Playing to the Crowd

Nancy K. Baym is a Sr. Principal Researcher at Microsoft in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She is the author and co-editor of three previous books about audiences, relationships, and the internet. More information, most of her articles, and some of her talks are available at nancybaym.com.

Baym's enthusiasm and experience makes this academic study accessible to professional musicians as well as musicology and communication scholars. (Library Journal) Nancy K. Baym was researching the impact of emerging technologies and music when most of us did not have the foresight to anticipate the changing music landscape. This is not her first pioneering work, and it certainly won't be her last, but it is, as always, fun and intriguing. An innovative wordsmith and an engaging storyteller, Baym explains how musicians transition from technologies designed to render them remote deities to those that invite them to be irrevocably intimate. Her observations carry weight and her interpretations are timely and timeless. She is a sharp researcher with a curious mindthe type that unfailingly seduces, educates and inspires you with their writing. - Zizi Papacharissi,University of Illinois at Chicago Nancy K. Bayms Playing to the Crowdis a major advance in our understanding of new media, music and audiences. Through careful ethnographic and historical work, Baym offers a definitive reception history of popular music as it went online. She also offers a transformative theory of music in the age of social media. Methodologically rich, beautifully written, and full of great storytelling, Playing to the Crowdexplains the novel aspects of our emergent online environment, all while linking it to music as a cultural practice that transcends any one context, and insisting that we understand online relationships as fundamentally human relationships. It will change the way you think about music, technology and people. - Jonathan Sterne,author of MP3: The Meaning of a Format Baym's book sheds light on the previously unexplored territory of musicians' own management of their social media presence through ethnography, and for this reason many sections of this volume deserve a place in music and media syllabi for undergraduate and graduate studies, particularly to study Western cultural contexts and popular music scenes. (Yearbook for Traditional Music)