In this article, I read the digital music archive of the Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR) through the lens of the concept of imaginary media. My objective is twofold: first, to review some of the current developments of DR’s digital music archive and, second, to explore how archival strategies can draw alternative lines in the history of recorded music. The purpose of this study is historiographical in that I perceive the configuration of digital music archives, including DR’s digital music archive, as being complicit in communicating histories of recorded music.
The focus of this article lies on a specific case study: an application for mobile devices entitled DR DJ.[1] DR DJ is an example of imaginary media because it never materialized, instead only ever existing conceptually. The study’s research object is the conceptual development of DR DJ: a proposal for alternative music discovery that I regard as an effort for reimagining DR’s digital music archive. In understanding this proposal, the article pursues answers to two questions: how does DR DJ – a down-voted proposal for music discovery – influence the structure and functionality of DR’s in-house digital music platform called /Diskoteket,[2] and to what extent does it expand the digital music archive’s music historical imagination?
The article provides historical context about DR’s music archive, and it assesses how it positions itself within DR as an esteemed public service institution. I situate the proposal for DR DJ within this context and explain it in detail. In order to stimulate the reading of this proposal and make the lens of imaginary media intelligible, I allude to some of the strategic considerations behind developing a digital music archive at DR.[3] In my analysis, DR DJ – as imaginary media – continually enters the real and is thus present as shades of actualization on /Diskoteket.
In examining the proposal for DR DJ, I take inspiration from media archaeologist Siegfried Zielinski’s (2006) approach to imaginary media. Zielinski’s specific contributions to the media archaeological canon help me in reimagining the music-historical communication emanating from DR’s music archive.[4] I view the proposal for DR DJ as imaginary media and assess it through Zielinski’s concept of variantology. I end the article by developing a speculative scenario of how DR DJ can open up untold stories of DR’s digital music archive if accepted. In contemplating the potentials of the proposal for DR DJ, I engage in an interventional reflection and take a subversive approach to the institutional understanding of DR’s digital music archive.
It is important to clarify that I have in-depth knowledge of DR’s digital music archive and the platform /Diskoteket as well as insight into the unapproved proposal for DR DJ, owing to the fact that I was employed as a music registrar at DR’s music archive from 2015-2023.[5] As such, my insight into DR DJ stems from first-person experience. This means that part of my methodology lies in a somewhat auto-ethnographic approach in which I must be aware of different external and internal interests that need balancing and continual review for the analysis to maintain critical distance. The subject of this article is something in which I am immensely invested, and I am fully committed to be as impartial as possible; it is emphatically necessary, therefore, for me to acknowledge that I have insight that might bias my analysis to some extent.