Music fandom in the digital age

Best Song ever - forever?

“…Third, growing up 'digital' opens opportunities for fans to become or remain more closely connected to peers worldwide, but also for their relationship with an artist to unfold more closely and directly than was possible for previous generations. According to Baym, Cavicchi and Coates (2017), the practices fans have been doing and the infrastructures they have always had in place among themselves have now become steady elements in their digital fan lives too (e.g., sharing recordings, photos, news, or their own creative works). Before such practices and activities had offline predecessors creating vast networks of fandom across the globe-for example, the exchange economy of pen friendships via 'Friendship Books' among teen Take That fans as described by Lőbert (2015).…”

“…For Irene, now working in the industry, and Melanie, the aspect of fan engagement is a crucial skill they claim to have picked up by being such super fans themselves (cf. Baym, Cavicchi and Coates, 2017), so being a fan helped forge and foster their careers. Irene addresses how she thinks she has better "marketing skills than someone who didn't have a fan account", because she understands when and what she needs to post to facilitate engagement (cf.…”

Challenges of Law and Technology - Herausforderungen des Rechts und der Technologie - Retos del Derecho y de la Tecnología

“…a) Software as a product One of the long overdue reforms of the Product-Liability-D-P concerns the inclusion of software as a product -in contrast to the previous law, regardless of whether 78 Commission, "Proposal of the EU Commission for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on Liability for Defective Products (Product-Liabiltiy-D-P)", September 28, 2022, COM (2022) 495 final 2022/0302 (COD). 79 Commission, "Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on horizontal cybersecurity requirements for products with digital elements and amending Regulation (EU)", September 15, 2022, 2019/1020 COM (2022) 454 final, hereafter cited as CRA-E. 80 the software is embodied ("embedded") in another product or not.…”

“…The legal policy discussion at the national level has now been caught up with at the European level: 75 After the EU Parliament had already submitted a formulated proposal on liability, 76 the EU Commission is now submitting a directive on the formulation of liability for AI systems (AI Liability Directive-E) 77 including a reform of the Product Liability Directive (ProdHaft Directive-E) following the proposal on the regulation of AI in terms of product safety law (AI Regulation-E). 78 Almost at the same time, the EU Commission has published a proposal for a new horizontal regulation on the cyberresilience of IT products, which considerably expands the product safety regulations -which cannot be dealt with here in extenso, but will also have an impact on liability. 79 To sum it up briefly: It is not so much the proposal for the AI Liability Directive as the proposed innovations in the Product Liability Directive that make us sit up and take notice.…”

Fans as transcultural gatekeepers: The hierarchy of BTS’ Anglophone Reddit fandom and the digital East-West media flow

“…Early publications, or the "first wave" of fandom studies, defined fandom in relation to physical spaces and objects since social media was not widespread yet and combated the negative narratives surrounding fans at the time (Cavicchi, 1998;Jenkins, 1992). However, recent work on digital fandom shows how the negative valence of "fan" has declined with the rise of social media since everyone has "followed" or "liked" something before (Baym et al, 2017). In fact, how scholars describe fandom structures has diversified as well, from concepts related to Bourdieu such as subcultural capital (Hebdige, 1979) and the cultural economy of fandom (Fiske, 1992), to ideas such as an imagined community (Anderson, 1983), interpretive community (Lindlof, 2015), affinity spaces (Gee, 2005), fan world (Hills, 2017), and the concept of the public (Warner, 2002).…”