patterns of listening

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Patterns of listening through socialmedia: online fan engagement with thelive music experienceLucy Bennett aa Cardiff University, Wales, UKVersion of record first published: 08 Oct 2012.

To cite this article: Lucy Bennett (2012): Patterns of listening through social media: online fanengagement with the live music experience, Social Semiotics, 22:5, 545-557

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Patterns of listening through social media: online fan engagementwith the live music experience

Lucy Bennett*

Cardiff University, Wales, UK

(Received 2 January 2012; final version received 30 June 2012)

In recent years, the expansion and use of mobile Internet and social media havechanged live music engagement and fandom quite considerably. It has not onlyallowed fans to find and connect with each other at shows, but also to tweet andtext concert set-lists and other information as they happen, thereby allowing non-attendees around the world to feel part of the event. This study examines theresponses of fans engaged in this activity, identifying the key themes and patternsapparent within this behaviour, arguing that fans are using social media andmobile technology in an effort to contest and reshape the boundaries of live musicconcerts. It demonstrates how these online tools are involving fans that are notphysically present at the show, seemingly incorporating them into the real-timelive experience. This article explores how fans of prolific touring artists U2 andTori Amos undertake this, with assigned concert attendees tweeting the set-list toonline fans, where they gather to enjoy the show together, from the comfort oftheir computers.

Keywords: popular music; fandom; liveness; social media; Internet; Twitter

The arrival and expansion of the Internet have changed music fandom quite

significantly, at least in the ways in which some fans engage with the live music

experience. In recent years, the use of mobile Internet and social networks such as

Twitter and Facebook has not only allowed fans to find and connect with each other

at shows, but also to tweet concert set-lists and other information as they happen,

thereby allowing non-attendees around the world to feel part of the event. This

article will examine the engagement of fans in this process, demonstrating how

these online tools are involving individuals who are not physically present at the

show, seemingly incorporating them into the real-time live experience. Seeking to

understand and unravel this practice, this study shall explore how fans of prolific

touring artists U2 and Tori Amos (Farrugia and Gobatto 2010) do this, with

assigned concert attendees tweeting the set-list to fans in their online communities in

freak out and party threads, where they gather to enjoy the show together, from

the comfort of their computers. I will examine the patterns and responses of fans

engaged in this activity, arguing that fans are using social and mobile media in an

attempt to contest and reshape the boundaries of live music concerts, a practice that

works to re-appropriate ideas of immersion in liveness.

*Email: [email protected]

Social Semiotics

Vol. 22, No. 5, November 2012, 545557

ISSN 1035-0330 print/1470-1219 online

# Crown Copyright 2012http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10350330.2012.731897

http://www.tandfonline.com

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This presence of mobile technology at live concerts, including the development of

mobile Internet in recent years, has altered fan interactions at live music events quite

considerably. In 1998 New York Times journalist, Neil Strauss, noted that rather than

cigarette lighters held aloft:

antennae seem to sprout from peoples heads and hands, and there are patterns made byglowing keypads and flashing green lights, evidence of concertgoers calling friendsduring the good songs or even checking their answering machine for messages duringthe boring parts. (1998, np)

In his study of concert attendees at a U2 show in November 2006, Chris Chesher

similarly observed that mobile phones were constantly present in and around the

show, helping some people to physically locate friends, or to connect with those not

immediately present (2007, 217). More recently, the development of mobile phone

applications such as SuperGlued, Flowd and FourSquare is making it even easier for

fans at a concert to connect and meet with others present at the show who also use

the function:

SuperGlued is an easy way to share and discuss concert experiences with the peoplearound you. We started out because there wasnt a place to see who else was at the showand what they thought. All the photos, videos and reviews were scattered. The collectiveenergy felt lost. Were here to change that and would like you to join us. (http://superglued.com)

With this application, fans can also post footage from shows to Flickr, YouTube,

Blogger, WordPress or Tumblr, by connecting their account and tagging the content

with the specific show ID (Bruno 2011). Flowd and FourSquare work in a similar

manner; with users checking in to concert venues and locating friends who are also

physically present (Dredge 2011). In 2010, Apple patented two further applications

for future development: iGroups, which lets groups of friends attending the same

event stay connected and share content and Concert Ticket, that would alsooffer discounts on food and drinks at the show, venue maps, access to interviews and

studio recordings by the bands playing, even possibly access to a live recording of the

gig itself (Music Week 2010). Music artists have also engaged in these develop-

ments: Trent Reznor, lead singer of rock band Nine Inch Nails, launched in 2009 an

application for fans of the band, entitled NIN Access, which is: a mobile window . . .kind of like Twitter within the Nine Inch Nails network . . .you can post a message ora photo by location, and if youre at a show you can see conversations between other

people who are right there (Rose 2009). And social media and mobile phone

technology have not only promoted fan interactions and connections between those

who are right there, but also for those who are remotely located and non-present.

