Music and the Internet Conference (UChicago and Online)

The goal of this conference is to bring together scholars and creators to present across a variety of perspectives on the intersection of music, sound, and online culture, and to help cultivate the developing international network of thinkers at work on these topics.

From autoplaying videos to social media echo chambers, the 21st-century internet is a noisy place. The internet and online platforms have become increasingly entwined in both the music industry and in everyday musical activity, with music as both a shaped and shaping medium. Online music communities have emerged around net-native genres with distinct aesthetic, communicative, and meme-based conventions. Such developments have varied throughout the history of music on the internet, with reverberating effects in other online creative industries. Accordingly, a range of theoretical, practical, and ethical issues are in open (and often urgent) discussion for those studying these phenomena.

Recent research meetings in this area of study include Music and the Internet (Oxford, 2018), Like, Share and Subscribe (Online/Lisbon, 2020), Digital Socialities (Aarhus, 2021), Information Overload? Music Studies in the Age of Abundance (Birmingham, 2021) and Internet Musicking (Online, 2022). This conference continues the momentum of the burgeoning interdisciplinary field of music and internet studies, fostering conversations across disciplines including (but not limited to) music studies, sociology, media theory, and computer science.

Keynote Speaker:

Dr. Jabari Evans (University of South Carolina, Harvard University Rebooting Social Media Institute)

Keynote Panel: Classical Music, Public Musicology, Race, and Social Media

Dr. Imani Danielle Mosley (University of Florida)

Babatunde Akinboboye (@babatunde_hiphopera)

Conference Co-Organizers:

Dr. Steven Gamble (University of Bristol)

Dr. Kate Galloway (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)

Dr. Paula Clare Harper (University of Chicago)

Conference Supported By:

Media Arts Data and Design (MADD) Center, University of Chicago

The Franke Institute for the Humanities, University of Chicago

Host or Publisher Music and the Internet Committee