Diffusing Music: Trajectories of Sonic Democratization – Available December 12, 2024

This book explores the diffusion and democratization of music in our current era through the proliferation of digital technologies. Music has become ubiquitous and increasingly intertwined with everyday life, rendering previous models of creation, performance, and consumption obsolete. Diffusing Music identifies trajectories between 20th-century innovators and the broader redefinition of the musical art in popular culture today. This approach can inform new modalities of musical thinking in the wake of the transformations being actualized by artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies. The author has been an active participant in many of the scenes and movements that gave rise to musical democratization. His experiences and collaborations with influential figures in the field are woven into the fabric of the narrative.

Bloomsbury Press website

“Many musicians are afeard of the encroachment of new distribution patterns and technologies (AI in particular) into our art, but Ben Neill strides into the future boldly, contextualizing them as extensions of historical processes that have been going on for centuries. He notices the pitfalls and dangers, but his stellar career as a postclassical/ambient crossover artist gives him the vantage point to weave the current cacophony of musical practices into a joyous free-for-all in which anyone can participate.” Kyle Gann, Professor of Music, Bard College, US, and author of Charles Ives’s Concord: Essays after a Sonata (2017)

“This is an essential book, discussing democratization of music from a historical perspective, as well as looking at its likely future effects on production and consumption of music. Written in a clear, simple language, it should find itself on a shelf of everybody interested in music and its interface with technology and social life.” Ewa Mazierska, Professor of Film Studies, University of Central Lancashire, UK