ABSTRACT
The Internet is an ideal platform for most forms of musicking (Small, 1998): it is now used extensively in the composition, performance, dissemination, and listening of music. The ecology of media musicians operate in today is substantially different from the one where music was written on physical media, released by a relatively small number of major labels, sold in shops, selected for play by radio DJs, and reviewed by established writers in the printed press. We have moved from this hierarchical situation to one where music-sharing websites, video channels, social media, and online artist profiles on the Web provide listeners with greater access to the world’s music via both commercial and alternative channels. Our new musical media have three key characteristics that separate it from older formats: they are networked, multimedia, and processor-based. This enables us to write music in the form of code, opening up the potential for interactivity and non-linear music that might include visuals and tactile outputs via the screens, sensors, and motors of our player devices. For this reason, the Internet is not merely a different conduit for distributing and communicating about music: it presents a drastic change in terms of which media properties musicians have at their fingertips for composing, performing, and listening to new music.
