Whither aura? Music in the age of mechanical reproduction

Benjamin (Reference Benjamin, Zohn and Arendt1968 [1935]) argues that, while works of art have always been reproducible to the extent they could be imitated by people, mechanical methods of reproduction represent something new. Their superhuman accuracy renders concepts of forgery and authenticity obsolete and allows copies of artworks to meet the beholder halfway, like a choral production performed in an auditorium but resounding in a listener's drawing room (Benjamin Reference Benjamin, Zohn and Arendt1968 [1935], p. 221). As a result, mechanical reproduction alters the impact of art and gives rise to new forms, such as photography and film, without originals and copies. Benjamin argues that something withers under these conditions and he calls this element ‘aura’. Reproduced art lacks the authority or ‘cult value’ that derives from an original's unique, physical history of ritual use, a value that is perhaps only increased by limiting access. The loss of aura is not necessarily a negative outcome in Benjamin's view, but can be democratising and liberatory. Mechanical reproduction detaches art from centralised ritual and hierarchised mediation and allows it to penetrate, permeate and reveal people's worlds.

Benjamin's focus is on visual art forms and his privileging of material uniqueness poses a difficulty when considering the aura of music, as his contemporary Adorno observes (Chapman Reference Chapman2011). Adorno's analyses of music focus on textual content like melodic and harmonic development so the ‘work’, like literature, does not reside in a physical original that can be copied. However, Benjamin's focus on technique defines art as a practice and enables consideration of how new modes of production and reproduction can generate new kinds of perception, which has been useful in relation to music (Middleton Reference Middleton1990, pp. 66–8). The concept of aura has been revised and broadened from Benjamin's formulation by understanding it as ‘relational and multidimensional’ instead of intrinsic (Bartmanski and Woodward Reference Bartmanski and Woodward2015), lying ‘not in a [musical work's] unique physical existence but in the space it makes for itself in the collective consciousness of cultural discourse and the witness that it bears to all that went into its making’ (Zak Reference Zak2001, p. 20). To say even that a work makes space ‘for itself’ could be misleading, as music's meaning is limited but not determined by the affordances of the work itself (DeNora Reference DeNora2000).

A modern, secular example of music being imbued with aura by a ritualised, exclusive context is the bourgeois concert form, in which the social and spatial arrangements are inseparable (Middleton Reference Middleton1990, p. 95; Small Reference Small1998). Meyer (Reference Meyer2009) observes an extreme instance of this in Wagner's decree that his opera Parsifal was not to be performed outside the purpose-built Festspielhaus in Bayreuth. Prefiguring Wu-Tang Clan, the composer's stated wish was to prevent his work from degenerating into ‘mere amusement’ (Rose Reference Rose1996, p. 159) and the success of this strategy is apparent from contemporaneous reports of fans undertaking a global ‘pilgrimage’ (Twain Reference Twain1891) to witness Parsifal with ‘devout contemplation’ and ‘trance-like devotion’, giving performances the character of a ‘memorial service’ or ‘cult’ (Meyer, Reference Meyer2009, pp. 153–4). This seems to bear out Benjamin's association of aura with the distance and centralised ritual made possible by restricted access. Such restriction is exceptional in secular music, however, in which the most respected works are often also the most widely presented. Also, even Parsifal was never entirely monolithic nor omnipotent, as Mark Twain's (Reference Twain1891) account of the Bayreuth festival makes clear. Twain reports that he endured the sacred opera ‘despite the singing’, quipping that ‘seven hours at $5 a ticket is almost too much for the money’, although he later encountered 12 or 15 dependable friends who assured him that with more viewings it would become a favourite. Days later, having been further enlightened by a German music magazine, Twain enjoyed a performance of Parsifal only to be informed by experts that this staging was merely ‘the wailing, screeching of third-rate obscurities, palmed off on us in the interest of economy’. Thus he reaches his wry conclusion: ‘Whenever I enjoy anything in art it means that it is mighty poor’. Although probably exaggerated for comedic effect, this is a remarkably familiar example of the varied sources and effects of aura in music. The dominant narratives that produce aura may be reproduced through rituals and by media, experts and peers, but these narratives are not determinative and people can consciously engage with them.

