Popular Communication, Piracy and Social Change by Jonas Andersson Schwarz Patrick Burkart

Author:Jonas Andersson Schwarz, Patrick Burkart [Jonas Andersson Schwarz, Patrick Burkart]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780367030056
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2019-01-08T00:00:00+00:00

COMMODIFYING THE COMMUNITY

Rather than a traditional audience commodity, Napster is closer to what Fry (1977) describes as a “commodity community”: an audience that is very much a community, but one that was built and maintained as such in order to serve as a commodity. Fry coins the term in a study about neighborhoods and residential units that are “intentionally planned, designed, and developed as an economic endeavour” (1977, p. 116). In these pre-conceived communities, residential units are sold in conjunction with a “‘way of life,’ culture, and social organization which is an implicit, if not an explicit part of the deal” (Fry, 1977, p. 116). Commodity communities rely on the culture of the community to attract interest, either from homebuyers or from those looking to invest in or extract value from the community. Through design of the environmental space and economic control of resources, community developers must convince buyers and sellers of the type of community they hope to create. Commodity communities depend on a fairly long-term and structural involvement of those managing them. Community developers are constantly shaping and trimming the community’s features in order to enhance its culture and values (Fry, 1977).

Early on, the people behind Napster had a vision of the role its users would play. Through its business plans, software, website and marketing, Napster designed a program conducive to creating community that could provide value and profit (Menn, 2003, p. 102). Napster tried to build this community through discursive and technical means. From explicit mission statements on its website—“Welcome to Napster, the future of music. […] By creating a virtual community, Napster ensures a vast collection of MP3s for download” (Napster, 1999)—to encouraging users to show support by writing to major record labels and the RIAA during its legal troubles (Napster, 2000), Napster called on its community and hoped to use them as a resource for garnering public support and for tactical activism.

Napster’s discursive attempts at community building were ultimately less successful than their technical innovations. Napster was built on Fanning’s desire to have “a real-time index that reflects all sites that are up and available to others on the network at that moment” (Fanning, as cited in Menn, 2003, p. 34). This meant that Napster, like many of today’s instant messenger clients or social networks, provided a constant awareness of the presence of other users and of the contents of the network. Napster’s near instantaneous indexing of all the files on the system meant that as each user logged on, their shared folder was visible to other users on the system. By focusing on the vast amount of material in circulation, the interface heightened the affective experience of searching for and finding music. Each file query was an indication both of the amount of movement taking place on the network as well as the sizeable amount of other users who were engaged in a shared practice. Searching simultaneously revealed the music users were seeking and validated participation in the community.

In addition to indicating the availability

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