In this article, I will focus on these interactions, exploring how fans of Tori Amos

and U2 negotiate them online. I will use as data interactions from @U2forum (http://

forum.atu2.com/), which holds over 5000 members who have amassed over 1 million

posts, and the recently re-launched Unforumzed (http://www.unforumzed.com/

forum.php), which holds almost 2000 members and three thousand posts. In

@U2forum I randomly selected and examined threads focused on the February 2011

U2 concerts in Johannesburg and Cape Town. With Unforumzed, I examined posts

in the Tori Tour forum, covering the 2009 and 2010 Tori Amos world tours.

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Although the forums under study are public spaces where membership is not

required to view posts, to maintain anonymity of members, I have refrained from

featuring any identifying usernames within this article.

Contesting the boundaries: involving the non-present audience

Where are you guys listening from? Out of interest.

Twitter (@U2 forum, 13 February 2011).

The effects of technology on the live music experience for non-present audience

members first became noticeable with the broadcast of concerts on radio, a mediumorganised around liveness (Auslander 2008; see also Barker 2012). The concept of

liveness has been theorised by Philip Auslander as first and foremost a temporal

relationship, a relationship of simultaneity (2002, 21) that occurs between an

audience and a live event. In this sense, and applied to music, it was only in

relation to its opposite, the recorded sound, that the concept of liveness could at first

be defined. This simultaneity allows us to think of liveness as part of the aura of a

physical event that disappears into, and is reconfigured through, the process of its

reproduction (Duffett 2003, 313).As Auslander acknowledges, the idea of liveness is a moving target, a

historically contingent concept whose meaning changes over time and is keyed to

technological development (2008, xii). Thus, the introduction of new technological

forms of visual broadcasting, such as the television and online webcasting (Duffett

2003) has had strong impact on live concert reception and ideas of liveness.

Exploring the effects of these developments in information and communications

technologies that work to threaten, prima facie, to destabilize liveness in the sense

considered so far, Nick Couldry suggested two fundamental shifts that have takenplace. The first involves an online liveness, where social co-presence develops on the

Internet, in the form of groups and audiences, and the second, a group liveness, which

entails continuous contact by a group through their mobile phones (2004, 357).

However, the more recent widespread presence of mobile phones and social

media at music concerts has resulted in much more dramatic changes. Capitalising

on the ability to send text messages, take photos and connect to the Internet on their

mobile phones, some fans are now engaging in the practice of rapidly alerting non-

attendees around the world to the songs being played, photos of the show, and anyother aspects of the performance as it is happening, live. The online fans can then

gather in order to receive the bulletins and remotely experience the concert together;

an activity which for fans of artists who vary their set-lists each night is a source of

particular excitement. Erin E. Watkins observed such excitement among Clay Aiken

fans, who engage in what they collectively term cellcerting (2007, see also Burns

2009, 149). This was defined as the transmission of information from a live event

where the audience is composed of fans, with the receivers engaged in computer

mediated communication, and the connection between individuals lasting for theduration of the entire concert, hazarding physical discomfort for both the cellcert

provider and the recipient, and the possible violation of conference-attendance rules

(Watkins 2007, 2). To ensure orderliness of these transmissions, this practice can

often be configured under a fairly rigid structure. For fans of American singer

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songwriter Tori Amos in @forumz, one of her largest online communities (which was

re-launched under the name Unforumzed in 2010), each concert was pre-assigned a

texter and a receiver, who then relayed the information to others, in a specifically

designed freak out thread:

Here we go! Its time to set up the setlist texting teams that made the 2007 freakoutthreads so much fun. As before, what we need is a person who is going to the show totext song titles to a person at home who can post them in the threads. Once a show hasboth team members in place, they get in touch and exchange numbers. A word aboutTwitter. We can probably have tweets from people at shows posted in threads, but I wantto keep that separate from this process. Sometimes people near the texters are annoyed,and I want to keep this process as subtle as possible. In fact, my preference would bethat setlist texters not also send tweets, but I wont make a hard and fast rule about that.If we can avoid pissing everybody off, fine. But the texts worked last time, so thats howI want to do it this time. So its time to volunteer! (@forumz, Setlist Report Teams 2009!4 July 2009)