Recording technology separated the reception of music from its unique performance in time and place at a more fundamental level. Adorno praises records for presenting ‘the music itself … shorn of phoney hoopla’ (Meyer Reference Meyer2009, p. 166), although the meaning and relative importance of recording ‘fidelity’ have themselves been subject to cultural change (Devine Reference Devine2013). Recording also gave rise to new artistic forms that complicate the idea of an original performance, as the technology became a creative resource in its own right (Bennett Reference Bennett2009, p. 475). Frith (Reference Frith1988, p. 22) argues that the development of recording as an art form enabled rock to develop as a ‘serious’ music with its own account of authenticity, which has arguably had consequences for all popular music since the 1960s. Production and reproduction have been especially blurred in hip hop culture, where the playback technology of the turntable is used creatively in mixing and scratching, while sampling turns existing recordings into raw material for new works (Potter Reference Potter1995; Schloss Reference Schloss2004). Thus, consistently with Benjamin's (Reference Benjamin, Zohn and Arendt1968 [1935]) broad conclusions, mechanical reproduction has dispersed and democratised the production and reception of music while redefining its parameters as an art form. Digital media and the expansion of the Internet have allowed music to be reproduced more easily, quickly and widely than ever (Jones Reference Jones2000; Hesmondhalgh Reference Hesmondhalgh, Pratt and Jeffcutt2009), while further problematising any materialist understanding of uniqueness and authenticity. Far more than centrally programmed radio and television, the wide choice and immediate access enabled by on-demand music streaming services (the ‘Celestial Jukebox’; Burkart and McCourt Reference Burkart and McCourt2004) seem to fulfil the 1931 prediction of Paul Valery that Benjamin quotes (Reference Benjamin, Zohn and Arendt1968 [1935], p. 219):

Mass reproduction not only increased opportunities for listening to music but also allowed new ways of listening to develop. Wagner's ceremonious presentation of Parsifal can be contrasted with Andy Warhol's statement a century later about his Sony Walkman: ‘I use mine all the time to listen to opera. It's nice to hear Pavarotti instead of car horns’ (Zito Reference Zito1981). Many listeners use portable, digital music devices to manage (Bull Reference Bull2007) or at least negotiate (Beer Reference Beer2007) their experience of physical environments. Having a range of music available in a variety of spaces enables listeners to apply it for their own ends, from simply enhancing their performance of everyday activities to engaging deeply with emotions and memories (DeNora Reference DeNora2000; Anderson Reference Anderson2004). More than a mere amusement, music's affordances for both intensely personal use and overt social display make it a resource for the construction of the self (Bennett Reference Bennett2013; DeNora Reference DeNora2000). Nevertheless, music is not only valued instrumentally but also respected as a powerful force, to the extent that people recognise particular experiences with both live and recorded music as inspirational, influential and even pivotal in their lives (Green Reference Green2016). In these ways, mechanical reproduction has enabled music to better penetrate, permeate and reveal people's worlds and selves.

Despite these highly personal uses and meanings, it is not the case that musical works can no longer carry a collectively recognised, culturally powerful aura. Auslander (Reference Auslander2002, pp. 83–4) suggests that the self-conscious discourses of authenticity in popular music recreate the conditions that governed the perception of works of art prior to mass reproduction. Increasingly, concepts of canon and heritage apply to popular music to an extent that Benjamin and his contemporary theorists of mass culture, defined against high art, may not have foreseen (Bennett Reference Bennett2009; see also Schmutz Reference Schmutz2005). Popular music is not free of cult value but full of it and surrounded by value-laden, collective rituals (Small Reference Small1998). Cultural discourse bestows aura upon even the material media on which popular music is reproduced, as in the case of vinyl records (Bartmanski and Woodward Reference Bartmanski and Woodward2015). Vinyl records demonstrate the continuing role for physical exclusivity and distance, reflected also in the power of limited editions, ‘rare’ recordings and memorabilia, although this is but one factor among many. In summary, the change effected by mass reproduction is not to remove aura from music, but to open the process of aura creation to wider participation and contestation by creating new space for uses and rituals of music. As a consequence, music's meaning becomes more obviously contingent (Middleton Reference Middleton1990, p. 95) and as this process is accelerated by the digitalisation of music, there has arisen renewed concern about its ‘devaluation’ (for example, Havighurst Reference Havighurst2015). This is a concern that motivates some artists, including the producers of Wu-Tang Clan's Shaolin, as this article will show. First, it is instructive to review the history of Wu-Tang Clan more generally.

