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Social Semiotics
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Patterns of listening through social media: online fan engagement with the live music experience
Lucy Bennett
a a

Cardiff University, Wales, UK Version of record first published: 08 Oct 2012.

To cite this article: Lucy Bennett (2012): Patterns of listening through social media: online fan engagement with the live music experience, Social Semiotics, 22:5, 545-557 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10350330.2012.731897

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Social Semiotics Vol. 22, No. 5, November 2012, 545 557

Patterns of listening through social media: online fan engagement with the live music experience
Lucy Bennett*
Cardiff University, Wales, UK (Received 2 January 2012; nal version received 30 June 2012) In recent years, the expansion and use of mobile Internet and social media have changed live music engagement and fandom quite considerably. It has not only allowed fans to find and connect with each other at shows, but also to tweet and text concert set-lists and other information as they happen, thereby allowing nonattendees around the world to feel part of the event. This study examines the responses of fans engaged in this activity, identifying the key themes and patterns apparent within this behaviour, arguing that fans are using social media and mobile technology in an effort to contest and reshape the boundaries of live music concerts. It demonstrates how these online tools are involving fans that are not physically present at the show, seemingly incorporating them into the real-time live experience. This article explores how fans of prolific touring artists U2 and Tori Amos undertake this, with assigned concert attendees tweeting the set-list to online fans, where they gather to enjoy the show together, from the comfort of their computers. Keywords: popular music; fandom; liveness; social media; Internet; Twitter

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The arrival and expansion of the Internet have changed music fandom quite significantly, at least in the ways in which some fans engage with the live music experience. In recent years, the use of mobile Internet and social networks such as Twitter and Facebook has not only allowed fans to find and connect with each other at shows, but also to tweet concert set-lists and other information as they happen, thereby allowing non-attendees around the world to feel part of the event. This article will examine the engagement of fans in this process, demonstrating how these online tools are involving individuals who are not physically present at the show, seemingly incorporating them into the real-time live experience. Seeking to understand and unravel this practice, this study shall explore how fans of prolific touring artists U2 and Tori Amos (Farrugia and Gobatto 2010) do this, with assigned concert attendees tweeting the set-list to fans in their online communities in freak out and party threads, where they gather to enjoy the show together, from the comfort of their computers. I will examine the patterns and responses of fans engaged in this activity, arguing that fans are using social and mobile media in an attempt to contest and reshape the boundaries of live music concerts, a practice that works to re-appropriate ideas of immersion in liveness.

*Email: Bennettlucyk@gmail.com
ISSN 1035-0330 print/1470-1219 online # Crown Copyright 2012 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10350330.2012.731897 http://www.tandfonline.com

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This presence of mobile technology at live concerts, including the development of mobile Internet in recent years, has altered fan interactions at live music events quite considerably. In 1998 New York Times journalist, Neil Strauss, noted that rather than cigarette lighters held aloft:
antennae seem to sprout from peoples heads and hands, and there are patterns made by glowing keypads and flashing green lights, evidence of concertgoers calling friends during the good songs or even checking their answering machine for messages during the boring parts. (1998, np)

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In his study of concert attendees at a U2 show in November 2006, Chris Chesher similarly observed that mobile phones were constantly present in and around the show, helping some people to physically locate friends, or to connect with those not immediately present (2007, 217). More recently, the development of mobile phone applications such as SuperGlued, Flowd and FourSquare is making it even easier for fans at a concert to connect and meet with others present at the show who also use the function:
SuperGlued is an easy way to share and discuss concert experiences with the people around you. We started out because there wasnt a place to see who else was at the show and what they thought. All the photos, videos and reviews were scattered. The collective energy felt lost. Were here to change that and would like you to join us. (http:// superglued.com)

