Web 2.0 and music: the case of Myspace

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Rossi, C., 2008, Web 2.0 and music: the case of Myspace, paper presentato al II Convegno
nazionale STS Italia: Catturare Proteo. Tecnoscienza e società della conoscenza in
Europa, Università di Genova, 19-21 Giugno; disponibile sul sito
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Pubblicato online su www.stsitalia.org il 30 novembre 2008.
Paper presentato al II Convegno nazionale STS, Catturare Proteo.Tecnoscienza e società della
conoscenza in Europa, Genova, 19-21 Giugno 2008, all’interno della sessione Information
Infrastructures and Science Producers
Web 2.0 and music: the case of Myspace
Camilla Rossi
Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Trento
([email protected])
Web 2.0 and Music: the case of Myspace
by Camilla Rossi
1. Introduction
Which relations do take place among the actors of the world of music and the new ICT tools of the
so called Web 2.0, with particular reference to the website Myspace.com? Ho do users and these
technological tools contribute to define and re-define each other? These are the questions that this
papers aims at answering.
I will consider here the spread of ICTs in relation to the artistic world of music, this by focusing on
the computer-mediated relations that spring out and keep developing among the different actors
(musicians, audience, producers and other) that contribute to create the art world (Becker. 1982) of
music.
In the next paragraph I will define Myspace.com by framing it into an STS perspective, while
paragraph three is dedicated to a literature review that shows why it is important to carry on this
research, and to do that within the theoretical framework of STS, since it is argued that more in
general, all Computer-Mediated Communication is likely to be considered inside this framework.
I will dedicate the following part of this paper to the empirical research, describing my research
plan and focusing on methodological issues.
In the last part, I will draw some conclusions from the first results of my exploratory research,
defining some future scenarios for other researchers that are willing to engage in this area of
studies, but more then that, I will suggest some further steps for this same research.
2. Web 2.0 and Myspace under an STS perspective
“Q: What is web 2.0?
A: It’s the intelligent web.
Q:What makes it intelligent?
A: We (the people) do”1
1
from a website dedicated to “Web 2.0 FAQs”
(http://opengardensblog.futuretext.com/archives/2006/04/a_web_20_faq.html)
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Web 2.0 has become nowadays some sort of buzzword that all the researchers involved in the study
on ICT and the Internet have to deal with. For those of you who still have not been bugged by that,
here is a how Tim O'Reilly first defined Web 2.0 in 2005:
“Web 2.0 is the network as platform, spanning all connected devices; Web 2.0 applications are
those that make the most of the intrinsic advantages of that platform: delivering software as a
continually-updated service that gets better the more people use it, consuming and remixing data
from multiple sources, including individual users, while providing their own data and services in a
form that allows remixing by others, creating network effects through an "architecture of
participation," and going beyond the page metaphor of Web 1.0 to deliver rich user experiences”2
Web 2.0 is thus basically a new lens through which to look at the WWW and the interactions that
take place within that Net. These interactions focus on the spread of the “collective intelligence”,
which mainly takes the form of collaborative practices and dynamics such as that collaborative
linking that made Google one of the best seach engines, as well as other collaborative activities
such as tagging (folksonomies), and social networking.
These practices give to the collectivity of Internet users a role of first relevance, and what used to be
considered a public, mainly passive, is now to be intended as a more and more active audience
(Livingstone, 1999). Thus, we can consider Web 2.0 as a a virtual example of Knowldege
Networking (Hakken, 2003), which can be intended as a spread of knowldege able to generate
meta-discourses that also deal with the underlying infrastructure and the processes that characterize
this transmission and share of knowledge.
Now, before moving to the core of empirical research, it is important to spend some more attention
on the need of an STS perspective to consider the main relevant features of Web 2.0, and more
specifically the phenomenon of social networking that takes place (also) on Myspace.com.
If this age of the Internet that has been labeled as “2.0” does indeed center on the activity of users
that are also handlers and producers of content, it is then fundamental to frame this object of study
within a theoretical perspective that considers and protrudes the relation between society and
technology, and that of the mutual influence of the two, a mutual influence that ends up in a process
of co-construction.
