This book is about the relationship between media, communication and globalization, explored through the unique empirical study of electronic music practitioners’ use of the global social media: MySpace, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. To understand the significance of the emerging nexus between social media and music in a global context, the book explores various aspects of production, distribution and consumption among electronic music practitioners as they engage with global social media, as well as a historical, political and economic exposition of the rise of this global social media environment. Drawing on interview-based research with electronic music artists, DJs, producers and managers, together with the historical portrayal of the emergence of global social media this pioneering study aims to capture a development taking place in music culture within the wider transformations of the media and communications landscape; from analogue to digital, from national to global, and from a largely passive to more active media use. In doing so, it explores the emergence of a media and communications ecology with increased mobility, velocity and uncertainty. The numerous competing, and rapidly growing and fading social media exemplify the vitality and volatility of the transforming global media, communication and cultural landscape. This study suggests that the music practitioner’s relationship with MySpace, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter and the key characteristics of these global social media, alter aspects of our practical and theoretical understandings of the process of media globalization. The book deploys an interdisciplinary approach to media globalization that takes into account and articulates this relationship, and reflects the enduring power equations and wider continuities and changes within the global media and communications sphere.
This book analyses the relationships between contemporary media and popular music, both via the mediation of music, and music as mediator. It does so through a series of original interviews with key practitioners: musicians, writers, magazine editors, radio presenters and major and independent label bosses. Those interviewed include Mark Ellen, editor of Smash Hits, Q, Mojo and currently Word magazines; Mark Cooper, producer of Laterwith Jools Holland and CEO of Music Entertainment at the BBC; Ben Watt, half of Everything But The Girl and owner of independent label Buzzin' Fly; and Fiona Talkington, original and current presenter of the Sony Award winning Late Junction on BBC Radio 3. Through these interviews, theory and practice are measured against each other and the book considers their experiences and observations in order to explore the ways popular music is produced, marketed and mediated. Examining visual, print, radio and new media, Media and Popular Music draws together disparate elements odisparate elements of music and media which formerly have not been considered together, and provides a fresh and innovative contribution to the swiftly growing field of popular music studies.
Since the 1980s, music videos have been everywhere, and today almost all of the most-viewed clips on YouTube are music videos. However, in academia, music videos do not currently share this popularity. Music Video After MTV gives music video its due academic credit by exploring the changing landscapes surrounding post-millennial music video. Across seven chapters, the book addresses core issues relating to the study of music videos, including the history, analysis, and audiovisual aesthetics of music videos. Moreover, the book is the first of its kind to truly address the recent changes following the digitization of music video, including its changing cycles of production, distribution and reception, the influence of music videos on other media, and the rise of new types of online music video. Approaching music videos from a composite theoretical framework, Music Video After MTV brings music video research up to speed in several areas: it offers the first account of the research history of music videos, the first truly audiovisual approach to music video studies and it presents numerous inspiring case studies, ranging from classics by Michel Gondry and Chris Cunningham to recent experimental and interactive videos that interrogate the very limits of music video.
Sounding New Media examines the long-neglected role of sound and audio in the development of new media theory and practice, including new technologies and performance art events, with particular emphasis on sound, embodiment, art, and technological interactions. Frances Dyson takes an historical approach, focusing on technologies that became available in the mid-twentieth century-electronics, imaging, and digital and computer processing-and analyzing the work of such artists as John Cage, Edgard Varèse, Antonin Artaud, and Char Davies. She utilizes sound's intangibility to study ideas about embodiment (or its lack) in art and technology as well as fears about technology and the so-called "post-human." Dyson argues that the concept of "immersion" has become a path leading away from aesthetic questions about meaning and toward questions about embodiment and the physical. The result is an insightful journey through the new technologies derived from electronics, imaging, and digital and computer processing, toward the creation of an aesthetic and philosophical framework for considering the least material element of an artwork, sound.
This book explores social networking sites as the digital field of cultural production by loosely drawing from Pierre Bourdieu's notion of field and capital. The book examines four case studies on MySpace, YouTube, Second Life, and Indaba Music, and the roles and the impact they have on the music industry and musicians. In doing so, the author explores the groundbreaking developments that empower independent musicians and problematizes the emergence of a variety of issues symptomatic of social media environments at the height of convergence culture.
Essays examining the effects of media innovations in cinema at the turn of the twentieth century affected performances on screen, as well as beside it. In the years before the First World War, showmen, entrepreneurs, educators, and scientists used magic lanterns and cinematographs in many contexts and many venues. To employ these silent screen technologies to deliver diverse and complex programs usually demanded audio accompaniment, creating a performance of both sound and image. These shows might include live music, song, lectures, narration, and synchronized sound effects provided by any available party—projectionist, local talent, accompanist or backstage crew—and would often borrow techniques from shadow plays and tableaux vivants. The performances were not immune to the influence of social and cultural forces, such as censorship or reform movements. This collection of essays considers the ways in which different visual practices carried out at the turn of the twentieth century shaped performances on and beside the screen.
Unruly Media is the first book to account for the current audiovisual landscape across media and platform. It includes new theoretical models and close readings of current media as well as the oeuvre of popular and influential directors.
Streaming Music examines how the Internet has become integrated in contemporary music use, by focusing on streaming as a practice and a technology for music consumption. The backdrop to this enquiry is the digitization of society and culture, where the music industry has undergone profound disruptions, and where music streaming has altered listening modes and meanings of music in everyday life. The objective of Streaming Music is to shed light on what these transformations mean for listeners, by looking at their adaptation in specific cultural contexts, but also by considering how online music platforms and streaming services guide music listeners in specific ways. Drawing on case studies from Moscow and Stockholm, and providing analysis of Spotify, VK and YouTube as popular but distinct sites for music, Streaming Music discusses, through a qualitative, cross-cultural, study, questions around music and value, music sharing, modes of engaging with music, and the way that contemporary music listening is increasingly part of mobile, automated and computational processes. Offering a nuanced perspective on these issues, it adds to research about music and digital media, shedding new light on music cultures as they appear today. As such, this volume will appeal to scholars of media, sociology and music with interests in digital technologies.
The rapid pace of technological change over the last decade, particularly the rise of social media, has deeply affected the ways in which we interact as individuals, in groups, and among institutions to the point that it is difficult to grasp what it would be like to lose access to this everyday aspect of modern life. The Oxford Handbook of Social Media and Music Learning investigates the ways in which social media is now firmly engrained in all aspects of music education, providing fascinating insights into the ways in which social media, musical participation, and musical learning are increasingly entwined. In five sections of newly commissioned chapters, a refreshing mix of junior and senior scholars tackle questions concerning the potential for formal and informal musical learning in a networked society. Beginning with an overview of community identity and the new musical self through social media, scholars explore intersections between digital, musical, and social constructs including the vernacular of born-digital performance, musical identity and projection, and the expanding definition of musical empowerment. The fifth section brings this handbook to full practical fruition, featuring firsthand accounts of digital musicians, students, and teachers in the field. The Oxford Handbook of Social Media and Music Learning opens up an international discussion of what it means to be a musical community member in an age of technologically mediated relationships that break down the limits of geographical, cultural, political, and economic place.