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C&W Presentation Outline

Today Im going to discuss some ongoing research that Ive been following for several years: that of emerging trends in online writing and blogging. Originally, my research was centered on the legal clampdown the music industry attempted to employ on music blogs that offered free content and how artists were working to subvert or support this trend. In recent years however, Ive found this project to evolve to focus on more new media concerns, specifically the evolving roles of the user as author, consumer, and reader: a multifaceted role that the digital realm enables with ease. As a one-time contributor to a music blog and writer for a news-magazine site, this topic is of particular interest to me from a scholarly perspective. Thus, my topic today will center on Digital Literacy and Music Blogging, specifically how digital discourse has allowed for authorship to evolve.

Introduction: the Move to User-Driven Authorship

Through tools such as WordPress, Tumblr, and Blogger, any individual with access to these platforms has the potential to become a persuasive authorial voice in the online world. Design scholar Ellen Lupton speaks to the commodification of the web space and user relationship in saying, The dominant subject of our age has become neither reader nor writer but the user, a figure conceived as a bundle of needs and impairmentsthe user is a figure to be protected and cared for but also scrutinized and controlled. Search engines and blog aggregate sites have picked up on this notion of course, as the site Technorati (among many others) keeps track of user traffic on a vast

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number of websites. Because of this drive for traffic, the web has pushed authors, editors, and designers to work inventively with new modes of content to allow for ultimate access and to garner attention from the digital masses. Way back in 2000, web experts were aware of the need to harness users while fostering movement and interests.

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Jakob Nielsen expressed that web uses dont like to readthey want to keep moving and clicking. The interactive digital environment not only allows users to be in some form of control but gathers data about its audience. As Lupton sums it up, we may play the text, but is it also playing us.

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Anne Wysocki also supports these notions in a lecture she gave at DePaul University in November 2011. During her talk, she noted that Today, we are always, when we are creating texts that communicate, shaping not only ourselves, but shaping the milieu in which we function together and become individuals together. Thus, the digital world of blogging is a bustling discourse and ideal for any agent looking to tap into any audience.

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Im going to frame my argument today drawing upon scholars Gunther Kress and Jessica Reyman in their notions of digital literacy as a product of cultural forces and authorship as an evolving set of roles.

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Thus, as an entry point into my research, let us consider ethos and audience in the multimodal world.

User-Driven Content or The Masses Writing for Free

The online music blog essentially carved out its own genre of writing and cultural criticism with the onslaught of sites such as Fluxblog, early versions of Pitchfork, and smaller, personal music blogs such as Aquarium Drunkard, My Old Kentucky Blog, and Large-hearted Boy. These blogs began as small, user-driven entities that eventually grew to larger bodies of information, as most music fans are familiar with the vast cultural reach of Pitchfork and their cooler-than-thou attitude.

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As of May 16, 2012, there were 10,673 registered music blogs on the website directory Technorati. This number has undoubtedly changed since then as more and more authors enter the digital discourse of music blogging.

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Consider these two graphs, sources from the Digital Music news website. In the year 2000, notice that 92.3% of music was purchased on the CD format. Ten years later, CD sales diminished to 49.1% as Download Singles, Albums, and Mobile music formats began to dominate the industry. A great deal of this consumer sea change can be attributed to music blogging; many blogs which follow a model that includes reverse chronology posts, a brief story or description, and a link to a playable or downloadable

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mp3 file of a song. Its worth noting that music blogging is notoriously ubiquitous, as blogger Matthew Baldwin once stated announcing [that] you write one is like announcing you have a liver. Perhaps just about everyone has his or her hands in some sort of blog, but its not as widely ubiquitous as one might think to create an impactful and influential blog with clout or cultural cache.

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Yet, music blogs are enabling a transparent relationship for users and readers. This method of music distribution creates a discourse that enables an interactive relationship between author and reader, rhetor and audience. Imagine trying to attempt the same conversation with a music critics work you read in Rolling Stone. Never before has the role of author, user, audience, and consumer been so intertwined.

