Andrew J. Bottomley. Sound Streams: A Cultural History of Radio-Internet Convergence. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2020. xi + 325 pp. $49.95 (e-book), ISBN 978-0-472-12677-4; $90.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-472-07449-5; $49.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-472-05449-7.
Reviewed by Anya Luscombe (University College Roosevelt)
Published on Jhistory (September, 2023)
Commissioned by Zef Segal (Department of History, Philosophy, and Jewish Studies, the Open University of Israel)
While there are many media professionals, scholars, and consumers who hail new media technologies as groundbreaking and innovative, claiming that contemporary media are a break from the past and offer disruptive new possibilities, there are others who point out that more often than not these new media forms are simply a "remediation" of what has gone before. In his book, Sound Streams, Andrew J. Bottomley is clearly in the camp of the latter when it comes to the history of radio-internet convergence, including podcasting. He elegantly makes the case that newer forms of radio distribution are new radio practices rather than separate new mediums and persuasively argues that the internet has not led to the death of radio but "has extended radio's reach and given the medium new vitality" (p. 10).
Bottomley's main arguments rest on the concept of "sociability"—that "radio at its core represents a sonically mediated set of cultural relations that produces a social space that structures our everyday lives"—and on what he terms radio's unique "affective"dimensions, that is, "a propensity in radio for sharing and emotional disclosure" (pp. 3, 4). In viewing radio as a set of cultural relations in which the continuities between old and new media are foregrounded instead of using a narrower technologically determinist perspective, he aims to "expose ... [an] unknown history while correcting many of the myths and misinformed dominant narratives" about online audio (p. 3). The interdisciplinary methods, including the many fresh case studies presented in the book, contribute to this aim.
The book comprises seven chapters of which the first two outline the early history of internet radio from 1993 to 2000, with the other five focusing on talk radio, music, drama, and podcasting (audioblogging, drama, documentary, and non-narrated storytelling). Chapter 1 presents two case studies of internet radio's early adopters: Internet Multicasting Service (IMS), the first "cyberstation" founded in 1993 in Washington, DC, by technology writer and open source advocate Carl Malamud, and the three college radio stations (WXYC at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, WREK at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and KJHK at the University of Kansas) that all put their broadcast signals online for live simulcast streaming in 1994. IMS ended in 1996 because, according to Bottomley, its "nonprofit model did not fit well among the capitalist fervor of the dot.com boom" (p. 55). For Malamud, internet radio was not about radio but a means to show people the value of the internet. Yet the content of early internet radio was similar to that which could be heard on traditional broadcast radio stations. Chapter 2 looks at the role of internet radio in the growth of the World Wide Web, presenting case studies of RealAudio (streaming audio software), AudioNet (internet radio web portal), and Pseudo.com (for-profit, internet-only radio network). Their programming was different than what tended to be available on broadcast radio of the era but, argues Bottomley, typical of the radio content of the 1910s and 1920s.
Chapter 3 focuses on what he calls the "first wave of podcasting," that is, audioblogging in the period 2000-2005. This first wave was followed by a second wave from 2005 to 2010 and an ongoing third wave from 2010 to the present. Bottomley asserts that the informal, conversational style of audioblogging, in which radio, the internet, blog/diary writing, and the telephone all converged, found its way into many areas of podcasting as well as social media platforms like Twitter. In highlighting this frequently overlooked period of podcasting and reminding the reader that even before the year 2000 audiences could download on-demand audio files, Bottomley also scotches the fanciful story that podcasting was introduced by MTV VJ Adam Curry in his 2004 program Daily Source Code. Chapter 4 explores the possibilities for interactivity on broadcast radio afforded by social networking sites and collaborative software tools. A case study of WNYC's The Brian Lehrer Show is used to demonstrate how such sites and tools enabled this already interactive call-in talk radio program to become an even more "effective public forum" (p. 13).
Chapter 5 looks at music radio and sound curation in the algorithmic age, in particular the streaming service Pandora. In what seems the most controversial assertion of the book, Bottomley posits that internet music radio services are still radio, despite the fact that the music is determined by computer algorithms. He believes that the "significant amount of human labour and intention behind" the algorithmic selections as well as of "radio or radio-like features" combined with "communal listening" through social media built into the internet radio platforms and apps are evidence of a remediation of "old" music radio by "new media" (pp. 170, 171, 173). Chapters 6 and 7 delve into audio storytelling. In fascinating case studies of the audio drama podcast Welcome to Night Vale, feature documentary podcast Radio Lab, and the non-narrated podcast Love + Radio, Bottomley shows how such contemporary podcasts have borrowed from and further developed older radio broadcasting genres and techniques. Many of the programs produced during this current third wave of podcasting include the sociability of the radio medium, "reproducing the presence, immediacy, actuality and liveness that are essential to radio broadcasting" (p. 199).
As Bottomley says, producers and audiences who are unaware of the roots of podcasting could "learn a lot from revisiting radio's vast storytelling archive" (p. 198). Such producers and audiences and indeed media scholars and students would do well to learn from revisiting other aspects of radio's history too to obtain a clearer, more accurate understanding of the continuities between "new" forms of media and "older" ones. They could start by reading the highly accessible Sound Streams and listening to the programs that Bottomley highlights.
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Citation:
Anya Luscombe. Review of Bottomley, Andrew J., Sound Streams: A Cultural History of Radio-Internet Convergence.
Jhistory, H-Net Reviews.
September, 2023.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=58442
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