks. In 1977, the international punk zine Flipside claimed that ‘the DIY indie, usually working little more as a labour of love, is only directed by some emotional instinct that drives their projects to completion’ (quoted in Thompson 2004: 122). In the 1970s and 1980s, the claim that DIY production was a form of a self-organised and unalienated labour was key to its oppositional stance (ibid.). While this oppositionality has receded, the enjoyment of creative work is still discursively central to contemporary DIY production. At the same time, the celebration of self-actualisation through unpaid labour is common within the creative industries and beyond (Banks 2010; Bartmanski & Woodward 2020; Gill 2014; Haynes & Marshall 2017; Hesmondhalgh & Baker 2011; Jones 2018; Lazzarato 1996; McRobbie 2002; Morris 2014). The music industry relies on a pool of creative workers who perform optimistic entrepreneurial ‘venture labour’ in the hope of generating income later (Neff 2012; Scott 2012). Furthermore, the fetishising of self- sufficiency as a mode of individual empowerment — that which Du Gay calls the ‘enterprising self’ (1996) — is key to the neoliberal discourse of post-Fordist production that disciplines workers into self-exploitation (Arvidsson 2008; Boltanski & Chiapello 2005; Gill & Pratt 2008; Skeggs 2004; Türken et al. 2016). It is also a key feature of digital platforms that encourage individuals to engage in forms of cultural participation in order to create more content (Jones 2018). 206

These structures can be observed in the case of underground music labels. 70% of label owners' personal income comes from an occupation that is not associated with music and yet the labour of label owners produces value that is profitable to certain actors (discussed below). Nonetheless, it is important to understand — from the label owners’ own perspectives — both what and who they see themselves as labouring for before examining how these divergent motivations are leveraged by platforms. Michał of the Edinburgh label Czaszka links his labour to the co- production of a ‘scene’.

DIY is an ethos which means a labour of love, doing things against the mainstream logic, taking artistic risks, operating on a small scale, finding like-minded people and building a 'scene' together, helping each other rather than [competing] with them (Michał interview 2019)

The labour and money expended on the scene are understood as a form of mutual contribution as part of a broader cooperative effort. Phillip White, of the New York based label Anticausal Records makes a similar point.

To make any community like this work, everybody has gotta pitch in, whether that means running your little label for a while or running a series or whatever. Everybody has to step up and do a bit and that's the thing I'm doing right now. I lose money on it and it's not something I particularly enjoy doing but I think it's important to have these things for people, these places for people to put their energies in and feel supported (White interview 2019).

The label is not only a financial loss for Phillip but it is also something of an emotional burden: Philip states that he does not particularly enjoy it. Nonetheless, Philip’s labour and resources are understood as critical responsibilities in order for the musical community to operate. While the label owners above point to a reciprocity within the circulation of resources, for some label owners, there exists an enduring sense that a more explicit debt is owed to the artist. In our interview, Gabe of Lillerne Tapes 207

articulates his anxiety around remunerating artists for their work and the revenue generated from digital sales.

James: What do you do with the money from the digital downloads? Does it go back into the label or does it go to the artist?

Gabe: At this point, [the money] just goes back into the label to facilitate the next release. It’s something I need to think about. I’ve always wanted to pay musicians for the music that they [make] because I want it to feel like they’re valued but I’ve never really found a way to do that at [this] scale. I’m at and have remained at a small scale. So this is something that I need to think about and then talk to more musicians about because I don't want to feel like I’m taking advantage of them. But at the same time, I give them free reign to charge whatever they want, whatever they want digitally on Bandcamp. If they want to put the music up and sell it, that’s fine with me. I want them to be able to make money off the music that they worked hard on. [...] I’m still trying to find a way to make it equitable for everybody and not feel like I’m an evil record label exec (Gabe interview 2019).

A number of important points are raised in this exchange and I will return to some of them in subsequent sections. Revenue generated from digital sales actually subsidises the production of cassette tapes: it is necessary in order to facilitate the next physical release. Second, there is a sense of a debt owed to the artist from the label owner — a concern that the artist is not being remunerated for their hard work but should be — even when the label owner Gabe is not keeping any money personally from the label. This debt establishes a sense of hierarchy between the label owner and the musician. Even while neither are personally collecting monetary surpluses from the enterprise, the work of the artist holds a negative relationship to monetary value as an absence, while the work of the label owner holds an unspoken relationship to monetary value. The cognitive and physical labour of running a label can be understood here as participating in what Boltanski and Thévenot refer to as the ‘inspired’ economy of worth (2006 [1991]: 83-90). The inspired economy of worth involves self- 208

abnegation in the name of some external value. While individuals participate in creating reciprocal relationships in which labour and resources are mutually contributed, this is always understood ultimately as in the service of the artist and their work. For David Graeber, the defining relationship of a debt is an exchange characterised by a hierarchy between the debtor and the creditor (2011: 121). This sense of hierarchy, of the ascendancy of the artist’s work (taken both here as the artist’s labour and of the musical work), is key to the operation of the small-scale cassette label. Releasing physical media enacts this hierarchy. Quintus of Last Visible Dog describes this relationship clearly.

All we want to do is try and edify the work by creating this physical release that is us trying to do justice to the music (Quintus interview 2019).

To release music on physical media is to honour an artist’s work, to do justice to music that’s value cannot be expressed in sales. The owner of the Berlin-based label Conditional Records (who chose not to disclose their name) describes this attitude succinctly.

The totemistic cassette is a summation of the artist's hard work and my belief in the music (Conditional interview 2019).

The cassette tape materialises a relationship of ‘belief’ from the label owner to the artist. The cassette monumentalises the perceived intrinsic value of the artwork. Although the language of autonomy has a long history, releasing music as an act of reverence is a much more recent formation within DIY networks and it is a product of the decreasing expectations to sell music in a media ecology characterised by abundance and free music. It can be understood as a type of gift or tribute to the artist. It is important to remember that many label owners are themselves musicians who will expect other tape labels to perform the same responsibilities. This creates a decentralised network of tribute-like gift transactions (Graber 2011: 382), or what Weinberger and Wallendorf refer to as ‘intracommunity gifting’ (2011): ‘intracommunity gifting creates and demonstrates tensile strength in the fabric of a community, the ability of a 209

community to stretch and extend to meet participants’ needs without help from outsiders’ (83). As Marcel Mauss suggests in his text on the gift (2011 [1925]), the gift is an inalienable object and it bears with it a trace of the giver: it enacts and remains expressive of a relationship long after the act of giving. While artists can and do sell on the cassettes they receive from label owners, the archiving of releases (described in the last chapter) publicly memorialises the label owners’ belief in the artist’s music that cannot be expressed fully in monetary terms. As many have noted, the giving of a gift is never entirely selfless (Arnould & Rose 2015; Derrida 1992; Mauss 2011; Sherry 1983): the language of autonomy and the opposition to the commodity form can and indeed does help label owners accrue and maintain their artistic esteem (i.e. cultural capital). Yet, this practice of releasing music remains mostly non-entrepreneurial because success is largely defined either in terms of sustainability and survival or within an economy of artist risk that celebrates the (potential) loss of income releasing aesthetically innovative music. While the artists released through tape labels may go on to sign more lucrative contracts — an event that many label owners take pride in, if it occurs — tape labels are less likely to begin generating significant surpluses because of the scale of production. Therefore, the efforts of label owners cannot be wholly reduced to the pursuit of cultural capital because the individualism at the heart of Bourdieu’s writing and those who use it (Scott 2012; Suhr 2012; Thornton 1995) cannot account for the fundamentally relational nature of this debt and intra-community giving.

The Calculative Economy I: Labels and Listeners

Michel Callon describes markets as calculative collective devices that are made up of a variety of components, both human and non-human (2005: 1230). The calculative economy here encompasses record labels and listeners as well as several digital platforms. I deal with these in turn. Compared with those who position themselves more autonomously, there are fewer labels and listeners who describe their decisions in explicitly calculative ways. Nonetheless, these labels and listeners are a substantive part of underground music networks and in order to capture the diversity of perspectives and expectations, it is necessary to describe them. Within the calculative economy, deals between labels and 210

musicians place specific values on the circulation of recordings. Labels and listeners take financial concerns into consideration and sales are considered to be a reasonable measure of success. Several labels describe their approach to releasing and selling music in terms that relate more to traditional forms of market-based exchange. This is not to suggest that these particular labels are motivated solely by profit or that they do not share views compatible with the autonomous economy suggested above. Rather, it is to suggest that these individuals express the relationship between the work of creating music and the release of music in monetary terms. Andrew of Eggs in Aspic describes the arrangements with the artists released on his label.

