Musings of a Media Culture graduate

1. Topic

As a topic for the final assessment of module 4, we would like to focus on the way music television changed or affected the concept of listening to music. Music television made it possible to not only listen to music, but also to watch music videos and to enter a virtual music environment. As a consequence of this, the concept and cultural practice of listening to music could get another meaning.

Research Question

In how far did the concept and cultural practice of listening to music changed with the introduction of music television? Has music television become the new radio?

Points and Questions of Attention

- We will make a comparison between the way people deal with merely listening devices and the way people deal with music television, thereby focusing on differences and similarities.
- How can we define the contemporary concept of listening to music seen from the point of view of music television?
- When listening to radio, the music can be either on the background or on the foreground of our attention. Is this also the case with music television or is the television-medium more present and can it not be placed in the background? Is music television used in the same way as radio?
- Does music get another meaning with the music television? For example by adding a visual dimension to the music in television, does it become more interesting to engage with it?
- Does music television bring forth another kind of consumer? Does the music consumer become more actively involved within the listening process?

2. Research Strategy

- As our field of study, we would like to use TMF (The Music Factory) as well as MTV (Music Television) as concrete examples and points of departure.

Ethnographic Research

- We will observe music television, thereby focusing on aspects such a voting on music, chatting with other viewers or other practices while listening to music and watching music videos.
- Secondly, we will observe people in our environment and examine how they use either TMF or MTV, thereby studying whether they are merely passively listening to the music they hear, watching music videos, or actively engage within the music environment. We will do the same for people who are listening to the radio.
- Next we will integrate within the TMF community by becoming a TMF-member and so infiltrating in the culture. Through the use of the TMF chatroom we will then be able to talk to other members and ask questions about their use of music television.

Research by Doing Interviews

- Furthermore, we are going to interview teenagers of different ages in real life and ask them how they use music television and radio.
- We will also interview somebody from before the music television era, but now regularly watches music television. We are going to ask this person how he or she experienced the arrival of music television and what difference music television made for his or her experience of listening to music.
- We are going to make a form with the same questions as we are going to ask during the interviews and spread this on the internet to people we know.

Interview Questions

1) When and where do you listen to music?
2) Can you describe how you listen to music?
3) Do you listen to music television? If so, when do you use music television?
4) When listening to music television, the music can be either on the background or on the foreground of our attention. How do you use music television?
5) Do you also listen to the radio? If so, in how far do you notice a difference in the listening experience?
6) In how far do you feel that music gets another meaning with music television because of its visual aspect?
7) Do you feel like the visual aspect enhances your listening experiences? Why?
8) Which one do you prefer, music television or radio? Why?

Literature Research

- For the theoretical part, we will examine some relevant literature and some video-series in which the rise of music videos is examined.

3. Research Results

Ethnographic Research Results:

As a preparation for the third skills training we had to do ethnographic research in our field of study. We observed people in our environment and examined how they use either TMF or MTV, thereby studying whether they are merely passively listening to the music they hear, watching music videos, or actively engage within the music environment. We would like to use these ethnographic results for our research.

Music Television studied when it is used as a background tool
What did we see, hear and perceive?

- I see a person doing homework while having the television channel TMF on the background. On this exact moment of observing, TMF is broadcasting music videos from all different kinds of genres and has commercial-breaks in between. The music videos which are played are (seemingly) random
- In the beginning, the person looks at the television quite often to see what is going on in the music videos. However, while the concentration on the homework is rising, the attention for the music television becomes lesser; the medium moves to the background and is merely used for its music.
- Sometimes the person is humming of singing along with the songs he hears
- When a VJ is talking on screen (to announce something) the concentration is often broken and the gaze moves towards the screen.
- If the song is not appreciated the volume of the television is turned low until the next song.
- When thinking about something of the homework-assignment, the gaze of the person is easily moved towards the television.

Music Television studied when it is on the foreground of one’s attention
What did we see, hear and perceive?

- The person watching MTV seems to be more interested and focused on the video clips she sees then the songs she hears. From her different facial expressions you can tell whether she sees something she likes, does not like, whether she sees something new or something she has seen for many times already.
- Commenting on the things she sees: “This video clip is not comparable to the image I had in my mind when hearing this song on the radio”, “This video clip makes the song even more boring”.
- moving on the rhythm of the song and singing along with the songs which she hears.
- When she hears a song she does not like, the concentrated act of watching the video clips shifts to merely gazing at the clip she sees. She thereby looks as if she is very bored and after a while even takes the zapper and zaps to TMF as another alternative for watching music television.
- Person starts to read out loud the text of a chat-session she sees while watching the video clips. She wonders why people say such silly things to each other.
- Apart from the chat-session, she also comments upon the final rate of each song. If people rate the song very high while she thinks the song is not worth it, she says “Oh God, how can people give this song such a high rate? It is a terrible song and video clip.”
- When there is a commercial-break, the person gets out of her seat, walks away from the television and gets something to drink.
- A second person enters the room and starts to watch the video clips too. After a while the second person gets up and walks away from the television. The first person asks why she is leaving and the other person answers by says “These clips all show the same stereotypes and I am getting frustrated by the constantly moving images”. She explains that the images distract her from the song she hears and that half-naked women and expensive cars, in her opinion, do not contribute to the song itself.