With this application, fans can also post footage from shows to Flickr, YouTube, Blogger, WordPress or Tumblr, by connecting their account and tagging the content with the specific show ID (Bruno 2011). Flowd and FourSquare work in a similar manner; with users checking in to concert venues and locating friends who are also physically present (Dredge 2011). In 2010, Apple patented two further applications for future development: iGroups, which lets groups of friends attending the same event stay connected and share content and Concert Ticket', that would also offer discounts on food and drinks at the show, venue maps, access to interviews and studio recordings by the bands playing, even possibly access to a live recording of the gig itself (Music Week 2010). Music artists have also engaged in these developments: Trent Reznor, lead singer of rock band Nine Inch Nails, launched in 2009 an application for fans of the band, entitled NIN Access, which is: a mobile window . . . kind of like Twitter within the Nine Inch Nails network . . . you can post a message or a photo by location, and if youre at a show you can see conversations between other people who are right there (Rose 2009). And social media and mobile phone technology have not only promoted fan interactions and connections between those who are right there, but also for those who are remotely located and non-present. In this article, I will focus on these interactions, exploring how fans of Tori Amos and U2 negotiate them online. I will use as data interactions from @U2forum (http:// forum.atu2.com/), which holds over 5000 members who have amassed over 1 million posts, and the recently re-launched Unforumzed (http://www.unforumzed.com/ forum.php), which holds almost 2000 members and three thousand posts. In @U2forum I randomly selected and examined threads focused on the February 2011 U2 concerts in Johannesburg and Cape Town. With Unforumzed, I examined posts in the Tori Tour forum, covering the 2009 and 2010 Tori Amos world tours.

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Although the forums under study are public spaces where membership is not required to view posts, to maintain anonymity of members, I have refrained from featuring any identifying usernames within this article.

Contesting the boundaries: involving the non-present audience

Where are you guys listening from? Out of interest. Twitter (@U2 forum, 13 February 2011).

The effects of technology on the live music experience for non-present audience members first became noticeable with the broadcast of concerts on radio, a medium organised around liveness (Auslander 2008; see also Barker 2012). The concept of liveness has been theorised by Philip Auslander as first and foremost a temporal relationship, a relationship of simultaneity (2002, 21) that occurs between an audience and a live event. In this sense, and applied to music, it was only in relation to its opposite, the recorded sound, that the concept of liveness could at first be defined. This simultaneity allows us to think of liveness as part of the aura of a physical event that disappears into, and is reconfigured through, the process of its reproduction (Duffett 2003, 313). As Auslander acknowledges, the idea of liveness is a moving target, a historically contingent concept whose meaning changes over time and is keyed to technological development (2008, xii). Thus, the introduction of new technological forms of visual broadcasting, such as the television and online webcasting (Duffett 2003) has had strong impact on live concert reception and ideas of liveness. Exploring the effects of these developments in information and communications technologies that work to threaten, prima facie, to destabilize liveness in the sense considered so far, Nick Couldry suggested two fundamental shifts that have taken place. The first involves an online liveness, where social co-presence develops on the Internet, in the form of groups and audiences, and the second, a group liveness, which entails continuous contact by a group through their mobile phones (2004, 357). However, the more recent widespread presence of mobile phones and social media at music concerts has resulted in much more dramatic changes. Capitalising on the ability to send text messages, take photos and connect to the Internet on their mobile phones, some fans are now engaging in the practice of rapidly alerting nonattendees around the world to the songs being played, photos of the show, and any other aspects of the performance as it is happening, live. The online fans can then gather in order to receive the bulletins and remotely experience the concert together; an activity which for fans of artists who vary their set-lists each night is a source of particular excitement. Erin E. Watkins observed such excitement among Clay Aiken fans, who engage in what they collectively term cellcerting (2007, see also Burns 2009, 149). This was defined as the transmission of information from a live event where the audience is composed of fans, with the receivers engaged in computer mediated communication, and the connection between individuals lasting for the duration of the entire concert, hazarding physical discomfort for both the cellcert provider and the recipient, and the possible violation of conference-attendance rules (Watkins 2007, 2). To ensure orderliness of these transmissions, this practice can often be configured under a fairly rigid structure. For fans of American singer