Raw I'mma give it to ya: the aura of Wu-Tang Clan

Wu-Tang Clan came to prominence during the compact disc era in the 1990s and their initial fame grew from radio play, situating their music squarely in the age of mechanical reproduction. As a hip hop group they work within a culture that exploits and celebrates mechanical reproduction (Schloss Reference Schloss2004).Footnote ¹ Yet as discussed in this section, their music's aura is demonstrated by its critical appraisal and canonisation, enthusiastic fanbase, recognised mythology and acknowledged influence, making Wu-Tang Clan, at least as much as any other popular music artists, an interesting case for considering the aura of popular music. In their case, this aura derives from multiple sources.

Perhaps the most immediate feature of the Wu-Tang Clan is its composition as a large and diverse group of artists, as one listener recalls from his first encounter with their music on the radio:

Each member has a fantastic name and particular attributes: Inspectah Deck, ‘that dude that'll sit back and watch you play yourself’; Raekwon the Chef, ‘cookin’ up some marvellous shit to get your mouth waterin’’; Method Man, who boasts ‘mad different methods to the way I do my shit’; Ol’ Dirty Bastard, so-called ‘‘cause there ain't no father to his style’; RZA, ‘the sharpest motherfucker in the whole clan … always on point, razor sharp’, and so on. These individual members have pursued parallel solo careers but in Wu-Tang Clan they ‘form like Voltron’ (quotes from Method Man in an audio interview at the end of ‘Can It Be All So Simple’, 1993). The most significant change to the clan's identity was the 2004 death of Ol’ Dirty Bastard, one of the original and most prominent members of the group. Arguably, the personae of the Wu-Tang Clan contribute to their music's cult value, rather than detracting from it or replacing it, as in Benjamin's (Reference Benjamin, Zohn and Arendt1968 [1935]) critique of Hollywood's ‘cult of personality’.

In describing what is arresting about Wu-Tang Clan's early music in particular, the term ‘raw’ is frequently used (for example Blanco Reference Blanco2011, p. 17), even by the artists themselves: ‘Raw I'mma give it to ya, with no trivia/Raw like cocaine straight from Bolivia’ (Wu-Tang Clan, ‘Da Mystery of Chessboxin’, 1993); ‘Ooh baby I like it raw/Yeah baby I like it raw’ (Ol’ Dirty Bastard, ‘Shimmy Shimmy Ya’, 1995). The term refers to both the sonic and semantic aspects of their music. The ‘gritty, lo-fi’ sound of the production betrays its fabled origin in RZA's basement, owing partly to his use of a low sample rate to enable longer samples (Blanco Reference Blanco2011, p. 15) as well as the minimal, ‘demo-like’ way in which the samples are combined to create tracks (Leask Reference Leask2013). The rough grain of the rappers’ vocals, ranging from rasps to distorted shouts, matches the lyrical content of profanity, crime and violence, taken to a comedic extreme in one skit where the members compete to invent the most grotesque method of torture: ‘I'll fuckin’ sew your asshole closed and keep feedin’ you, and feedin’ you, and feedin’ you, and feedin’ you’ (‘M.E.T.H.O.D Man’, 1993). Another uncompromising aspect is the dense ‘Wu-Tang slang’, combining references to martial arts films and other popular culture with the spiritual symbolism of the Five Percent Nation and hyperlocal or personal tropes (RZA 2009). The combination of these various aspects is raw in two senses. Raw means fresh, in that the music ‘wasn't a refusal or an affirmation of a hip hop world that had ignored them, it was a NEW hip hop world they had made for themselves’ (Kulkarni Reference Kulkarni2013) and as a result, ‘Hip-hop music would never be the same’ (Blanco Reference Blanco2011, p. 16). Raw also connotes authenticity, naming the impression that this is music from the street or the basement, delivered in pure form, uncut and hard-hitting. Thus the textual and textural affordances of Wu-Tang Clan's music, as interpreted through the cultural contexts of hip hop and popular music, marked it as unique and authentic.