James: How do the deals with the artists work?

Andrew: It varies from one artist to another. Generally speaking, the artists retain the full rights to all of their work. We don’t have licenses or copyright. So they can put it out themselves. How it normally works is they get sent 20 copies plus 1 pound for each one sold.

James: So there is a transfer of money there and not just tapes?

Andrew: Yes, and with digital sales — we have high quality download on Bandcamp — the band keeps all revenue from digital sales.

James: How large are the runs?

Andrew: It depends on the artist. Some as low as 35, up to 70. So really small.

James: Is that just determined on how well they’ll sell?

Andrew: Yes exactly. And sometimes we’ll get that horribly wrong and they’ll sell out in 2 hours and I’ll wish we had sold more. Other times, we’ve done a second pressing so that’s a route we can go down if necessary (Andrew interview 2018). 211

Eggs in Aspic sells both the cassettes (with an attached digital download) and the digital download alone for £7. The scale of releases is contingent on the expectation of sales. Artists are paid proportional to sales, keeping a percentage of the sales from the cassettes and all digital sales. Here, the value of the labour of artistic creation is expressed in clear monetary terms, although the work of running the label is again not remunerated. David McLean of Tombed Visions records links the label’s artist arrangements to a lineage of DIY cultural production.

David: I guess this comes from the DIY, hardcore ethos that [I] grew up with but it’s just a split — just a simple split. I print this many tapes. You get this music. I get this much to recoup costs.

James: So it’s a 50/50 split?

David: Yeah it’s a 50/50 split. They give me the music. I produce the physical incarnation of that album, or EP or whatever it is. I give them their fair share to hopefully get paid out of, whether through selling their merch at shows. In regards to digital downloads, I have nothing to do with that. It’s basically their music. They’re loaning it to me to release it. Once I’ve sold out and recouped my costs, what they do with that record — whether they want to rerelease it or anything like that, that’s absolutely fine. I try to split it so that I recoup costs, but also make a little bit of money, just slightly more to put back into the label, just to keep it ticking over. The aim is not to make money. It’s just to release music [I’m] really interested in. If I can keep doing that, then the label will exist. I don’t have any baggage attached to the label. It doesn’t pay my bills. It will never be set up to do anything like that. I just need enough money in the pot to keep it going (McLean interview 2018).

Here, the act of transferring cassettes to the artist is figured as a payment for their work. In addition, 50% of all profits after the costs have been recouped are transferred to the artist. David states that the point of the label is not to make 212

money — resonating with the autonomous economy of worth described above — yet the deals with the artists are calculated in order to keep the label financially buoyant. Unlike Noel’s label described in the previous section — in which the goal was simply to release music — sales and financial stability are understood as a meaningful goal and measure of success. For some label owners, the choice of releasing on cassette is directly linked to the ability to sell the format easier than other formats. Joshua of Muzan Editions describes the use of the cassette format based on tape labels’ comparative success.

From an economic standpoint, I learnt pretty quickly that labels working with tape were doing much better than labels working with CDs in this electronic ambient genre (Joshua interview 2018).

Hiroyuki Chiba, head of the Sendai-based Eerie Noise Records, expresses a similar idea.

A lot of artists ask me to release on cassette. In America and a few other countries, releasing music on cassette leads to much better sales (Hiroyuki interview 2018).

For these labels, the cost of the cassette tape is not primarily linked to artistic risk, as it is in the autonomous regime of value, but to its ability to sell and therefore effectively recuperate costs. Some listeners also describe their consumption practices in calculative terms. For these listeners, the comparatively affordable price of the cassette is a motivating factor for consumption.

I like buying tapes from gigs as they're pocket sized and usually about the price of a pint, so not too expensive, but a nice way to throw the artist a bit of extra money if you enjoyed their set and to remember them after the gig if they're a new discovery. If a band has a record for less than about £12 I'd usually buy that first but most often it's tapes (L97).

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The music I enjoy is predominantly released on cassette. The price-point is also preferable to more expensive vinyl (L123).

Cheaper than vinyl, better physical product than CDs (L47).

They tend to be inexpensive, include a digital download (or at least they better), and are equally accessible for me to listen to as other mediums (L129).

The cassette tape is sold at a comparatively lower price than vinyl records. As L97 states, if an artist or label is selling a record for less than £12, they would prefer to purchase a vinyl record. Motivated by a desire to acquire physical media, listeners make calculative decisions about their choice of media. Calculative decisions can also be seen in label owners’ expectations for the future of their labels. While the majority of labels define success in terms of survival, sustainability, and persistence in the face of obstacles, a small number of labels state that they would like to grow and reach larger audiences. Andrew states that he would like to be able to release larger batches and eventually move on to releasing vinyl.

James: What would you say your hopes for the future of the label are?

Andrew: I just want to get it more well known. Just keep releasing really good music. Maybe slightly bigger batches of tapes. Potentially vinyl going forward. I certainly want to do more live gigs with artists, start putting on some shows (Andrew interview 2018).

Similarly, the owner of Maple Death records states that he would like to grow the label.

[My hopes are for the label to] keep growing and creating a like-minded family of musicians (Maple Death interview 2019).

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These statements are far from the aggressive entrepreneurialism one might observe in other corners of the music industries. Nonetheless, label owners are here defining their expectations for success around increasing sales and visibility. Expectations and the ways in which individuals discursively articulate their financial relationships hold an important performative role in the enactment of orders of value which have real effects upon the circulation of music. As will be shown below, digital platforms can leverage these distinctions between expectations — between autonomous artistic values and more market-based calculative expectations, and the murky spaces in between them — in order to legitimise and reproduce their power as intermediaries.

The Calculative Economy II: Bandcamp

While some labels and listeners occasionally practice calculative ways of valuing recordings, digital platforms such as Bandcamp and Spotify operate consistently in this way. As YouTube (Fuchs 2015) and Spotify (Marshall 2015b) have already received much critical attention, I focus here only on Bandcamp. I discuss the financial arrangements between users and digital platforms and in the following sections, I discuss the ways in which platforms integrate themselves within music networks and scenes. Bandcamp functions as a key component of what Michel Callon refers to as ‘calculative agencies’ (2005): through making specific monetary claims on the circulation of recordings, and through giving users targeted metrics, Bandcamp helps enact and discipline users into calculative ways of acting with recordings. The platform Bandcamp employs what the service refers to as a ‘revenue share’ system. The platform keeps a 15% cut of all sales of digital music and a 10% cut of all ‘merchandise’ which includes not only the sale of physical media such as cassette tapes and vinyl records but also any other merchandise such as clothing (this revenue share is capped at $100 per item, in the case of high value items). It is free to create a Bandcamp account and upload music but the platform also offers a premium account for $10 per month. The premium account includes faster uploading speeds, targeted audience statistics integrated with Google analytics, options for targeted audience communication, and the option to remove streaming from the page’s uploaded content. In Bandcamp’s 12 years of 215

operation, the basic interface has changed remarkably little and the platform requires a relatively small number of staff to keep it in operation (Hesmondhalgh et al. 2019: 8). The platform offers users a ‘storefront’ interface as well as the storage of both producer and user information. An artist or label’s page features a static web player and offers listeners the option to listen to and purchase music. Within the political economy of communications there has been a long debate about the process of value generation and distribution within digital platforms. One school of thought — drawing on Dallas Smythe’s audience commodity model (1977) and the tradition of autonomist Marxism (Lazzarato 1996; Hardt & Negri 2000, 2004, 2009; Boutang 2012) — holds that users of platforms such as Facebook perform labour for the platform (Dolber 2016; Fisher & Fuchs 2015; Fuchs 2013, 2014; Fuchs & Chandler 2019; McGuigan & Manzerolle 2014; Scholz 2012; Terranova 2000, 2004; cf. Bolin 2012; Caraway 2011, 2016; Hesmondhalgh 2010; Morris 2014; Napoli 2010). The scholarship on ‘prosumption’ (Denegri-Knott & Zwick 2012; Ritzer 2014, 2015a, 2015b, Ritzer & Jurgenson 2010; Yang 2009) and user-generated content (Banks & Deuze 2009; Banks & Humphreys 2008; Roig et al. 2013; Shepherd 2013) shares the concern with the (co)production of value although it takes a more ambivalent stance on the question of whether this should be understood as exploitation or not. Another school argues that data constitutes a resource that is appropriated through opaque and problematic technologies of surveillance (Couldry & Mejias 2019; Greenfield 2017; Srnicek 2015; Zuboff 2018). However, Bandcamp is less ambiguous in this way. The financial relationship between the platform and its users can be understood as a form of rent, as the total cost of revenue well exceeds the cost of storage and platform maintenance (see Arvidsson & Calleoni 2012; Caraway 2011; Huws 2014; Pasquinelli 2008; Rigi & Prey 2015; Negus 2019: 369;). Selling music on Bandcamp can be understood as analogous to renting a market stall. The value of recordings has its origins in the labour of users and users have full ownership rights over their own music as well as control over the pricing of their own recordings. Bandcamp operates as a ‘transaction platform’ (Hesmondhalgh et al. 2019: 7) and thus its growth depends on maximising the number of users and listeners who interact through the platform. In 2016, Bandcamp launched Bandcamp Daily, an online music publication based in New York. Bandcamp employs a larger number of journalists 216

