Last month, I was invited to speak at a Sociological Review symposium on Music and Social Networks, hosted by the Mitchell Centre for Social Network Analysis and organised by Nick Crossley, the author of Networks of sound, style, and subversion: the punk and post-punk worlds of Manchester, London, Liverpool and Sheffield, 1975–80 (MUP, 2015). It was a brilliant event, and I wish I could have stayed for the whole thing. As I was extemporising from slides, I don’t have any proper notes to put up here – but I do at least have the livetweets. So here they are. They’re a pretty good record of a lot of my main points, provided you read ‘@dr_d_allington did X’ as ‘@dr_d_allington and his colleagues did X’ whenever the topic is music, and remember that those colleagues were the brilliant Anna Jordanous and Byron Dueck (or do I mean @annajordanous and @ByronRDueck?). I’ve inserted comments on the tweets where necessary.
'Joining the Dots: #Music & #SocialNetworks' from @MitchellSNA & @TheSocReview 16-18 Jun: http://t.co/v1ozvmFxRM pic.twitter.com/XOZCwJ8kU2
— Manchester Sociology (@MCRSociology) May 15, 2015
First speaker at #MusicSNA is @dr_d_allington
— Sociological Review (@TheSocReview) June 16, 2015
#MusicSNA @dr_d_allington talking about esteem in networks of cultural production. His interest emerges from sociology of literature.
— Sociological Review (@TheSocReview) June 16, 2015
For example, Anheier and Gerhards’s (1990) ‘Literary myths and social structure‘.
#MusicSNA @dr_d_allington his research began with interactive fiction: how ratings were enacted within this relatively close community
— Sociological Review (@TheSocReview) June 16, 2015
Now in press at Cultural Sociology! I signed the copyright form this week.
#MusicSNA @dr_d_allington explaining how his research then moved on to electronic music: similar analysis to interactive fiction
— Sociological Review (@TheSocReview) June 16, 2015
Electronic music producers and esteem & value – @dr_d_allington applies the K-core Method #MusicSNA
— Mitchell Centre SNA (@MitchellSNA) June 16, 2015
To clarify, this was something I did with the interactive fiction data and that we initially tried with the SoundCloud data. There were various reasons why we ended up analysing the latter in a different way.
#MusicSNA not much money involved for most producers of electronic music. @dr_d_allington expected to find most people working for esteem
— Sociological Review (@TheSocReview) June 16, 2015
#MusicSNA interviews with electronic music producers by @dr_d_allington: expressions of esteem valued differently between cases
— Sociological Review (@TheSocReview) June 16, 2015
Most of the interviews were actually done by Byron; Anna and I worked more on the quantitative data collection, although we all did some interviewing.
#MusicSNA @dr_d_allington found that London was a good place to be electronic music producer – even for digital distribution & dissemination
— Sociological Review (@TheSocReview) June 16, 2015
I.e. we collectively found this!
#MusicSNA @dr_d_allington: how does geography shape expressions of esteem among cultural producers?
— Sociological Review (@TheSocReview) June 16, 2015
The research on music (as opposed to interactive fiction) is currently in press at Cultural Trends. Copyright form also signed this week.
#MusicSNA @dr_d_allington Electronic music producers identified that London has strong locational advantages in their genre
— Dr Allan Watson (@AllanWatson1) June 16, 2015
#MusicSNA Some great SNA of cities from @dr_d_allington – London sits at the centre of peer esteem networks
— Dr Allan Watson (@AllanWatson1) June 16, 2015
London most of all, but also Los Angeles and New York. The notable thing is, these were the same three cities at the centre of the network of recording studios that Allan Watson uncovered behind the big hits of 2012 in the US, UK, and Australian download markets. Except that I didn’t know that until Allan got up to speak a little later. See below.
#MusicSNA @dr_d_allington: people tend to listen to and follow those electronic music producers within same city, country and region
— Sociological Review (@TheSocReview) June 16, 2015
#MusicSNA @dr_d_allington Importance of live music venues: audiences for electronic music in London bigger than in other cities
— Dr Allan Watson (@AllanWatson1) June 16, 2015
And this is where Allan tells me I can find the article with his social network analysis of recording and mastering studios (see above), later that afternoon:
@dr_d_allington Here is the link to the paper: http://t.co/w2NVitZYgn
— Dr Allan Watson (@AllanWatson1) June 16, 2015
Just in time for me to get a reference to it into the Cultural Trends article. Interestingly, the same troika of London, New York, and Los Angeles that appeared at the centre of ‘our’ social network of SoundCloud users and of Alan’s several social networks of recording studios turns out to be at the centre of Apple’s new online broadcasting initiative.
The blog post linked to here is an analysis of clusters in the network of SoundCloud cities, which got a little spike of interest thanks to the symposium:
hey @jaeger_sampler @alxhnl ^^ this shit by @dr_d_allington @GaWC @SoundCloud
— jon r (@almereyda) June 17, 2015
Note troika.
cool. Any similar future events coming up?
It was a one-off event – you could contact the organiser, Nick Crossley, to see if he has anything else planned. Alternatively, you could subscribe to JISC’s Social Network Analysis mailing list.