The geographic and socio-economic origins of Wu-Tang Clan's music are essential to its place in cultural narratives and therefore its aura. The group includes neighbours, family and friends from the New York boroughs of Brooklyn and, most famously, Staten Island. On their debut album Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) (1993), songs like ‘Can It Be All So Simple’, ‘C.R.E.A.M.’ and ‘Tearz’ present origin stories set in ‘the slums that's busted’ (‘Wu-Tang Clan Ain't Nothing ta Fuck Wit’, 1993). In one pre-song skit, Ghostface Killah breathlessly informs other Wu-Tang Clan members that he just witnessed ‘Shameek from fucking two-twelve’ being shot in the head, followed by a moment of bathos as a stoned-sounding Method Man struggles to comprehend the news (‘Wu-Tang: 7th Chamber’, 1993). Thus Wu-Tang Clan's background aligns with popular and critical notions of hip hop authenticity (Armstrong Reference Armstrong2004). In Benjamin's (Reference Benjamin, Zohn and Arendt1968 [1935]) terms, their music draws cult value from the witness it bears to its history in specific places and times, although this connection does not depend on physical uniqueness but instead on the space the music occupies in the collective consciousness of cultural discourse (Zak Reference Zak2001). The relationship between place and music is reciprocal as Wu-Tang Clan are acknowledged for bringing Staten Island the ‘respect’ it had been lacking in comparison to other boroughs (Barclay Reference Barclay2007) and for wrenching hip hop's centre of gravity ‘back’ from Los Angeles to New York more generally, with their signature sound becoming ‘east coast street rap's calling card for some years after’ (Leask Reference Leask2013).

These real world settings are mythologised in the songs through Wu-Tang slang and sonic references, so that Staten Island becomes ‘Shaolin’, inhabited by sword-wielding assassins and wise abbots, while urban drug dealing and gang activity take on the epic drama of Mafia films. These stereotypes are used to reframe lifestyles that are themselves stereotyped as abject in broader cultural narratives (Tate Reference Tate2003, p.136). The balance of fiction and reality, kitsch and pathos, levity and danger, expressed through the considerable wit and charisma of the production and rappers, seems to be a major locus of Wu-Tang Clan's broad appeal. As Tate opines:

Thus their music's aura is multiple, manifesting differently to disparate audiences. Wu-Tang Clan have capitalised on this broad appeal with extra-musical ventures including video games and the Wu Wear clothing line, distinguished by the iconic, curved ‘W’ logo that also adorns their record covers. Partly inspired by RZA's earlier, disappointing encounter with the music industry (RZA 2009), Wu-Tang Clan's unique business approach became part of their legend, including their multi-media output, an ever-growing circle of associated artists or ‘Killa Beez’ and a groundbreaking recording contract that left the individual rappers free to sign with labels of their choice for their prolific solo output. This cultural empire was acknowledged in 1997 when the cover of leading hip hop magazine Source bore a large, red W, in lieu of any group members, to advertise a feature article about the group (Barclay Reference Barclay2007). The W is also a gesture (making a ‘V’ with the thumb and fingers of each hand and joining them), held aloft at performances of the Wu-Tang Clan and associates and when one of the group's tracks is played, as the author has witnessed in Australian clubs. Wearing or holding the W is a ritual display of affiliation with the Wu-Tang Clan's music and its connotations as discussed in this section.