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songwriter Tori Amos in @forumz, one of her largest online communities (which was re-launched under the name Unforumzed in 2010), each concert was pre-assigned a texter and a receiver, who then relayed the information to others, in a specifically designed freak out thread:
Here we go! Its time to set up the setlist texting teams that made the 2007 freakout threads so much fun. As before, what we need is a person who is going to the show to text song titles to a person at home who can post them in the threads. Once a show has both team members in place, they get in touch and exchange numbers. A word about Twitter. We can probably have tweets from people at shows posted in threads, but I want to keep that separate from this process. Sometimes people near the texters are annoyed, and I want to keep this process as subtle as possible. In fact, my preference would be that setlist texters not also send tweets, but I wont make a hard and fast rule about that. If we can avoid pissing everybody off, fine. But the texts worked last time, so thats how I want to do it this time. So its time to volunteer! (@forumz, Setlist Report Teams 2009! 4 July 2009)

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These set-list report teams operate to a specific agenda, whereas fans of U2 also engage in this activity, but are less structured, with twittering fans using a particular hash to alert others to their tweets:
You can follow the set-list live on Twitter: @U2s Twitter List. Users of Tweetdeck or several other Twitter clients can follow that List the same way theyd follow a user and automatically get the updates from ALL users. You can also follow the List via the web page linked above. @U2 will be adding accounts to that list as people say they plan to tweet setlists from any shows so if youre going to a show, Tweet @U2 a message. (@U2 Forum, 18 December 2010)

Non-attendees can then gather and follow these bulletins as they happen, in specifically designed threads, which often last for over fifty pages. An example of how fans discuss these concert-related tweets is evident within a thread on the @U2 forum covering their 2011 Johannesburg show:
People are already in the stadium. Caught a tweeted pic from a fan showing that s/hes right in front of the band. Opening acts onstage. Id give it less than an hour before U2 arrives. i hope U2 comes out now. im so sleepy. its 2:28am now. One Day Like This by Elbow is playing over the PA. Thats the song before Space Oddity I believe. Beautiful Day According to Twitter the stadium erupted as they opened with Beautiful Day. Just wait until they all remember U2 wrote Where The Streets Have No Name. (13 February, 2011)

Thus, even though they are not physically present and are in different time zones, fans are gathering to share their opinions and knowledge and the excitement surrounding this specific event, in such a way that they not only feel part of the live music experience, but also create their own. Some construct and post possible

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set-lists, sharing their own predictions, while others play the songs being performed as the songs are texted in. After the concert, the interest continues, with fans posting footage and songs from the show on YouTube and sharing their photos. There is also evident an interest in the intricate details of the event. Fans inquire about the outfits worn on stage by the artist (and if they have worn similar attire at previous show), the volume of people queuing outside the venue, the songs played on the PA system before show time and even excitedly post tweeted photos of the empty stage set up. As Rich King observes, mobile communication allows us to participate in social interactions that were previously reserved for only those who were physically present, a situation which results in a reliance on co-present understandings with sometimes a development-and sometimes erosion-of social cohesion (2010, xi). Thus, the sender of bulletins from a concert alters their own experience of the show by focussing on communications with fans who are remotely located, but consequently co-present. While some U2 fans use social media to send bulletins to other fans throughout the concert, others take the connection further by using a facility called 1000 mikes self-described as Radio 2.0 to broadcast the entire show to them as it happens. The volunteer show attendees use their mobile phone to connect to the platform, which then generates a personal live broadcast channel, which other fans can access and listen in to through the website. The band themselves have also engaged in the broadcast of their concerts live in 2009 their show in the Pasadena Row Bowl, California, was streamed live on YouTube. As their manager stated:
the band has wanted to do something like this for a long time. As were filming the LA show, its the perfect opportunity to extend the party beyond the stadium. Fans often travel long distances to come to see U2 - this time U2 can go to them, globally. (Fentiman 2009, 11)

