Until the computerization of music making and the ‘napsterization’ of its consumption into downloadable soundtracks by the late 1990s, popular music flows had been largely determined by the corporate networks of record companies,distributors, and retailers. With the expansion of cyberspace coupled with the decreasing costs and increasing simplifications of operating audiovisual technologies,the digital sphere is now an indispensable platform for the production, distribution,and consumption of popular music. From the circulation of musical performancesand tracks via video-sharing and file-sharing Internet domains to the proliferation of related informational and promotional websites, the world of popular music has undergone significant transformation within this decade by the rapid advancementof social media. Such new technologies have led to what Jones (2002) describes as the disintermediation involving the removal of routinized practices of the analog era and reintermediation of music in the digital age that in turn redefines the accessibility of music to the public (222-23). Aside from the challenges posed by the newintangibility and transferability of digital music content on the issues on ownership,copyrights, and patents in the music industry (Styve´n, 2007), the Internet’s role indecentering and deterritorialization of popular music has also gained scholarlyattention. As the ‘Internet-based scenic infrastructure’ (Moberg, 2008, p. 91) of previously locally confined alternative and independent music genres develops transnational circulatory networks, the centrality of the Anglo-American neoliberalmainstream in determining popular music flows may no longer be taken for granted (Cammaerts,2011;Seago,2004; Williams,2006)
From ARI organized symposium on “Popular Music and the Internet in Asia”