These set-list report teams operate to a specific agenda, whereas fans of U2 also

engage in this activity, but are less structured, with twittering fans using a particular

hash to alert others to their tweets:

You can follow the set-list live on Twitter: @U2s Twitter List. Users of Tweetdeck orseveral other Twitter clients can follow that List the same way theyd follow a user andautomatically get the updates from ALL users. You can also follow the List via the webpage linked above. @U2 will be adding accounts to that list as people say they plan totweet setlists from any shows so if youre going to a show, Tweet @U2 a message. (@U2Forum, 18 December 2010)

Non-attendees can then gather and follow these bulletins as they happen, in

specifically designed threads, which often last for over fifty pages. An example of how

fans discuss these concert-related tweets is evident within a thread on the @U2 forum

covering their 2011 Johannesburg show:

People are already in the stadium. Caught a tweeted pic from a fan showing that s/hesright in front of the band.

Opening acts onstage. Id give it less than an hour before U2 arrives.

i hope U2 comes out now. im so sleepy. its 2:28am now.

One Day Like This by Elbow is playing over the PA. Thats the song before SpaceOddity I believe.

Beautiful Day

According to Twitter the stadium erupted as they opened with Beautiful Day. Just waituntil they all remember U2 wrote Where The Streets Have No Name. (13 February, 2011)

Thus, even though they are not physically present and are in different time zones,

fans are gathering to share their opinions and knowledge and the excitement

surrounding this specific event, in such a way that they not only feel part of the

live music experience, but also create their own. Some construct and post possible

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set-lists, sharing their own predictions, while others play the songs being performed

as the songs are texted in. After the concert, the interest continues, with fans posting

footage and songs from the show on YouTube and sharing their photos. There is also

evident an interest in the intricate details of the event. Fans inquire about the outfits

worn on stage by the artist (and if they have worn similar attire at previous show),

the volume of people queuing outside the venue, the songs played on the PA system

before show time and even excitedly post tweeted photos of the empty stage set up.

As Rich King observes, mobile communication allows us to participate in social

interactions that were previously reserved for only those who were physically

present, a situation which results in a reliance on co-present understandings with

sometimes a development-and sometimes erosion-of social cohesion (2010, xi).

Thus, the sender of bulletins from a concert alters their own experience of the show

by focussing on communications with fans who are remotely located, but

consequently co-present.

While some U2 fans use social media to send bulletins to other fans throughout

the concert, others take the connection further by using a facility called 1000 mikes self-described as Radio 2.0 to broadcast the entire show to them as it happens. Thevolunteer show attendees use their mobile phone to connect to the platform, which

then generates a personal live broadcast channel, which other fans can access and

listen in to through the website. The band themselves have also engaged in the

broadcast of their concerts live in 2009 their show in the Pasadena Row Bowl,California, was streamed live on YouTube. As their manager stated:

the band has wanted to do something like this for a long time. As were filming the LAshow, its the perfect opportunity to extend the party beyond the stadium. Fans oftentravel long distances to come to see U2 - this time U2 can go to them, globally.(Fentiman 2009, 11)

Other shows have since been streamed through live audio on the official U2 website,

for subscribing members. Thus, fans in front of their computers can now join the

extended party by listening and tuning in to the concert live; monitoring incoming

tweets and photos, while simultaneously discussing all these happenings with other

fans in the designated online community threads.

Philip Auslander touches upon the sense of communal strength of an audience,

arguing against the notion that live performance itself somehow generates whatever

sense of community one may experience (2008, 64). Instead, citing examples such

as the 1996 Olympic Games and screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, he

suggests that mediatised performance makes as just as effective a focal point for the

gathering of a social group as live performance (2008, 64). In sum, he stresses that a

sense of community arises from being part of an audience and the quality of the

experience of community derives from the specific audience situation, not from the

spectacle for which that audience has gathered (2008, 65). I want to build on this, by

also suggesting that social media and mobile Internet are now being used in an effort

to blur the boundaries between those who are physically present and those who are

remotely located. However, although these boundaries are, for some, seemingly

becoming less distinct, there still remain differences in the experience generated. For

example, individuals physically present at a live concert may go through a different

communal experience to those attending from their home computer in online fan


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forums, which conversely and simultaneously, are also undergoing a distinct

communal experience. In order to explore and understand this further, I will now

examine in turn the three key themes that can emerge within these online fan

interactions surrounding the live concerts: collective anticipation, the exchange offan knowledge and judgements made on text.

