![]() The music industry has undergone radical changes and the preliminary engine of the change has been technological development, in particular the digitization of music distribution. To more fully illustrate this phenomenon, this essay proffers a brief case study of marketplace and distribution platform Bandcamp and indie musician Car Seat Headrest. Suturing the artist to the intermediary, the artist-as-intermediary articulates the ways in which the responsibilities formerly held by music label executives - promoters, managers, A&R representatives - have not disappeared with disintermediation but have instead been downloaded onto the musician. To understand this disruption, this essay presents the conceptual framework of the artist-as-intermediary. However, this increased access to the means of distribution comes with increased responsibilities musicians not only write, record and produce their own music, in the digital era, they are charged with the added responsibility of promoting, circulating and distributing their music. " Often celebrated, disintermediation is understood to have lowered the barrier to entry into the music industry, following the sudden rise in access to marketplace and distribution platforms. The advent of digital distribution platforms has removed middlemen from the musical supply chain - better known within the industry as the process of " disin-termediation. This paper attempts a small contribution toward unmasking the illusions that are connected with the illusio, which for Bourdieu is among the central functions of sociology. This shift is part of a new illusio that now motivates the musician's participation in the music market. The concept of the musician as artrepreneur replaced the hopes that were connected with the record contract. Instead, self-management is presented as a new, central, and legitimate strategy to push musicians' careers forward even though studies show that the chances for independent musicians have not grown. Today, in the age of digital communication networks, the record contract is no longer as crucial as it used to be. ![]() This widespread concept stood in stark contrast to the actual conditions of work in the field and can thus be described as forming an important part of the illusio (in Bourdieu's sense), motivating participation while at the same time masking the actual working conditions. As a counterpart, the article evaluates empirical findings from an interview study with German and US-American musicians to answer the following research question: How are concepts of career management advocated and how are they related to the musician's practices? This research suggests that in the 1970s to 1990s, self-management was regarded as a necessary evil before getting a recording contract, which was seen as a central aim for musicians. It identifies two divergent key concepts: the artrepreneur and the record contract. ![]() This article contrasts present conceptions of pop musicians' career development with ideas from the 1960s to 1990s. Moreover, the dissertation looks at self-mediation and self-distribution as elements of self-management, exploring the idea that the industry and media changes together stimulate the rise of a new form of entrepreneurialism among musicians. The dissertation looks beyond the mediations themselves to see self-mediation as a kind of identity making and work. This dissertation examines the complexity of the situation with inspiration from theory of media and social change, arguing that the implications of digitalization and mediatization more broadly in the early to mid-2010s are far-reaching. The analysis considers the implications of popular social media for both the mediation of the artist and for the business model that regulates the distribution of agency in the music business. The aim is to understand how organizational and communicational practices of middle-layer musicians are related to media-driven changes in the music business. This PhD dissertation is a study of key structural changes in the conditions of popular music artists, specifically within two rock music scenes in Scandinavia and the United States.
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