Music and the internet: towards a digital sociology of music

音乐与互联网：走向音乐的数字社会学（Digsocmus）是一个跨学科的研究项目，旨在提供第一个全面的分析不断变化的文化作用的互联网在音乐。它的历史重点是从早期的万维网到当今的社交媒体平台世界的二十年时间，并以一系列以互联网创新实验而闻名的音乐流派作为其经验重点，它回答了三个首要的研究问题：1）互联网的使用是否有助于“艺术”和“流行”音乐之间的更大边界跨越？（“跨界”）2）互联网是否影响了当代流派地理范围的扩大或多样化？（“地理”）3）互联网在多大程度上重塑了音乐制作和发行的机构？（“非中介化”）该项目将采取比较案例研究的方法。它将分析四个“天生的数字”音乐流派，其各自的成因与互联网和万维网文化发展的重要时期相吻合，其美学，政治，地理范围和支持机构都受到这些发展的影响。案例研究将是：1）90年代中期：实验电子乐2）00年代早期：网络音乐和现场编码3）00年代中期至今：盒式磁带复兴（噪音，无人机音乐和DIY）4）2010年代至今：后网络音乐（视听作曲，网络艺术，蒸汽波）虽然它们各不相同，但每一种流派都有大量和创新的在线表现形式，这些表现形式对其定义以及音乐家如何体验至关重要，观众和推动者。这包括使用邮件列表来组织独立的交流渠道，通常将艺术和流行音乐结合在一起（研究1）;采用互联网作为地理分布的现场表演媒介（2）;采取离线和邮购盒式磁带交换的反动行动，通常绕过主流机构（3）;然后是与现代社会媒体和商业网络空间的颠覆性和批判性接触（4）。在这20年的时间里，互联网的使用范围和多样性需要新的方法来分析和理论化的音乐，其中在线实践是核心。这项研究的一个主要概念和方法的贡献，然后，将使用社会数据科学，或“大数据”的方法来分析这些类型。根据研究问题，并混合定性和定量方法，这些量身定制的方法将分析和可视化来自“原生数字”媒体（如论坛，邮件列表和社交媒体平台）的数据，从而使在线音乐的分析超出了单个研究人员的范围。通过将这些方法与民族志和历史相结合，该项目将在数字音乐学中开辟一个大胆的新方向：音乐的数字社会学。领导活动旨在支持Haworth发展成为国际研究领导者。阿姆斯特丹大学的访问奖学金将使他与数字研究领域的领军人物密切接触，为合作和出版提供新的机会。国际会议将使他能够共同塑造数字音乐学的一个新的子领域，同时也影响了新一代的数字音乐学家。最后，他在学术界之外的国际地位将通过国际音乐节上的研讨会来提高，音乐家，行业专业人士和观众将被邀请合作：首先，讨论与流派相关的交叉，地理和非中介化主题;其次，设计和塑造数字方法本身（见WP5.1）。

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).