Collective anticipation

Anticipation has been identified for some fan cultures as delivering a strong element

of pleasure (Gray 2010; Harrington and Bielby 1995, 139; Huron 2006). Certainly

the most prominent theme apparent within online fan engagement with live music

concerts is collective anticipation surrounding what will happen and be experienced

during the show. For these music fans, anticipation is mainly focused on what songswill be performed, with specific excitement surrounding the possibility of new or rare

tracks being included in the set. Some Tori Amos fans create their own set-lists for

the shows and post them within the concert threads before show time, in an effort to

predict the running order and songs performed:

I wonder if shell play a longer set since shes the only act. The last two shows have been18 and 16 songs, so I cant see it going much longer, but I also think this show will be abit less hits/standards heavy than the others. I hope she plays Secret Spell solo again,and if shes still in such an American Doll Posse mood, itd be great to get solo GirlDisappearing or Almost Rosey. I also hope she does SOMETHING from Choirgirl-erathat isnt Cooling. [Here is the] setlist for the last show in Milan, for anyone who wantsto use that to make predictions. (Unforumzed, 12 July 2010)

Anticipation surrounding the set-list is often based on fan research into the

frequency of songs played in recent shows on the tour, and calculations based on

previous performances in a particular city. Within this, fans exchange detailed

preferences on the object of fandoms musical catalogue. For example, the aboveposter expresses a desire for solo performances of specific songs and versions from

different eras of Tori Amoss career. Even though this poster will not be physically

attending the show, or be there to witness the performance and songs played in

person, such fans engage in levels of anticipation and excitement that previously

would have suggested their attendance. The build-up to showtime intensifies this

excitement even further, with fans expressing their heightened anticipation in the

minutes before the artist takes to the stage, as is evident in the following extract from

a U2 fan thread focusing on their concert in Cape Town:

Im such a dork, I just screamed out loud. Good thing Im the only one home!

WERE LIVE IN CAPE TOWN AND ITS FRIDAY NIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You should see me - I think Im going to faint soon . . .Honestly, Ive got tears almostcoming from my eyes right this moment!

OMG!!!! im hearing Bono live!!!!! im crying!!!! (@U2 forum, 18 February 2011)

These posts display that the emotional responses from fans commonly elicited

by live concerts can also be achieved through remote engagement. Despite their

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non-physical presence, online fans are seemingly experiencing and re-enacting the

same responses as the audience members present at the show: in a concert, people

behave in ways that they would not outside the performance:. . . audience membersclap and yell . . . all things which would be inappropriate in the context of everydaylife (Cavicchi 1998, 89). Thus, the boundaries of the live concert and its notions

of liveness are extended. Online attendance is validated by the exchange of

emotional outbursts, which transforms this behaviour into a collective experience,

even though the participants remain geographically dispersed.

The rapid exchange of fan knowledge

Exploring Bruce Spingsteen fandom, Daniel Cavicchi discovered that many fans

even [keep] track of what songs Springsteen plays from concert to concert and studyany variations in their structure or arrangement (1998, 92), an activity also explicit

within the fandom of artists such as Grateful Dead (Rodriquez, Gintautas, and Pepe

2009; Scott and Halligan 2010, 105) and Bob Dylan (Levesque 2006). The Internet

has worked to facilitate this sharing of information, allowing fans to collectively

create and maintain concert set-list databases, where performances can be catalogued

and archived. The arrival of social media and mobile Internet has worked to further

complement and accelerate this behaviour, allowing fans to pool and distribute this

knowledge as the shows are happening. Thus, as the online fans receive and discussthe concert bulletins, the second key theme, involving a rapid exchange and display of

fan knowledge, becomes evident. This is most obvious in the discussions of the

frequency with which certain songs have been performed. A detailed knowledge of

performance statistics became apparent within the following Tori Amos freak out

thread:

Love it so far!

Its inevitable for any of the over played songs to appear, but hey, crucify is pretty good

First performance of Crucify of 2010?

She just did it the other day ago in Montreux lol

Not a fan of teen spirit, she seems to play it a lot. Hopefully shell get it out of hersystem by London.

Smells Like Teen Spirit came out of nowhere and seems to be played a lot, after a longbreak. Twice in 07, 3 times in 03, but otherwise over a decade since it was really playedoften (Cactus Festival Freak Out, Unforumzed, 11 July 2010).

