Cybersounds

The Editor: Michael D. Ayers is a Visiting Professor at Manhattan College and holds degrees in sociology from Virginia Tech and the New School for Social Research (New York). He is the co-editor of Cyberactivism: Online Activism in Theory and Practice (2003) and a contributing music critic to Billboard.com, Giant and the Village Voice.

«The writers offer an illuminating cybersurfing safari out to the point break where art, commerce, community, self, and politics converge. The result is a smooth ride to a fresh new shoreline of twenty-first century cultural criticism. The essays are comprehensive, well crafted, theoretically informed, empirically grounded, loud, clear, alive, and kicking.» (Donna Gaines, sociologist/journalist; Author of ‘Teenage Wasteland’ and ‘A Misfits Manifesto’) «‘Cybersounds’ is terrific. It takes readers inside the many sorts of cyberscenes now being developed by inventive people creatively using the Internet to build community among music makers and fans. We see the emergence of new means of controlling entry, norms of communication, identity formation, politics, and ethics in these worlds where flesh and machine begin to merge. These emergent scenes are set in the context of the technologies, laws, and business models that make them possible and shape/stunt their growth, and we learn of the musical creativity lost as well as the creativity gained in the process.» (Richard A. Peterson, Co-Editor with Andy Bennett of ‘Music Scenes: Local, Translocal and Virtual’)

• Contents: Michael D. Ayers: Introduction – Elizabeth A. Buchanan: Deafening Silence: Music and the Emerging Climate of Access and Use – Markus Giesler: Cybernetic Gift Giving and Social Drama: A Netnography of the Napster File-Sharing Community – Andrew Whelan: Do U Produce?: Subcultural Capital and Amateur Musicianship in Peer-to-Peer Networks – Andre Pinard/Sean Jacobs: Building a Virtual Diaspora: Hip-Hop in Cyberspace – Adam Haupt: The Technology of Subversion: From Digital Sampling in Hip-Hop to the MP3 Revolution – Michael D. Ayers: The Cyberactivism of a Dangermouse – Daragh O’Reilly/Kathy Doherty: Music B(r)ands Online and Constructing Community: The Case of New Model Army – Chris Anderton: Beating the Bootleggers: Fan Creativity, «Lossless» Audio Trading, and Commercial Opportunities – Gabrielle Consentino: «Hacking» the iPod: A Look inside Apple’s Portable Music Player – Trace Reddell: The Social Pulse of Telharmonics: Functions of Networked Sound and Interactive Webcasting – John Ryan/Michael Hughes: Breaking the Decision Chain: The Fate of Creativity in the Age of Self-Production – Jonathan Sterne: Afterword: On the Future of Music.