Within this landscape of collaborative activities and tools that outline some major features of Web
2
http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2005/10/web-20-compact-definition.html
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2.0 can be placed Myspace.com. This website is described, as the subtitle itself suggests, like “a
place for friends”, this meaning that the tools provided are aimed at finding and maintaining
contacts through the interlinking of personal profiles. Besides this, Music has a special role in
Myspace.com: indeed, since 2004 it is possible for musicians to have
“MySpace profiles for musicians [that] are different from normal profiles in that artists
are allowed to upload up to six MP3 songs. The uploader must have rights to use the
songs (e.g their own work, permission granted, etc). Unsigned musicians can use
MySpace to post and sell music using SNOCAP, which has proven popular among
MySpace users. Shortly after MySpace was sold to Rupert Murdoch the owner of Fox
news and 20th Century Fox in 2005 they launched their own record label, MySpace
Records, in an effort to discover unknown talent currently on MySpace Music. MySpace
Music is a section of the website that allows its users to display their songs. It doesn’t
matter if the artist is already famous or still looking for a break into the industry;
aspiring artists can load their songs onto MySpace and have access to millions of
people on a daily basis. Some well known singers such as Lilly Allen and Sean Kingston
gained fame through MySpace. The availability of music on this website continues to
develop in the foundation of young talent. Over eight million artists have been
discovered by MySpace, and many more continue to be discovered daily”3
Under an STS perspective, Myspace.com can be seen as set of the technological tools dedicated to
social networking, of the knowledge that is deployed and shared on line, and the actors interessed
and potentially enrolled within this complex network. Following this perspective, Myspace.com can
be considered as a virtual set of what Hakken (2003) called knowledge networking, that is a process
of deployment of knowledge that gives rise to metadiscourses on the same process of spread of
knowledge.
The STS lens looks particularly appropriate for framing the phenomenon of Myspace.com, since it
would be hard to think of this set of instruments independently from its users and practices of use.
An empirical example of this is offered by the art world4 (Becker, 1982) of music, in which
Myspace.com entered since the option to have music profiles was made available in 2004.
3
4
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MySpace#cite_note-10
Becker defines the art worlds as “"the network of people whose cooperative activity, organized via their joint
knowledge of conventional means of doing things, produce(s) the kind of art works that art world is noted for” (1982)
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Music profiles work as personal pages, but they also let the owner upload music files that can be
made downloadable or addable to other profiles. Also, it is provided the option to make available
the lyrics of the songs and to let people comment the track.
Not only music profiles became extremely widespread, but the website's founders and runners
started some projects specifically dedicated to music. The main one lies in the abovementioned
“Myspace Records”, which is a Los Angeles-based music label also run by the Myspace founder
Tom Anderson, which is both aimed at finding new music artist and produce them, as well as at
supporting more famous ones, like the successful punk band Pennywise, that released its last album
under this label this year.
Also, a Myspace profile called “A place for music”5 has been released in order to give information
and tutorials to all the bands running (or willing to run) a music profile. Besides that, this page links
to music-related forums and lets people post public comments in order to promote their music.
Other official myspace pages came out, these dedicated to peculiar music genres as hip hop and
metal (“a place for hip hop” and “a place for metal”). Moreover, live shows are booked and
organized on Myspace.com as a part of what are called “Myspace secret shows”, that are held all
over the world, and that lately reached the number of 150 gigs held. To this project is dedicated
another official Myspace page6.
All these features show the strong relation that this worldspread and famous social networking site
with the music world (or better, music art world). This relation has also been outlined as a winning
feature of the success achieved by the whole Myspace.com project by word of the same Tom
Anderson, that in a tv interview for “The Hour”7, where the founder declares that one of the
elements that made Myspace.com to have the best on the competing social networking websites like
Facebook was in fact the music-related stuff.
For all these reasons it seems reasonable, on the one hand, to consider Myspace.com under an STS
perspective, in order to outline the relation of technology and its users. It is important to notice that
all the above mentioned features where not part of the original Myspace.com project, but they
where set up with the passage of time. This means that the needs and the practices of use of the
users of this website were taken into consideration by the runners of Myspace.com, and therefore it
is assumable that Myspace.com should better be seen as an ongoing process rather than under a
linear model vision of how this computer infrastructure, considering it under an essentialist point of
5
6
7
http://www.myspace.com/aplaceformusic
www.myspace.com/secretshows
the interview is retrieveable at http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=-yWpnto-hqQ
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view, relates itself to a number of music artists and fans that would be considered as pre-existing
unities. On the contrary, it is relevant to investigate how these human and non-human elements
relate to each other, mutually co-constructing themselves in a network of actors.
On the other hand, the mentioned music-related features show how interesting it is to investigate
why so many bands use Myspace.com, and that even more interesting is how they do it. It is with
the objective of understand this that this work was originated.
