The online composer–audience collaboration

Abstract

Online platforms are increasingly blurring the boundaries between composers, listeners and performers through collaborative environments for musical creativity. New approaches to music composition through the platforms have the potential to forge creative collaborations with audiences and allow them to become active participants in the conception of a work. This chapter focuses specifically on Jacob Collier and Andrew Huang, two artists who make use of the online resources to collaborate with their audience by requesting compositional material from them to implement it into their songs. It analyses how these two musicians use the platforms to invite their audience into their creative process and it provides a detailed description of their corresponding approaches to audience collaboration. In addition, the chapter postulates eight layers of discourse that can be analysed for further insight into the dynamics between composers and online audiences, and as a tool for understanding and interpreting the mechanisms of digital interactions.