Socio-semiotic considerations about playlists

Abstract

This paper analyzes the notion of playlists as a socio-semiotic category in the context of the mediatization of contemporary popular music by studying its uses in virtual and non-virtual communities. We propose that the digital mediatization of playlists affects contemporary cultural forms, shaping social modes of conceiving music as they enable new forms of interaction in the present moment. Our investigation focuses on different ways digital mediatization of playlists contributes to creating virtual communities and transforming performative practices in non-virtual communities of musicians. In our analysis, we consider the playlist as a format, a category of action that encodes cultures in different social groups in a diachronic trajectory. It may involve the evolutionary development of musical genres or practices of production and recognition, in which the use of playlists and their interactive possibilities as repertoire affect how the digital memory of the semiosphere is encoded.