In a recent report from Moscow Higher School of Economics' Institute for Cultural Studies which surveyed listener habits of the contemporary Russian public, it was detailed that the changing digital infrastructure by which users not only create but digest music has resulted in great changes in the way music not only used for leisure, but for education and beyond.
I will go through some of the general findings of the study and then conclude with three, rap-centered points that hold serious merit for future research into Russian rap scholarship.
General Findings
In the impressively large study, several key findings were discovered. From a compiled mixture of online and offline respondents gathered through surveys and interviews, it was deduced that listening to music has become an almost ubiquitous activity. Further, a good third of respondents assiduously follow the music industry. Secondly, due to the massive popularity of streaming as a result of increased youth participation, the market consensus is that streaming is much more lucrative than selling music to be purchased. They also point out that COVID-19 has caused more people to utilize streaming services, the most popular device for streaming being smartphones (followed by computers then laptops), and that nearly 9/10 listen to music without purchase, with driving being the predominate setting for music consumption (seconded only by general multi-tasking). However, some of the latter findings read as much more important to understanding the climate of music listeners in Russia today. For example, it seems as if the musical proclivity of Russian audiences today are "fragmentation, randomness, omnivorousness," a positive and also negative consequence of greater access to musical eclecticism. Why is this a bad thing you might ask? Well, the study follows this pronouncement with the all too common finding that because of mobile tastes in music, Virginia Woolf calling this a chief aspect of middlebrow culture (Chowrimootoo, 2020), the likelihood that a listener will digest more than 30 seconds before making a judgement is relatively low. Other seminal findings were the pronouncement of computer music as 21st century folk music (6), the belief of streaming as a musical "echo-chamber" (7), increased musical prejudice and "mood" as the chief trait of musical selection (8), and general feeling of overwhelm at the amount of available music, along with a strong separation of the music from the musician (9). Undoubtedly, many of these findings pose phenomenal avenues for research for Music and Cultural researchers interested in the musical habits and behaviors of of modern Russia. The notion that the construct of musical Russianness for those who grew up in Russia is a set grouping of music is fascinating, as it shows that since the 19th and 20th centuries, what is musically "Russian" is no longer governed by aesthetics but instead proximity during childhood development.
In this way, the answer to "Russian music is..." is really now unshakably subjective.
Rap Music Findings
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