UC Riverside

Syncopated Progress comprises eight audiovisual pieces that blend electroacoustic and electronica influences, each responding to a specific music technology: sampling, spatial audio, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), music streaming services, virtual vocalists, ubiquitous music, artificial intelligence, and cultural memory. Where relevant, each piece incorporates the technology it examines within its compositional process.Each chapter explains a technology’s technical functions and musical applications, analyzes research on its socio-cultural impacts, and discusses the accompanying audiovisual piece. The creative process reveals how musicians function as technology consumers, as Théberge argues, while also examining how these technologies operate as cultural objects that shape and are shaped by their users.Music technology companies frequently promote “technical solutionism,” the belief that technological solutions can address complex industry problems. Streaming services, for example, promised to equalize opportunities for independent musicians. However, these technologies often mask structural issues or create new problems rather than resolving existing power imbalances in music distribution, royalty systems, and audience access.Creating music with emerging technologies required extensive research into leading companies, products, and services. This producer-consumer role, when combined with critical analysis of these technologies, demonstrates that music technologies function as non-neutral cultural objects. Understanding contemporary music-making requires examining how musicians relate to the technologies that facilitate creative practice and distribution.