From Composition to Production: How Digital Audio Reshapes the Music-Making Workflow

Abstract

 Digitalisation of music production tools has completely reorganised the process for developing musical ideas, recording them, arranging them and delivering them to audiences from a traditional reliance on specialised facilities, professionals as intermediaries and large sums of capital, to an individual creator engaging in such activities within their own domestic space using consumer-grade devices. Examine how digital audio technology, primarily digital audio workstations (DAWs), MIDI-based virtual instrumentations, and AI-assisted mixing and mastering software/tools have changed the music-creation process from creation to production by referring to the materialist technological paradigm, creative labour theories, and recording-as-composition viewpoint as the basic theoretical support for this study. Three intertwined arguments are presented below: Digital tools did not merely speed up existing work procedures but reshaped the cognitive and creative activities by means of which music was produced and performed; The mass media's prevailing portrayal of digital music production as a democratic process conceals substantial continuity concerning who gets access to such works and on what basis; And the incorporation of AI-assisted production tools and Streaming Platform technical standards into the production process has become a new stage of Algorithmic control over Musical decisions whose impact on Creative Independence remains unexplored. Based on this, several recommendations for music Industry governance, creative labour policy and the Future development of musical Craft are put forward in this conclusion section.