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Postmillenial Pop
Playing to the Crowd: Musicians, Audiences, and the Intimate Work of Connection
Explains what happened to music―for both artists and fans―when music went online.
Playing to the Crowd explores and explains how the rise of digital communication platforms has transformed artist-fan relationships into something closer to friendship or family. Through in-depth interviews with musicians such as Billy Bragg and Richie Hawtin, as well as members of the Cure, UB40, and Throwing Muses, Baym reveals how new media has facilitated these connections through the active, and often required, participation of the artists and their devoted, digital fan base.
Before the rise of social sharing and user-generated content, fans were mostly seen as an undifferentiated and unidentifiable mass, often mediated through record labels and the press. However, in today’s networked era, musicians and fans have built more active relationships through social media, fan sites, and artist sites, giving fans a new sense of intimacy and offering artists unparalleled information about their audiences. However, this comes at a price. For audiences, meeting their heroes can kill the mystique. And for artists, maintaining active relationships with so many people can be both personally and financially draining, as well as extremely labor intensive.
Drawing on her own rich history as an active and deeply connected music fan, Baym offers an entirely new approach to media culture, arguing that the work musicians put in to create and maintain these intimate relationships reflect the demands of the gig economy, one which requires resources and strategies that we must all come to recognize and appreciate.
Playing to the Crowd explores and explains how the rise of digital communication platforms has transformed artist-fan relationships into something closer to friendship or family. Through in-depth interviews with musicians such as Billy Bragg and Richie Hawtin, as well as members of the Cure, UB40, and Throwing Muses, Baym reveals how new media has facilitated these connections through the active, and often required, participation of the artists and their devoted, digital fan base.
Before the rise of social sharing and user-generated content, fans were mostly seen as an undifferentiated and unidentifiable mass, often mediated through record labels and the press. However, in today’s networked era, musicians and fans have built more active relationships through social media, fan sites, and artist sites, giving fans a new sense of intimacy and offering artists unparalleled information about their audiences. However, this comes at a price. For audiences, meeting their heroes can kill the mystique. And for artists, maintaining active relationships with so many people can be both personally and financially draining, as well as extremely labor intensive.
Drawing on her own rich history as an active and deeply connected music fan, Baym offers an entirely new approach to media culture, arguing that the work musicians put in to create and maintain these intimate relationships reflect the demands of the gig economy, one which requires resources and strategies that we must all come to recognize and appreciate.
- GenresMusicNonfictionFandom
263 pages, Paperback
Published July 10, 2018
16 people are currently reading
162 people want to read
About the author
Nancy K. Baym
7 books9 followersNancy K. Baym is a Principal Researcher at Microsoft in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She is the author and co-editor of four books about audiences, relationships, and the internet, including Personal Connections in the Digital Age. More information, most of her articles, and some of her talks are available at nancybaym.com.
(Biography adapted from NYU Press, https://nyupress.org/books/9781479821...)
(Biography adapted from NYU Press, https://nyupress.org/books/9781479821...)
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
July 11, 2018
Full disclosure, Nancy is a colleague and a friend. But I am struck by how superb this book is. Those who want to understand the way social media is slipping into the professional lives, not just of musicians but anyone who ends up maintaining a public engagement with the 'clients' they work with -- real estate agents, bartenders, hairdressers, tax lawyers, academics -- will learn a great deal from this book. It does not look for easy explanations, but recognizes that the demand to be on social media is always a push and a pull, and that different people 'solve' that tug of war in different ways. The book also makes a convincing case that music and the music industry has regularly served this "canary in the coal mine" role for new technologies, from new business models and new formations of fans, to the new labor dynamics of the "gig economy". Nancy is also a beautiful writer, making useful concepts clear, giving life to the words of the musicians she interviewed, and including her own life as a fan and a professional academic in subtle ways. I highly recommend this book.
August 5, 2019
I read this because my new band is thinking about how we want to approach marketing. I thought this was going to be a pro-social media book, eg. "here's how to use Instagram to really hook people", but I was pleasantly surprised to see that it shows the pros and cons to every form of relationship between band and fan.
One big takeaway: we can't control how people talk about us. They will talk on their medium of choice, regardless of what we want them to do. And we do need to keep tabs on where the fans are and what they're saying.
p.12: music has been regarded as a commodity only in recent history. For the most part of human history, it was a participatory experience, and the idea of a "fan" has existed only for the last century. What it means to be a 'fan' is no fixed, it will change with the advent of new media. Maybe we need to start thinking of them as friends, not fans. But then again, they're not friends, because we can't have 100 frienships let alone 1000. Boundaries must be drawn in a one-to-many relationship. There's a choice to be made: intimate and 'normal' person, or "brand" and mystique (p.180). But after all, fans want to see behind the curtain. But maybe it robs the start of the magic. But maybe stars won't exist anymore...
