ABSTRACT
Technology is central to the configuration of a music marketplace but attention is typically focused on producers and the means of distribution. Much less is known about the role consumers play and how fans use digital technologies to participate, shape, and co-produce music scenes (see also Leyshon et al., this volume). This chapter is about the practices of a group of music fans who create and maintain websites about music scenes, with special emphasis on Santiago’s indie music scene. These fans spend a lot of time in front of their computers, programming, surfing the web, uploading content on their websites, redesigning them to include new applications, as well as managing Facebook and Twitter accounts and exchanging links, pictures, and various types of content. They do the same thing using their mobile phones, communicating with the audiences they build through their websites. Digital communications technologies are present everywhere in their everyday lives. It is, therefore, impossible to understand how they structure their lives without observing the centrality that the Internet, mobile phones, flows of information, and links, clicks, “tweets,” or “likes” have in their daily activities. These technologies enable individuals to situate themselves in networks where different flows of objects and symbols (Appadurai 1986) circulate regarding their interests, particularly around music.
