Music and the internet: towards a digital sociology of music
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Birmingham
Department Name: Languages Cultures Art History & Music
Abstract
Music and the internet: towards a digital sociology of music (Digsocmus) is an interdisciplinary research project that aims to provide the first comprehensive analysis of the changing cultural roles of the internet in music. Taking as its historical focus a twenty-year period ranging from the early take up of the world wide web to the present day world of social media platforms, and taking as its empirical focus a series of music genres known for innovative experimentation with the internet, it responds to three overarching research questions:
1) Have uses of the internet contributed to greater boundary crossing between 'art' and 'popular' musics? ('Crossover')
2) Has the internet affected an expansion or diversification of the geographical reach of contemporary genres? ('Geography')
3) To what extent have the institutions that provide for the production and distribution of music been reshaped by the internet? ('Disintermediation')
The project will take a comparative case study approach. It will analyse four 'born digital' music genres whose respective geneses coincide with important periods in the cultural development of the internet and world wide web, and whose aesthetics, politics, geographical extent, and supporting institutions have all been shaped by these developments. The case studies will be:
1) Mid-90s: experimental electronica
2) Early-00s: network music and live coding
3) Mid-00s-present: cassette tape revivalism (noise, drone music and DIY)
4) 2010s-present: post-internet music (audio-visual composition, net art, vaporwave)
Although they vary, each of the genres has substantial and innovative online manifestations that are central to their definitions and to how they are experienced by musicians, audiences and promoters. These range from the use of mailing lists to organise independent communicational channels, often merging art and popular musics (study 1); to the adoption of the internet as a live performance medium for geographically-distributed performance (2); to a reactionary move offline and towards the mail order exchange of cassette tapes, often bypassing mainstream institutions (3); and then to a subversive and critical engagement with the modern day world of social media and commercial webspace (4).
The range and diversity of uses of the internet over this 20-year period demand new approaches to the analysis and theorisation of music for which online practices are central. A major conceptual and methodological contribution of this research, then, will be to analyse these genres using social data science, or 'big data' methods. Informed by the research questions, and mixing qualitative and quantitative approaches, these tailored methods will analyse and visualise data from 'natively digital' mediums like forums, mailing lists, and social media platforms, thereby taking the analysis of online music beyond the reach of a single researcher. By mixing these approaches with ethnography and history, the project will stake out a bold new direction in digital musicology: the digital sociology of music.
The leadership activities are designed to support Haworth's development to becoming an international research leader. A visiting fellowship at the University of Amsterdam will place him in close contact with the leading figures in digital research, providing new opportunities for collaboration and publication. The international conference will allow him to collaboratively shape a new subfield of digital musicology, while also impacting on a new generation of digital musicologists. Finally, his international standing outside of academia will be enhanced by workshops at international festivals where musicians, industry professionals, and audiences will be invited to collaborate: first, in debating the themes of crossover, geography and disintermediation in relation to the genres; and second, in designing and shaping the digital methods themselves (see WP5.1).
1) Have uses of the internet contributed to greater boundary crossing between 'art' and 'popular' musics? ('Crossover')
2) Has the internet affected an expansion or diversification of the geographical reach of contemporary genres? ('Geography')
3) To what extent have the institutions that provide for the production and distribution of music been reshaped by the internet? ('Disintermediation')
The project will take a comparative case study approach. It will analyse four 'born digital' music genres whose respective geneses coincide with important periods in the cultural development of the internet and world wide web, and whose aesthetics, politics, geographical extent, and supporting institutions have all been shaped by these developments. The case studies will be:
1) Mid-90s: experimental electronica
2) Early-00s: network music and live coding
3) Mid-00s-present: cassette tape revivalism (noise, drone music and DIY)
4) 2010s-present: post-internet music (audio-visual composition, net art, vaporwave)
Although they vary, each of the genres has substantial and innovative online manifestations that are central to their definitions and to how they are experienced by musicians, audiences and promoters. These range from the use of mailing lists to organise independent communicational channels, often merging art and popular musics (study 1); to the adoption of the internet as a live performance medium for geographically-distributed performance (2); to a reactionary move offline and towards the mail order exchange of cassette tapes, often bypassing mainstream institutions (3); and then to a subversive and critical engagement with the modern day world of social media and commercial webspace (4).
