<!doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD W3 HTML//EN">
<html><head><style type="text/css"><!--
blockquote, dl, ul, ol, li { padding-top: 0 ; padding-bottom: 0 }
--></style><title>Guidance on Fan Labor?</title></head><body>
<div>Hi all,</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Many on this list seem to be interested in issues of the unpaid
labor that internet users do. I am working on a project in which I
have to say some things about this, but labor is far from my own areas
of expertise (those would be fandom, online community, relationship
formation and maintenance, online language use) and I tend to get lost
and/or overwhelmed when the topic arises on this list. I am going to
throw out a brief description of the project and am hoping that some
of you will be able to offer some insights into these issues that
might help guide my analysis. I know the theory and exemplars are out
there, but I don't know where to begin.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>I am looking at the relationships amongst independent music
labels, musicians, and very active online fans in the Swedish music
scene. I've written a paper describing how this scene is organized
across multiple international online sites and geographic locations
called "The New Shape of Online Community" which is
available here:<font face="Lucida Grande" size="-3" color="#000000">
http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue12_8/baym/index.html
.</font></div>
<div><font face="Lucida Grande" size="-3"
color="#000000"><br></font></div>
<div>What draws me to this topic (aside from the excellent pop songs)
is the phenomenon where (unpaid) fans, most of whom are not in Sweden,
are serving as publicists for the music, and doing a really good job
of getting it out of Sweden and into international ears. These labels
are selling most of their CDs outside of Sweden with minimal marketing
abroad (though they do make heavy use of MySpace and in some cases
license the recordings to international indie labels).</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>These fans do things like write English language mp3 blogs and
run Swedish-music-only club nights in places like London, Glasgow,
Madrid and Washington which barely break even. Some act as volunteer
booking agents, managing tours for these bands in their own countries.
There's a tiny bit of money to be made for the most successful of
them, but none is in it for that reason, and very few are doing
anything that has potential to bring in money (like placing ads on
their sites).</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Now, no one is really making substantial money on this scene, so
it is not a case where user labor is lining the pockets of others.
It's a labor of love for everyone involved -- most of the musicians
and label people either have day jobs or are poor. However, there are
still issues of potential exploitation (e.g. I interviewed someone who
was responsible for consciously and strategically manufacturing the
buzz that got an unknown band international record contracts,
financially benefiting the labels and the band but not himself). I am
trying to make sense of what motivates the fans to do this, and how
the labels and musicians make sense of what these fans are
doing.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>I'm also intrigued by the shifting power dynamic in which fans
are the tastemakers and filters rather than the labels and traditional
media (in this case radio and music magazines). I might add that I do
a bit of this myself on a small scale, in that I write reviews for one
of the mp3 blogs about which I'm writing.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>I'm hoping that someone can point me to some smart ways or
resources to theorize the free-labor dimensions of what I'm getting at
above. </div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Thanks,</div>
<div>Nancy</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><br></div>
<x-sigsep><pre>--
</pre></x-sigsep>
<div>Nancy Baym<x-tab>
</x-tab>http://www.ku.edu/home/nbaym</div>
<div>Communication Studies, University of Kansas</div>
<div>Blog: http://www.onlinefandom.com</div>
</body>
</html>