Remediating Sound

This essential book unveils critical approaches to how YouTube has revolutionized the way we (re)create, (re)mix and (re)use sound, music and the moving image in the digital age. The editors and contributors explore innovative and collaborative music practices and trends that pulsate within audiovisual and streaming cultures, including its connection for all users involved, and its influence on contemporary societies, cultures and politics. Remediating Sound: Repeatable Culture, YouTube and Music is an important book for scholars seeking to unravel the entwined worlds of music and digital cultures. * Shara Rambarran, Senior Lecturer in Music, Business, and Media, University of Brighton, UK, and author of Virtual Music: Sound, Music, and Image in the Digital Era (Bloomsbury, 2021) *
For two decades YouTube has both driven and showcased the emerging genres and aesthetics of new digital media. Central to such media is remediation, the transformation of sounds and moving images as they migrate from one genre, platform or technology to another: the result is a cultural practice in which collage, montage and quotation play an essential role, with fixed works and meanings giving way to dynamic, multimodal networking and emergent meaning. Based on the reworking and transformation of existing materials, creativity is redefined as social interaction. Held together by the focus on YouTube, and encompassing a wide range of digital practices and genres – from fanvidding and reaction videos to protest videos, SoundCloud rap and vaporwave – this multi-authored volume is an indispensable and cutting-edge guide to a technological, social and aesthetic phenomenon that has become a core dimension of life in the 21st century. * Nicholas Cook, Emeritus Professor of Music, University of Cambridge, UK *