Other shows have since been streamed through live audio on the official U2 website, for subscribing members. Thus, fans in front of their computers can now join the extended party by listening and tuning in to the concert live; monitoring incoming tweets and photos, while simultaneously discussing all these happenings with other fans in the designated online community threads. Philip Auslander touches upon the sense of communal strength of an audience, arguing against the notion that live performance itself somehow generates whatever sense of community one may experience (2008, 64). Instead, citing examples such as the 1996 Olympic Games and screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, he suggests that mediatised performance makes as just as effective a focal point for the gathering of a social group as live performance (2008, 64). In sum, he stresses that a sense of community arises from being part of an audience and the quality of the experience of community derives from the specific audience situation, not from the spectacle for which that audience has gathered (2008, 65). I want to build on this, by also suggesting that social media and mobile Internet are now being used in an effort to blur the boundaries between those who are physically present and those who are remotely located. However, although these boundaries are, for some, seemingly becoming less distinct, there still remain differences in the experience generated. For example, individuals physically present at a live concert may go through a different communal experience to those attending from their home computer in online fan

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forums, which conversely and simultaneously, are also undergoing a distinct communal experience. In order to explore and understand this further, I will now examine in turn the three key themes that can emerge within these online fan interactions surrounding the live concerts: collective anticipation, the exchange of fan knowledge and judgements made on text.

Collective anticipation Anticipation has been identified for some fan cultures as delivering a strong element of pleasure (Gray 2010; Harrington and Bielby 1995, 139; Huron 2006). Certainly the most prominent theme apparent within online fan engagement with live music concerts is collective anticipation surrounding what will happen and be experienced during the show. For these music fans, anticipation is mainly focused on what songs will be performed, with specific excitement surrounding the possibility of new or rare tracks being included in the set. Some Tori Amos fans create their own set-lists for the shows and post them within the concert threads before show time, in an effort to predict the running order and songs performed:
I wonder if shell play a longer set since shes the only act. The last two shows have been 18 and 16 songs, so I cant see it going much longer, but I also think this show will be a bit less hits/standards heavy than the others. I hope she plays Secret Spell solo again, and if shes still in such an American Doll Posse mood, itd be great to get solo Girl Disappearing or Almost Rosey. I also hope she does SOMETHING from Choirgirl-era that isnt Cooling. [Here is the] setlist for the last show in Milan, for anyone who wants to use that to make predictions. (Unforumzed, 12 July 2010)

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Anticipation surrounding the set-list is often based on fan research into the frequency of songs played in recent shows on the tour, and calculations based on previous performances in a particular city. Within this, fans exchange detailed preferences on the object of fandoms musical catalogue. For example, the above poster expresses a desire for solo performances of specific songs and versions from different eras of Tori Amoss career. Even though this poster will not be physically attending the show, or be there to witness the performance and songs played in person, such fans engage in levels of anticipation and excitement that previously would have suggested their attendance. The build-up to showtime intensifies this excitement even further, with fans expressing their heightened anticipation in the minutes before the artist takes to the stage, as is evident in the following extract from a U2 fan thread focusing on their concert in Cape Town:
Im such a dork, I just screamed out loud. Good thing Im the only one home! WERE LIVE IN CAPE TOWN AND ITS FRIDAY NIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You should see me - I think Im going to faint soon . . . Honestly, Ive got tears almost coming from my eyes right this moment! OMG!!!! im hearing Bono live!!!!! im crying!!!! (@U2 forum, 18 February 2011)

These posts display that the emotional responses from fans commonly elicited by live concerts can also be achieved through remote engagement. Despite their

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non-physical presence, online fans are seemingly experiencing and re-enacting the same responses as the audience members present at the show: in a concert, people behave in ways that they would not outside the performance:. . . audience members clap and yell . . . all things which would be inappropriate in the context of everyday life (Cavicchi 1998, 89). Thus, the boundaries of the live concert and its notions of liveness are extended. Online attendance is validated by the exchange of emotional outbursts, which transforms this behaviour into a collective experience, even though the participants remain geographically dispersed.