The following paragraph is dedicated to a literature review that shows why it is important to carry
on this research, as well as relevance of doing that within the theoretical framework of STS, since it
is argued that all Computer-Mediated Communication is likely to be considered inside this
framework.
3. Why to study this, and what we already know
3.1 Why Myspace.com?
As the previous section partly shows, Myspace is an example of Web 2.0, more specifically a case
of a social networking-dedicated set of tools. More than that, this website comes out as socially
relevant to be studied because of its huge amount of users: Alexa (a well-known web information
company) positions Myspace.com as the sixth most visited website in the world, right before
Wikipedia.com. In August 2006 the website hit the 100 million accounts8.
This numbers make it quite a relevant object of study, also because this platform does not binds its
users to employ the provided tools in a specific way. People can use it for promoting themselves as
people, as workers, as music bands, and also profiles of clubs, events and more, can be set up.
Myspace.com thus seems to give quite a good example of the mutual influence that society and
technology have on each other.
3. 2 What literature already told us about CMC
Once chosen our object of study, it is necessary to find the (or at least one) proper way to study it.
In this case, we are dealing with interactions that take place on line, and thus we are walking the
path of Computer Mediated Communication (CMC). This object of study has long been considered
a self sufficient field of studies that could be embedded in the broader discipline of Sociology of
Communication (Roversi, 2004). Nonetheless, a deeper view at literature on CMC highlights the
need for it to come with more substantial and well articulated disciplines or fields (Baym, 2006).
8
http://mashable.com/2006/08/09/myspace-hits-100-million-accounts/
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CMC is not self-sufficient for more than one reason: first, there has always been a severe confusion
between those who consider CMC only as an object of study, and those who instead comprise
under this label also a set of theoretical and methodological tools to approach mediated on line
interactions. Second, also those scholars approaching CMC from a Media Studies point of view are
reflecting seriously on how today, especially in the light of the new whole set of perspectives
outlined by Web 2.0 tools, Media Studies need to be revised (Gauntlett, 2004; 2007; Merrin, 2006;
Naughton 2006). Its is inescapable either to look for a more developed and useful discipline in
which to embed the study of CMC, or to find a reasonable and fruitful support to this latter.
Actually, the good seeker committed to this double search shall find in literature both answers.
The first important element outlined by a literature review is that Media Studies approaching CMC
have been dealing on the study of the impact of technology on society, considering the relation
among these two elements as one of direct causality. In opposition to this approach, accused of
technological determinism, stood the Social Shaping of Technology (MacKenzie, Wajcman, 1985),
a concept and approach that switches the focus on the social aspects of use and definition of
technologies. Indeed, this latter perspective has been strongly criticized of trying to contrast the
technological determinism of other approaches by counterproposing an idea of technology as a
social production, which would end for being another type of determinism (Button, 1992).
The same argument, put at a more general level, is carried out by Dahlberg (2004), who discusses at
a theoretical level how different epistemological traditions that approached the study of the Internet
are always limited and necessarily bearing some sort of determism, this because almost all these
studies took as granted the separation of technology from the social context. In other words, Media
Studies that were focused on the use presumed the autonomy of users in the choice of how to
employ technology, putting completely aside the social context; while those studies dedicated to
social impacts of technology have instead missed to problematize technology and its social
construction; and finally, studies of political economy and some STS studies would have stressed
the social aspects, sometimes taking from a proper consideration of technology. For these reasons
Dahlberg (2004) suggests his solution in order to overcome these risks, a solution which would
stand in not focusing on technology (or users) as completely autonomous, but rather as constructing
a social context.
Up to this it is possible to affirm that literature offers many examples of lacks and
problematizations of CMC-related studies and approaches. But which solutions does it perspect?
The works that need to be mentioned at this point because of the useful and reasonable answers they
offer to this problem are two very insightful articles by Boczkowski And Lievrouw (2008) and
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Boczkowski, (1999). The first work outlines the strong tie of CMC with STS, by highlighting a
gradual and increasing connection of these two fields of studies, a connection that especially pivots
on three topics: the process of development of technology, that is seen today by both approaches as
a relation of production and consuption; social consequences and technological change, that is more
and more considered as a sociotechnical phenomenon (Lievrouw and Livingstone, 2006: 247) in
which new technologies take the form of an embedded and transparent infrastructure (Star e
Bowker, 2006; Star e Ruhleder, 1996); and a vision of the relation bewteen technology and society
that embodies “technological shaping” and “social shaping” in a network that can reach different
points of balance, giving shape each time to different sociotechnical configurations.
