This article explores the phenomenon of musical labeling as a dynamic construct situated at the intersection of cultural and sonic-technological domains, with particular focus on its role in the digital age. Musical labels, once tied to functional, social, or ritual contexts, have evolved into contemporary designations where sonic and technological traits play a central role in shaping genres and styles. However, these categories pose significant analytical challenges, as they are social constructs that often resist objective definition. Drawing on the Musicology of Music Production, the article proposes a theoretical and methodological framework that foregrounds the active role of sound and studio-based technical processes –such as mixing, dynamic shaping, and timbral effects– in the construction of musical labels. This perspective complements traditional sociocultural approaches with an aesthetic and material analysis of sound. Finally, the article examines how streaming platforms increasingly rely on algorithms that classify and recommend music by combining user behaviour with strictly sonic data extracted from audio files, highlighting the growing influence of sound characteristics as classification criteria. This convergence of cultural consumption and acoustic analysis suggests a new paradigm in understanding how music is categorized, circulated, and perceived in contemporary digital environments.
Advanced digital methodologies have transformed music research, enabling innovative approaches to data collection, analysis, and interpretation of music practices and cultural contexts. This article examines the evolving landscape of digital tools and methods in musicology, focusing on their methodological strengths and limitations. dual perspectives, this work provides a guideline for navigating digital methodologies in music research.
In 1970s Spain, the magazine Hilo Musical occupied a distinctive position as a mediator between technology, music, and audiences. Linked to the ambient music service of the same name, distributed through the telephone network, the publication contributed to shaping listening practices and modelling musical taste within a context of profound social, cultural, and technological transformation. Based on a documentary analysis of editorials, feature articles, and interviews published between 1970 and 1979, the study examines the discourses through which Hilo Musical articulated criteria of value, legitimised repertoires, and constructed imaginaries of the public, in a constant tension between elitism and democratisation, tradition and modernity, functional consumption and critical listening. The analysis is organised around five dimensions –appreciation, distinction, identity, function, and informal music education– which make it possible to account for the complexity of these processes of cultural mediation. From a historical and genealogical perspective, the study proposes reading the case of Hilo Musical as a relevant antecedent for understanding contemporary dynamics of cultural prescription and the management of taste in technologically mediated contexts.
This article analyzes the apparent paradox of the orchestral conducting training system in Colombia, namely the existence of university programs, both public and private, that produce highly qualified graduates who are nevertheless systematically devalued within their own labor market in favor of foreign professionals or nationals holding academic credentials obtained abroad. Using the framework of the Codeterminist Materialism of Totality (CMT), this phenomenon is deconstructed not as a systemic failure, but as a highly functional circuit operating according to a dual logic. It is argued that while private universities function under an extractive market logic –selling “symbolic capital” in exchange for substantial economic capital– public universities operate under an internally contradictory logic of state reproduction. The article concludes that the systemic function of this apparatus is not the production of successful conductors, but rather the generation of a “precarized elite,” the extraction of value from aspirants, and, fundamentally, the reproduction of cultural and epistemic dependence on the global hegemonic center, thereby constituting a key mechanism of the coloniality of knowledge.
