Ahead of its time

Many of you are aware that this past May I completed a master's thesis in the study of music and American urban culture. For those of you who don't know, the paper--The Subway Sessions--was a sociological study on how the iPod is changing the way people use music as a response to their urban environment.

The idea came to me last summer, while doing an extended piece for BreakThru Radio that looked at the Music Under New York (aka 'MUNY') program. As my team's investigation into street musicians deepened, I began to pay attention to the habits of people on the subway who were engaged with personal listening devices more than I did the musicians struggling to make a buck. "I wonder what they are listening to?" was the first thought, immediately followed by "And how is that changing their perception of the environment?"

As summer turned into fall, I thought more and more about this oxymoronic 'public-private' soundtrack that lives in and under our streets. I eventually became so fascinated by the topic that I decided to pursue it as my major piece of graduate work.

When my research began last fall, there was little to nothing to be found that had been written on the topic. In the early 80s, just after Sony introduced the Walkman, a small onslaught of academic articles and studies (mostly from Japan for obvious reasons) appeared in musicological journals; but that was it. More recently, some bloggers of little academic or professional credential had postulated on what the effects of the iPod were in our society and to musicians, but it was difficult to find qualified research into this urban phenomenon.

It seems to me that ever since I finished my studies, there has been a deluge of work on this very topic. Some of it has been academic, like the article "Wall of Sound" that first appeared as an excerpt on Slate and was later published in full print in New York's n+1 magazine. This particular publication stung a bit. I had interviewed one of the editors at n+1 back in November, and we had discussed my thesis in detail. I was hoping to get it published in his magazine and he seemed to warm to the idea, which is why I was shocked to discover that n+1 had published a paper on this exact topic only two weeks before my thesis was turned in. The article's author, Nikil Saval, is a Ph.D. candidate at Stanford and assistant editor of n+1. I couldn't help but wonder, "Just how many subways are there in Stanford, California?"

Alas, not all of this, "What's on your iPod?" is academic. And thank God for that, for if it was it could get quite boring quickly. Take this Tumblr Web site for example, "What's On NYC?" that asks random New Yorkers with headphones on what songs they are listening to, and then maps and tags them on Google maps. This is exactly what I sought to track.

Smartphone apps are being developed by the day as well, or so it seems. We are seeing more and more technology that looks for ways to have fun and take advantage of individual urban soundtracks. Perhaps most famously, and successful, is Grammy's developed "Music Mapper" app, an application that lets you drop songs, write stories, and share your own "audiobiography" as you wander through life. Or, if you are more into seeing others lives than you are about sharing your own, you can pick up songs left by others and read what they have left for you within a specific radii of your location. Similarly, there is Schematic Labs developed "Soundtracking" app. It's kind of like Twitter, but with music. You can share what you are listening to on your iPhone with those who are in range of you and also have the same app. Similar, but more like Pandora radio, is Soundtracker, except it lets you see what your friends are listening to at any given moment as well as sharing your own music and using the application like a radio station.

There were times during my research when I was kicking myself for going the unconventional route on my graduate work. When I tried to explain to contemporaries what I was doing, including some professors, I often received sideways glances as if to say, "Where is the academia in that?" Now, I am almost moved to shock to see just how trendy my topic was.

The words 'academic' and 'trend' don't seem to fit together all that well. All of this recent pop culture Youtube and Smartphone Application design surrounding the "What are you listening to?" inquiry risks making my thesis be received as cheap in many pretentious academic circles. Yet there is a whole other side to this argument--my graduate work was slightly ahead of its time. Too often the formal academy waits too long to begin to dissect major shifts in culture. There are some sound arguments as to why this is, staying power and effect being the most popular, but at the pace of information-exchange in which we now live, it may be that this patience bow to reality.

I don't know if my graduate work was "ahead of its time" or "cheapened academia". You can be the judge of that. What is for certain, is the amount of attention this curiosity is getting all over the world. It seems I am not the only one who started asking "What are you listening to?" and then set out to share these soundtracks with the rest of the world.