The range and diversity of uses of the internet over this 20-year period demand new approaches to the analysis and theorisation of music for which online practices are central. A major conceptual and methodological contribution of this research, then, will be to analyse these genres using social data science, or 'big data' methods. Informed by the research questions, and mixing qualitative and quantitative approaches, these tailored methods will analyse and visualise data from 'natively digital' mediums like forums, mailing lists, and social media platforms, thereby taking the analysis of online music beyond the reach of a single researcher. By mixing these approaches with ethnography and history, the project will stake out a bold new direction in digital musicology: the digital sociology of music.
The leadership activities are designed to support Haworth's development to becoming an international research leader. A visiting fellowship at the University of Amsterdam will place him in close contact with the leading figures in digital research, providing new opportunities for collaboration and publication. The international conference will allow him to collaboratively shape a new subfield of digital musicology, while also impacting on a new generation of digital musicologists. Finally, his international standing outside of academia will be enhanced by workshops at international festivals where musicians, industry professionals, and audiences will be invited to collaborate: first, in debating the themes of crossover, geography and disintermediation in relation to the genres; and second, in designing and shaping the digital methods themselves (see WP5.1).
Planned Impact
Digsocmus will achieve lasting cultural impact through an innovative programme of knowledge co-production ('ethnographic collaboration') that is folded in with the intellectual goals of the project. The research participants will include: creative practitioners associated with the case studies; music industry professionals associated with the independent record labels that support the genres; and audiences and members of the public with interests in electronic music. By bringing these normally disparate groups together to debate the themes and findings of the project, and by building and nurturing a mutually enriching collaborative dialogue with them, Digsocmus aims to 1) enhance the interdisciplinary knowledge and skills of the stakeholders, 2) influence the programming of major electronic music festivals, and 3) create a new public understanding of the aesthetic, social, and institutional changes to musical production in the age of the internet.
The ethnographic collaboration will take place during the following on and off-line activities: 1) collaborative workshops at Mutek festival, Montréal; CTM/Transmediale, Berlin; and Music Tech Fest; 2) a residency at Access Space, Sheffield; and 3) a 'Twitter takeover' in co-ordination with the international festivals
1) The collaborative workshops will each be organised around one of the three research themes of crossover, geography and disintermediation. They will take the form of organised public debates on the given theme, with invited contributions drawn from a mixture of artists, record label owners, journalists, audiences, and representatives of the festival.
2) At Access Space, the Fellow will work with Alex McLean, one of the founders of the international 'live coding' movement, to brainstorm social data science methods for the analysis of live coding's online communities. Using digital archives McLean holds, he and the fellow will collaboratively design text-mining methods oriented to the 'crossover' research theme (WP5.1).
3) In collaboration with international festivals, the fellow will 'takeover' their Twitter feeds to interact directly with online practitioners and audiences associated with the genres, both to strengthen and consolidate existing links, and reach new audiences ('takeover' means having control of their popular Twitter page for a defined period). As well as debating on Twitter, those that interact will be directed to a wiki page where, similarly to in the workshops, they will be invited to debate early comparative interpretations in open online exchanges.
To consolidate the results of the workshops, and deepen the impact of the findings, a discussion session will be organised featuring invited contributors drawn from the collaborative workshops, residency, and Twitter takeover. This will result in a statement to be published in the festival booklets for Mutek, CTM, and/or Music Tech Fest. As well as reflecting on the process of collaborating with the stakeholder groups, the statement will make critical recommendations concerning the programming of electronic music events. This will include: 1) how they may achieve geographical diversity and challenge geographical inequality in electronic music; 2) how the 'divide' between art and popular electronic musics may be productively challenged; and 3) how we may achieve sustainable on and offline music industries in a technological ecosystem dominated by a small number of internet companies.
