DATA JOURNALISM: MAPPING MODES OF MUSIC MIGRATION

How different people from different spaces access music.

People access music differently in different spaces. As technology evolves, so do methods of accessing music. Mobile phones are now the dominant mechanism for downloading music in South Africa.

Mobile phones have overtaken computers as the primary means to navigate the digital world. The EIGHTY20 website shows that up until 2011 people accessed the internet mostly from personal computers at home. In 2012 accessing internet via a mobile phone overtakes access from computers.

In 2012 mobile phones became the most popular device to access the internet. Source: EIGHTY20.

The Role of Mobile Phones in Uplifting Society

Increasing attention has been turned to mobile phones for interacting with the digital world. Almost half of South Africa’s population own a smartphone, according to the 2015 Census. And a third of smartphone users use their mobiles to download music. As long as the technology is available, people will find a way to access music.

Modes of music technology has changed over the years, and so have the methods used to access music. At each juncture in its history, people have acquired music legally or found a way to hack the system and share music freely. As result, copyright laws have had to adapt and keep up with the fluid change in technology in order to preserve the intellectual property of the artists.

How Technology Changed Music Overtime:

The evolution of music, technology and copyright since the 20th Century.

Mobile is the new oil, it’s the new platinum,” says Mokgetha Mapaya, founder of the music sharing platform Kasimp3.

In 2011 Nokia launched their ‘Beyond Consumption’ project that explored content creation using mobiles as a platform to generate and distribute media. Nokia sponsored several research projects from Computer Science and Film and Media studies to use depth ethnographies to fully understand digital participation in less advantaged communities.

“What I would wish, I could connect my phone to my system and download straight from my system, but unfortunately I can’t do that,” says Azlan, a hip-hop artist from Fingo Village, Grahamstown.

We talk to Professor Adam Haupt about music in the modern digital era and the challenges of sharing. Then we take it to the streets to hear how people access their music.

“Many new voices can make themselves heard particularly through social and mobile media as they converge with mass media,” writes the University of Cape Town’s centre for ICT development who works on the Nokia Beyond Consumption project.

Grahamstown, a Case Study: Accessing music in the more rural South Africa

Fingo Village is a small township located in Grahamstown, in the Eastern Cape of South Africa.

One community has found a means to consume and produce music using the resources available to them. One of these projects zoomed into a township to observe how young South African users create and share music on cell phones. Alette Schoon, a video ethnographer and lecturer at Rhodes University, and Bhavana Harrilal, a Masters student in Computer Science, headed up the study in the Fingo Village township, Grahamstown. Hip-hop artists in Fingo Village township face very real challenges of limited internet access, high data costs and dated technology.

Schoon conducted an ethnographic study on the local musicians and produced a short film titled “Digital Hip Hop Headz” which shows an emic perspective of the internal functioning of the artists in the township. It takes the viewer on a journey into a South African township where access online media platforms are not the norm and artists use second-hand computers and microphones to create mp3 tracks. These songs are then shared using simple and data-friendly methods.

Different ways of accessing and sharing music files:

Bluetooth: Bluetooth is the cheapest and easiest way to distribute music in poorer communities. As result, it has remained the primary way to share music and other files in the Fingo community. People would either meet in a hub to share music, or a ‘laaitjie’ (young boy)would be sent around Fingo to Bluetooth the music files to others.

File Sharing Ecology: Another popular offline method of sharing music files is the use of flashdrives and CD’s. These mediums are considered “repositories of digital media”, according to Alette Schoon, because they can store a large number of files and become digital archives of the Grahamstown Hip Hop music. However, users would need access to a computer to listen to the music.

Data Light Platforms: The online version of transferring music has been on the rise in Fingo Village. People use the simplified ’two-step’ internet: which allows them to upload and download files. These files are low resolution in order to use minimum mobile data. The two popular file sharing sites, Kasimp3 and Datafile Host, are data light and economical.

Social Media Platforms: Social media has provided the people from Fingo Village with another means to share their music. Services such as likes, shares and links to songs stored online adds great value to the young rappers permeance on the internet.

The 2011 Census shows that at that time only 99 people, 1.52% of the population in Fingo Village, can access the internet from their mobile phones to download or upload music. But instead of letting their circumstances inhibit them, they find innovative ways of creating music and sharing it with their community using offline methods like Bluetooth and flash drives.

The technological challenges inspired a fellow rapper and Computer Science student Mokgetha Mapaya from Tembisa township in Gauteng, to create Kasimp3 in 2012. Kasimp3 is a data light platform that allows data sharing on mobile phones and is easily accessible for people with limited data. Users can create profiles, follow artists, and publicize when they upload a photo or mp3. In an interview with Mahala, Mapaya stated that 90% of users access the platform using mobile phones. Datafile Host is another popular platform used by the Fingo Community. It is described as “reliable and fast” even though it only offers uploads and downloads.

My name is Soninke Combrinck, and I am a UX Designer and Interactive Storyteller currently studying Interaction Design at Harbour.Space University, in Barcelona, Spain.

See more of my projects at www.soninkecombrinck.com.