Unboxing the Black Box

During the Covid-19 lockdowns, producers who were unable to generate income through DJing turned to social media. They began livestreaming their production of electronic dance music (EDM) on platforms such as Twitch and YouTube, where viewers could support them through donations. This created an environment where the production of EDM songs became a public and interactive spectacle, contrasting with the previously solitary nature of music production (Butler, 2014). This paper argues that recent developments in Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs) from recording tools to those focused on sound generation and processing (Reuter, 2022) have been integral to the platformization (Poell et al., 2019) of DAWs. This evolution has enabled music production to become a social phenomenon that spans multiple platforms, from Discord music challenges to PayPal donations. The paper will demonstrate the potential for musicology in having the often black-boxed process of music production “unboxed” and will explore the consequences for composers who respond to continuous suggestions from comment sections, using examples from producer John Selway.