Popular Music Between the Groove and the Code

Abstract

This chapter investigates the question of music as a technology of memory. A practice of popular music preservation is discussed, specifically, as it is used in a number of music blogs. The bloggers collect, digitize, and archive extensive collections of music. This practice is a result of distinctly individual and intimately motivated endeavors to preserve and archive the musical past. The blogs are investigated as examples of a radical overlap between the offline materiality and the immateriality of the code. Such practices have repercussions on the level of copyright, sustainability of such preservation, and, importantly, as a tool to tell stories through music.