Abstract
Perhaps the most significant aspect of the MP3 format is that over the past 20 years or so it has burgeoned to such an extent that it now accounts for the majority of recorded sounds that are available to us. That alone would be sufficient in justifying extensive focus on the MP3, and this is what Jonathan Sterne offers in this book. To anyone familiar with his work, it will be no surprise to find that he unpacks an enormous amount from this diminutive format, not least because, quite rightly, he is concerned throughout to place it within a much longer process of historical development than that acknowledged by many writers on digital culture and ‘new’ media. This development occurred through various durations and across various sites. It figures in the book as, in Sterne’s terms, a set of concentrically connected histories that are both long-term and relatively short-term in extension and scale, and accordingly manifest different temporal rhythms.
His story begins – inasmuch as there is any clear-cut beginning – in the 1910s with the emergence of psychoacoustics as a distinct new approach to hearing, and with the research done on telephony in relation to the auditory response of its users. There is a marked legacy extending into contemporary experience from the perceptual technics that were devised through this research, particularly as it later became connected with information theory and cybernetics. Sterne then moves on to perceptual coding and the work required for the data compression necessary for digital sound transmission. This involves the psychoacoustic concepts of masking and critical bands, both being essential for the MP3 encoder, with audible sound being used to mask noise. We then turn to the standardization of the MP3 format.
This established compatible protocols for encoding audio across different digital technologies, on what of course is a global basis, and it did so in the interests of those setting the standards. But the process of standardization also happened through a series of listening tests conducted in the early 1990s. These tests anticipated the experience of listeners in respect of audio quality, at least so far as a professionally defined aesthetic of ‘good’ sound was concerned. Sterne devotes an entire chapter to what they involved, as he does in discussing how the economics of the MP3 format developed, which perforce raises the questions of what music is, how it should be socially organized, and for whose benefit. So, for example, the file-sharing story, as Sterne points out, is usually told in either a tragic version, highlighting the damage dealt to the recording industry, or a heroic version, celebrating the popular exchange and redistribution of music. Whichever version is preferred in any particular context, the value issue – and how value is defined – remains a constant factor. In this regard, Sterne emphasizes the market value of music, and there is no doubt that this has prevailed, with mass ‘piracy’ being an extension of the same economic paradigm as was represented by major-label market dominance, ‘breaking old oligopolies but leading to the establishment of new ones in the process’ (p. 210). As he argues, we need new models for a robust musical culture if we are ever to see ‘an alternative, better world for musicians and listeners’ (p. 28). More broadly, we need ‘multiple models of hearing subjects and sonic technologies’ because, otherwise, what faces us is ‘a sonic monoculture that will be of relevance to an ever-dwindling set of people and contexts’ (p. 28).
This is a book that brings many surprises, the most significant being that the format with which it deals needs to be understood against a much wider backdrop than one would initially expect. Sterne places the MP3 within this longer duration of communication technologies, and so properly historicizes it. This entails a considerable rethinking of the development of digital technologies and their role and place in modern communications, and raises interesting issues around the basic question of what it means to listen and hear.