"Every Home Is Wired": 1 -- The Net in Relation to Music Subcultures

"Every Home Is Wired":
1 -- The Net in Relation to Music Subcultures

With respect to music, the role of cultural segmentation is especially pronounced. Music is already inherently favouring subcultures -- "music's roots as a form and as a social practice are in the group, and one of its functions is the ritualised demonstration and celebration of the difference between the group and those outside it. So rock music necessarily takes on subcultural meanings and proposes them to mainstream culture as challenges, exceptions or propositions for renovation", as Turner points out (2). In doing so, rock automatically creates and strengthens distinct fan subcultures; the musical mainstream that still has considerable market influence today is thus shown to be a creation of an industry interested in easily serviceable mass markets -- it is not a necessary product of consumer interests.	Bit 24
Thus, "mass production of millions of recordings by the centralised industry may be outdated simply because people realise they can get what they really want elsewhere, a 'customisation' phenomenon happening simultaneously in many industries the world over" (Campbell Robinson et al. 28). In many ways, the Internet as a medium is ideally suited to cater for this fragmented market: its own organisational structure also encourages this new form of virtual localisation. Many of the media forms transmitted through the Net themselves display a strong bias towards user segmentation -- for example in the way newsgroups are categorised into a hierarchical list of topics, beginning with a distinction into broad topical areas (top-level hierarchies like comp[uting], sci[entific], and rec[reational]), then subdividing further (for example, newsgroup groupings concerned with specific computer systems, sciences, or types of entertainment), and further (groups for folk music, opera, classical music, and so on), resulting in fairly specific newsgroups like rec.music.artists.springsteen or rec.music.classical.guitar.	Bit 25

With respect to music, the role of cultural segmentation is especially pronounced. Music is already inherently favouring subcultures -- "music's roots as a form and as a social practice are in the group, and one of its functions is the ritualised demonstration and celebration of the difference between the group and those outside it. So rock music necessarily takes on subcultural meanings and proposes them to mainstream culture as challenges, exceptions or propositions for renovation", as Turner points out (2). In doing so, rock automatically creates and strengthens distinct fan subcultures; the musical mainstream that still has considerable market influence today is thus shown to be a creation of an industry interested in easily serviceable mass markets -- it is not a necessary product of consumer interests.

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Thus, "mass production of millions of recordings by the centralised industry may be outdated simply because people realise they can get what they really want elsewhere, a 'customisation' phenomenon happening simultaneously in many industries the world over" (Campbell Robinson et al. 28). In many ways, the Internet as a medium is ideally suited to cater for this fragmented market: its own organisational structure also encourages this new form of virtual localisation. Many of the media forms transmitted through the Net themselves display a strong bias towards user segmentation -- for example in the way newsgroups are categorised into a hierarchical list of topics, beginning with a distinction into broad topical areas (top-level hierarchies like comp[uting], sci[entific], and rec[reational]), then subdividing further (for example, newsgroup groupings concerned with specific computer systems, sciences, or types of entertainment), and further (groups for folk music, opera, classical music, and so on), resulting in fairly specific newsgroups like rec.music.artists.springsteen or rec.music.classical.guitar.

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Section 1 -- Go on to Bite:

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27	28	29	30
31	32	33	34	35