With histories of early computing and the internet currently booming in popular culture - demonstrated by museum exhibitions, television programmes, and features in broadsheet newspapers - these events will chime with a growing public interest in, and understanding of, the project's themes and historical foci. In addition to the collaborative workshops, the aforementioned festivals will all be used as venues within which to share the benefits of the research beyond academia via public talks and seminars.
The ethnographic collaboration will take place during the following on and off-line activities: 1) collaborative workshops at Mutek festival, Montréal; CTM/Transmediale, Berlin; and Music Tech Fest; 2) a residency at Access Space, Sheffield; and 3) a 'Twitter takeover' in co-ordination with the international festivals
1) The collaborative workshops will each be organised around one of the three research themes of crossover, geography and disintermediation. They will take the form of organised public debates on the given theme, with invited contributions drawn from a mixture of artists, record label owners, journalists, audiences, and representatives of the festival.
2) At Access Space, the Fellow will work with Alex McLean, one of the founders of the international 'live coding' movement, to brainstorm social data science methods for the analysis of live coding's online communities. Using digital archives McLean holds, he and the fellow will collaboratively design text-mining methods oriented to the 'crossover' research theme (WP5.1).
3) In collaboration with international festivals, the fellow will 'takeover' their Twitter feeds to interact directly with online practitioners and audiences associated with the genres, both to strengthen and consolidate existing links, and reach new audiences ('takeover' means having control of their popular Twitter page for a defined period). As well as debating on Twitter, those that interact will be directed to a wiki page where, similarly to in the workshops, they will be invited to debate early comparative interpretations in open online exchanges.
To consolidate the results of the workshops, and deepen the impact of the findings, a discussion session will be organised featuring invited contributors drawn from the collaborative workshops, residency, and Twitter takeover. This will result in a statement to be published in the festival booklets for Mutek, CTM, and/or Music Tech Fest. As well as reflecting on the process of collaborating with the stakeholder groups, the statement will make critical recommendations concerning the programming of electronic music events. This will include: 1) how they may achieve geographical diversity and challenge geographical inequality in electronic music; 2) how the 'divide' between art and popular electronic musics may be productively challenged; and 3) how we may achieve sustainable on and offline music industries in a technological ecosystem dominated by a small number of internet companies.
With histories of early computing and the internet currently booming in popular culture - demonstrated by museum exhibitions, television programmes, and features in broadsheet newspapers - these events will chime with a growing public interest in, and understanding of, the project's themes and historical foci. In addition to the collaborative workshops, the aforementioned festivals will all be used as venues within which to share the benefits of the research beyond academia via public talks and seminars.
People |
ORCID iD |
| Christopher Haworth (Principal Investigator / Fellow) |
Publications
Haworth C
(2020)
How are public figures transformed/memefied?
