Music and the internet: towards a digital sociology of music

音乐与互联网：走向数字音乐社会学(Digocmus)是一个跨学科的研究项目，旨在对互联网在音乐中不断变化的文化角色提供第一个全面的分析。它以20年的历史为重点，从万维网的早期发展到当今的社交媒体平台，并以一系列以创新互联网实验而闻名的音乐流派为实证重点，回答了三个最重要的研究问题：1)互联网的使用是否有助于更大程度地跨越‘艺术’和‘流行’音乐的边界？互联网是否影响了当代流派的地域覆盖范围的扩大或多样化？(‘地理’)3)互联网在多大程度上重塑了提供音乐制作和发行的机构？(‘非中介化’)该项目将采用比较案例研究方法。它将分析四种“诞生的数字”音乐流派，它们各自的流派与互联网和万维网文化发展的重要时期不谋而合，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：实验性电子音乐2)00年代初：网络音乐和现场编码3)00中期-现在：盒式磁带复兴(噪音、无人机音乐和DIY)4)2010年代-现在：后互联网音乐(视听作品、网络艺术、蒸汽波)尽管它们各不相同，但每一种流派都有实质性和创新性的在线表现形式，这对它们的定义和音乐家、观众和推广者如何体验它们是至关重要的。从使用邮件列表组织独立的交流渠道，通常将艺术和流行音乐融合在一起(研究1)，到采用互联网作为现场表演媒介进行地理分布的表演(2)，到离线和转向磁带邮购交换的反动行动，往往绕过主流机构(3)，然后是颠覆性和批判性地与现代社交媒体和商业网络空间接触(4)。在这20年里，互联网使用的范围和多样性要求对音乐的分析和理论化采取新的方法，而在线实践是音乐分析和理论的核心。因此，这项研究的一个主要概念和方法贡献将是使用社会数据科学或“大数据”方法来分析这些流派。在研究问题的启发下，结合定性和定量的方法，这些量身定做的方法将分析和可视化来自论坛、邮件列表和社交媒体平台等原始数字媒体的数据，从而使在线音乐的分析超出了单一研究人员的能力范围。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：数字音乐社会学。领导活动旨在支持哈沃斯发展成为国际研究领先者。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保持密切联系，为合作和出版提供新的机会。这次国际会议将使他能够合作塑造数字音乐学的一个新的子领域，同时也影响到新一代数字音乐学家。最后，他在学术界之外的国际地位将通过在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进行合作：第一，讨论与流派有关的交叉、地理和去中介化主题；第二，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).