YouTube and Music

Abstract

The first of two volumes on YouTube and music focuses on how sonic cyberculture has become embedded within everyday life. As the main platform for video sharing since its launch back in 2005, YouTube has amassed unquantifiable amounts of audiovisual content that have been produced, shared, transformed, downloaded and consumed by billions of users worldwide, making YouTube as a central hub for contemporary media. As an online space that provides new formats for content production and sharing, the platform operates as a portal into the social, political and cultural spectra of everyday life, creating new work logics and forms of labour (from DIY to self-made YouTube celebrities), creative communities and social bubbles in cyberspace. Music and sound have played a vital role within this emergent and democratised space. In this volume, 13 authors from several different countries examine how music has been created and used by YouTube users to establish and a promote a narrative for their daily lives. The digital platform has been used to create and disseminate sonic and emotional soundscapes, to stage performances and build artistic (cyber)identity, to engage in producing and circulating aural content for composing and teaching, and even to customize listening habits. This volume mixes long and short essays to explore these interactions from a variety of angles, from YouTube users’ comments to online collaborations between composers and listeners and virtual stages for real and imagined performances.