The two authors thus pose the basis for an investigation of CMC that needs to focus on the relation
between technology and users (Boczkowski, 1999).
Under this point of view, the object of study of CMC switches from the same mediated interactions,
to the relations of human users and non-human techological elements they deal with. A particular
attention gain then the processes of social construction (of software and hardware tools that involve
also Web 2.0), rather than on the product or impact. In reaching this awareness, Boczkowski points
out the fundamental role of some concepts like that of “mutual shaping”, adopted by the SCOT
approach (Pinch e Bijker, 1984; Bijker, 1997; Bijker et alii, 1987), and those of “coevolution”(Callon, 1986)9, and co-production (Latour, 1991) of technological artifact and users, that
were outlined by the perspective of Actor-Network Theory (Callon, 1986; Latour, 1993; Law, 1997;
Law e Hassard, 1999).
In conclusion, what a deep view at literature on CMC suggests us is that CMC should be watched
under an STS perspective, underlining co-construction processes rather than the direct influence of
technology on society.
This work, too, is dedicated to investigate how things change with new technologies, and how
technologies change in relation to people. The example of the art world of music is useful in order
to underline how social formations do not die or live in regard to technology, but how they change
and are changed in regard to this.
I will dedicate the following part of this paper to the empirical research, describing my research by
introducing methodological issues.
3. An introduction to methodology
9
The author talks about “‘co-evolution’ of ‘society’, technological artefacts and knowledge of nature” (Callon,
1986: 20).
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The empirical part of my research has been started recently, and it has been runned with a
qualitative research methodology that mainly concerns the use of such techniques as participant
observation and interviews. Since the object of my study is not limited to on line interactions but it
also flows into the off line world, the ethnographic part of data collection related to observation has
been runned both on Myspace.com and in a multi-activities Music Association located in
Bagnacavallo (RA), Italy. This in order both to catch those attitudes and behaviours that are not
visible and therefore observable on line, and to better grasp the use of Myspace.com within the
daily off line activities of this music-related actors, this offering some information on the way in
which on line activities are embodied in the daily off line dimension.
As regard to on line observation, I availed myself of what is called cyberethnography (Hakken,
1999; Teli, Pisanu and Hakken, 2007, Ward, 1999). This technique is not substantially different
from Virtual Ethnography (Hine, 2000), since it still stands in observating and maybe taking part to
what happens on line, but it was labeled differently in order to undeline a completely different
epistemological starting point. Indeed, Hine asserts that “virtual ethnography is not only virtual in
the sense of being disembodied. Virtuality also carries connotation of “not quite” adequate for
practical purposes even if not strictly the real thing” (Hine, 2000: 65). On the contrary,
cyberethnography refers to cyborgs for overcoming this separation among on line/off line,
human/non-human: Ward suggests indeed that cyber-ethnography outlines that a “hybrid space is
rapidly emerging that is neither absolutely physical or virtual”, and Hakken Teli and Pisanu add that
“It could be helpful [...] for managing the continuous online/off-line stress attendant to following
the daily interactions of computer mediated groups. In this sense, cyberethnography itself is hybrid”
(2007: 5).
As above mentioned, my empirical research also employs the technique of interviewing. In
particular, I have started my on field data collection some months ago with a few open interviews
that could let me understand where to focus on, while designing a set of relevant points to touch
during the following interviews. Since my work does not start from hypothesis to be verified or
disconfirmed, and also in order to reduce the influence of my background and ideas on the received
answers, these following interviews would be non-structured,. This choice is in line with the whole
setting and approach of my research, that, following the methodological advice of
ethnomethodology, is aimed at following the actors and their actions (Garfinkel, 1967) and
considering them as spokespersons (Latour, 2005) that spontaneously describe how they give
meaning to the social world.
The topics that I found worth to be put into question during interviews are: Web 2.0 (What is it?
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What tools do you use? What did you use before?); Myspace.com (How would you describe it?
How do you use it?); and Music (Relation of Myspace.com with Music? Would you talk about an
on line music scene, subculture or other configurations? Why do you think so many music-related
activities are carried out on this website?). All the interviewed (and to-be-interviewed) subjects are
involved in music production, being them music artists/band members, sound engineers,
representatives of live booking agecies, and so on.