These activities involve the exchange and display of fan cultural capital. John Fiske,

applying Bourdieus (1984) notion of social and cultural capital to fandom,

determined a cultural economy that can be found within the actions of fans,

arguing that knowledge is fundamental to the accumulation of cultural capital(1992, 42). Nessim Watson expands on this by concluding that displayed [fan]

knowledge is one of the shared markers of community belonging (1997, 108).

Likewise, Eva Kingsepp views fan knowledge as a tool of social distinction as it

helps to distinguish those who possess it from those who do not, those who belong to


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the community from those who are outside (2006, 227), as does Nathan Hunt, who

argues that it is used to establish who is an insider and to declare others to be

outsiders who do not have the right to participate within fandom (2003, 186).

Henry Jenkins similarly puts an emphasis on the importance of the exchange ofknowledge between different segments of the [fan] community (1992, 7), coming to

a conclusion that knowledge equals prestige, reputation, power (2006, 125), as

does Majorie D. Kibby in her discussion of the ritual sharing of information

between John Prine fans (2000, 96). The concert freak out threads can therefore be

seen as a ritualistic sharing and display of knowledge and information between fans.

Judgements of performance based on text

Another key theme within discussions surrounding live concert bulletins is the

engagement of fans in judgements of the show, based on the set-list alone and

evaluations garnered from their fan knowledge. If a performance is comprised of

what is classed as a safe set-list, composed of standard songs and familiar chart

hits that have already been played many times at previous shows, fans can express a

collective disappointment towards the concert, as evident with this Tori Amos fan

exchange:

Wow a standard non-special set!

Oh for crying out loud. This setlist is punishment for the rockin show last tour. Imheading off for a bit, too. Maybe when I come back she will have perked up. In fact, Iknow she will. She cant keep the energy that low for that long.

Im not saying this to be ugly, but I think she should take some time off . . . I feel asthough a lot of her music has been really uninspired live lately . . .

Worst Show Of Tour? This is getting really boring.

Dont leave me here alone with this setlist!

I really dont think Toris feeling this tour much.

I stayed up for this??? (San Diego Freak Out thread, @forumz, 17 July, 2009).

When these judgements are made, and considerable disappointment is expressed,

attendees of the show sometimes offer reminders that knowing the titles of the songs

being played does not always equate to an understanding or experience of the actual

performance, which can be considerably different to that experienced through social

media. For example, improvisations, which make a consistent appearance withinToris live sets, are not always communicated live to the online listeners:

FYI the encore may have seemed slightly boring . . .But OMG Police Me had animprov in the middle because some security guard was trying to push us away and shewas like police us etc and then restarted the song . . .Take to the Sky had I feel theEarth Move and was out of this world. Everyone was dancing like fools. (19 July 2009)

Similarly, the sender of the texts at the San Diego show later posted in the freakout

thread, declaring [it was an] amazing show mediocre setlist but flawless and

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intense performances. Never thought I could like Jamaica inn, Oceans or Cloud.

Also, Siren was batshit. Another attendee similarly posted:

She came ROARING out. And she kept up the intense energy for the first half of theshow. It waned a little bit after the band came back . . .but quickly smoothed out andhummed right through the end of the show. The encore was a jammin dance party.

Others present also claimed the performance to be the best they had seen so far on

the tour, thereby demonstrating the difficulty that can arise when a performance is

evaluated through the medium of texts, photos and tweets alone.

Conclusion

This study illuminates how mobile technologies and social media are emerging

strategies being used by fans at live music concerts to include and update those not

physically present. My argument is that we should see this practice as an effort by

fans to contest and reshape the traditional boundaries of the live music experience.

By tweeting set-lists and other information as it is happening, online fans can

become collectively connected to the show and thereby enjoy some form of

replication of the event, which has considerable meaning within a fan community.

As Simon Frith argues, a live concert is not simply a transitory experience, but also

symbolises what it means to be a music fan (2007, 5). Daniel Cavicchi makes a

similar observation by stressing that:

for fans . . .a concert represents a powerful meeting of the various forces and people andideas involved in their participation in musical life . . . together, they enact the meaningof fandom. They shape and anchor fans sense of who they are and where they belong.(1998, 37)

Thus, as I have argued, fans are using the tools of social media to expand the

boundaries of the concert, re-appropriate their understandings of liveness to

experience a sense of this powerful meeting from the comfort of their home

computer.