Too much intimacy can be dangerous p182
I think M and I prefer distance, focus, introspection, personal freedom. And maybe that's part of what we want to sell. One option, just post impersonal schedule stuff on social media, when necessary.
p. 25, on the point of making music: "'Whatever the quality of feeling music affords, from the amusing to the soulful, from the fleeting to the indelible, from the frivolous to the passionate, all are precious contributions to a central value humans seem to share--the value of life being fully lived because it is being abundantly experienced."
p.70, a fun interaction with fans: "'MailMe 1 Thing' in which she invites audiences to mail her one thing and in return she will send them one back. Her 'Postcard Project' invites people to send her a postcard, which she too will reciprocate in time."
p.71: whether you get a label deal or not, you are still the one responsible for maintaining a relationship with fans, and being in touch with them.
p.108: "If you treat it like marketing, people perceive that you're trying to sell them something...Do you want to be part of a community that is all about sales? [...] Treat it like a community, something you're part of not a sales channel."
p.121: another approach is to link to the communities out there, but not necessarily post/participate. Franz Ferdinand links out to a fifty or so fan sites.
p. 163: Does Gratis want to "sneak into" a person's daily routine?"
p.166: it can be good because you can get some mundane affirmation, some postive feedback. Then again, you can get some serious shitposts too.
p.169: social media creates small mundane interactions. Maybe our tac is to create exclusively intense interactions? Maybe we don't want to have an everyday sense of connection?
I feel like we are moving towards a less produced world, where messages are cheapened, filmed on a phone, tweeted quickly. The need for a magazine to publish you is diminishing. You can communicate how you like, directly to fans.
Being "real" with fans isn't necessarily better. There's also something to said about cultivating mystique.
p.192: it's unclear that getting super-personal on social media means much towards making money. I think we both believe that it's important to detach.
p. 197 :Beiung distan, resreved, and surrounded by mysteique is out. Being interpersonal and open is in."
One big takeaway: we can't control how people talk about us. They will talk on their medium of choice, regardless of what we want them to do. And we do need to keep tabs on where the fans are and what they're saying.
p.12: music has been regarded as a commodity only in recent history. For the most part of human history, it was a participatory experience, and the idea of a "fan" has existed only for the last century. What it means to be a 'fan' is no fixed, it will change with the advent of new media. Maybe we need to start thinking of them as friends, not fans. But then again, they're not friends, because we can't have 100 frienships let alone 1000. Boundaries must be drawn in a one-to-many relationship. There's a choice to be made: intimate and 'normal' person, or "brand" and mystique (p.180). But after all, fans want to see behind the curtain. But maybe it robs the start of the magic. But maybe stars won't exist anymore...
Too much intimacy can be dangerous p182
I think M and I prefer distance, focus, introspection, personal freedom. And maybe that's part of what we want to sell. One option, just post impersonal schedule stuff on social media, when necessary.
p. 25, on the point of making music: "'Whatever the quality of feeling music affords, from the amusing to the soulful, from the fleeting to the indelible, from the frivolous to the passionate, all are precious contributions to a central value humans seem to share--the value of life being fully lived because it is being abundantly experienced."
p.70, a fun interaction with fans: "'MailMe 1 Thing' in which she invites audiences to mail her one thing and in return she will send them one back. Her 'Postcard Project' invites people to send her a postcard, which she too will reciprocate in time."
p.71: whether you get a label deal or not, you are still the one responsible for maintaining a relationship with fans, and being in touch with them.
p.108: "If you treat it like marketing, people perceive that you're trying to sell them something...Do you want to be part of a community that is all about sales? [...] Treat it like a community, something you're part of not a sales channel."
p.121: another approach is to link to the communities out there, but not necessarily post/participate. Franz Ferdinand links out to a fifty or so fan sites.
p. 163: Does Gratis want to "sneak into" a person's daily routine?"
p.166: it can be good because you can get some mundane affirmation, some postive feedback. Then again, you can get some serious shitposts too.
p.169: social media creates small mundane interactions. Maybe our tac is to create exclusively intense interactions? Maybe we don't want to have an everyday sense of connection?
I feel like we are moving towards a less produced world, where messages are cheapened, filmed on a phone, tweeted quickly. The need for a magazine to publish you is diminishing. You can communicate how you like, directly to fans.
Being "real" with fans isn't necessarily better. There's also something to said about cultivating mystique.
p.192: it's unclear that getting super-personal on social media means much towards making money. I think we both believe that it's important to detach.
p. 197 :Beiung distan, resreved, and surrounded by mysteique is out. Being interpersonal and open is in."
December 2, 2021
Docking a few stars because it uses PR quotes as "evidence" of some celebrities caring about their fans. The guy who is selling cosmetics and weed and covid shirts and milking his fans dry does not, in fact, respect his fans. Oh yeah, and telling them to shut up and be pretty.
Researchers should be better at verifying.
Researchers should be better at verifying.
February 1, 2021
i feel like this would be a great companion piece to william deresiewicz's the death of the artist in the way it was formatted but also in the way it deals with creator/patron relationships. i found this incredibly easy to read.
December 10, 2023
Bought this book to help me with a research paper that focused on fan engagement. I was able to find some good quotes to use for my paper! It’s not one that I would go back and reread for fun, but it was interesting!
September 3, 2022
A thoughtful and useful read of music workers and their mediations with technology.
March 6, 2024
Participatory in music
Rather boring, but a deep studies in the musicology world. How musicians could measure the participatory and interaction with their audiences.
Rather boring, but a deep studies in the musicology world. How musicians could measure the participatory and interaction with their audiences.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews