The Global Sound Archive

Abstract Through the concept of the global sound archive, we propose a holistic perspective to study the sound universe accessible through the Internet. This concept refers to a reservoir of extremely heterogeneous, expansive, and unstable sound fixations that include musical expressions, soundscapes, corporeal sounds, voice messages generated through instant messaging apps, podcasts, and many other sonic phenomena. In the development of the article, we describe how agents contribute to this archive, where the sound fixations it contains are hosted, and what its central attributes are. This investigation is informed by concepts of diversity, expansiveness, instability, modularity, and intermediality. 1