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

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

From such internally consistent musical subcultures emerge certain structures -- community traditions, well-known and trusted individuals and subcultural institutions. Offline, these include specialty fan clubs, music labels, radio shows, and fanzines, and their leaders, owners, hosts, and editors; partially, these are taken along in the move online, and converted into newsgroups, online stores, Web sites, and mailing-lists, again with central figures. Added are new elements possible and necessary on the Net, such as FAQ lists and netiquettes.¹⁴	Bit 62
The Expression of Subcultural Style in a Text-Based Medium
There are also some important differences between Internet-based music subcultures and 'real-world' ones, however. "No longer tied to a geographic site (in a unifying and concretising fashion), older structures of recording and listening have given way to new forms of music and identity that are inscribed in the sounds, words, structures, technologies and rhythms of the music itself", as Harley writes (229); furthermore, the medium's strong reliance on text-based communication is also causing changes. Hebdige writes that "the challenge to hegemony which subcultures represent is not issued directly by them. Rather it is expressed obliquely, in style. The objections are lodged, the contradictions displayed ... at the profoundly superficial level of appearances: that is, at the level of signs" (17) -- on the Net, however, almost the only signs available are those of written speech.	Bit 63

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