to create content for Bandcamp Daily and many of these writers are frequent users of the platform itself. As stated in chapter 3, many music platforms attract users to their services by curating and selecting music and Bandcamp is no different. Knowledge workers — often with specialist knowledge of particular musical styles or with credentials within particular scenes and networks — are employed to produce content that helps users navigate the content available on the platform. This journalism can be understood as a loss leader that ultimately leads to more purchases and thus more rent extracted by the platform. Founded in 2008, Bandcamp was initially funded by Silicon Valley venture capital. Venture capital firms fund platforms with large quantities of capital, often for many years until the platform has a large enough market share that it may turn a profit (Srnicek 2016). This form of financing is common within the digital economy and it is a key mechanism which allows platforms to monopolise (or oligopolise) a market; as long as platforms continue to secure investors, they can expand regardless of their ability to actually generate revenue above costs. Netflix, for example, was still in $12 billion of debt as of late 2019 and Spotify only reported its first (modest) profits in 2018 after over a decade of operation. As Bandcamp is a privately held company, there is limited information on its turnover. Bandcamp does state that it has been profitable since the year 2012 (Hesmondhalgh et al. 2019: 6). In 2017, Bandcamp reported ‘paying’ $70 million to artists (Stutz 2018). From this figure it is possible to calculate the total revenue from transactions between buyers and sellers in 2017 as lying somewhere between $8 and $12 million dollars3, much of which flows back into the networks of Silicon Valley financial capitalism. Compared with the revenue generated by other music platforms such as Spotify, this figure is rather modest. Nonetheless, the relationship between Bandcamp and its users is not formally different from other transaction-based platforms such as Etsy, Ebay, or Depop. Label owners have different perspectives on Bandcamp’s business model. For users operating at a very small scale, the transaction fees are often seen as fair or even negligible. For Markus of the Mönchengladbach, Germany label Econore, the Bandcamp fees are not an issue.

3 These two figures are calculated from the 10% and 15% transaction fees respectively. 217

Bandcamp [is] cheap. The commission they get is laughable to be honest (Markus interview 2019).

Zach of Neologist Productions is similarly unconcerned with Bandcamp’s financial model.

The revenue share, I think [it is] honestly a very minimal thing and they have different perks and add-ons. Once you've made a certain amount of money through your shop then their revenue share drops, so they take out less for every sale, and I don't really make money at all. I got the digital sales up there for free and so when I'm selling things physically like my revenue share just like keeps adding up and adding up and then once in a while the entire proceeds of a sale will go to Bandcamp to pay off my revenue share (Zach interview 2019).

Because Zach is not attempting to make any money from running his label, the revenue share is considered to be inconsequential. Bandcamp, perhaps more than any other platform, brings together many users who consider their music-making to be a secondary form of work or a hobby (i.e. a labour of love). It relies on tens of thousands of unknown artists making small transactions — potentially between a handful of users. These transactions are financially inconsequential to individual users who are not motivated by money, but in the aggregate, generate millions of dollars of revenue for the platform. For many others, Bandcamp’s fees are considered to be an issue of contention. Matthew of Patient Sounds finds the revenue share model to be costly.

I love the Bandcamp platform and am very much a fan of it. My only issue is the large “profit-sharing model” they implement when artists sell physical merch on the site. It is much more economical for artists to sell their physical merch through their own website. Bandcamp will not feature artists or labels in their articles that sell physical merch off their [own] website. This is my only issue with Bandcamp, but it is a rather large issue (Matthew interview 2018). 218

As Matthew suggests, above a certain level of activity, the platform fees do become significant (thousands of dollars annually for medium sized labels). Bandcamp Daily also only features artists and labels who sell physical merchandise through the platform, placing pressure on artists to use the platform rather than their own websites. For Yves Malone, a Canadian ambient composer who has released on several cassette labels, the transaction fees are considered high.

Their %’s [sic.] are a little onerous but they have invested in the infrastructure, so what are you going to do. If anything, a little competition is nice to keep the finger on the artists scale — hopefully there will be a contender someday to bring higher returns to the artist (Yves interview 2019).

Yves here expresses the possibility that competition from other platforms may help place a downward pressure on the rent charged by Bandcamp. Most digital platforms in operation today were set up at similar times between 2004 and 2008 with Spotify, Bandcamp, SoundCloud, and MixCloud all set up between 2006 and 2008. These platforms were all funded by venture capital firms and have grown to dominate the market together. These conditions mean that there are very high barriers to entry for new digital distribution services, making competition unlikely and rent-seeking behaviour very easy on behalf of platforms. While Bandcamp’s business models are highly transparent and more sustainable than others that are still propped up by Silicon Valley capital, Bandcamp still acts monopolistically within particular music scenes and networks in ways that benefit its own rent-seeking business models. Bandcamp also offers basic user metrics to all sellers with the option to access more sophisticated data for those who pay for the premium service. These metrics provide sellers with the locations of buyers, streaming statistics, information on when a Bandcamp link has been embedded in another site (for example, a review) as well as offering sellers avenues for targeted communication with users who have already purchased music from the seller. Metrics such as these produce a quantified and quantifying user (Bratton 2015). Not only is the 219

audience datafied, but the activity of a label owner or musician is also quantified, casting qualitative relationships as a measurable form of success. Hesmondhalgh et al. argue that (2019: 7) Bandcamp does not cultivate a competitive ‘culture of connectivity’ (van Dijck 2013) in which quantified interactions between users are made public (such as likes on a Facebook post). While Bandcamp does not display quantified metrics publicly, it still makes listeners’ purchases public on artists’ pages (discussed in greater depth below). Furthermore, targeted and specialist metrics encourage individuals to understand themselves and their connectivity to others in quantified terms (Ruckenstein & Pantzar 2017). This form of quantified self disciplines individuals into calculative and competitive behaviour that are often oriented towards future growth rather than establishing qualitatively strong connections with other individuals in the present (Jones 2018). Only a handful of labels (just under 10%) suggest that they regularly use the user metrics in order to coordinate their releases and communicate with artists. These users are still significant as Bandcamp operates by mediating between diverse users. Many of these users are not motivated by money and consider the platform’s rents to be inconsequential. For those artists who have more ambitious financial goals, the platform offers metrics and audience interfaces that can (putatively) help labels and artists reach more listeners. Yet, in order to make these different relationships seem normal, Bandcamp has to position itself as an inseparable part of the support economy. Before discussing Bandcamp’s integration into this economy, it is necessary to understand how listeners and label owners understand this economy of value.

The Support Economy

The third order of value is the support economy. An ethics of support has long resided within underground music networks. As Sarah Thompson argues, this was often centred on the practice of ‘supporting your local scene’ by attending live performances of local bands (2004: 122; see also Gaines 1994: 57). Similarly, DIY discourses encouraged listeners to purchase music at local record stores. This can be seen in a message from the punk activist group Positive Force published in the 220

liner notes to the 1989 benefit compilation record State of the Union released by Dischord Records.

We encourage people to consume less [...] to support local small scale alternatives to giant corporations, to ultimately reject greed in all its forms (Goshert 2000: 90).

