[ecrea] new book: Playing to the Crowd

We would like to announce a new publication from New York University 
Press, which we hope will be of interest.

*Playing to the Crowd***

Musicians, Audiences, and the Intimate Work of Connection

*Nancy K. Baym***

*_http://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/playing-to-the-crowd_**__*

"Nancy K. Baym was researching the impact of emerging technologies and 
music when most of us did not have the foresight to anticipate the 
changing music landscape. This is not her first pioneering work, and it 
certainly won't be her last, but it is, as always, fun and intriguing. 
An innovative wordsmith and an engaging storyteller, Baym explains how 
musicians transition from technologies designed to render them remote 
deities to those that invite them to be irrevocably intimate. Her 
observations carry weight and her interpretations are timely and 
timeless. She is a sharp researcher with a curious mind—the type that 
unfailingly seduces, educates and inspires you with their writing."—Zizi 
Papacharissi, University of Illinois at Chicago

"Nancy K. Baym’s /Playing to the Crowd /is a major advance in our 
understanding of new media, music and audiences. Through careful 
ethnographic and historical work, Baym offers a definitive reception 
history of popular music as it went online. She also offers a 
transformative theory of music in the age of social media. 
Methodologically rich, beautifully written, and full of great 
storytelling, /Playing to the Crowd /explains the novel aspects of our 
emergent online environment, all while linking it to music as a cultural 
practice that transcends any one context, and insisting that we 
understand online relationships as fundamentally human relationships. It 
will change the way you think about music, technology and 
people."—Jonathan Sterne, author of /MP3: The Meaning of a Format/

Explains what happened to music—for both artists and fans—when music 
went online.

/Playing to the Crowd/explores and explains how the rise of digital 
communication platforms has transformed artist-fan relationships into 
something closer to friendship or family. Through in-depth interviews 
with musicians such as Billy Bragg and Richie Hawtin, as well as members 
of the Cure, UB40, and Throwing Muses, Baym reveals how new media has 
facilitated these connections through the active, and often required, 
participation of the artists and their devoted, digital fan base.

Before the rise of social sharing and user-generated content, fans were 
mostly seen as an undifferentiated and unidentifiable mass, often 
mediated through record labels and the press. However, in today’s 
networked era, musicians and fans have built more active relationships 
through social media, fan sites, and artist sites, giving fans a new 
sense of intimacy and offering artists unparalleled information about 
their audiences. However, this comes at a price. For audiences, meeting 
their heroes can kill the mystique. And for artists, maintaining active 
relationships with so many people can be both personally and financially 
draining, as well as extremely labor intensive.

Drawing on her own rich history as an active and deeply connected music 
fan, Baym offers an entirely new approach to media culture, arguing that 
the work musicians put in to create and maintain these intimate 
relationships reflect the demands of the gig economy, one which requires 
resources and strategies that we must all come to recognize and appreciate.

*Nancy K. Baym* is a Principal Researcher at Microsoft in Cambridge, 
Massachusetts.  She is the author and co-editor of three previous books 
about audiences, relationships, and the internet, including /Personal 
Connections in the Digital Age/. More information, most of her articles, 
and some of her talks are available at nancybaym.com 
<http://www.nancybaym.com>.


*New York University Press**| Postmillennial Pop | June 2018 | 280pp 
| 9781479821587 | PB | £21.99**

*Price subject to change.


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