Sharing is Caring

How do you show that you care about something? You share it. It is not a crazy new evolutionary concept and music is no exception to it. Music was meant to be shared. You only have to look at the origins of folk music to realise how important it is to share and participate in musical story telling. The internet then, would have to be one of musics greatest friends of the 21st century. Its new DIY, collaborative new media technologies have allowed the average citizen to participate in the transformation and recirculation of media content allowing music to be shared in a variety of different ways and with a whole lot more people (see here). We all have the ability to be produsers.

The networked environment of sites like Myspace facilitate the sharing of music. Myspace users can add bands as friends, add songs to their profile which in turn can be added to another friends site and so on. Sharing is a never ending process, constantly being built upon as more and more people join the network.

File sharing on Kazaa, Limewire and Windows live messenger allow users to share files quickly and at no cost. Even the gatekept file sharing networks such as Itunes give people the ability to share music far more easily than the traditional model of purchasing cd's and lending them to friends. (See my blog post "Music 2.0. Get Excited!" for an interesting insight into the future of file sharing)

Citizen journalism also has a role to play in the sharing of music. Blogs such as Yelling about music, Totally Fuzzy and Indy alternative blog site Obscure sound share the latest music news that mainstream media neglect to tell us. They provide information for a niche set of music fans who can then comment and share their own thoughts and experiences. Perhaps even leading to collective intelligence.

The most brilliant part about all of these avenues is that they can then be linked together. A youtube post can appear on a myspace page, a blog site, an email or facebook, forming one huge network of shared content. I recently participated in this sharing and linking process. I loved my friend Liam Griffin's new film clip and wanted to share it with my friends so I copied the link from Youtube onto my blog site and provided further links to his myspace page. He just increased his potential fan base without even lifting a finger. Another example of networked collectivism is Baym's work on fan communities where it was found that fans build their community through a network of internet sites, each with its own specialised purpose and format. Music was shared through fans spreading their knowledge throughout the network.

In DIY communities music can be shared by both the musicians, the fans and sometimes hybrid produsers. It allows for niche, grass roots experimentation for budding musicians as well as a space for fans to interact and share their passion for music with others. Music was meant to be shared. The internet has allowed more ways to share than ever before. In a world without copyright laws it's a match made in heaven right?

Get smarter Facebook! You're driving me mad.

Last week I read Axels blog about the problems he has with facebook as a social network. Axels main issue was the flattened structure of facebooks social relationships into simple yes/no answers to friend requests. He argues that this flat structure undermines how we organise and distinguish between social ties in real life. At the time I thought he had a fair point but i didn't think too much about it. But now things have gone too far! I logged onto my facebook account today to discover a friend request from my landlord who also happens to be my roommate/best friend's mother. Personally i see it as a gross invasion of my privacy. There are certain things that certain people just shouldn't know about. First of all as my best mates mother I don't want her knowing what i get up too. I don't want her to see all those drunken photos i have been tagged in recently. I don't want her to know who my friends are, where i have been, who and what has been written on my wall. She doesn't need to know! Secondly, as my landlord i most certainly don't want her to know! For her to discover all those drunken photos from house parties is sure to send me packing.

I wonder what my roommate thinks of this. That is her mother! Would you want your mother as a friend on facebook? I would probably initially laugh in her face and suggest helping make her profile look somewhat hip and cool... as hip and cool as a 40yr old mother of 3 can be. But after a week or two when she discovers who all your friends are and the shenanigans they get up to things might not be so hilarious.

I never used to think about the consequences of pressing 'accept friend request'. I just see it as a polite thing to do when someone asks you to be their friend. However, i am now seriously reconsidering my stance on being a friendly person. My boss at work recently added me on facebook. What a mistake that was to accept. I now find it incredibly awkward when I call up on Monday for my shifts and he says "so why is Emma feeling over the moon today?" or "ooh I see you had a big weekend (wink wink)".

I discovered last week that my cousin worked up the courage to clean out her facebook. She was fed up with having so many people on it that she didn't consider, or want, to be apart of her circle of friends. The only people on her facebook now are a small collection of people who she loves and trusts to know about her business. Eliminating all those people out of her network was a pretty brave thing to do! But she should never have had to do it. Facebook needs to get smarter. My cousin has now lost contact with a whole range of people that probably would have been handy acquaintances in years to come.

I'm a firm believer in keeping sections of your social life separate. Certain aspects of my character are portrayed to different sets of friends. I don't like it when my boss knows i like Indie rock music and partying at Rics and I don't like it when my new ultra cool musician friend knows I work at a lame research company. I want to be able to show people who I am when I want and how I want. I don't want facebook to do it for me in a completely impersonal and static way. I know I have the choice to either accept or reject a friend request but I don't think the problem is solved that simply. I would be quite happy for my boss to be my friend on facebook or my mates mother if there was some way for me to decide how much of me I want share with them. We're living in an age of produsers. Give me some control facebook! I want to be able to shape my online communities. Decide who is in them and what I share with them. Is that too much to ask?