In summary, Wu-Tang Clan's mass-reproduced popular music is replete with magical avatars, semantically potent and iconic works, temporal and geographical associations, totems and rituals, which produce and reproduce its aura. However, the global, cross-cultural reception of their music also demonstrates that aura itself can be reproduced, relocated and reinterpreted as people integrate the music with their worlds through varied and localised rituals. With digital reproduction this decentralisation of aura accelerates and, while it is not named as such, this is the threat against which the limited edition Shaolin album has been positioned, as considered in the next section.

Picasso Baby: Valuing popular music as art

The strategically announced release of an extremely limited, extremely expensive album fits with Wu-Tang Clan's image as innovative entrepreneurs. Viewed as a promotional strategy, it has attracted substantial media attention beyond their usual sphere and at the very least, grossed US$2 million in a single transaction. This is another sense in which Shaolin could be seen to be all about the ‘Benjamins’ (a slang term for US$100 bills).Footnote ² The philosophical justifications presented by the producers of Shaolin, RZA and Cilvaringz, reinforce the former's thoughtful, even spiritual image as the Abbot of the Wu-Tang Clan (see for example RZA 2009). Yet beyond their marketing utility, these statements identify a live question with their central claim, that the ease of access permitted by digital technology is a problem for our relationship with music. The official website for the album presents texts entitled ‘Edictum’ and ‘Conceptus’ with a tone pitched between an artist's explanatory statement and a manifesto (RZA and Cilvaringz 2014):

In these texts, the producers claim that they are less concerned with artists’ income than with people's experience of music and the emotional bonds they form with it. Like Wagner, they cite the fear that if it is ‘all just too easy’ their music will become mere amusement and distraction. As counter-examples they note that ‘Bach, Beethoven and Mozart’ were held in ‘profoundly high esteem’ for forging ‘windows into the most elusive elements of human experience’. They present Shaolin as an approach with a lineage in ‘the Enlightenment, the Baroque and the Renaissance’, by which they hope to reawaken perceptions of music as ‘monumental art’ and to inspire and intensify urgent debates about the future of music, ‘both economically and in how our generation experiences it’ (RZA and Cilvaringz 2014).

These pronouncements take as their starting point the idea that music is an art form of importance to human flourishing, with no difference in this regard between popular music and canonised art music. They argue that any difference lies not in the music's inherent value but in people's attitudes to it. One way in which scholars have sought to define ‘popular’ music and culture is by its mass distribution as a commodity, a ‘technologico-economic’ definition (Birrer, in Middleton Reference Middleton1990, p. 4). By removing these trappings, RZA and Cilvaringz seek to overcome the perception of their art form as inferior and disposable. Shaolin’s exclusive edition, illustrious housing, gallery exhibition and seven figure price are material expressions of the music's intended status as (high) art, imbued with Benjamin's (Reference Benjamin, Zohn and Arendt1968 [1935]) institutional and monolithic formulation of aura. Nevertheless, the central physical item is a compact disc, which nostalgically references the recent history of popular music and at a deeper level, whether deliberately or not, the centrality of mass reproduction to popular music as a cultural form.

The Shaolin album is perhaps the most extreme manifestation of this intent in popular music but it is not the first or only one in recent times. In January 2015, Scottish rock band The Sexual Objects sold the sole vinyl copy and exclusive reproduction rights of their album Marshmallow (2015) for £4,213 at auction on eBay (Anon 2015), a move explained by singer Davy Henderson in terms nearly identical to those of RZA and Cilvaringz:

The track listing of Marshmallow includes a reference to the Wu-Tang Clan, which has been interpreted as an acknowledgement of their precedent for this release strategy (Cooper Reference Cooper2015). There are also recent precedents within the hip hop world, in particular, for Wu-Tang Clan's material framing of their music's cultural value. In October 2013, unsigned rapper Nipsey Hussle sold 1,000 compact disc copies of his Crenshaw (2013) mixtape for $100 each, even though it could also be downloaded for free. In an interview Hussle said, ‘It's time we acknowledge what we all know: the music is free. We shouldn't force people to buy it, what we should do is create different methods to monetise the connection’ (Robehmed Reference Robehmed2013). Rapper, label boss and art collector Jay-Z, who purchased 100 of Hussle's discs, released a track called ‘Picasso Baby’ (2013) in which he calls himself ‘the new Jean-Michel’ (in reference to the late painter, Basquiat) and asks:

