The tendency towards cooperation is what separates the cultural animal from the wild one, but it is only in the last decades of technical development that new digital forms of cooperation have begun to erode the boundaries between producer and consumer” writes Magnus Larsson in an article for the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter.
Suddenly there are lots of “prosumers” (a concept discussed in the groundbreaking book wikinomics). The activity of “prosumption” can be seen in the new forms of collaborative and “dynamic” internet enterprises that have begun to overtake their “static” counterparts. Wikipedia has outsourced the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Bloggers outsource CNN and Google maps Mapquest. User generated and essentially cooperative ventures are outclassing centralised domains created not by mass collaboration, but by the cooperation of the comparatively few. Those who consume information are the also the active producers of this very same knowledge, and this essentially collective knowledge is now showing its true potential.
The consequences for social collaborations like the production and enjoyment of music could not be more emancipating. The same developments in information technology which have initiated the above trends are changing the way we can create and enjoy new music. Within music, the distance between those who produce and those who “consume” has also fallen; digital music formats combined with the internet allow us to share our music more easily, and increases in technology allow us to create a good quality recordings from our bedroom.
This is an event which brings music closer to the authentic cultural expression it has always been, and within this new environment music is truly flourishing. With the new forms of collaboration and mass participation we see a window where the “static” gatekeepers of music production and distribution are outclassed by a vibrant and non exclusory celebration of music. This celebration is conducted within a sphere where everyone has the right to an audience, and this audience can exercise a new found power as the determiners of value. With global distribution of music readily available, and effective channels through which it can be promoted more accessible than ever before, music can at last be freed from the structural constraints which has for the last decades been its antithesis. It is nothing less than the digital music revolution.
