From Microsound to Vaporwave: internet-mediated musics, online methods, and genre

How is the internet transforming musical practices? In this article, through a study of five prominent popular and crossover music genres spanning the period from the late 1990s to the present, we examine how the internet has augmented the creative, aesthetic, communicative and social dimensions of music. Analysing the internet-based practices associated with these genres poses methodological and theoretical challenges. It requires new research tools attentive to the online practices involved in their creation and reception. To this end we adapt the Issue Crawler software, an established digital method that analyses networks of hyperlinking on the world-wide web. In addition, it requires a theoretical framework that can respond to music’s profuse mediations in the digital environment. We propose that a version of genre theory offers such a framework. The paper concludes by reflecting on the implications of our analysis for theorising music and place and for historical periodization after the internet.