Participatory Boundaries

Abstract

How do musicians deal with audiences who are organized into gift cultures online? This chapter explores the tensions they experience between wanting and needing to control audiences and recognizing music’s value as a participatory experience. It identifies three strategies of control (territorializing through fan clubs and contests, invoking intellectual property law, and datafying with big data) and two strategies of participation (accepting autonomy and letting them help through fan labor practices like fan funding and promotion). It identifies the challenges with both control and participation, arguing that in a market context, musicians cannot give themselves over fully to participation.