Subversive technologies: Web radio and cultural change
Alexandros Baltzis2009
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Abstract
A major cultural agent A sector of the music industries Tim Wall, analyzing the political economy of the internet music radio, observes that although music and profit maximization are two central aspects of contemporary radio, they are neglected. I would like to focus precisely on at least one of those neglected aspects: the music. As Antoine Hennion and Cécile Méadel (1986) have pointed out, radio is the medium par excellence. I think that it is not an exaggeration to add that it is a medium par excellence especially for the musical culture. Considering the history of the medium, regardless of its form as a public service, a business, a propaganda system, or some hybrid (Malm & Wallis, 1992), it is not very difficult to confirm its importance for the musical culture. Either as a major player in the local music life-as in the Greek case until the elimination of the state monopoly and that of Great Britain-or through its symbiotic relation with the other major player in the music life of the twentieth century, the recording industry, radio is nowadays more engaged in the workings of the musical culture than ever. In Greece, most of the approximately 1,300 radio stations are music stations and as several researchers have noted (Tacchi, 2000; Menduni, 2007), the fact that the radio set vanishes in the dashboard of a car, in the alarm clock, in the mobile phone etc., rather reinforces its power in everyday life. It also makes more difficult to establish its cultural significance. In the economics of culture and the arts, however, as well as in the economics of the recording industry and in the sociology of music, radio is considered a sector of the music industries (Fig. 1). * Sociologist, lecturer in the School of Journalism and Mass Media Studies at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece). His research interests are focused on the fields of the sociology of the arts and culture, sociology of music and sociology of education. He has participated in many international and local conferences and has published several papers (
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