Support is understood as the choice to purchase music from local independent alternatives rather than (presumably national or international) ‘giant corporations’. There is here a politics of copresent immediacy woven into the language of support that is understood as the responsibility to contribute materially to the sustenance of alternative infrastructure that are figured to be external to the endemic ‘greed’ of capitalism. In contemporary underground music networks, however, support has come to mean something slightly different. In a media ecology that prioritises free access to recordings, support has become less about the choice between purchasing music from independent and major label (or chain stores) and more about the choice to purchase music at all. Furthermore, the exchange of recordings for money is not necessarily understood as a fungible, calculative exchange designed to recuperate the costs of production or pay for the work of creating and releasing music (from the label’s perspective) nor is it a necessary means for the listener to access a recording or acquire a particular object or medium. Instead, the transfer of money is here a performative act of support — a gift that expresses the listener’s appreciation for the artist or label. This performative act of support is a voluntaristic, supplementary, and ethically charged act of consumption after the listener has already listened or sampled the music. Support is about communicating the felt aesthetic worth of a musical work in the medium of money: it is a translation of value from an autonomous aesthetic economy into a monetary value. The remaking of consumption as support represents the residual importance of the record purchase as a transaction — and as a translation of aesthetic worth into the medium of money — in a new economic context in which this exchange is less likely than ever to generate income or surpluses for labels and artists. 221

Acts of support take place through two forms of media circulation. First, listeners pay to download digital copies of a piece of music that they can access for free, often in spite of the fact that listeners in this media ecology are less likely to experience feelings of possession towards digital recordings (as demonstrated in chapter 4). Second, listeners purchase cassette tapes, even though they can listen to the music for free without purchasing a tape and even though they may not listen to these cassettes or even hold a particular affinity for the format. These two forms of support hold a lot in common but they also differ in that feelings of intimacy and belonging are more likely to be produced by the consumption of physical media. Unlike the forms of support characteristic of the 1980s punk scene, however, contemporary acts of support are less likely to take place in spaces of bodily copresence and more likely to integrate listeners from diverse geographic locations into mediated social networks in which ties are established primarily through consumption. Phillip of Anticausal discusses the relationship between digital downloads, support, and monetary value in our interview.

James: Personally, do you buy a lot of physical media?

Phillip: No. I wouldn't say so. I tend to stay digital because I don’t have enough space at my place. I buy [physical media] at shows because I want to support this person. I want to support this store. Otherwise, I live in New York. My place is tiny. I don’t need any extra shit in my house.

James: Do you pay for digital downloads?

Phillip: Yeah it's important even though it's not going to make or break anybody's career. But it's important to me that I express that these things are of monetary value to me (White interview 2019).

Purchasing music is not considered to be motivated by a desire for either digital downloads or physical media. In fact, physical media are described as an inconvenience for Phillip as they take up too much room in his New York 222

residence. Instead, the act of purchasing is purely an expression that these recordings are ‘of monetary value’. The question of precise monetary values is here less important than the general translation of the aesthetic value of the recording into the medium of money. Pedro, of the OTA, describes a similar relationship between money and support.

James: How often do you purchase digital downloads?

Pedro: When something strikes me deeper, I recur to that pathetic communication through money and pay some coin (Pedro interview 2019).

The act of paying for a digital download is figured not as a commercial transaction, or as a mechanism to access music, but as a way of communicating that the recording is deeply meaningful to him. For Kota Watanabe, a Tokyo-based musician, acts of monetary support are not tied to specific media nor are they linked to the cost of different media.

Kota: I purchase things from Bandcamp so I think I want to buy it because I want to show support for the artists. But it doesn’t matter if it’s physical or not.

James: Is it cheaper if it's digital?

Kota: Actually yes.

James: Do you think that affects your choice of media (baitai)?

Kota: No. it doesn’t matter to me (Kota interview 2018).

Again, the choice to purchase music is not motivated by a desire to acquire or own a particular copy of a recording or a particular physical format. Calculative 223

decisions about price or preferences around media are secondary to the act of showing support. Zach describes to me how he regularly paid above the asking price on Bandcamp.

Zach: Yeah, I do actually overpay [on Bandcamp] quite a lot.

James: So you pay more than the amount requested?

Zach: Yeah, especially if it’s for free download I’ll usually [pay] like a dollar or two dollars or something like that. And if it’s something like $5, I’ll [pay] six bucks. It pretty much just depends if I have throwaway money.

James: Do you think it’s important to purchase the music you listen to in terms of the artist?

Zach: Oh, yeah, absolutely. It’s all about support. If you can and are willing to pay for something that’s free, then you should (Zach interview 2019).

Bandcamp’s ‘pay what you choose’ model enables listeners to decide the monetary value of the recording. For Zach and many others, the choice to pay more than the asking price is not understood as a specific unit of payment or value, but more a general expression of generosity. Listeners also regularly purchase digital downloaded music. 80.5% of listeners surveyed state that they pay to download music. The remaining 19.5% of listeners who do not pay to download music make up a specific group of listeners. As fig. 11 shows they are more likely to shop at record stores, to use physical media as a primarily listening technology, and to hold an affinity for the cassette tape as a format. They are less likely to hold a subscription for a streaming service. Nonetheless, the majority of listeners regularly pay to download music. As fig. 12 shows, while 18% of listeners only pay to download music when no other format was available, 52% pay to download music at least once a month with 28% downloading music weekly. As will be shown below, many of these listeners also 224

regularly purchase physical media. An ethics of support exists across formats, then, and is not tied to physical media specifically.

Fig. 11 - Consumption patterns of downloaders and non-downloaders

Consumption practices Listeners who pay to Listeners who do not pay download music to download music

Hold a streaming service 45% 35% subscription

Purchase music at record 41% 55% stores

Use physical media as 11% 34% primary listening technology

Express an affinity for the 20% 45% cassette tape

Fig. 12 - Frequency of paid downloads

Frequency of paying to download music Percentage of listeners

At least once a week 28%

Between once and three times a month 24%

Between once and six times a year 10%

Rarely 20%

When no other format is available 18%

Listeners who purchase music digitally often link these transactions to the inadequate forms of revenue generated through streaming platforms.

225

We stream previews of things we are interested in buying but even if previews are not available we will still purchase items before listening to them. Artists need that support — even with that support making certain types of music is not sustainable — [but] we want to support others who wish to create and share those creations (L2).

[I buy digital downloads] to support indie artists that would make nothing on streaming (L121).

I use Spotify as a way to find music to buy. If I like it, I'll buy it. It's good to support artists (L104).

While listeners use streaming services to both find new music and listen to music, they are understood as unfair with regards to the remuneration or payment to artists. Purchasing music digitally is understood as an ethical necessity placed upon the individual consumer to make up for the lack of payment from streaming services. Yet, as listener L2 suggests, it is often understood that this support is not necessarily enough to remunerate artists for their time. This idea is expressed by another listener.

I think it's important to support the arts. In addition to being a musician myself, I have a lot of friends who also are musicians and artists. We're all struggling to get by (I myself [am] FAR below the poverty line in the US) and I know how hard a lot of people work to get their work out into the open and I think it should be rewarded (or at least compensated) (L12).

Support here is not understood as a form of direct payment for the artist’s labour but instead compensation. In face of the lack of income for most musicians, support is understood as reparative, what Stephen Graham describes as a ‘reconciliatory’ logic of consumption in the face of ‘digital deprivation’ (2016: 122). 226

The idea that supporting artists by purchasing their music is less a form of payment and more a communication or expression of value is shared by other listeners.

I don't care much about mainstream artists that are already well settled in the industry but I do care about small artists who are struggling [...] Support the artists and show appreciation (L117).

[I purchase digital music] to support artists or labels and thank them for being an inspiration (L110).

Much like Pedro’s ‘pathetic communication’ above, supporting artists through the medium of money is understood as a form of gratitude or appreciation more often than it is understood as a way of ‘paying’ artists for their labour. Because of this relationship between financial hardship and support, many listeners state that it is only artists operating on a smaller scale that require support.

I prefer to [purchase music] because it helps to support the artists, hopefully leading to more music from them. I am more likely to support small artists/labels as more popular artists can probably continue to be successful without my support (L26).

I both [stream and purchase music], but purchasing music is still a great way to support bands that are actively trying to make some sort of living from their art. I tend to not buy older albums at full retail if I can help it, but I will typically pay a little more to smaller bands because more of that money goes to them (L68).

[I purchase music] so I can support my favorite artists and help them thrive. If it's someone who doesn't need the support like a big-ass band, I'll have no problem pirating (L84).