Conclusion of this Ethnographic Research:

When we relate our ethnographic results to the research question In how far has the rise of music television -as a source of music next to radio- transformed the meaning and character of listening to the users of these media? We can say that music television, at least for the people we observed, has become like the new radio. People listen and watch music channels when it is playing on the background during the performing of other activities. However, the medium from which the music is playing is more dominant than the radio has ever been. The listener also watched the television because it is more interesting because of its visual characteristics. Previously, when the radio was playing there was no attention for the medium ‘radio’ because there was nothing to see there, the attention was only for the sound which it produced.

From our observations, we can say that when music television is on the foreground of one’s attention, the person is not so much focused on the songs he or she hears, but merely on the video clips he or she sees as well as the chat-sessions and visual rating of the video clips. When looking at the reactions of our research-subjects we can say that the visual aspects or the things one sees can either enhance the song one hears or has previous heard on the radio or make the song even more boring. When the latter is the case, the person switches to another, more interesting music television ion order to see whether the other channel can indeed provide a better listening experience.

Up until now, we can conclude that the reaction on music television and the way it is handled is comparable to the reactions on radio and the way radio is handled. First of all, the music is used to fill the silence of the environment during certain activities. Secondly, just like when listening to radio, the concentration for the other activity is broken when somebody starts talking or when a commercial is played. This is a common reaction on a change in the environment in which you are working. The same as when listening to the radio it is not possible to change the song which is played, an obvious reaction in this case is to put the volume low for a moment, to change the channel, or to do something else for a moment.

4. Script

Before Presentation Starts:

Because TMF and MTV are basically in Dutch, it would be nice to have a translation for everybody -even for the parts which are already in English- so everything will be clear for the listeners. This is also useful in case somebody lost his or hers attention, or did not understand something. Therefore we will hand out a translation to everybody before our presentation starts.

Content of Radio Documentary:

- Introduction of TMF and MTV (“Dit is TMF, the music factory” or “MTV. Your Music Television”) recorded from television and an introduction of for example Radio 538 (“I Love Radio 538, Altijd hits”) recorded from the radio.
- The interview questions and interview answers we recorded. Maybe organised on the answers of the separate questions, not on the individual interviews. We will record one of us asking the questions. This way we can let the people first hear the question and then the answers which were given. It then becomes more clear which questions the interviewees are answering.
- Background noises depending on the answers given by the people we interviewed and the surrounding and context in which we interview the people.
- Maybe we could record some parts of the video-series on music television which is available in the library (depends on their content, we have to see them first).

Content of Presentation:

- Introduction to our research
- Explanation of our research-results. In this part we will first of all order our research results into a coherent theory based on the literature we read and secondly give a concrete answer to our research question. We will pay attention to how radio and music television are used by our interviewees and talk about the differences and similarities in the concept of listening to radio and music television.
- Conclusion in which we will give a summary of the things heard in the documentary and during the presentation.

6. References and Sources

Relevant Literature

Popular music and youth culture: music, identity and place.
Andy Bennett (2000)

Youth Media
William Osgerby (2004)

Viva MTV: Popmusik im Fernsehen
Klaus Neumann-Braun (1999)

Why I (still) want my MTV: music video and aesthetic communication.
Kevin Williams (2003)

Dancing in the distraction factory: music television and popular culture
Andrew Goodwin (1993)

Sound and Vision: the music video reader
Simon Firth, Andrew Goodwin.... (1993)

Listening in: radio and the American imagination
Susan Jeanne Douglas (2004)

Sounding out the city: personal stereos and the management of everyday life
Michael Bull (2000)

Music in Everyday Life
Tia DeNora (2000)

The Radio Handbook
C. Fleming (2002)

Capturing Sound. How Technology had Changed Music.
M. Katz (2004)

Consuming Audio: An introduction to Tweak Theory.
Marc Perlman (2003)

Relevant Websites

- http://www.mtv.com/index.jhtml?rd=home
- http://www.tmf.nl/
- http://www.radio538.nl/538/

Relevant Video Material

Fantastic Voyages: eine kosmologie des Musik-videos
(music videos as art, development of the phenomenon) Video-series.