UNDERSTANDING THE TECHNOLOGY OF SOUND AND THE MUSIC INDUSTRY
As you inch closer to the classroom door, you can hear the distinct “bum bum be-dum, bum bum be-dum bum” from Rihanna’s “Disturbia” echoing through the hall. You round the corner to see the music video projected at the front of the room and students quietly bopping their heads along with the beat. Class is now in session for the new special topics course, “Music Video from MTV to TikTok.”
Led by Paxton Haven, our 2025-26 Visiting Assistant Professor in Communication Arts, students in this course dive into history to discover how technological shifts influence the media form of music video. This exploration of audio-visual media begins with “soundies” in the early 1940s and progresses to MTV and the rise of music videos as a means of song promotion, to the digital distribution revolution ushered in by YouTube, and finally to the current popular music branding era characterized by TikTok. Within each era, Professor Haven has students watch and analyze numerous music videos.
“We start by looking at what literally happened on the screen in the music video, then I build out context for what was happening in terms of the industry and technology at that moment in time,” Haven said. “Those two things allow us to make broader arguments about how cultural shifts are reflected in music videos throughout history.”
Many Communication Arts courses share this mission of revealing how technology affects different aspects of sound and music. Professor Jeremy Morris runs two such courses: “Sound Cultures–Podcasting and Music” as well as “Music Industries and Popular Culture.” Both include a final project that asks students to produce a podcast.
“Whether I’m talking about music or podcasting, I’m almost always coming from an angle that is technology-based,” Morris said. In his “Music Industries” course, Morris helps students realize how songs are markers of moments in time.
New sound technologies, like Auto-Tune, have always created anxiety within the industry. When Auto-Tune made pitch correction possible in the late 1990s, many criticized the technology, claiming it devalued real musical talent. However, artists have embraced the technology, and the sounds have grown familiar in popular music from artists as varied as Charli XCX, Post Malone, The Weeknd, Billie Eilish, Bon Iver, Radiohead, Frank Ocean, and many others.
Similar anxiety is seen today with the use of AI in sound production. These historical precedents help Professor Haven and Professor Morris get students thinking critically about the role of technology within sound industries like music, podcasting, and music video.
Sound technology also plays a major role in Communication Arts film courses, as students analyze various aspects of mise-en-scène within cinema. Film Professor Jeff Smith asks students to analyze a scene from Spike Lee’s 25th Hour, in which DJ scratching sounds bounce from speaker to speaker in the back of the theater. Utilizing the rear sound stage of a theater is one technique filmmakers use to build the story world as soundscapes become more technologically complex.
Professor Morris reflected that “if we’re teaching students about media industries and how media works, it feels incomplete to try and do that without recognizing the importance of sound and sonic media.” As sound technologies continue to evolve, Communication Arts will keep listening.