227

For listeners who specifically support smaller artists, supporting is understood less as a form of tribute or communication and more as a contribution to sustaining artists’ creative work. Nonetheless, this act of support is still understood as different from a normative commercial transaction. Purchasing music as a form of support is here revealed to be both optional and deeply ethical. The artist’s ability to continue making music is understood as the responsibility of the individual consumer. As listener L25 states above, many listeners link the act of support to experiences of ownership and thus to physical formats. Before discussing listeners’ rationalisations for purchasing music on cassette tape, it is necessary to look at labels’ pricing structures. For several labels, the minimum asking price of the cassette tape on Bandcamp was set as low as possible without losing money.

Cassettes are currently priced at $6, with the goal of keeping them as low as possible while also covering all costs (Monorail interview 2019).

We’re just looking to cover costs. At first, we priced the cassettes at five bucks because it was the cheapest I’d seen or heard on the scene and Already Dead Tapes was charging that — a label that I’ve worked within in the past that I really like. So we’re just trying to offer it as cheap as we can (Jeff interview 2019).

£5. I strongly believe cassettes should be cheap and affordable (Michał interview 2019).

Cassettes are often priced around the number 5 or 6 (regardless of currency). Paul Vidich, former executive at Warner Music, describes the pricing of singles at $1 as an ‘emotional threshold’, below which became an ‘acceptable impulse purchase’ for many consumers (quoted in Sun 2019: 106). The 5 dollar or euro mark holds a similar role within underground music networks. It feels ‘cheap’ or ‘affordable’, especially in comparison with the average price of a vinyl record which rarely drops below $12. While labels may ensure that the cassette is priced higher than the cost of production — thus operating calculatively — an ethics of affordability still takes precedence here. 228

In some cases, the price of cassettes does not cover the cost of production or is unlikely to cover the cost of production without completely selling out. Stefan of Faux Amix describes the relationship between price and value on his label.

[The cassettes are] five euros. It’s very cheap and we make an effort to keep it at five euros. I guess the most important reason to settle for 5 Euros is not that we feel that [the music] is not worth more. But because we like the idea of accessibility and actually we also sell the digital copy usually [for] five euros. So anyone who doesn’t want a physical cassette, but just wants the digital music will probably also pay five euros. It feels like a very accessible amount to pay for music that you like. It might be that five euros is actually a little too low a price to break even but [we] just take our chance really that way. Also, there are always customers who will pay more if they get the chance so you can select five euros or more if you feel like it and lots of people buying the music feel that they should pay more. So they will sometimes pay even 20 euros for one cassette which enables us to keep the price low for people that can only pay five euros (Stefan interview 2019).

Critically, Stefan suggests that the choice of pricing does not represent the true value of the music which exists only as an aesthetic value. Instead, the price participates in an ethics of affordability and the option to pay more is left open for individual consumers who subsidise those who pay the asking price. For many, purchasing physical media helps to mediate this relationship of support, leaving the purchaser with a token of the act. When asked why they chose to purchase cassette tapes, some listeners communicate both an affinity for the cassette tape format specifically as well as a desire to support artists.

[I purchase cassettes to support] the artist, [the] audio benefits (tape warmth, etc.), and to have a tangible representation of the music I enjoy (L126).

I've always loved the format. Beautiful objects. [I can] own a physical object with beautiful artwork for a very small price. Lots of artists & labels 229

I follow/support are small, independent and this is how they can release physical formats (L50).

I purchase most mediums, but tapes are aesthetic and often more affordable so I'm able to support artists more often (L58).

For these listeners, the desire for specific formats is intimately bound up with the desire to support labels and artists. However, a far more significant proportion of listeners choose to purchase music on cassette tape not because they hold a particular affinity for the format but instead because it is the only (physical) format available.

[I buy tapes] literally ONLY [sic.] if there is no other option (L53).

Sometimes [cassette] is the only physical medium available, and costs only slightly more than the digital version (L55).

Most of the time it would be because the album would only [be] available on tape or because if I bought the digital on Bandcamp, I could get a physical tape for maybe a buck or two more. I like having physical objects (L69).

Generally, the music I'm purchasing on cassette is only available in cassette/digital formats. Truth be told, if vinyl is available, I'll often opt for that, though I'll pick [cassette] over CD if those are the only options (L71).

Generally, the stuff I like is either cassette and/or download or cassette only. I tend to go for the cassette, but as they are often limited runs (being from small labels), if the cassette is sold out before I could purchase, then I opt for the download. I prefer the cassette format for noise and drone as [the] format suits the genre (L76).

Often the sort of music I enjoy is only available on tape or digitally, and buying a tape seems to validate the creative process (L135). 230

These listeners make up a very large category (34%) of the total surveyed. These listeners hold an affinity for physical media but not specifically the cassette tape and many of these listeners would prefer to purchase vinyl records if they are available. If one removes all the non-downloaders (19.5% of the total sample), there is in fact a strong causal relationship between the consumption of cassettes and digital downloads. Those who purchase cassettes frequently also purchase digital downloads and stream music frequently. In other words, the cassette tape participates in a broader ethics of support that occurs across multiple media. There is an asymmetry in the motivations and values of the two sides of this exchange, between an ethics of affordability and a discourse of generosity. It is helpful to think of the cassette tape as mediating a relationship of gift-giving. David Graeber captures this idea in his anthropological theory of value.

If one gives another person food and receives a shell in return, it is not the value of the food that returns to one in the form of the shell, but rather the value of the act of giving it. The food is simply the medium (2001: 57).

Support is the act of expressing the value of a recording in the medium of an often-arbitrary monetary value. Money becomes what Vivian Zelizer refers to as the ‘money object’ through the process of giving (1994). To support with $20 is not twice the relationship of support than to give $10. The specific value is less important than the relationship enacted and the responsibilities attached to the use of the money. The relationship, here, is one of belonging. This can be seen in the difference between label owners’ understanding of a supporter and of a customer. Noel makes a distinction between a customer and a supporter.

I guess it’s a matter of semantics in some ways but referring to those people as customers has never made me particularly comfortable because it implies just a financial relationship between the two of you whereas that is not really the case. When you’ve got people who are coming back again and again and buying everything that you put out it’s because they love the music. I don’t like thinking because they love our product. It’s because they 231

love the music that we are lucky enough to be involved with and I think that some of them will buy stuff to make sure the label keeps going. They’ll take a risk [with] some releases that they may not know as much about because they trust us from previous releases and because they want to support the label. [...] They’re definitely more supporters [than customers] because we’re not a money-making venture (Noel interview 2019).

A supporter represents a relationship that exceeds the commercial transaction. Supporting a label is a much longer-term relationship. While the supporter is figured as somebody who cares about the music rather than the ‘product’, the supporter is also represented as a loyal purchaser who purchases music from the label without prior knowledge of the music. The figure of the supporter is inseparably linked to the values of the autonomous economy — of artistic ventures that were intended to bestow aesthetic value rather than to generate a profit; in this view, the aesthetic value bestowed through creating physical media can only be confirmed through an ongoing commitment rather than one-off purchases. Eric of Thousands of Dead Gods also gestures towards this longevity.

When you buy [a cassette], it's more like being a patron of an artist than it is being a fan of a band. Like a band has to get together and do a record every year or like a rapper, there's an industry behind or something like that. There's an organization and [they release] singles and it's thought out whereas noise is just a momentary kind of like expression. I'll buy anything from Hostage Pageant because I know the way he makes it. It doesn't necessarily matter what it is because I know it'll be Hostage Pageant and [I like that] (Eric interview 2019).

Buying cassettes is understood as a form of patronage. This is different from fanship as, for Eric, it requires an ongoing commitment to the artist releasing music on the artist’s terms. While this act of support may not in fact adequately subsidise the labour of creating and releasing the music (although in some cases it does), it is still an important exchange that enacts a relationship of belonging. This is particularly 232

true in underground networks as a high number of listeners have also released music themselves, many on cassette tape. This relationship of belonging creates a reciprocal network of mutual support and gift giving.

The online community (especially on Twitter) of tape labels and the artists who release on them is a real gem of beauty in an otherwise bleak internet landscape, and I want to be a part of it and support it (L123).

[The] low cost/low risk [of cassettes] is a chance to try out different things. It's also nice to engage with a smaller and more intimate music community that is largely releasing stuff on cassettes right now (L150).

As listener L150 suggests, an intimate community is formed through the circulation of cassette tapes. The network is largely composed of individuals who do not have strong personal ties to one another who are widely distributed across different geographic spaces. Money and cassettes mediate the relationship between individuals who do not know each other in a network of reciprocal gift giving and support. These relationships are also viewed to hold a particular temporality.

