The midway assessment is organised in two parts, and starts with a two-hour public seminar, followed by a closed meeting.
The purpose of the midway assessment is to evaluate the progress of the PhD project at a point when it is still possible to make small or more substantial changes.
You can also participate on Zoom through this link.
Programme
10:15 - 10:40 Welcome, and Presentation by Candidate Vemund Hegstad Alm.
10:45 - 11:45 Comments by, and discussion with Dr. Steven Gamble
11:45 - 12:00 Plenary discussion with the public
Following the public event, there will be a closed meeting between the candidate, invited opponent, and supervisors (12:00 - 12:30).
About Vemund's research
If you have listened to popular music recently, chances are that what you have been listening to contains royalty-free sounds from a sample platform. Royalty-free samples are purpose-made building blocks ranging from one-shot drum sounds to fully fledged musical passages. These sounds, and the creators behind them are rarely at the forefront of popular music, nor its discourse or research, they remain for the most part hidden in plain sight. Yet, they constitute an integral part of the sound of contemporary popular music.
While previous research has focused on the consumers of these samples—the musicians who buy and utilize them in their own productions—this thesis turns the attention to the creators of the royalty-free sounds—sample makers—and how they navigate the platformed ecosystems that samples are mediated through. More specifically, the thesis centers around qualitative interviews with sample makers working for Splice, the largest sample marketplace, and how they negotiate platform affordances, creative agency, and labor dynamics in their day-to-day work. The interview material is supplied by a platform analysis which sheds light on the opaque mechanisms of Splice that influence the technical and creative choices of sample makers as they strive towards optimizing for this platform.
More generally the thesis raises questions of how digital platforms affect labor and creative expression in a music industry that is increasingly governed by a few major companies and platforms. As platforms like Splice achieve near monopoly of industry niches, they also get to set the terms of musical practices to an unprecedented degree. Sample packs must fit in by complying with platform guidelines, algorithmic search engine optimization, and by considering usability for the end-users. At the same time, they must stand out in the increasingly saturated market to grab the attention of potential users. However, creators assert that they maintain a great deal of creative autonomy as they develop strategies to navigate the platformed environments of the music industries, thus resisting reductive narratives of homogenization.