taramacdaniels

Social media and the music scene

In the past decade, the music scene has completely changed due to the implications of social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Pandora, GrooveShark and now the latest, Ping. From records to disc tapes to CDs to iPods, music has now evolved to the next level of sharing and even stealing on the Internet.

I would like to write my research paper on how social media affects the music scene including musicians, live bands and music listeners. This paper could be a combination of a few methods (maybe even a case study?), but I believe the best methods would be in-depth personal interviews with bands and musicians and then surveys to music consumers. Interviewing one band and surveying their fans at a particular show could achieve this.  Or a variety of music-consumers could be surveyed.

The uses and gratification theory could definitely be applied to this study. The music scene is now centered on people’s choices, allowing them to choose how they receive and share their music. Musicians and up-and-coming bands have become accustom to giving out their music for free on Myspace or other social networking sites because listeners are now able to download music for free from file hosting sites such as mediafire. I believe that these new forms of social media are affecting the ways people are interacting with music, which might go against the underlining assumption of the uses and gratification theory (media does not influence them, they influence media).

Social media is also affecting the ways in which live music is being shared, as well.  Bands (mostly through tapers at the concerts) are now streaming live shows to the Internet. Will this eventually deter people from going to see live shows, if they are able to watch it and listen to it live all from the comfort of their couch?

The literature review would include explanations and brief histories on social media sites that are used for music such as Myspace, Facebook, Jambase, GrooveShark, Pandora, Ping, and whatever other ones I can find. My literature review would also include a brief history on the ways that music was shared before social media (the radio?).

The best part about this research topic is that I am extremely interested in it. I am very passionate about music and use social media websites daily to download, listen and learn about new music and concerts. I am excited to learn about the newest social media music network, Ping. I think this would be a new and personalized project, which gets me to the most challenging part of this topic. Because this is such a new topic, scholarly research might be very hard to find. Will I be able to come up with or even find 30 good sources?  What’s more important a topic with good resources that I  am not very interested in, or a subject I am extremely interested in with little research on it?

When reading chapter 5, I couldn’t help but think of the movie “The DaVinci Code” as I was reading about human beings unique ability to engage in symbolic communication. Symbols have been apart of our society and apart of our communication process since the beginning of humanity. But the chapter says that communication has not been in mass form since the beginning, that mass communication is a fairly new concept. But in a way, because the masses have understood and used symbols since the beginning of time, could this not be considered an aspect of mass communication?

In reference to the part about mass communication being a one-way communication flow mediated and enhanced by technology. R & V said that mass communication used to give little opportunity for immediate feedback from the audience, but new media technologies are changing this. Will these new and evolving media technologies change the way we think about mass communication and lead us into a new paradigm shift?

McQuail notes the perceived purposes of mass media (providing a window on events or a mirror to events, filtering or serving as gatekeeper for info reaching the audience, being a guide to interpret events, offering a forum for the presentation of ideas, and disseminating information). Are there other purposes for mass media? What other similarities do these purposes have?