To support the artists, the labels, the distributors, or the second-hand providers. A proper relationship as opposed to a series of brief encounters and one-night-stands that listening online seems to be (L45)

The cassette takes up space in the listeners’ house, standing as a token of the longevity of belonging to this network. As Sarah Thompson writes, ‘[m]ost importantly, the circulation of punk commodities serves as one of the necessary conditions of the formation of punk groups, scenes, and an international community that are recognizable as such to punks. Not only does the commodity represent labor as a set of social relations, but it facilitates extra-labor relations between people critical of the very relations that valorize the commodity as an exchange-value’ (2004: 137). This resembles what Rick Altman refers to as ‘constellated communities’ who ‘cohere only through repeated acts of imagination’ (1999: 161-162). Unlike the language of support characterised by the 233

Dischord compilation (quoted above), the local scene no longer serves as the locus of support. Instead, support enacts the integration of listeners into a distributed network that spans multiple continents across both physical and across digital media.

Platforms and the Support Economy

While these performative acts of support and belonging involve the circulation of different media (digital downloads and cassettes), both of these forms of circulation are channeled through the platform Bandcamp. Bandcamp is particularly tailored to underground music networks: it has not only embraced the language of support in its public facing discourses but it has also built it into the interface of the platform. In doing so, Bandcamp mediates between the autonomous economy in which artists create music for aesthetic enjoyment, and the calculative economy in which artists attempt to maximise their sales that produce monetary value to be extracted as rent by the platform. As a transaction- based platform, Bandcamp requires the maxmisation of user interactions across the platform. Yet, in order to reproduce its power as a financial intermediary, it must feel to users coterminous with their existing practices of circulation and consumption. Hesmondhalgh et al. refer to this as ‘behavioural skeuomorphism’, the incorporation of residual practices and ethics into the structure of emergent platforms (2019). Bandcamp relies heavily on the language of the gift. When a listener attempts to stream the same track twice, an image appears (shown below). The window reads ‘The time has come to open thy heart/wallet’. As the image shows, buying the album enables the listener to ‘directly support’ the label and the artist, as well as get access to unlimited streaming and unlimited high-quality downloads. Through the language of ‘heart/wallet’, Bandcamp elides the financial and affective connections of belonging between the listener and the label or artist. If the user dismisses the window, the red heart comically breaks into shards and falls down the screen. Regular users of the platform will encounter this particular function very often. The user may continue to stream music but the interface of the platform has communicated to them that they have tacitly broken the expectation that free streaming is premised on a subsequent responsible 234

purchase. Bandcamp builds individual consumer responsibility, if comically so, into its interface. Once an individual purchases a track, they receive a message thanking them for their ‘support’. The recording then enters the users’ personal collection and they are able to download it on their computer or listen to it offline through the Bandcamp mobile application. As stated in chapter 4, Bandcamp also makes listeners' collections publicly visible. Simultaneously, below the album artwork, Bandcamp also displays users who have ‘supported’ the artist or recording. Bandcamp lists all users who have purchased the music in one format and another. Users may also publish reviews of the music through the platform that will appear beneath the album artwork. Hesmondhalgh et al. are right to state that these acts of support are not quantified in the way that a Facebook ‘like’ or a Twitter ‘retweet’ is (2019: 9). Support is represented instead as a group of user profile images which can be compared but not specifically quantified. By following the user links, one can view each users’ purchases (or acts of support), their wishlist, as well as the accounts that follow and are followed by that particular user. In doing so, Bandcamp visualises and remediaties a community of support, linking the personal collection to the public community.

Fig. 13 – Bandcamp purchase prompt window

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Bandcamp works to conflate membership of a musical community with usership of the platform. It does so in a way that converts displays of individual consumer responsibility into a public community. Barnett et al. describe how discourses of ethical consumption rely upon the cultivation of individual knowledge and the exercise of choice through the medium of the purchase of commodities.

[T]he power relations constitutive of ethical consumption practices rely upon deploying distinctively cultural forms of ‘‘government’’, such as practices aimed at the cultivation of moral consciousness, of self-control, and of self-display (Barnett 2001). Understood along these lines, consumption can be thought of as one of the key sites of ethical self- formation in the contemporary period of ‘‘advanced liberalism’’ (Miller and Rose 1997). It serves as a key arena in which people are made up as selves who can exercise freedom and responsibility by exercising their capacities to choose, where these are understood to be a realisation of the innate, private right of individual autonomy (Barnett et al. 2005: 30).

Bandcamp offers users the ‘choice’ to pay for the music they consume and then automatically displays this support publicly, while archiving individuals’ consumption in a personal profile alongside their wishlist and their followers. It cultivates a sense of community and belonging to a scene through the individual choice of consumption. The elision of community membership and platform usership works to (partially) erase Bandcamp’s role as a mediator. This can be seen within the language of listeners who articulate a discursive trope of ‘directness’.

I like to support the artists and labels directly, rather than via third-party services (L57).

[I purchase cassettes] for the physical experience and to support the artist instead of enriching the goddamn middlemen corporations (L73).

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[It’s important to] support the artist/labels directly - not through Spotify or such like (L44).

All of these listeners — who regularly purchase music through Bandcamp — use the language of directness in contrast to third-party services, ‘middlemen’ or in the last quotation, specifically Spotify. Bandcamp is not represented as a third party profiting from the exchanges between artists, labels and listeners. The notion that Bandcamp allows listeners and artists to come into ‘direct’ contact is highly beneficial to their business model that enables the normalisation of rents charged on transactions.

Fig. 14 –Bandcamp artist page for Dis Fig

Labels are slightly likely to use a language of directness as listeners. This is hardly surprising given that the Bandcamp fee is deducted from the seller’s income. Nonetheless, several label owners point to the deep integration of Bandcamp into underground music circulation.

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Bandcamp is a really savvy digitization of music head culture (Britt interview 2018).

Bandcamp definitely is the music store of the new age (Markus interview 2019).

Bandcamp is built in the 21st century, but with [the] traditional record store ideal still within its framework (Geng interview 2019)

These label owners testify to the behavioural skeuomorphism of Bandcamp (Hesmondhalgh et al. 2019: 8). As this chapter and this thesis have demonstrated, Bandcamp works to remediate residual practices and ethics of music circulation. By eliding membership and usership, Bandcamp is able to position itself on the side of artists. Several label owners state that their labels may not even exist without the platform.

I think [Bandcamp is] a lot better, a lot fairer for the artists than something like Spotify. I don’t think the label would exist without Bandcamp (Andrew interview 2018).

I think Bandcamp and SoundCloud have really changed music immensely and have been able to give people the ability to find fans through the actual music platform and not extra third party review sites and things like that. It's like you can skip that and just find an audience directly via the platform that you're hosting your music on and posting your physical release design and they do a really good job of helping listeners and labels and musicians meet without having to search around for each other. I don't think I could exist without Bandcamp as a platform. It's revolutionised things for me (Gabe interview 2019).

The circulation of cassette tapes at present is so deeply embedded in the structures of emergent digital platforms such as Bandcamp that individuals feel they could not exist without it. Bandcamp, to many, feels coterminous with the 238

network of small record labels. This in turn helps keep Bandcamp’s near monopoly-share on underground music networks. Bandcamp heavily participates in the language of voluntaristic and ethical consumption characteristic of the support economy more broadly. On 3rd July 2020, the CEO of Bandcamp Ethan Diamond posted an article on Bandcamp Daily titled ‘Support Artists Impacted By the Covid-19 Pandemic’. Diamond discusses how the platform is continuing to waive its revenue share on select dates in order to support musicians affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as in support of Black artists in response to the rising presence (in the mainstream media) of the Black Lives Matter movement after the killing of George Floyd.

On March 20, 2020, we waived our revenue share in order to help artists and labels impacted by the pandemic. The Bandcamp community showed up in a massive way, spending $4.3 million on music and merch—15x the amount of a normal Friday— helping artists cover rents, mortgages, groceries, medications, and so much more. It was truly inspiring.

On May 1, 2020, we did it again and fans paid artists $7.1 million – amazing!

On June 5, 2020, fans paid artists $4.8 million, and so many artists and labels used the day to donate to organizations fighting for racial equity [...].

It may sound simple, but the best way to help artists is with your direct financial support, and we hope you’ll join us as we work to support artists in this challenging time (Diamond 2020).