As if to answer this question, Jay-Z's album Magna Carta … Holy Grail (2013) was put on display next to a surviving copy of the Magna Carta in Salisbury Cathedral, England. Jay-Z also put himself on display in a New York City art gallery, rapping ‘Picasso Baby’ for six hours in a performance inspired by artist Marina Abramović, who attended along with other invited guests from ‘the New York art and cultural world’ (Michaels Reference Michaels2013). In Picasso Baby: A Performance Art Film (2013), released in lieu of a standard music video, Jay-Z says:

As Jay-Z makes explicit, all of these projects are, in part, deliberate extensions of what has been recognised as the late modern blurring of high art and popular culture. Bennett (Reference Bennett2009) observes that general notions of heritage and culture have become progressively more grounded in the popular cultural forms and products of the recent past, including contemporary popular music forms. Hip hop music, along with other ‘street’ genres like punk and electronic dance music, has become involved in a process of consecration similar to what Bennett calls ‘heritage rock’. An example of what could be called heritage rap is the 20th anniversary of Nas's Illmatic (1994), marked by a reissue, world tour and substantial media coverage, some of which took the opportunity to reflect more broadly on the hip hop canon (Josephs Reference Josephs2014). Similar reflections met the 20th anniversary of Wu-Tang Clan's debut album, ‘a certified masterpiece of the genre’ (Leask Reference Leask2013; see also Kulkarni, Reference Kulkarni2013). Critical analyses of both new and ‘classic’ hip hop releases draw upon high art discourses and are published in mainstream cultural organs (for example Frere-Jones Reference Frere-Jones2014), continuing the trend that began with rock in the 1960s. Nevertheless, demarcations between high art and popular music persist at the institutional level through government funding and regulation (Shuker Reference Shuker2001, p. 18) and the thematisation of academic literature, also mirrored in the internal discourse of hip hop that constructs it as oppositional (‘art is too bourgeois’), and made explicit at the level of commerce in the price disparity between high art and popular music. This latter divide is illustrated neatly by ‘Beat Bop’, a 1983 record with a sleeve design by painter Jean-Michel Basquiat (who also produced the music), original pressings of which are ‘among the most valuable rap records ever made, although a relative steal for a vintage Basquiat print’ (Nosnitsky Reference Nosnitsky2013). RZA and Cilvaringz draw attention to this price disparity between popular music and high art, and the parallel disparities they perceive in respect and emotional investment, by adopting a high art price and other high art signifiers for Shaolin. They ask, ‘Is exclusivity versus mass replication really the 50 million dollar difference between a microphone and a paintbrush?’ (RZA and Cilvaringz 2014). Their project and the others described in this section illuminate the new space that the digitalisation of music has created for such perennial debates about cultural worth to play out. Just as ‘live’ music was promoted and debated as an ideal only after it ceased to be the sole available option, the separation of music from its physical commodity form has enabled and inspired new debate as to just how music can and should be presented, circulated and valued.

The sceptre: digitalisation and democratisation

Popular music involves and is arguably defined by the tension between three discourses. It is cast and judged as a popular (‘folk’) culture with social functions, a mass commodity with economic constraints and uses, and an art form that produces aesthetic experience and cultural value (Frith Reference Frith1996, pp. 42–3; Gracyk Reference Gracyk2001, pp. 18–23; Shuker Reference Shuker2001, pp. 7–9).Footnote ³ Shaolin and the other projects discussed in the preceding section seek to promote the artistic dimension of popular music and they do this partly by exploiting the space that digitalisation, by decentering the recording-as-commodity, has created for innovation in the mass commercial dimension through matters like pricing, artist compensation and distribution (see for example Shuker Reference Shuker2001, p. 65). At the same time their central tactic of exclusivity highlights a tension between the artistic and popular dimensions. This tension is explicitly acknowledged by both the creators and critics of Shaolin.