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In her research that centers on authors, users, and copyright, Jessica Reyman writes that the Internet is different form pre-digital technologiesin that who can participate and in what ways is more open (6). The structure of blogging, reading, and commenting tools enables for a more rapid form of producing and exchanging information that continues to build a growing discourse. The typical structure of a blog post is uniquely multimodal as I previously covered: headline, text, image, and audio or video. This multimodal structure illustrates how rhetorical agency is being exercised to persuade readers through a multitude of toolsits an onslaught of music information. The term technological determinism can be applied here, as we as contemporary users know that technology is inherently progressive or destructive. I argue that we are

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currently in a progressive state in which any user can engage with other writers/producers/and consumers in the blogging realm with these multimodal tools. In essence, the encroaching visibility and accessibility of the blogging genre is winning out over nearly all other forms of traditional music writing. Its immediate, engaging, and has a takeawayan mp3, a zipped download of a mixtape, or a video session.

TRANSITION (Image of Soundcloud, Spotify embed, or like button)

As Gunther Kress asserts in his scholarship about new media, we know that new media are not invented to meet needs already adequately catered for. They are invented to meet new needs. Thus, music blogs are learning to use different modes of communication to attract new readers and sustain a particular audience. Mp3 links that were once downloadable are now embeddable, streamable, and likeable on a variety of heavy-hitting music blogs. These moderators and producers are building and contributing to their ethos by drawing from a multimodal world that is now such second nature to so many of us. To remain at the forefront of information discourse, a mediums message must be spread in an accessible and engaging manner. In the social multimodal world, there are growing opportunities to reach new audiences and persuade new readers. Likewise, the potentials for linking and sharing enable this discourse to be spread to wider communities. Kress and Van Leeuwen state that *writings+ power of temporarily and spatially extending the reach of the world, its ability to extend memory, the permanence of its authority, and the technicalprevision it allows, in short restructures the consciousness it brings about.

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A handful of prominent music bloggers even maintain their own live video or recording sessions with artists that tour through their towns. This tactic allows readers to access limited, unique content that is at a cultural premium. Its all about being the first to hear one song or band. The blogopheres embrace of new media and multimodal persuasive tactics continues to reshape the cultural market and discourse that surrounds music.

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Chicago Tribune music critic Greg Kot writes in his 2009 book, Ripped, that The best of the print media could still bring levelheaded professionalism, writing, and historical context to the party. But those values began losing out to timeliness and convenience, factors that were paramount to a generation of music fans sources. Paired with an open-source participation model that allows users to contribute content, opinion, and even media, the digital music blogging discourse is a powerful genre that is creating more digitally literate music consumers one blog at a time. Users essentially drive the content and are inspired to share or create their own blogs as a result. Everyone is a writer or a critic in the digital discourse, whether theyre name is in the byline or the commenting fields. This social environment allows reader/user/viewer to easily move into the role of writer/creator/producer. As David Bolter is oft quoted from his Writing Spaces, the technological constraints and social construction always interact in such a away that it is impossible to separate the two.

TRANSITION- The Future of Digital Authorship

So what precisely is the future of Digital Authorship in the music blogging world?

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With the rise in user-generated content on news-magazine blogs and individual posts maintained by a small staff or a single person at an independent music blog, this audience can be expanded to accommodate more authors and producers. As readers become producers and fellow rhetors through persuasive interaction, the possibilities for authorship gains are vast. But does the genre of music blogging need to be anthologized in a part of the vast digital texts? Scholar Carla Hesse wrote in the mid 90s about the potentials for temporal texts in the digital realm. She imagined a world in which we are all, though electronic writing, continuously present to one another. Will we reach a point of such interconnectivity that the tangible music industry ceases to exists all together? We know that bloggers are gradually working and growing their audiences and contributors to outmode printed text all together, intentionally or unintentionally. So how will we talk about these issues in a decade? As we continue to mine information and observe the digital authorship revolution, let us consider how the texts of music blogs in the digital discourse enables consumers, fans, and readers to become authors, producers, and figures of digital authority.