Stylistic Morphing: Notes on the Digitisation of Contemporary Music Culture

Abstract

This article is a series of notes concerned with tracking the social and cultural implications of the digitisation of music. In this piece we explore a number of emerging questions and phenomena with the explicit intention of opening new sets of questions and creating opportunities for further reflections and more detailed empirical case studies. This article, therefore, is not intended as a final word or a definitive statement on the phenomenon of cultural morphing, but rather it represents an attempt to experiment, to develop, and to explore the field of hybridisation and popular cultural change. It is hoped that these exploratory notes will illuminate some of the cultural transformations resulting from the proliferation and appropriation of a wide range of digital music technologies.