In line with the above mentioned approach to data collection, the data analysis was inspired by
Grounded Theory (Glaser and Strauss, 1967), that suggests to start from data in order to get to
theory. This basically turned into a practice of data analysis that started from field notes and
transcripts of interviews for outlinining the most frequently or strongly recurring elements.
Therefore, the first exploratory part of both participant observation and interviews have been
completed, and the actual data collection has started some weeks ago. Thus it is not currently
reasonable to talk about solid data. Nonetheless, it is possible to outline some insights that emerged
so far, insights that on the one hand show the strong tie between on line and off line dimensions, as
well as the mutual influence of this technological tools and its users. On the other hand, it is
possible to sketch some elements for my (and other researchers') future studies. To both of these
points is dedicated the paragraph that follows.
4. Some insights from the field and further steps
In the first part of this work it has been shown how important is Myspace.com, not only for the
many features and Web 2.0 tools provided, but also for the amount of users it comprises. But how
do people involved in music production do make sense of it? How do they use it? How does the
relation of these technologies with its users take shape? Here are some insights from the empirical
research conducted so far.
4.1. The first results of my research
4.1.1. MySpace.com as Infrastructure
One thing that strongly came out in all the interviews is that Myspace is “something you can't not
have” and that “old-stile websites are obsolete, now all music moves on Myspace”.
The reasons of the success of this platform for the music scenario were referred to the practice of
searching other bands, that on Myspace.com works as a sort of browsing among profiles of bands
that play similar music genres, or that are supposed to be worth listening standing to the reputation
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mechanism of top-friend lists. In other words, also if Myspace.com provides a search engine for
music, it is mainly by surfing from profile to profile (both personal and band profiles) that users like
to find music. Also, users seem to particularly appreciate that profiles are constantly updated, more
frequently than “old” homepages (this because the website results very user friendly also to nontechnical users). This, not excluding completedness: “on Myspace.com you can find every band:
those you already know of, those you still don't, those who disbanded, and also all those who still
have to come”.
Being it for these reasons or not, is seems reasonable to think of Myspace.com as an infrastructure,
in the definition offered by Star (1999).
This software platform would indeed have become taken-for-granted, totally embedded and
transparent (Star, 1999). Just to give an example of this, it is relevant what another interviewee
stated: “Myspace is so spread out that it's like it did not exist anymore”.
Also, the way of behaving inside Myspace.com, which has a precise netiquette (mostly related to
the negotiation of “friendship”), is learned as a part of membership (Star, 1999), and finally
Myspace.com represents an example of “infrastructure [that] both shapes and is shaped by the
conventions of a community of practice” (Star, 1999: 381). Indeed, on the one hand many musicrelated features were added in time by designers to face the attention the website got from the music
world. On the other hand, music production seems to be strongly influenced by Myspace.com: one
sound engineer and producer suggested in fact that “now” (with the success of Myspace) “more
bands record songs, but the usually record just three to four tracks, just to have them loaded on their
profile, they don't aim at recording full-leghts albums anymore”. Also, bands would be more
influenced by the work of overseas artist, that they can easily find and keep checked on Myspace.
Therefore, we can say that Myspace can be considered as an infrastructure that entered, and now
makes (invisibly) part, of a set of practices that are influenced (and mutually influence) music
production and diffusion. More in general, this also clearly shows the situated co-construction of
technology and society.
4.1.2 Active audiences and the role of fans
What is the role of the audience? Is there an audience on Myspace? Does the role of music fans
change with Myspace.com? How? The first data collected seem to show the relevance of these
questions, as well as they offer some preliminary suggestions for answering them. Indeed, all the
interviees affirmed that Myspace.com is mainly a way for musicians (but also for “personal” users)
to introduce and present themselves and their works. All the asked people told that being on
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Myspace.com opened up lots of opportunities, like having the band get sponsored by a clothing
brand, often being contacted for interviews, finding people willing to set up a street-team.
Much of this is usually related by interviees to the opportunity that Myspace.com offers of being in
constant contact with other people, that are not directly involved in first person in the music
scenario (differently from other failing only music-focused websites like Purevolume.com).