Diamond here describes fans of musicians operating on the platform as part of ‘the Bandcamp community’. The use of the pronoun ‘we’ positions Bandcamp on the same level as listeners in supporting artists. The responsibility to protect the livelihoods of individuals who have lost critical income from touring is positioned as a voluntaristic responsibility of the listener rather than on the platform, that continues to profit regardless of the livelihoods of musicians. As Hesmondhalgh et al. note, ‘Bandcamp’s business model is [...] about making the case for a moral economy in which consumers deliberately treat musicians’ livelihoods as their 239

own concern.’ Bandcamp delicately positions itself between users who have no intention of making money and those who are aspirational, as well as audiences who believe that — regardless — their money is being put to good use purchasing music through the platform. This rise in the language of optional support is not unique to Bandcamp. Spotify similarly has offered users the ability to make direct ‘donations’ through their app to artists with a pledge to match a total donation of up to $10 million dollars to a musicians hardship fund. The platform’s page for the ‘COVID-19 Music Relief’ describes the campaign as ‘supporting the global music community in an unprecedented crisis’ and invites users to continue to donate to music hardship funds. In addition, Spotify released what they refer to as their ‘artist fundraising pick’ in which users can pay (vetted) artists ‘directly’ through the Spotify application (pay, in addition to the subscription fee that they already pay). Spotify promised to contribute $100 per artist who received a donation up to a total contribution of $1 million (10,000 artists). Once again, a language of support surrounded this new feature: the platform released a statement that read ‘[w]ith this feature, we simply hope to enable those who have the interest and means to support artists in this time of great need’ (Spotify 2020). Much like Bandcamp, the platform positions itself on the side of consumers, supporting artists. While the platform makes a contribution itself — largely negligible in comparison to the platform’s annual revenue, $7.44 billion in 2019 — the responsibility is largely left down to consumers who have the ‘interest and means’ to rescue the livelihoods of musicians. Importantly, I am not suggesting that the scale of Bandcamp’s rents is comparable with the value extracted by platforms such as Spotify and YouTube (although many underground labels also use these other platforms). Bandcamp is a highly transparent platform, it has a good knowledge of its usership, and it affords labels and artists a great deal of control over their music — all rare and admirable qualities in the current digital media ecology. Nonetheless, Bandcamp is not entirely innocent, and it participates in problematic aspects of the contemporary digital media ecology: namely, the somewhat-neoliberal valorisation of autonomous labour and the corporate remaking of consumption as an ethical choice on behalf of the consumer. Furthermore, considering the long-term precarity of digital platforms and privately owned storage mechanisms 240

discussed in the last chapter, the deep discursive and structural embeddedness of contemporary underground music culture in Bandcamp places musicians and listeners in an unending state of contingency. This presents a threat to the very forms of intra-community gifting described above, even as Bandcamp works actively to cultivate these relationships.

Conclusion

Within underground music networks, there has long existed an ethics of creative work in which cultural production is understood to be (at least, in theory) autonomous from the circulation of money or the accumulation of monetary surpluses. As the broader music industry has shifted away from a model in which recordings make up the primary income of artists, and as generating income from creating music has become arguably more difficult than ever for underground artists (Haynes & Marshall 2018: 1989), a tribute-like economy of reverence has emerged in which cassette tapes come to represent — for label owners — a bestowing of aesthetic value onto a musical work rather than a means to generate income. Listeners, too, participate in gift-like transactions as they purchase cassettes in order to demonstrate their support and affective ties to particular releases while also affirming the curatorial role of the label. While listeners perform these acts of support across multiple media, cassettes and other physical media produce particularly strong feelings of belonging to a network between strangers that may reside in different continents. If support was once tied to the live show as a site of copresent sociality, support is now tied to the text as an immemorial work that circulates across wide geographic spaces. Platforms such as Bandcamp channel these voluntaristic acts of support in order to extract rent on transactions. They use a language of consumer responsibility and (liberal) individual choice while also remediating and rendering publicly visible communities of support in order to reproduce their power as intermediaries. The cassette tape here participates in multiple regimes of value. It circulates in an autonomous economy of artistic risk and reverence, as a potential medium for making money for a label, and as an affordable way to collect music and show support for the label. The cassette tape’s participation in these different regimes of value, these different expectations and relationships, leads to an 241

emergent form of circulation that is on close inspection very different from the forms of circulation characteristic of underground networks in the 1980s and 1990s. The cassette tape is no longer a mode of content transmission: instead, it memorialises and mediates acts of intra-community gift-giving between distributed individuals. The emergent support economy sits at the intersection of shifting institutional arrangements, economic logics, and changing social relationships in which physical media and digital media become inseparably entangled. The emergent international support economy is a new mode of use and it is a product of the cassette tape’s plasticity, of its integration into both residual DIY ethics and emergent platform logics.

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Conclusion The Politics of Plasticity

This thesis has shown that the cassette tape of the 2010s cannot meaningfully be considered the same format that it was in the 1980s or the 1990s. The boundaries and the connections of the cassette tape — as a plastic phonographic media system among other media systems — have been shifted in relation to four major factors associated with the emergence of digital platforms in the last two decades. The first is the changing digital networks of music transmission, namely distributed peer-to-peer networks (Napster, Gnutella, Soulseek) and privately owned, centralised streaming services (Spotify, YouTube, Bandcamp). The second factor is the abundance of material in circulation, partly conditioned by the structures of visibility that social media and other digital platforms have built into their algorithms. The third is the precarity of privately owned storage platforms such as YouTube and Bandcamp and the changing property relationships associated with these. The fourth is the changing value structures of digital music circulation. These four factors — roughly mapping onto chapters 2 to 5 respectively — are hegemonic features of the contemporary media ecology that is dominated by the presence of digital music media platforms. Contrary to the cassette tape’s established history within practices of mixtaping, home-taping, and listening on the move, the format is used at present in emergent, ritualistic practices of listening that are tied to the domestic sphere and bound up with an ethics of the album as a work. Simultaneously, the format has been disarticulated from transmission networks of musical discovery and mass access. Once used as an inexpensive means for releasing music to a wide audience, the cassette is increasingly figured as an artisanal art object released in limited-edition runs. Long-derided for its potential to degrade and demagnetise, the cassette is used increasingly within emergent techniques of archival storage. Finally, the cassette tape is circulated within gift exchanges that take place after listeners have already come to discover new music. The cassette has been distributed across the digital platforms Bandcamp, Discogs, and YouTube, inscribed publicly in the territory of the record label and in communities of support and cultural memory. The sum of these practices and uses represent a 243

novel way of interacting with multiple media. They point to the plasticity of the cassette tape as a phonographic medium. As I have argued throughout this thesis, plasticity is concerned with the way in which changing patterns of use and practices of circulation participate in boundary-making and boundary-crossings (de Laet & Mol 2000; Nowak & Whelan 2016; Sterne 2003) — of the connections and disconnections between different devices and technologies. These connections can be observed within three sites of plasticity in which multiple media systems cross over and meet: texts and textual frames, institutional logics and arrangements, and social relationships. At the level of the text, the cassette tape has become increasingly bound up with an ethics of the album as an immutable musical work. The cassette tape, perhaps counterintuitively, participates in a metaphysics that presents musical works as public goods, premised partly on the devaluation of digital music as less ‘real’. In this context, the work as a text is framed by the record label as a serially organised archive of aesthetically innovative music and the territory of the record label is distributed across multiple digital spaces, according to an ethics of visibility that reproduces the curatorial authority of the record label. The work becomes immemorial as it is documented and circulated through multimedia archival techniques of cultural memory. At the level of institutions, the cassette tape is bound up with the changing scale, positioning, and ambitions of independent record labels. Once concerned with establishing a degree of scene autonomy and thus presenting a challenge (or at least a meaningful alternative) to the major labels, the DIY micro-independent record label is increasingly defined by the small-scale of production, artistic risk, and a heightened discourse of individual curatorial autonomy. At the same time, the cassette tape circulates through digital platforms such as Bandcamp and Discogs that trade on the authenticity of independent labels’ branding while also extracting value from the interactions between multiple users. Recordings on cassette tapes also circulate digitally in parallel on streaming services such as Bandcamp, Spotify, and YouTube and, rather surprisingly, the revenue generated from these platforms often helps to subsidise the production of physical media. At the level of social relationships, the circulation of cassette tapes integrates individuals distributed across a wide geographic space into a constellated community that is both based around networks of mutual 244

