In this dissertation, I have studied the creative agency of the record/music producer. The aim of the dissertation is to study what kinds of creative and social agents record producers are. Agency here means an individual or collective capacity to move within structures. Therefore, I approach my main question through examining how the creative agency of the producer is formed with respect to structures specific to record production; music technologies, studio spaces and sociocultural structures like the music industry and genre-related values. 

To achieve this, I have conducted ethnographically oriented multi-method case studies on three music production projects. I have mainly relied on field obervations, interviews and the music my participants produced. The novelty here lies in the fact that this study combines ethnographic case studies of pop, rock and classical in the same study. 

My main finding is that the music producer’s agency in the studio production process is constructed through an interplay between technological practices, social settings and studio spaces. Technological practices and studios influence the social aspects, the creative core, of music production. Furthermore, technologies together with genre expectations influence the producer’s role differently in different production settings. This is best visible in the idea of the pop producer as ‘tracker’, another novelty finding. 

I hope to have provided perspectives on how agenies can be formed at the grass roots level also outside the realm of music production. Furthermore, I have provided a model into studuying agencies in all kinds of technologically induced cultural processes.