Ola Johansson - Songs from Sweden: Shaping Pop Culture in a Globalized Music Industry

Media is always spatial: spaces extend from all kinds of media, from newspaper columns to Facebook profiles, from global destination branding to individually experienced environments, and from classroom methods to GIS measurement techniques. Crucially, the way information is produced in an increasingly globalised world has resulted in the bridging of space between various scalar terrains. Being and engaging with media means being linked to people and places both within and beyond traditional political borders. As a result, media shapes and facilitates the formation of new geographies and other space-constituting and place-based configurations. The Media is always spatial: spaces extend from all kinds of media, from newspaper columns to Facebook profiles, from global destination branding to individually experienced environments, and from classroom methods to GIS measurement techniques. Crucially, the way information is produced in an increasingly globalised world has resulted in the bridging of space between various scalar terrains. Being and engaging with media means being linked to people and places both within and beyond traditional political borders. As a result, media shapes and facilitates the formation of new geographies and other space-constituting and place-based configurations. TheGeographies of Mediaseries serves as a forum to engage with the shape-shifting dimensions of mediascapes from an array of methodological, critical and analytical perspectives. The series welcomes proposals for monographs and edited volumes exploring the cultural and social impact of multi-modal media on the creation of space, place, and everyday life. series serves as a forum to engage with the shape-shifting dimensions of mediascapes from an array of methodological, critical and analytical perspectives. The series welcomes proposals for monographs and edited volumes exploring the cultural and social impact of multi-modal media on the creation of space, place, and everyday life.

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15003

Cover illustration: Alex Linch/shutterstock.com

This Palgrave Pivot imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

The Geography of Media series is constantly growing. You are holding in your hands our fourth title, again in the easy to access Pivot format. Its predecessors investigate cyberplaces, platform urbanism, and pirate radio stations. Here comes Ola Johanssons inside look into the Swedish music industry: While Swedish pop may be thought to emanate from Sweden, pop music audiences may already have heard a bit of Sweden in the multi-scalar dimension of composing and creating a pop song for a universal audience. A Scandinavian country of 10 million, Swedens army of writer-producers create songs for numerous global pop artists, but we also need to investigate the political economy of how a pop song relies on globalized networks.

Music production no doubt has changed since the time when ABBA used to top the charts, and Kimberly Peters Radio Caroline stole listeners from the BBC by broadcasting from a ship just outside of British jurisdiction (see Peters 2018). The romanticism of a single songwriter who picks a few chords on the guitar, hums along while scribbling down a few lines of lyrics has been replaced by locally-based producers and studios who operate globally. Multiple people add sound bites and samples to a song that is constantly reshaped, optimized, and forwarded over group networks and shared cloud storage. As Johansson tells us, hybridity becomes part of the creative process. Hybridity unlocks a wellspring of creative expressions that acknowledge the local and specific along with the imagined global and universal.

Listening habits and our access to music have also changed. Do you remember the time when you had to buy an actual, physical music album, just because you wanted to listen to that one particular song? When you put on the album for the first time, you were suddenly confronted with all the other songs you didnt particularly like or where interested in. After a while those other songs actually started to sound better, and sometimes even ended up being more valuable to you than the one responsible for the buying decision. Finally, you familiarized yourself with the previously unaccustomed harmonies to expand your musical taste. With the rise of digitally distributed music and personalized listening recommendations, those awkward sounding songs have been removed from your playlist, substituted by tracks based on customer ratings and the algorithm of your preferred streaming service.

In regard to randomness, the way we listen to music via online platforms has more in common with traditional, analog radio, Kimberly Peters talks about inRebel Radio. But even if you dont know which song the algorithm picks for you next, you are seldom surprised by its sound. Streaming services have become powerful digital platforms. Amazon Music, Apple Music, and Swedish based Spotify co-shape their users experience of the world and reanimates discussions ranging from Thirdspace (Soja 1996) to Hyperreality (Eco 1987). If you want to dig deeper into the role digital platforms play for our societies, we strongly recommend picking up Sarah Barns