The rapid exchange of fan knowledge Exploring Bruce Spingsteen fandom, Daniel Cavicchi discovered that many fans even [keep] track of what songs Springsteen plays from concert to concert and study any variations in their structure or arrangement (1998, 92), an activity also explicit within the fandom of artists such as Grateful Dead (Rodriquez, Gintautas, and Pepe 2009; Scott and Halligan 2010, 105) and Bob Dylan (Levesque 2006). The Internet has worked to facilitate this sharing of information, allowing fans to collectively create and maintain concert set-list databases, where performances can be catalogued and archived. The arrival of social media and mobile Internet has worked to further complement and accelerate this behaviour, allowing fans to pool and distribute this knowledge as the shows are happening. Thus, as the online fans receive and discuss the concert bulletins, the second key theme, involving a rapid exchange and display of fan knowledge, becomes evident. This is most obvious in the discussions of the frequency with which certain songs have been performed. A detailed knowledge of performance statistics became apparent within the following Tori Amos freak out thread:
Love it so far! Its inevitable for any of the over played songs to appear, but hey, crucify is pretty good First performance of Crucify of 2010? She just did it the other day ago in Montreux lol Not a fan of teen spirit, she seems to play it a lot. Hopefully shell get it out of her system by London. Smells Like Teen Spirit came out of nowhere and seems to be played a lot, after a long break. Twice in 07, 3 times in 03, but otherwise over a decade since it was really played often (Cactus Festival Freak Out, Unforumzed, 11 July 2010).

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These activities involve the exchange and display of fan cultural capital. John Fiske, applying Bourdieus (1984) notion of social and cultural capital to fandom, determined a cultural economy that can be found within the actions of fans, arguing that knowledge is fundamental to the accumulation of cultural capital (1992, 42). Nessim Watson expands on this by concluding that displayed [fan] knowledge is one of the shared markers of community belonging (1997, 108). Likewise, Eva Kingsepp views fan knowledge as a tool of social distinction as it helps to distinguish those who possess it from those who do not, those who belong to

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the community from those who are outside (2006, 227), as does Nathan Hunt, who argues that it is used to establish who is an insider and to declare others to be outsiders who do not have the right to participate within fandom (2003, 186). Henry Jenkins similarly puts an emphasis on the importance of the exchange of knowledge between different segments of the [fan] community (1992, 7), coming to a conclusion that knowledge equals prestige, reputation, power (2006, 125), as does Majorie D. Kibby in her discussion of the ritual sharing of information between John Prine fans (2000, 96). The concert freak out threads can therefore be seen as a ritualistic sharing and display of knowledge and information between fans. Judgements of performance based on text Another key theme within discussions surrounding live concert bulletins is the engagement of fans in judgements of the show, based on the set-list alone and evaluations garnered from their fan knowledge. If a performance is comprised of what is classed as a safe set-list, composed of standard songs and familiar chart hits that have already been played many times at previous shows, fans can express a collective disappointment towards the concert, as evident with this Tori Amos fan exchange:
Wow a standard non-special set! Oh for crying out loud. This setlist is punishment for the rockin show last tour. Im heading off for a bit, too. Maybe when I come back she will have perked up. In fact, I know she will. She cant keep the energy that low for that long. Im not saying this to be ugly, but I think she should take some time off . . . I feel as though a lot of her music has been really uninspired live lately . . . Worst Show Of Tour? This is getting really boring. Dont leave me here alone with this setlist! I really dont think Toris feeling this tour much. I stayed up for this??? (San Diego Freak Out thread, @forumz, 17 July, 2009).