Also, my on line observation offered some interesting examples of how fans/users are directly
involved in music production and diffusion. It is not unfrequent to see public comments on bands
profile requesting to upload tracks for users to listen or to add them to their personal profiles. Often
fans ask bands to play in their town, and sometimes this ended up in having the band organize itself
to fulfill the request, or even having the fan directly asked to contact some club in her/his area in
order to organize the event. Moreover, I had chance to read bullettins (a one-to-many message that
is simultaneously sent from one profile to all his friends' ones) of bands, like the rock girl band The
Donnas, asking the fans to send footages for their forthcoming video:
In another case,
that of the pop-punk Italian band Supermarket, the band was putting up a contest for fans to film a
video of one of their songs. Slightly different is the case of two Italian girls putting up a profile
dedicated to a club they like. As they themselves declare (see image), this profile was created on a
completely voluntary basis by the two, who spontaneously want to invest energies in promoting the
club.
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In the description of the profile's owners is affirmed that: “Some Latte+ [club's name] was missing
in this Myspace world. So, here we are honouring our favourite club, our SECOND HOME. We
want to say first that all this came into being ONLY because of our total devotion to this place. It's
an idea we came up with, carried out by us, no other people involved”. These are just few examples
of the relation among music-involved actors and “personal” users of Myspace.
All this strongly relates to the role of audiences and fans. As noted by Livingstone about new
media, “audiences -as users- are increasingly to be understood as plural (i.e. multiple, diverse,
fragmented) [and] as active (i.e. selective, self-directed, producers as well as consumers of texts)”
(1999: 64). The role of audiences is more and more active, since they appear as more or less
directly involved in the practices of music production and diffusion.
Something more specific about the new Internet tools is outlined by Jenkins (2006), who talks about
the role of fans and audiences of cultural products. At different points in his work, he affirms that
media producers need fans as much as fans need them, and the productive role of fans would never
stop, and must be severly considered by producers. Moreover, Jenkins states that producers and
marketers are more and more involved in a reflection about involving audiences of media contents,
because they consider the cultural product as open to the participation of consumers.
All of these reflections seem to be well exemplified from my first data, that outline not only the
growing importance of the audience/fans activity, but that highlight the blurred line of distinction of
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users and producers of content, finally putting into question this same distinction.
4.2 Preliminary conclusions and Further Steps
All the data collection and analysis seem to show two strong relations: that between technology and
users, and that between music producers and audience/fans.
About the first, it has in fact emerged how Myspace users appropriated the technological tools in a
specific and unexpected music-oriented way, so that the platform's designers figured out new and
peculiar features in order to follow this interest. Moreover, the relation among on line, technologymediated interactions seem to be entagled to off line ones (i.e. if you play in a band “you have to
have a Myspace profile”, bands immediately update their profiles with the new work, news,
upcoming shows, contexts).
About the relation among music producers and audience/fans it emerges instead a need of
problematizing the question. One of the further steps of my work will indeed involve a deep
investigation of how the audience/fans should be considered in the light of their more and more
active role in production.
Another further step that has raised as necessary is the elaboration of the Art world of music, a label
which I availed myself of, but that needs to be talked out given my first results. In line with what
argued by Becker (1982), these strongly show how this Art World is constitued by multiple actors,
but the data seem to open up a further scenario: since the boundary between production and
consumption is more and more blurred, is it still possible to think of different, separated roles inside
the Art world of music?
4.3. Future Scenarios
Even if I just showed how still open and preliminary my research is, it is nonetheless already
possible to draw a couple of interesting scenarios for other researchers that are willing to engage in
this area of studies.
The first deals with how music-related work relates to social netwoking, with a special regard to
production and distribution. Since the recording activity of musicians seems not to be oriented to
printing and selling Cds, how does the work of a musician change? Does this mean that we are
enetering a brand new era centered on live shows? Or rather on marketing and merchadinsing? If
so, what's the role of the music product? And moreover: what's the relation of all these with new
tools provided by and for social networking?
The second scenario has to do with hyerarchies. Many of my interviees affirmed that, thanks to
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social networking (namely, Myspace) they were able to start on line interactions with their favourite
bands, exchanging opinions and suggestions. Also, despite the fact that Myspace profiles are
customizable, the website policies impose certain standars (of format of music files, of behaviour
and spamming-related actions, of space for images) indistinctly to all users, bein them “bigs” or
“mr.smiths”. How does the complex network of human and non-human actors involved in these
Web 2.0-mediated hyerarchies look like?
With this work, I outlined why the relation of the art world of music and the Web 2.0 tools provided
by Myspace.com can be reasonably framed under an STS perspective. I then showed, with the first
results of my empirical analysis, the different insights that open up to a wider research, both for this
same work as well as for other researchers interested in investigating how society and technology
mutually construct each other.
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