^

Clarissa Brough

Search

NOWPLAYING

MAIN

Browse
Activity
Radio
YOUR MUSIC

Songs
Albums
Artists

Matt Brough
SONG
Take Me Home
Only Girl

ARTIST

ALBUM

Jess Glynne

I Cry When I Laugh

Rihanna

Kayne West-Flashing Lights

Driving Music

Jon-Luc Furlong

Loud

Calvin Harris-Feel So Close

Favourites

Local Files

The emergence of interactive music technologies in the twenty-first

century has culminated in music listening being more readily
facilitated and accessible. With the
PLAYLISTS
recent decline in purchasing music,
including music downloads (see
Gym Tunes
FIGURE.1), individuals are more
frequently engaging in interactive
Dance Tunes
online music networks, such as
Creamfields 15 Apple Music, Spotify, SoundCloud
and Rdio. These online communities
Uni Classics
provide an open forum for listening,
organising, sharing and rating music.
FIGURE.1 [1]
Studying

Why do people engage in online music networks?

What function do online music networks perform in the

Chill Out
listening practices of users?

Wendy G
Avicci-Wake Me Up
Memories 2014

Burby 89
Metallica-Creeping Death
Anthems

Rae
Ludovico Einaudi Le Onde
Piano Music

Paulio A
Taylor SwiftShake It Off
Pop Sing-Alongs

Online music networks serve as arenas for the construction and performance of identity. Thus they provide a very particular
type of self-definition, being what Foucault terms a technology of the self[2]. Here technology symbolises more than just the
machine but also the way in which it mirrors the user; their choices, preferences and values. Subsequently, compilations of
music on online music communities could serve as epistemological points of reference, displaying gender identities in terms of
How can music choices be mapped onto gender identity?
musical taste.
Are the identities perceived on online music networks individual or collective?
In recent years, the concept of gender identity has undergone a significant transformation, being no longer conceptualised
as stable but instead as something more contingent and indefinite. Donna Haraway suggests that these various indefinite
identities have become more readily crafted by the emergence of the cyborg, being a hybrid of machine and organism [3].
Can multiple performances of gender identity be perceived in the music choices compiled by a user on an online music
network?
Do music recommendation services built within these platforms, as well as seeing what friends are listening to, diversify
musical taste and performances of gender identity?
To what extent is a users musical taste, and subsequent gender identity, determined by what the platforms algorithms
enable them to see?
LYRICS
References
[1] http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/01/buying-musicis-so-over/384790/
[2]Hutton, P. et al (eds.) (1988) Technologies of the Self. London: Tavistock.
[3] Haraway, D. (1991) A Cyborg Manifesto. IN: Haraway, D. Simians,
Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge.
p.149-181.

Clarissa Brough
cb1g15@soton.ac.uk