Audio Poverty

In this lecture, Diedrich Diederichsen will ask about the effects that result from the reification and objectification of music. At issue here are not simply the pros and cons of this phenomenon. Rather, pop music needs to be seen first of all as a special case of objectification: pop music does not just become an object, it always does so as a product. If pop music becomes a product, it becomes real exchange value. This link has always represented a problem for the ideologists of music, and quite rightly so.

However, this descent to the devalued “zero point” of art has also brought out new possibilities. In pop music, exchange value stands at the same time for the possibility of discussing the music: the agents of pop music are constantly making judgments about the music. In this way pop music formed a social structure that drew its self-conception from the never-ending exchange about pop music. In this process, we can see an aspect that is characteristic for exchange processes in general. Exchange only ruins society when it is based on something else; Marx, as we know, calls this use value. But in pop music, exchange, in a sense, begins at zero. It targets the total commercialization of youth, but can also turn around this very dynamic (at least to a certain extent).

With the disappearance of the music object, its complete immaterialization, which can be seen taking place at the moment, a new stage has begun. During the course of this development, the debate on popular music has suffered a severe disturbance, and a result we are posed with the threat of a new, judgment-free idealism. While this idealism still refers to commodities, it has no awareness of the relationship, not even a hint. In this way a pure exchange value emerges that can no longer even be exchanged.

But in the meantime, a possible counterprogram is taking shape, and thus a new perspective for current popular music. This counterprogram can basically be described as a flight to performance. To grasp more precisely this way out, we first need to work out the differences vis-à-vis the product and object modes of pop music. Above all, it is crucial to ask whether concert and performance can truly be considered independent of recording and studio production. At the moment, it is still entirely an open question whether the performance can actually reverse the object character of popular music or, if not, what forms this object character then takes. The issue of the discourse that can be linked to performance-oriented popular music also needs to be discussed.