PRESENTATION: UN-DISTRACTING LISTENING

The entanglements of the world’s largest music entertainment companies with their ad-tech streaming partners – working together in pursuit of engagement at any cost – have shaped not only a generation of passive listening, but also passive producing: behavioural data packaged and sold, playlists recycled as training sets for mechanized algo-mixes, content-milled “UGC,” and more. Today, to participate in musicking – scholar Christopher Small’s theory that music is not a thing but the many activities around it – often means doing free labour for labels and DSPs. In this talk, Liz Pelly, author of Mood Machine, will unpack how preserving music cultures requires not only understanding how corporations capture these activities, but also committing to alternative networks built outside the glare of—and in opposition to – global power players. This ongoing hope – that building social power to improve music’s material conditions also renews presence and ritual in listening – is ours to pursue.