Cybersounds: Essays on Virtual Music Culture (31) (Digital Formations)

«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')

Since the mass proliferation of the Internet, music has been the one art form that has seen the most attention online. This volume culls together essays that examine the cultural aspects of music existing online. More than just the notion that «people download, » Cybersounds is the first collection that critically looks at this issue, ultimately presenting new ideas and directions for exploring this field.