Haworth C
(2023)
Post-punk, Industrial Culture Zines, and the Information Dark Age
in Theory, Culture & Society
| Title | Afro | Algo Futures performances @ Vivid Projects |
| Description | A showcase event for (Algo|Afro) Futures, celebrating the work four early-career Black artists who, since April 2021, have been exploring the creative potential of live coding. The event featured pre-recorded and live performances and artworks from the artists, and was streamed live from Vivid Projects in Birmingham, in front of a local (socially distanced) audience. |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Impact | This event has so far received 1,315 views online |
| URL | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OenTVK_AW0Y |
| Description | Music and the Internet: Towards a digital sociology of music brought together historical and contemporary case studies to explore both how web technologies are reshaping musical communication, and how these changes give rise to new ways of analysing, interpreting and knowing music. We found that web-based digital methods, when allied with interpretive, qualitative and historical forms of insight, can significantly further the cultural analysis of contemporary music, while also casting established musicological themes-- like subculture, art-pop crossover, and musical geography--in a new light. The project provided important new work on genres that have been underexplored in musicology, including hyperpop, live coding, cassette tape experimentalism and network music. It also offered new perspectives on more established genres that owe their definition to the early web, like rave, electronica and industrial music. As a broadcast medium (like the telephone), the internet's effects on music are harder to quantify than were it an inscription medium (like the phonograph or musical notation). Indeed, contemplating music in the web age revives questions about music's medium specificity, since rather than affecting purely sonic qualities, the web acts on musical mediality, sociability, and communication all at once. Comparing historical and contemporary instances of music's encounters with the web illuminated just how changeable these material and ideological mediations of electronic music have been in the short life of the web. For instance, early subcultural engagements with the web often remediated the style of punk, cyberpunk, and industrial culture zines, asserting an association with independent, grassroots musical media, and aligning with early hopes about the web's ability to enhance participatory democracy and flatten institutional hierarchies. In more contemporary musics, mediation increasingly flows in the opposite direction as web-idiomatic communication like trolling and memeing suffuses musical expression and reception. Indeed, post-internet genres like hyperpop call for an understanding of internet communication as everyday communication, placing pressure on the online/offline, real/virtual distinctions that supervised turn-of-the-millenium work on music and the internet. Across a series of web-based methods, including YouTube comment analysis, historical website ecology analysis, discourse analysis, and social network analysis, we explored the expanded life of music online. A visiting fellowship in the Media Department at University of Amsterdam facilitated an ongoing collaboration with the Digital Methods Initiative and Open Intelligence Lab research groups, which has enhanced capacity within the research team and beyond. Some case studies dove into historical mailing lists and fora to analyse the wax and wane of musical subcultural theory and the often-giddy collisions between high and low culture that characterised the early years of the muscial web. Others followed music into the endless comment threads underneath YouTube videos to map such themes as music's refraction of intergenerational identity politics. Overall, we advocated for a flexible and situated approach to digital methods' use in relation to internet-mediated musics. Just as the internet cannot be reduced to one ensemble of uniform effects, there is no one-size-fits-all method appropriate to music's and social and cultural analysis online. |
| Exploitation Route | To date, digital musicology has tended to put computational analysis to the service of existing musicological themes. As such, an emphasis on the lives, works, and performances of composers or instrumentalists who flourished before the age of the internet prevails within the field. By contrast, this project sought to define the digital sociology of music as the study of music, mediality and sociality in born-online and online-mediated contexts. Web-idiomatic social data analysis methods were part of this, and they have assisted in analysing the changing relations between music and internet communication over a thirty-year period. At the same time, we have advocated for the use of such methods to supplement and extend contextual scholarship, including critical listening and interpretation. The benefits of this project will primarily be felt in music disciplines including digital musicology, contemporary music, sound studies, and music and the internet studies. |
| Sectors | Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| Description | The collaboration with FoAM / Kernow (now 'Now Try This') and live coders Antonio Roberts and Alex McLean led to a new mentoring initiative directed at early career Black Artists in the West Midlands. The collaboration arose in part from Haworth's longstanding ethnographic work with live coding communities, and was developed in a collaborative dialogue on the topic of how to widen participation in live coding, while also acknowledging experimental electronic music's debt to Black musicians and intellectuals. This is now an annual initiative. The project, conference, ensuing publications, and digital methods workshops are already being cited in academic calls for papers as evidence of a nucleating field of research around music and the internet and the digital sociology of music. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2021 |