According to RZA, the announcement of Shaolin attracted good will from his peers in the music and film industries as well as multi-million dollar bids, although his claim to have been offered US$5 million was undercut by the reported sale price of US$2 million (Aswad Reference Aswad2014). On the other hand, Cilvaringz claimed that he was ‘being crucified by Wu Tang fans every day’ (Greenburg Reference Greenburg2014). The Wu-Tang Clan itself has been divided, as Masta Killa and Ghostface Killah expressed appreciation for the release strategy (Kyles Reference Kyles2015) while Method Man spoke passionately against it:

This quote pinpoints the central concern of aggrieved fans, that they want to hear the music and should be able to do just that. Indeed, Method Man observes that if Shaolin cannot be heard by ‘the people’ then it cannot be ‘music’ (as understood by Wu-Tang Clan and their fans, which is popular music), but is turned into ‘something else’. This is an appeal to popular music's popular dimension, which inherited from its parent concept of folk music the recognition of music as a need and a right. This is balanced by the commercial dimension, which after all makes the popular dimension possible by mass reproduction and distribution (Gracyk Reference Gracyk2001), as well as by the artistic dimension, which enables hierarchies of fandom and expertise through which the morality of access is filtered (Thornton Reference Thornton1995).

The arguments over Shaolin show that any attempt to enhance popular music's artistic dimension by limiting its mass quality, will also limit its popular dimension and therefore put into doubt its definition as popular music. A discussion of the project on music website The Quietus, which like this article observes links to Benjamin's theory of aura, argues that it is possible to promote both the artistic and popular dimensions of popular music by separating its mass quality from the commercial imperative (Barry Reference Barry2014):

It seems extremely unlikely that governments would fund popular music to the extent necessary to decouple it from commerciality, for the cultural and practical reasons noted here (a Catch-22). However, digitalisation and the Internet enable and demand new relationships between mass art and commerce, by affecting music production, distribution and consumption (see Jones Reference Jones2000). This is evident in the success of the streaming services described earlier and also linked to the rise of the ‘experience economy’ in relation to music (for example, the relative economic significance of live music; Campbell Reference Campbell, Tschmuck, Pearce and Campbell2013), which a Shaolin listening tour would exploit. This consequence of digital media is also demonstrated in the online fundraising campaign through which fans sought collectively to purchase Shaolin, fuelled by the idea of their right to hear it:

This campaign raised US$15,406, falling well short of Shaolin’s sale price, although similar ventures have succeeded. An unrelated campaign created one day later saw 4,124 people contribute US$67,424 to purchase the sole copy of an unreleased Caustic Window (alter-ego of electronic music producer Aphex Twin) record at auction, enabling the music to be shared digitally among the contributors and the broader public of Internet users. The campaign organisers promised to relay funds exceeding the purchase price (approximately US$20,000) to the artist and record label as well as a charity (Thomas Reference Thomas2014), making at least a token acknowledgement of the economic imperatives of popular music despite bypassing its commodity form. Like the auction house release of Shaolin, these fundraising campaigns are outliers that may not offer a universally workable model of distribution (a similar but more practical and increasingly common approach is the crowdfunding by fans of artists’ recording, distribution and touring). However, these sensational actions help to mark out the space opened by digital reproduction technology for new ways of calibrating the fundamental tensions of popular music.

Against the arguments of RZA and Cilvaringz about the damaging effects of digital access to music, there is a counter-narrative that the Internet has both democratised and enriched participation in music. Alternative rock musician and recording engineer Steve Albini argues (Albini Reference Albini2014):

These online communities are virtual music scenes (Bennett and Peterson, Reference Bennett and Peterson2004) that enable shared histories between people who have never met (Strong, Reference Strong2011), and therefore shared perceptions of aura. Thus digital reproduction may work not only to disperse and diversify music's aura by distributing it more widely but also, through the same means, to provide new opportunities for the kinds of shared consumption, interpretation and ritualisation that imbue music with a unified aura. Indeed, the backlash to Shaolin and the fundraising campaigns discussed above demonstrate a collective ardency that is the opposite of non-committal distraction in the face of unprecedented access to music.