contribution and generosity while also centring the ascendancy of the artist and the artist’s labour. The cassette tape memorialises acts of exchange while also linking personal collections and memories to broader publics of belonging. This social network is also uneven. This particular lineage of the cassette tape is largely tied to North American and Western European individuals, whereas the technology is considered to be newer to Japanese audiences. In order to access western audiences for certain types of music that commonly circulate on the cassette tape (noise music, ambient, experimental electronic), releasing on cassette necessitates engaging with infrastructure that is distributed unequally throughout these spaces. The cassette tape and other physical media have become a part of a broader shift within underground music networks away from the ontological dominance of the live performance – as the primary site of musical interaction and cultural participation – towards the text as a historicised work. The contemporary circulation of physical media set the epistemological preconditions for social interaction: they are part of the ways in which underground network members come to know about one another. Raphaël Nowak and Andrew Whelan propose that ‘digital music’ should be understood as a boundary object, discursively named at the intersection between different social groups and their respective needs, understandings and values (2016). Viewed this way, digital music is ontologically underdetermined and different namings render visible different configurations of the digital within particular interactions and conflicts (ibid.: 125-126). The cassette tape, as I have argued in chapter 1, is ontologically overdetermined, reduced to the consolidated materiality of the plastic cassette cartridge. Through tracing the connections and associations, I have shown that this is a reductive understanding of the cassette tape. Through multiple practices of use, the cassette comes to be meaningful to individuals within underground music networks at the overlapping boundaries between media formerly understood as distinct. The cassette tape as a phonographic media system includes digital technologies such as Bandcamp and Discogs. There could be no real understanding of Bandcamp without an account of the circulation of physical media. As such, the cassette tape, operating as a particular scale of physical media circulation, shapes the way in which underground network members navigate and encounter music, regardless of whether they purchase cassettes or physical media themselves. The artist, the 245

work, the curatorial label, and the public committed to the preservation of these figures are inseparable parts of underground music networks and the digital platforms that bring underground members together. The cassette tape has not simply taken up novel uses, but through its plasticity, it participates differently in the organisation, transmission, and storage of music. This, in turn, has ramifications for how scholars locate the boundaries of media. These shifting patterns of use were hardly anticipated by the designers of the technology. Lou Ottens, head of the team that developed the original Phillips compact cassette in the early 1960s, stated in 2013 that they were attempting to meet an emerging demand for an affordable and portable audio recorder (Dormon 2013). Portability and configurability: these are the affordances of the cassette tape as an individual technology. Developed by a leading actor in the consumer electronics industry, the technology was a product of a sector that often functioned antagonistically towards the recording industry. Many of the actors discussed throughout this thesis continue to understand the cassette tape as somewhat outside of the contemporary music industry. Its scarcity in the face of abundance, its curatorial specificity in the face of algorithmically generated playlists, and its circulation through DIY record labels and networks would seem, on the surface, to suggest a meaningful state of opposition to or at least, distinction from the mainstream music industry. Yet, as I have argued, the cassette tape is highly compatible with a media ecology based around instant access and the format has become increasingly amenable to the value logics of digital platforms. Scarcity, curation, and consumer generosity are as important to many digital media platforms as they are to underground network members. It would not be an exaggeration to state that contemporary uses of the cassette tape have come into alignment with emergent media hegemonies in a way not before observable in the technology’s 58 years of existence. This raises an important question about the relationship between power, technology, and use. This new alignment challenges an established lineage of critical thought that positions consumption — that is, use — as the primary site of resistance and contestation of hegemonies, or at least of pronounced consumer agency (Jenkins 2006). ‘The tactics of consumption’, writes Michel de Certeau, are ‘the ingenious ways in which the weak make use of the strong’ and they ‘lend a political dimension to everyday practices’ (1988: xvii). Stuart Hall’s theory of 246

Encoding/Decoding accounts for hegemonic, negotiated, and oppositional forms of reading, and (as discussed in the introduction of this thesis), Adrienne Shaw’s enriched account of affordances similarly theorises technological use as a potential site of resistance. What these accounts do not leave room for is the ways in which use can become the site for the co-formation of emergent hegemonies. The problem lies in the linearity of producer-user models of use. This results in a form of (somewhat inverted) technological determinism, if not in theory, then in method. This is simply an inversion of theories that understand consumption as the reproduction of power relationships built into production (Baudrillard 1981; Bull 2000; Featherstone 2007). Technologies are understood to constrain and enable certain forms of action but they are not reciprocally remade in the process of use (Taylor 2001). This risks a form of reification that ultimately presupposes the boundaries between one technology and another. On the contrary, it is in the unexpected products of boundary-crossings and connections that the cassette tape has been rendered highly compatible with the value extraction and neoliberal modes of governmentality of digital platforms. All of this is not to suggest that the circulation of cassette tapes do not continue to hold a meaningful and valuable role within the everyday lives of the individuals discussed within this thesis. These musicians, label owners, and listeners are evidently deeply invested in the music that they circulate, and the cassette tape participates in emotionally and socially rich fields of experience, bringing together individuals that would otherwise not know each other. The listeners and label owners discussed here are not any more complicit in the reproduction of platform modes of governmentality than other musicians and audiences. In Hall’s language, the uses I have outlined in this thesis could be appropriately interpreted as negotiated uses of the media ecology as a whole, one that continues to manifest unexpected connections and articulations. Digital technologies, then, provide a form of paradoxical empowerment that is both meaningfully felt by users and potentially exploitative (or at least, extractive) (Proulx et al. 2011). Plasticity is a resourceful critical and methodological tool as it foregrounds these sites of overlap and entanglement. A focus on plasticity is particularly important for studies of ‘old’ media and technologies because existing literature often risks reifying these technologies within what turn out to be anachronistic practices of use. More broadly, future 247

studies of music cultures and media — particularly studies of analogue media and studies of DIY cultures — could benefit from an increased focus on such nonlinear interactions between multiple types of users (designers included). In the case of the cassette tape, there are differences in understandings between different groups. Perhaps most alarmingly, many listeners purchase music on physical media primarily because they hope to contribute to sustaining musicians’ livelihoods while many label owners in fact are only able to stay afloat from digital sales and (occasionally) streaming revenues. Limiting research to production or consumption in isolation is likely to miss these miscommunications and misrecognitions, and thus miss the circuits of feedback and emergent effects that result from them. Studies of music media could also benefit from a sensitivity to the multiple temporal layers of technological design and practice and the ways in which these emergent and residual layers may harbour, contest, or come into alignment with changing power relationships and hegemonies. Many of the technological functions considered to hold a democratic-participatory possibility (Manuel 1993) — the cassette’s potential configurability, particularly — were displaced onto highly centralised digital media that continue to employ that language of participation and user-control, while more closely controlling (in economic terms) the circulation of recordings than ever before. Finally, future research could also benefit from a focus on the ways in which use (necessarily) shapes the creation as well as the contestation of technological and economic power relationships. This is particularly important when discussing digital media as there is a tendency to assume that practices follow on from technological structures. Focusing on users’ own understandings of practice, and the ways in which platforms translate between different forms of use is a resourceful approach. In this thesis, examining the three sites of plasticity and interaction helped to decentre the focus on individual media. Ultimately, there is no blueprint to explain the role of technology in contesting and undoing hegemonies and power relationships (Casemajor et al. 2015). Consumption does hold the possibility to contest the power over representation and information held by the media industries. So does production. So does circulation. Without a workable theory that can locate the changing structures of media out in the world of practice, researchers may continue to try and find explanations for cultural phenomenon within the mechanism of technologies themselves. By looking 248

through and across the mechanism, it becomes clear that there is as much of the cassette tape 2.0 in the cloud as there is in the plastic of its cartridge.

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~ Switch off all the machines ~ Friedrich Kittler 250

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Discography Beat Happening (1984) Beat Happening. Olympia, WA: K Records. Information available at . Screaming Dukduks, the (1983) The Screaming Dukduks. Northridge, CA: Swinging Axe Productions. Sebadoh (1998) [1987] Weed Forestin’. Long Island, NY: Homestead Records. HMS158-1. Unbalnce Neurose (2003) Industrial Neurose. Japan: Nihonsei Label. NLCDR- 01.

Filmography Szava-Kovats AG (2010) Grindstone Redux [DVD]. Lowell, MA: True Age Media.

Taylor Z (2016) Cassette: A Documentary Mixtape [online]. Accessed at < https://www.cassettefilm.com/> on 08/12/2020.

Websites Apple (2019) iPhone 11. Accessed at on 10th December 2019. ------(2020) Obtaining Service for your Apple Product after an Expired Warranty. Accessed at on 20th August 2020.