10 - Digital Inequalities and Global Sounds

Summary

As the world lurches towards technologies of artificial intelligence, algocracy, the Internet of Things, and ensuing privacy paradoxes, music practitioners and consumers have embraced and resisted new ways of listening, while reckoning with emerging sonic regimes. What, however, does technological privilege – and sudden catch-up – mean in a (one hopes) decolonising world still divided on the fault lines of politico-economic advantage, class, race and gender? This article makes several attempts at decentring mainstream views of digital musicking in light of broader themes of recirculations and remediations. It draws from examples around the world, ranging from African-American rap in K-pop, to ‘pathways’ carved by indigenous musicians hidden in plain sight on YouTube, to sonic subversion of internet memes. With an intersectional approach that considers alternative musical dimensions that generate their own logics in interaction with hegemonic powers, this chapter seeks to open windows onto today’s new, asymmetrically digital sonic regimes.