Music distribution in the consumer society: The creation of cultural identities through sound

Abstract

RESUMENLos seres humanos estamos condicionados, en una medida imposible de estimar, por los supuestos de la cultura en que vivimos, y ésta nos impone modos de pensar y de percibir, hábitos, costumbres y usos. La música como forma de expresión cultural siempre ha tenido un papel muy importante en la construcción social de la realidad, es un arte cuyo desarrollo va unido a las condiciones económicas, sociales e históricas de cada sociedad. El presente artículo analiza el papel que tiene la música dentro del universo simbólico de la cultura contemporánea. Para ello centra su estudio en describir cómo nuestra sociedad ha generado multitud de sonidos que se distribuyen libremente a través de los canales establecidos por las nuevas tecnologías permitiendo establecer, a través del proceso de comunicación musical, múltiples identidades culturales que son incapaces de ordenar el discurso musical actual y extraer de él lo que de novedoso pueda presentar. Para ello se analizan los profundos cambios estructurales y simbólicos que está sufriendo la música en la sociedad de consumo y que hacen necesario fijar un nuevo paradigma para su análisis que permita estructurar la diversidad de sonidos de nuestra época, analizar su creación, distribución y consumo. Finalmente, el artículo concluye desarrollando la idea de que hoy, debido al contacto continuo con el hecho musical que se produce en la sociedad contemporánea, ha cambiado nuestra forma de percibir la música; nos hemos acostumbrado a apreciarla como una fuente de placer efímero, a percibirla más como una satisfacción inofensiva que como una necesidad vital. ABSTRACT Our behavior is determined by the characteristics of the culture in which we live. Culture imposes on us ways of thinking and perceiving, habits, customs and usages. Music is a form of cultural expression that has a very important role in the social construction of reality. Music has always accompanied man, is one of the oldest rituals of human kind. No one knows exactly how and why the man has started to make music but the music has been a means of perceiving the world, a powerful instrument of knowledge. Traditionally, creation and distribution of music has been tied to the need to communicate feelings and experiences that can not be expressed through common language. This paper describes how our society has generated a multitude of sounds that are distributed freely through the new technologies. This set of sounds is creating cultural identities that are unable to manage his current music and understand their communicative speech. To this end, the paper examines the profound changes that music is experiencing in a consumer society. These changes make it necessary to establish a new paradigm for analysis that allows structuring the diversity of sounds, analyzing their creation, distribution and consumption. Finally, the paper states that permanent contact with the music changes the way we perceive sounds. In contemporary society, music has gone from being a vital need to become an instrument of consumption. Thi...

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