From audio broadcasting to video streaming: The impact of digitalization on music broadcasting among the Swedish-speaking minority of Finland

Abstract

This paper investigates how digitalization has affected the role that Finland’s Public Service Broadcasting Company (YLE) plays for the popular music culture of the Swedish-speaking minority of Finland. Drawing on theories from popular music and cultural industry studies, the study explores to what extent new technology has changed practices, structures and perspectives of minority artists. The paper, which forms a sub-study of a larger research project on the impact of digitalization on minority music, focuses on two case studies, the comic duo Pleppo and comedian/artist Alfred Backa. The analysis illustrates how important the public service broadcasting company still is for minority culture despite the structural changes caused by digitalization. However, the radio’s quality norms have led to a paradoxical situation where the digital productions of the musicians need to compete with the technical standards of the international entertainment industry, whereas the channels’ own productions can follow DIY norms. As the broadcasting company is increasingly moving its focus towards the web, it must in the future achieve a balance between the different dynamics of commercial interests, controversial creativity and traditional public broadcasting objectives.

The Impact of Digitalization on Minority Music: Technological Change and Cultural Belonging among the Swedish-speaking Finns

“…During the twenty-first century, many Finland-Swedish artists have continued to use digi tal technology to create and distribute their productions (for more details, see Brusila and Ramstedt 2019). At the same time, new forms of audio-visual expressions have been de veloped to articulate and negotiate cultural identity.…”

“…The jokes often deal with the daily life of the Swedish-speaking population, phe nomena relating to cultural belonging, and sometimes, in an explicit form, with Finland-Swedish identity as such. Thanks to its ambiguous nature, humor of this kind makes it possible to negotiate minority ethnicity and personal relationships with society, but this negotiation also has its limitations (Brusila and Ramstedt 2019). A digital recoding of ma terial from the international entertainment industry can assign these cultural elements new meanings, but they can also re-disseminate existing meanings and reaffirm their im portance (Joo 2011), or simply function as blank postmodern pastiche (Jameson 1990), rather than empowering or confirming a minority identity.…”

“…As a reaction to the changing media situation, YLE's Swedish youth channel Radio X3M was already after its establishment in 1997 at the forefront of digital radio development in Finland, and it chose to develop this sector resolutely (for more details, see Brusila and Ramstedt 2019). It started streaming programs and web TV inserts, created a chat forum that generated a large online community, and finally formulated a basic production idea that was summarized in the words "the web first."…”

”Vi dör ut. Ack, så tragiskt. Ack, så roligt.”

“…Pleppo inledde med att publicera en egen webbsida som ursprungligen var ett opretentiöst undergroundprojekt som stegvis utvecklades och blev startskottet till duons framgångsrika karriär i underhållningsbranschen. Under åren har Pleppo bland annat producerat internet-podcaster och videor, radio och tv-program för nationella rundradiobolaget Yle, samt ståupp-och teatershower (se Brusila & Ramstedt 2019).…”