However, this practice does raise a number of issues. First, as technology

develops and mobile handsets become even more sophisticated, the bounded space of

a live show may be contested further. How this will affect the experience of concert

attendees who are physically present will need to be investigated. For example, with

video calling being launched on more mobile handsets, another dimension of the

live experience will become available to non-present individuals. For some live

events, tweet seats are also being introduced (Netburn 2011), which allow and

encourage attendees sat in these sections to live-tweet during performances. However,

this situation can highlight the differences between audience members with regard to

how a live music event should be experienced. As one attendee of a Cincinatti

Symphony Orchestra concert that introduced this service, observed:

Their texting thumbs were moving faster than the violinists fingers . . . they wouldoccasionally nudge each other and read what the other person had up on his or herscreen. They didnt even look up to applaud at the end of each selection. The fact that


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they were watching their handheld devices, they missed out on what was happening onthe stage. (Rose 2011)

It is possible that the tweeters, as they had selected to occupy the tweet seats,

rather than feel they had missed out on the stage performance, perceived that an

added element was delivered to their experience, as a result of their connection to the

non-present audience. Nevertheless, the introduction of tweet-seats works to make

differences between audience members and their approach to the use of mobile

technology during a concert explicit, with strong opinions arising that this behaviour

is a breach of concert etiquette (Fanto 2011; Griffin 2011). For some audience

members the value of the concert may be that it is not available to anyone not

present; from their perspective the intensity of performer/audience communication is

undermined by its communications to people not present.

Second, how artists respond to and direct their fans towards, or away from, these

technological developments could undergo change and have strong implications on

the process. While some acts, such as Wilco and Natalie Merchant, ask audience

members to refrain from engaging with their mobile devices during shows (Jurgensen

2010), others such as Tinie Tempah (Empire 2010) Lady Gaga and Richie Hawtin

actively embrace and encourage this practice from themselves and within their fan

communities. As Hawtin explains:

For the Plastikman tour we built an iPhone app called SYNK for people in theaudience. When I perform, at one point I can unlock their iPhones and they start seeingwords on their screens and they can manipulate them. As soon as that happens, theystart playing with it. It starts making sounds. And at that moment I stop being theperformer, theyre performing. (Baym 2011)

These negotiations between artist and audience surrounding technological tools

and the resultant effects on expectation, immersion and participation in performance

are likely to be rewarding and challenging for both parties.How young people who are growing up with these technological tools perceive a

live experience should also be discussed. Some may have no experience of concerts

except through the widespread use of mobile Internet and social media. The practices

described here will seem a natural aspect of liveness. Nicholas Carah has explored

the behaviour of young audience members at concerts and suggests that for them

device use and screen culture are entwined with the development of savvy

identities. Using their cell phones and digital cameras [during concerts] enable[s]

them to translate enjoyment into media texts (2010, 56). This may have considerable

implications in the future on expectations of, and what is considered as, concert

etiquette and participation as an audience member.Finally, the question remains as to how the music and technological industries

will work together to respond to these practices. On 30 September 2011 the Black

Eyed Peas hosted a Backstage Hangout in collaboration with the social network

Google Plus, where remotely located fans could watch the band preparing for the

show and observe footage of the concert from a seat you cant buy. In this sense,

the non-present audience were seemingly given a more distinct status than those

physically attending the show. Posting about the event on the social network, lead

singer Will.i.am stated:

554 L. Bennett

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Lets see how many people will join in on the backstage and onstage hangout . . . letsre-define concerts, interaction, webcamn, lets have fun . . . i want to re-define backstageinteraction with fans who can not make the show . . . i think this will be the very firstonline backstage onstage web cam session . . . i like doing things 1st. (Google Plus, 29September 2011)

Such efforts by music and technological industries to re-define music concerts and

how artist and audience members interact with each other, alongside providing

beneficial coverage and exposure to involved companies, may work to even further

reshape our understandings of liveness and how fans engage with the live music

experience. That said, the extent to which these practices will be able to replicate

physical presence at a show is still debatable. Distinctions between being there and

participating remotely may become further blurred and continue to be re-negotiated

as technology develops, but this will also confirm that being there, whatever that

means, is the musical experience fans most value.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Martin Barker for the helpful suggestions during the writingof this article.

Notes on contributor

Lucy Bennett is the co-founder and co-chair of the Fan Studies Network. She graduatedwith a PhD in online fandom at JOMEC, Cardiff University, with a thesis focusingR.E.M. fans. She is the editorial assistant for Social Semiotics. Her research examinesaudiences and their use of the Internet, with particular focuses on fandom, music andsocial media. Her work appears in the journals New Media & Society, TransformativeWorks and Cultures and Continuum and she is currently guest editing a special issue ofParticipations on music and audiences.

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patterns of listening

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