Host Jack Roberts is joined by Dave Haynes from the online music platform Soundcloud, journalist Jennifer Allan of The Wire magazine, and Future Human’s Ben Beaumont-Thomas. They discuss how the advance of instrument technology is changing the way music is composed and distributed, and provoking an explosion in musical creativity that is broadening the possibilities of sound.

We also hear from musician Matthew Herbert, who expresses his frustration at preset sounds and the ‘vacuum of ideas’ in today’s music; writer Adam Harper, whose recently published book Infinite Music examines the breadth of musical expression possible with modern technology; and producer of the moment Subeena, who questions whether today’s listener places a premium on the originality of a sound.

Since the first flute was carved from bone, man has enthusiastically adopted the latest technologies to express himself musically. From Pierre Schaeffer cutting magnetic tape to J Dilla cutting samples, recording technology has been manipulated to create astonishing sound worlds.

Now, cheap and intuitive music-making software is available to the masses via mobile devices and we’re seeing more people make music than ever before. The technology is becoming so sophisticated that generative music and sonification techniques are practically giving computers creative agency. But is truly new, powerfully affecting music being created, or are we simply hearing the same old sounds rehashed? And how will social networking, and the capacity to share data more freely, affect the way we write, discover and listen to music?

Listen below via Soundcloud, or download from iTunes.