“… computer music is cool!” Theoretical Implications of Ambivalences in Contemporary Trends in Music Reception

Technical innovations in the last years have decisively changed the ways in which we consume music. The use of the internet has led to an heretofore unknown expansion in the access to different kinds of music. Napster is the slogan which popularized the idea of searching the computer files of millions of computer users through a central server and of downloading a host of music titles in fairly good quality. Other “peer-to-peer”– systems (i.g. imesh) followed. This practice has led to an economic battle in which it is not always clear which side the combatants are on. Net pirates see themselves as a kind of computer vanguard and create a myth of digital heroism for themselves. In the center of this new mythology they place the pioneer, a cultural archetype with deep roots in the mythic history of the American continent and pop culture. This computer pioneer is a fighter for freedom in the name of a just cause. But the once wide gap between pioneers and the mass of average computer users has narrowed over the years. The easy accessibility of music has become part of a popular life-style as people tend to spend more time with the computer in chatrooms and other virtual digital worlds. Playful forms of consumerism are becoming more interesting in this context. It may be argued that Jeremy Rifkin’s “age of access” has already begun, the age in which the access to the thing, but not the thing itself is it. In the context of music consumption new processes of a fetishization of technology are taking place. Computer music is cool because of computer streaming techniques – a stance which obviously raises the question whether music is listened to at all. These trends will be discussed in their implications for a further development of music reception theory.