This article raises some critical questions about cultural intermediaries as both a descriptive label and analytic concept. In doing so, it has two main aims. First, it seeks to provide some clarification, critique and suggestions that will assist in the elaboration of this idea and offer possible lines of enquiry for further research. Second, it is argued that whilst studying the
This article traces the formation of popular music idol industries in China and the emergence of data fandom. It charts the growth of digital platforms and historicizes the commercial and geopolitical itinerations linking cultural production in Japan, South Korea, and China. It locates data fandom as an integral part of the popular music industries reconfigured by digital social media platforms; a structural change from the production-to-consumption ‘supply chain’ model of the recording era towards emergent circuits of content that integrate industries and audiences. Data fans understand how their online activities are tracked, and adopt individual and collective strategies to influence metric and semantic information reported on digital platforms and social media. This article analyses how the practices of data fans impact upon charts, media and content traffic, illustrating how this activity benefits the idols they are following, and enhances a fan’s sense of achievement and agency.
This article focuses on how the major US recording companies attempt to strategically manage their different genres of music. It then considers the consequences of this for creative and commercial practices through illustrative case studies of the corporate management of rap and salsa. In broad terms, the article is intended as a contribution to debates about the `culture industry' and the interrelations between `culture' and `economics'. Two themes are used as a way of highlighting this relationship and the role of the music companies in cultural production: that an industry produces culture and that culture produces an industry. These themes are developed through an interrogation of detailed empirical material brought together from research conducted in the USA during 1996.
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