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

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

Pushing and Pulling
As much as 'average' participants have needed time to come to terms with the Net, so have institutional users struggled with online media. A central problem for the music industry is that the Internet is a 'pull', not a 'push' medium: unlike the practice in print, radio, and TV, new artists and musical styles cannot be 'forced' onto the public through extensive advertising and airplay. With the advent of global computer networks that are open to all types of participants and promote the free flow of information, "media firms do not enjoy the same degree of leverage over Internet content as they have in their traditional oligopolistic media markets. The nature of the Internet is that anyone can produce a website -- there is no physical scarcity as in broadcasting -- and the costs are far lower than the costs of launching a traditional publication" (Herman & McChesney 123). Summarising the dilemma, Herman & McChesney note that "if consumers with computers and modems could have access to countless websites at no admission price, they [are] not going to be especially enthralled by interactive TV or expensive private computer services" (117).	Bit 48
In effect, then, the advantage on the Internet is not with the 'common denominator' music the central music industry bodies would prefer to market to the largest audiences available, but rather with the music of well-defined genres that slot in well to the segmentalised structure of the Net -- genres whose existing or emerging fan bases all over the world can utilise the Internet to find and organise themselves and their subcultural communities. Ideally, such genres are sufficiently consistent (otherwise, further fragmentation might be necessary), culturally productive (so that there is enough material for discussion on the newsgroups), and thus readily representable (which is a condition for attracting fan participation in the community in the first place).	Bit 49

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