buying nothing: digital music.

Yosh kindly queried whether the cd’s ‘becoming’ is valid, because it can quickly cross territories, be copied, shared etc.

The digital file can undergo territorial becomings…but i’d argue that without being dropped back to a physical form, the becomings leave no impression.

a becoming: “produces both a rupture and possiblities for new beginnings” (Guattari, Adolescent revolution, 67). Without a physicality, a history, something to be inscribed on, the becoming is simply a new ‘being’. an mp3 is not marked by time, or space, but flows above them.

a copy is not degraded…the cd carries no trace of its past, asides a short name. a pure simulacrum? it does not present it’s history, it hides it.

its the old homage versus pastiche debate: i’d argue that a vinyl re-edit is more a homage – we know it’s a re-edit. whereas when eminem samples labi schiffre, the digital file doesn’t carry this information: it hides it.

All digital files attempt a concealment of their history. There is no such thing as a vintage / retro mp3. They conceal their workings (binary, lasers) as opposed to the physical analogue record / tape / anything that moves. We cannot see the cd: we load it into the machine – a machine we cannot see the workings of.

The vinyl machine is in some ways translucent – we see each part’s contribution to the whole. Label, to pressing plant, to independant shop. The needle in a groove. Whilst machinic, it has seams to be broken into, opportunities for manipulating. A record player can ‘work’ in mulitple ways: it can create more than one single machinic flow – but a cd player can either work, or not.