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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.
About the author
H. Cecilia Suhr is Assistant Professor of Media Studies at Miami University Hamilton and a musician and composer.
Summary
Explores social networking sites as the digital field of cultural production by loosely drawing from Pierre Bourdieu's notion of field and capital. This 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.
Report
«This book is an insightful and nuanced study of social network sites. Through H. Cecilia Suhr's extensive case studies, her argument neatly contrasts the utopian rhetoric often surrounding new media with the tensions and contradictions present in their actual operation. This is a valuable contribution to our understanding of the role of digital media in reconfiguring contemporary popular music culture.» (Roy Shuker, Author of 'Understanding Popular Music Culture')
«Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, and a plethora of other social media services have rapidly emerged as crucial arenas for production, distribution, and consumption of music. This book reports the findings from four in-depth studies of such services and it provides a lucid, balanced, and theoretically grounded account of the role of social media in the contemporary music industry.» (Patrik Wikström, Associate Professor, Department of Journalism, Media, and Communication, University of Gothenburg)
