The Change of Music Culture

Lawrence Lessing states that society has moved from a Read/Write (RW) culture to a Read/Only(RO) culture because of various technological advancements. A RW culture is where people consume music and are able to change it, or recreate it. A RO culture is where audience only consumes it, but does not have a response or change to it. I do not believe Lessing’s idea that our culture has moved to a RO culture because in today’s music business, there are a number of people who are known for taking other people’s work and recreating it into their own work. Artists such as Girl Talk and DJ Earworm are some examples that I have listened to. These people take various clips from other artist’s work, and form one song of their own by creating a “mash up”. Even though these are examples of people who have become well known from their work, anyone can now go on the internet and take their very favorite songs and mix them together with our technology we have today. These people are also able to make their new songs available to everyone in society by using YouTube. With technology advancements people are now able to get ideas from other people, create their own music, and easily share their makings to the world.

Lessing’s, Remix Culture, discussed ideas of John Phillip Sousa, which made me analyze what I believed our music culture was like today. Sosa stated that “infernal machines” would displace ordinary citizens “vocal cords”. This would create a society with less ways to create music and there would be a downfall in amateur’s music making. I agree with Sousa when he states that technology changes our culture. Since there are new ways that people are creating music, it is being done in various forms that people have not seen in the past. This has created different types of music and various sound reconstructions. I do not believe the idea that Sousa thinks that there would be less participation in amateurs making music. More than ever there are shows that are being created to have viewers watch people want to become professionals in some type of art. Some examples are, dancing, singing, acting, etc. These shows that are created have high audience flow. People are interested in watching these amateurs because of the way that they are so talented. The people who are performing take a song that was written by a professional and change it. The words are the same, but most of the time the song becomes something new by the way that the amateur decides to perform it.