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When these judgements are made, and considerable disappointment is expressed, attendees of the show sometimes offer reminders that knowing the titles of the songs being played does not always equate to an understanding or experience of the actual performance, which can be considerably different to that experienced through social media. For example, improvisations, which make a consistent appearance within Toris live sets, are not always communicated live to the online listeners:
FYI the encore may have seemed slightly boring . . . But OMG Police Me had an improv in the middle because some security guard was trying to push us away and she was like police us etc and then restarted the song . . . Take to the Sky had I feel the Earth Move and was out of this world. Everyone was dancing like fools. (19 July 2009)

Similarly, the sender of the texts at the San Diego show later posted in the freakout thread, declaring [it was an] amazing show mediocre setlist but flawless and

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intense performances. Never thought I could like Jamaica inn, Oceans or Cloud. Also, Siren was batshit. Another attendee similarly posted:
She came ROARING out. And she kept up the intense energy for the first half of the show. It waned a little bit after the band came back . . . but quickly smoothed out and hummed right through the end of the show. The encore was a jammin dance party.

Others present also claimed the performance to be the best they had seen so far on the tour, thereby demonstrating the difficulty that can arise when a performance is evaluated through the medium of texts, photos and tweets alone.

Conclusion

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This study illuminates how mobile technologies and social media are emerging strategies being used by fans at live music concerts to include and update those not physically present. My argument is that we should see this practice as an effort by fans to contest and reshape the traditional boundaries of the live music experience. By tweeting set-lists and other information as it is happening, online fans can become collectively connected to the show and thereby enjoy some form of replication of the event, which has considerable meaning within a fan community. As Simon Frith argues, a live concert is not simply a transitory experience, but also symbolises what it means to be a music fan (2007, 5). Daniel Cavicchi makes a similar observation by stressing that:
for fans . . . a concert represents a powerful meeting of the various forces and people and ideas involved in their participation in musical life . . . together, they enact the meaning of fandom. They shape and anchor fans sense of who they are and where they belong. (1998, 37)

Thus, as I have argued, fans are using the tools of social media to expand the boundaries of the concert, re-appropriate their understandings of liveness to experience a sense of this powerful meeting from the comfort of their home computer. However, this practice does raise a number of issues. First, as technology develops and mobile handsets become even more sophisticated, the bounded space of a live show may be contested further. How this will affect the experience of concert attendees who are physically present will need to be investigated. For example, with video calling being launched on more mobile handsets, another dimension of the live experience will become available to non-present individuals. For some live events, tweet seats are also being introduced (Netburn 2011), which allow and encourage attendees sat in these sections to live-tweet during performances. However, this situation can highlight the differences between audience members with regard to how a live music event should be experienced. As one attendee of a Cincinatti Symphony Orchestra concert that introduced this service, observed:
Their texting thumbs were moving faster than the violinists fingers . . . they would occasionally nudge each other and read what the other person had up on his or her screen. They didnt even look up to applaud at the end of each selection. The fact that

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they were watching their handheld devices, they missed out on what was happening on the stage. (Rose 2011)

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It is possible that the tweeters, as they had selected to occupy the tweet seats, rather than feel they had missed out on the stage performance, perceived that an added element was delivered to their experience, as a result of their connection to the non-present audience. Nevertheless, the introduction of tweet-seats works to make differences between audience members and their approach to the use of mobile technology during a concert explicit, with strong opinions arising that this behaviour is a breach of concert etiquette (Fanto 2011; Griffin 2011). For some audience members the value of the concert may be that it is not available to anyone not present; from their perspective the intensity of performer/audience communication is undermined by its communications to people not present. Second, how artists respond to and direct their fans towards, or away from, these technological developments could undergo change and have strong implications on the process. While some acts, such as Wilco and Natalie Merchant, ask audience members to refrain from engaging with their mobile devices during shows (Jurgensen 2010), others such as Tinie Tempah (Empire 2010) Lady Gaga and Richie Hawtin actively embrace and encourage this practice from themselves and within their fan communities. As Hawtin explains:
For the Plastikman tour we built an iPhone app called SYNK for people in the audience. When I perform, at one point I can unlock their iPhones and they start seeing words on their screens and they can manipulate them. As soon as that happens, they start playing with it. It starts making sounds. And at that moment I stop being the performer, theyre performing. (Baym 2011)

