Conference Agenda
The Online Program of events for the 2026 AMS Annual Meeting appears below. This program is subject to change. The final program will be published in early November.
Use the "Filter by Track or Type of Session" or "Filter by Session Topic" dropdown to limit results by type. Some of the sessions are also color-coded: purple indicates performances, grey indicates paper forums, and orange indicates sessions which have been organized by one of the regional associations of IMS (ARLAC or IMSEA). (Sessions which are both IMS sessions and performances are only colored orange.)
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Please note that all times are shown in the time zone of the conference. The current conference time is: 1st Sept 2026, 02:57:04am EDT
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Daily Overview |
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Fans, Audiences, and Participants in Popular Music Session Chair: Lance Morrison | |
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Imperfect Celebrity: Slow Listening to Gaga in the Age of Digital Music Streaming University of Pennsylvania Against the widespread ubiquity of the digital music economy, the cassette endures. Since its invention in 1963, the compact cassette has altered listening habits, facilitated movements, and embodied the spirit of anti-corporate music sharing and appreciation. I critique narratives of the cassette’s obsolescence by framing intimacy and durational listening as affordances of the format that support a contemporary movement of resistance against the hyper-acceleration in music consumption and criticism. Building on the work of Jonathan Sterne, Peter Manuel and others, I develop a multidisciplinary analytic framework that investigates how the materiality of memory—theorized through tape degradation and physical fragility—inspires richer listening and reflection across multiple listens. I argue that the materiality of cassettes feeds an emotional attachment that eludes digital streaming. Cassette curation and slow listening techniques offer a deliberate technological deceleration that re-engages a deeper critique than algorithms allow. This paper sees how tape tests the tension between ownership and renting through increasing access to physical media. Drawing on audio, visual and written music criticism released during the promotional cycle of Lady Gaga’s eighth studio album Mayhem (2025), I present a case for mixtaping pop albums with well-chosen commentary onto cassette to hallmark the album’s themes, document its critical reception, and ultimately, reclaim the pop object from the market. Curating Mayhem defends boundaries between my individual listening experience and the sway of market forces and hype. With an unavoidable 1:1 recording and playback ratio, the cassette continues to live at the intersection of musicology, sound studies, and material culture; it invokes the notion of the marketplace and corporate finance as essential, rather than peripheral to understanding twenty-first century performance and production. As the cassette continues to contend with digital economic market forces, the tactile experience of archival labor in cassette culture continues to reorient listening from passive consumption to an environmental and embodied encounter that requires temporal engagement. | |