Diffusing Music

This book explores the democratization of music in our current era made possible by digital technologies. Investigating how the utopian ideals and experimental practices of 20th-century musicians helped to spawn the recent seismic disruptions to the art form, this book explores the current environment of networked connectivity; music has become ubiquitous and increasingly intertwined with everyday life, rendering previous models of creation, performance, dissemination, and consumption largely obsolete. Diffusing Music identifies trajectories between 20th-century innovators and the broader redefinition of the musical art in popular culture through technology today. This examination gives context for the advancement of new creative practices and approaches to the art and business of music that are appropriate for current and future technological configurations, and offers new insights on important historical figures and movements. It asserts the prescience and value of experimental music by identifying its powerful influence on the digital milieu in which we all now exist, and presents possibilities for new definitions of musical creativity and distribution as musicking becomes more and more ubiquitous.