These negotiations between artist and audience surrounding technological tools and the resultant effects on expectation, immersion and participation in performance are likely to be rewarding and challenging for both parties. How young people who are growing up with these technological tools perceive a live experience should also be discussed. Some may have no experience of concerts except through the widespread use of mobile Internet and social media. The practices described here will seem a natural aspect of liveness. Nicholas Carah has explored the behaviour of young audience members at concerts and suggests that for them device use and screen culture are entwined with the development of savvy identities. Using their cell phones and digital cameras [during concerts] enable[s] them to translate enjoyment into media texts (2010, 56). This may have considerable implications in the future on expectations of, and what is considered as, concert etiquette and participation as an audience member. Finally, the question remains as to how the music and technological industries will work together to respond to these practices. On 30 September 2011 the Black Eyed Peas hosted a Backstage Hangout in collaboration with the social network Google Plus, where remotely located fans could watch the band preparing for the show and observe footage of the concert from a seat you cant buy. In this sense, the non-present audience were seemingly given a more distinct status than those physically attending the show. Posting about the event on the social network, lead singer Will.i.am stated:

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Lets see how many people will join in on the backstage and onstage hangout . . . lets re-define concerts, interaction, webcamn, lets have fun . . . i want to re-define backstage interaction with fans who can not make the show . . . i think this will be the very first online backstage onstage web cam session . . . i like doing things 1st. (Google Plus, 29 September 2011)

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Such efforts by music and technological industries to re-define music concerts and how artist and audience members interact with each other, alongside providing beneficial coverage and exposure to involved companies, may work to even further reshape our understandings of liveness and how fans engage with the live music experience. That said, the extent to which these practices will be able to replicate physical presence at a show is still debatable. Distinctions between being there and participating remotely may become further blurred and continue to be re-negotiated as technology develops, but this will also confirm that being there, whatever that means, is the musical experience fans most value. Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Martin Barker for the helpful suggestions during the writing of this article.

Notes on contributor
Lucy Bennett is the co-founder and co-chair of the Fan Studies Network. She graduated with a PhD in online fandom at JOMEC, Cardiff University, with a thesis focusing R.E.M. fans. She is the editorial assistant for Social Semiotics. Her research examines audiences and their use of the Internet, with particular focuses on fandom, music and social media. Her work appears in the journals New Media & Society, Transformative Works and Cultures and Continuum and she is currently guest editing a special issue of Participations on music and audiences.

References
Auslander, P. 2002. Live from cyberspace or, I was sitting at my computer this guy appeared he thought I was a hot. PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 24, no. 1: 16 21. Auslander, P. 2008. Liveness: Performance in a mediatized culture, 2nd ed. Oxon: Routledge. Barker, M. 2012. Live to your local cinema: The remarkable rise of livecasting. Palgrave McMillan. Baym, N. 2011. Nancy Baym: An interview with Richie Hawtin: Building Global Community. [Online] 23 February 2011. http://blog.midem.com/2011/02/nancy-baym-an-interview-withrichie-hawtin-building-global-community/ (accessed December 31, 2011). Bourdieu, P. 1984. Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste. London: Routledge. Bruno, A. 2011. Superglued sneak peek: App, Unveiling At SXSW, Finds Gigs Based On Location, Friends, Preferences. Billboard. [Online] 14 March 2011. http://www.billboard.biz/ bbbiz/industry/digital-and-mobile/superglued-sneak-peek-app-unveiling-at-sxsw-1005073062. story. (accessed December 12, 2011). Burns, K.S. 2009. Celeb 2.0: How social media foster our fascination with popular culture. California: Greenwood Publishing. Carah, N. 2010. Pop brands: Branding, popular music, and young people. New York: Peter Lang Publishing. Cavicchi, D. 1998. Tramps like us: Music & meaning among Springsteen fans. New York: Oxford University Press.

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