| Sector | Education,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| Impact Types | Cultural,Societal |
| Description | Digital Methods for Musicologists |
| Geographic Reach | Multiple continents/international |
| Policy Influence Type | Influenced training of practitioners or researchers |
| Impact | The workshops equip early career and established researchers with the knowledge and tools to research and teach the study of musical issues online. |
| URL | https://blog.bham.ac.uk/digsocmus/2022/03/14/digital-methods-workshops-for-musicologists/ |
| Description | Accelerating embedded computational analysis of Web data about music in UK universities |
| Amount | £202,700 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | AH/X007316/1 |
| Organisation | Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 01/2023 |
| End | 01/2024 |
| Description | Research England's Quality-related Research Strategic Priorities Funding |
| Amount | £9,572 (GBP) |
| Organisation | United Kingdom Research and Innovation |
| Department | Research England |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 01/2022 |
| End | 04/2022 |
| Title | Historical web page analysis |
| Description | This method captures and visualises Named Entities in the source code of web pages so that a page's 'visibility' to a search engine can be analysed. Where other methods visualise 'outlinks' from a website to other destinations online, this method visualises a form of 'inlink' -- ie the terms that can be entered to discover a particular webpage in a search engine. The method can be used to generate alternative social networks for web pages that date from before about 1997 (after which time, search analytics changed). |
| Type Of Material | Data analysis technique |
| Year Produced | 2020 |
| Provided To Others? | No |
| Impact | So far the main impact is on my own research group |
| Description | (Algo|Afro)futures |
| Organisation | FoAM Kernow |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Private |
| PI Contribution | I have been researching live coding for several years, with some focus on access and inclusion. Furthermore, live coding is a key case study in the project. The initiative was guided by this previous research, and by collaboration with Alex McLean and Antonio Roberts. |
| Collaborator Contribution | The partners are established electronic musicians with expertise in live coding performance and software design. They have designed the mentoring programme and the website, and they will deliver the workshops (which start in April 2021). |
| Impact | This is a multi-disciplinary collaboration involving musicology and creative coding. |
| Start Year | 2021 |
| Description | Hyperpossible at Coventry Biennale of Contemporary Art 2021 |
| Organisation | Coventry UK City of Culture |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| PI Contribution | Consultant and collaborator on one-day symposium as part of the 'Hyperpossible' events at Coventry Biennale 2021-22. |
| Collaborator Contribution | The collaborators are Ryan Hughes, the director of the Coventry Biennale, and Michael Piggot, the curator. Both are organising the Biennale, and I have been invited as a consultant and co-organiser for a syposium looking at British cyberculture in the 1990s. |
| Impact | The first output is an event to take place on 11 December 2021. The disciplines it covers are contemporary art, art history, film and music. |
| Start Year | 2021 |
| Description | Between Sound and Concept |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | CCRU Between Sound And Concept was a day of talks and presentations on the musical and sonic legacies of the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit, one of the three historical Coventry and Warwickshire-based art groups that the HYPER-POSSIBLE events focused on, and a case study in the project. Speakers / interrlocuters included Steve Goodman who releases music as Kode9 and is the founder of Hyperdub records; Robin Mackay, founder of Urbanomic publishing; authors McKenzie Wark, Amy Ireland, Keir Milburn, and Niall Gallen; and the electronic musicians Antonio Roberts and Rosa Francesca. The event was sold out early, and was livestreamed to several hundred viewers on YouTube. It has raised a great deal of interest and requests for subsequent activities. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://coventry2021.co.uk/what-s-on/coventry-biennial-2021-between-sound-and-concept-listening-with... |
| Description | Blog |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | The activity is a project blog |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| URL | https://blog.bham.ac.uk/digsocmus |
| Description | Interview on electronic music and cyberculture in the 1990s |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | The activity relates to case study 1 of the project. It is part 1 of an ethnographic interview I conducted with the founder of Collapse journal and Urbanomic Press about his activities in relation to cyberculture and electronic music in the 1990s. The interview was very widely shared on social media and sparked interest in the project. It also placed the PI in dialogue with several other important figures in the scene. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |
| URL | https://readthis.wtf/writing/towards-a-transcendental-deduction-of-jungle-interview-part-1/ |
| Description | Talk in Electronic Dance Music Seminar at University of Manchester |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | This research seminar was a roundtable with three speakers presenting on issues in Electronic Dance Music. The researcher presented 'Post-racial rhetoric and delusion Dubstep Heads: Mapping the power dynamics of 'open source philosophy' in electronic dance music web fora' to disseminate findings from the project. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |