The music industry, technology and utopia – an exchange between Marcus Breen and Eamonn Forde

Extract

A new struggle has emerged within popular music. This struggle is about technology and access to music through computer-mediated technology. Somewhat typical of the state of cultural things being more complex in their multiple articulations, this struggle runs in tandem with the historical struggle by youth for ‘their music’ against that of previous generations. The multiple characteristics of the struggle over cultural production, ownership and circulation represents a change from earlier days when pop music was articulated to youth culture and social movements, offering relatively direct relationships from one to another. (For example, ‘The Sixties’ became the shorthand reference for these cultural formations.) That relationship still exists, albeit in a self-conscious historical sense that requires continuous examination as it changes with the new generations of youth and the available technologies.