Who let the DAWs Out? The Digital in a New Generation of the Digital Audio Workstation

Pop is increasingly assimilating the compositional practices of hip- hop and EDM (electronic dance music). This shift is driven by a new generation of Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs). These are less based on a recording studio logic and more a combination of controlling loops and the networked logic of ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) culture. Via new media theory, this article discusses how the practices of hip-hop and EDM are digitalised in the DAW, and what that means for pop production. I argue that it entails funda-mentally new practices that can better be understood as control of metadata that define interrelational running processes.