How Technology Affects Music Listening Experiences

As someone who writes and produces music in my free time and is also studying the field of communications and media studies in school, I’ve usually kept these interests separate. However, after reading Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, I became interested in exploring music through the lens of media studies. This shift has shaped my concentration at NYU Gallatin, where I’m studying communications, popular culture, and marketing. 

Music is one of my biggest passions. I find it fascinating how listening to music through different formats can drastically alter one's listening experience–whether that be listening to music live, physically, or digitally. McLuhan's ideas have influenced my understanding of music technology and its impact on an audience, thereby changing how I perceive music and interact with different mediums. Moreover, his concepts of the new medium as an old medium, hot and cool media, and the role of an artist are all interconnected to both historical and modern music. His probes connect to music because shifts in music technology are an excellent example of how form and content interact with one another and affect society. His ideas of the new medium as an old medium, hot and cool media, and the role of the artist all demonstrate how shifts in music technology illustrate the interaction between form and content in society.

Music technology has evolved remarkably, from the phonograph to the LP, cassette tapes, CDs, MP3s, and now, streaming–the dominant way people listen to music today. McLuhan warns that culture will collapse if people become overly reliant on one specific technology, urging us to notice how our listening experience changes when switching between technologies. He proposes that new mediums imitate older ones, a trend that applies to the advancement of music technology. In his own words, “A new medium is never an addition to an old one, nor does it leave the old one in peace. It never ceases to oppress the older media until it finds new shapes and positions for them” (McLuhan 174). An example McLuhan describes is manuscript culture’s shift to print. This pattern can also be seen in the shift from physical to digital formats of music, a sophisticated change that has been driven primarily by consumers' increased desire for convenience. The rise of illegal downloads and digital music libraries, which were far more convenient than carrying around CD players, forced record labels to adapt by moving to music streaming. Despite these shifts, new mediums of music continue to reference or imitate their older counterparts for the sake of familiarity since people are usually more comfortable with what they already know. 

The cassette imitating the LP is a prime example of a new medium embodying the old. While maintaining the physical format of music, cassettes offered greater portability, allowing people to listen to music in their cars and on the go. Similarly, when CDs were introduced, they closely resembled the size and shape of vinyl records. Streaming also mirrors physical music collections–just like how people once curated CD libraries or created mixtapes of different songs, streaming platforms enable users to make playlists and gain a sense of ownership over their digital collections. Features such as playlist creation, album artwork, and personalized recommendations further enhance this imitation, evoking the nostalgic experience of flipping through vinyl records or CDs in a record store. Even live music is replicated in our digital age, as artists and bands can stream concerts in real time, replicating the experience of attending a live concert while permitting virtual interactions through comments and reactions on social media.

Another idea of McLuhan’s that connects to music technology is his concept of hot and cool media. He notes that “hot media do not leave so much to be filled in or completed by the audience. Hot media are, therefore, low in participation, and cool media are high in participation or completion by the audience” (McLuhan 23). According to him, media can move between hot and cool, which applies to how people experience music through different formats. For example, live concerts are considered a cool medium because they require more audience participation. Often, artists will hold out the mic for the crowd to sing along, engage in call-and-response interactions, and encourage applause after each song. Additionally, live music is lower in definition compared to recorded tracks, and its imperfect audio quality evokes a more varied, unfiltered experience for listeners. Concertgoers are not only listening to the music, but also seeing and feeling the performance physically, making live music a highly sensory and immersive engagement. 

Radio is a medium that I believe is cool, but McLuhan argues is hot. McLuhan defends his opinion by stating that radio provides little room for response, and only involves hearing. Contrarily, I identify radio as a cool medium due to its lack of a visual aspect. When listening to the radio, people must actively use their imaginations to picture the speakers and singers. Radio hosts may also encourage participation by requesting listeners to call into the station and talk. Moreover, hosts engage and interact with the music by talking after songs, making the overall experience of radio more cool in my opinion. 

The last idea that I found connects to music is the role of the artist, which relates to Radiohead's 1997 album O.K. Computer. McLuhan says that the artist is the savior and should be the most valued since they can intricately influence the technological future because they have the most awareness of the future. According to him, “[t]he artist is always engaged in writing a detailed history of the future because he is the only person aware of the nature of the present” (McLuhan 65). Since artists are constantly engaged in the world creatively they’re often more aware of the current political and cultural landscape. He also notes, “[a]rtists in various fields are always the first to discover how to enable one medium to use or to release the power of another” (McLuhan 54). Pertaining to musicians, many of them have predicted the political and technological landscape shifts long before they occurred. Furthermore, artists hold the power to influence how people experience music by helping them understand technology's broader impact on the world through an artistic lens. 

With OK Computer, the indie rock band Radiohead predicted the alienation, isolation, and technological overload years before smartphones existed, especially in songs such as “No Surprises,” “Airbag,” and “Paranoid Android.” Although Radiohead did not know the exact specifics of future technology, thanks to their understanding of their current-day social environment, they were deeply aware of how it could potentially manifest in our technological future. This is demonstrated in lead singer Thom Yorke's comments in a Rolling Stone article, where he explained, “The paranoia I felt at the time was much more related to how people related to each other… Everything I was writing was actually a way of trying to reconnect with other human beings when you’re always in transit. That’s what I had to write about because that’s what was going on, which in itself instilled a kind of loneliness and disconnection” (Greene). Because of Yorke's heightened awareness of the present, artists like Radiohead were able to identify and express future consequences through their music. 

Another element to consider regarding the role of the artist is McLuhan's view that artists sell themselves out, meaning that they give into commercial pressures to make profit; however, numerous artists today aren’t able to gain success on streaming platforms due to algorithmic curation. This creates a divide between commercially successful artists and those whose work remains unprofitable, challenging the authenticity of mainstream music. 

In conclusion, technology affects how people listen to music because newer mediums emulate older mediums, persisting with similar qualities but enhancing convenience. This is shown with changes in the formats of how people listen to music. Music has moved between hot and cool, modifies listening experiences, and demonstrates that the artist helps people understand the impact of technology on society. Through learning about how closely intertwined music is with media theory, I’ve become increasingly interested in the relationship between listening experiences and music's cultural impact in my studies. This has allowed me to bridge my passions. Through analyzing music with media theory, I’ve been able to understand how to move forward with the music I’ve been making recently because it has pushed me to think more about how to communicate the music I write and produce and what mediums fit best with my brand since different formats have different impacts on an audience. Understanding music as a technological medium has been informative for my creative endeavors.