[iDC] Guidance on Fan Labor?

Tue Oct 2 21:21:24 UTC 2007

Nancy there are others here on the list who have more to  
knowledgeably say about the subject,

But your use of the phrase "Labor of Love" triggered something for me  
- I keep finding this word "Love" coming up and I think we ought to  
crack that open -

A couple of quotes for starters:

"So to me, if you selflessly promote the growth of your customers and  
your colleagues, that's true Love. I don't know what more you could  
do for someone."
-Tim Sanders, CSO Yahoo and author of /Love is the Killer App/

"Love is about a profound sense of attachment. Want a really great  
metaphor? When researchers at Emory University in Atlanta track brain  
processes through scans, they can see different areas of the brain  
light up as they are engaged. How about that? We literally light up!  
If you want a definition of Love, that's not a bad one."
- Kevin Roberts, CEO of Saatchi + Saatchi and author of /Lovemarks:  
the future beyond brands/

Yikes. Love as promoting growth and stimulating the brain? There  
seems to be a lot of talk about L-O-V-E in branding and the Creative  
Industries. Is anyone looking at this in light of social histories of  
love? Seems to me that the Romanticism behind the market is just  
bustin' loose...

Kevin

On Oct 2, 2007, at 9:21 AM, Nancy Baym wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Many on this list seem to be interested in issues of the unpaid  
> labor that internet users do. I am working on a project in which I  
> have to say some things about this, but labor is far from my own  
> areas of expertise (those would be fandom, online community,  
> relationship formation and maintenance, online language use) and I  
> tend to get lost and/or overwhelmed when the topic arises on this  
> list. I am going to throw out a brief description of the project  
> and am hoping that some of you will be able to offer some insights  
> into these issues that might help guide my analysis. I know the  
> theory and exemplars are out there, but I don't know where to begin.
>
> I am looking at the relationships amongst independent music labels,  
> musicians, and very active online fans in the Swedish music scene.  
> I've written a paper describing how this scene is organized across  
> multiple international online sites and geographic locations called  
> "The New Shape of Online Community" which is available here: http:// 
> www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue12_8/baym/index.html  .
>
> What draws me to this topic (aside from the excellent pop songs) is  
> the phenomenon where (unpaid) fans, most of whom are not in Sweden,  
> are serving as publicists for the music, and doing a really good  
> job of getting it out of Sweden and into international ears. These  
> labels are selling most of their CDs outside of Sweden with minimal  
> marketing abroad (though they do make heavy use of MySpace and in  
> some cases license the recordings to international indie labels).
>
> These fans do things like write English language mp3 blogs and run  
> Swedish-music-only club nights in places like London, Glasgow,  
> Madrid and Washington which barely break even. Some act as  
> volunteer booking agents, managing tours for these bands in their  
> own countries. There's a tiny bit of money to be made for the most  
> successful of them, but none is in it for that reason, and very few  
> are doing anything that has potential to bring in money (like  
> placing ads on their sites).
>
> Now, no one is really making substantial money on this scene, so it  
> is not a case where user labor is lining the pockets of others.  
> It's a labor of love for everyone involved -- most of the musicians  
> and label people either have day jobs or are poor. However, there  
> are still issues of potential exploitation (e.g. I interviewed  
> someone who was responsible for consciously and strategically  
> manufacturing the buzz that got an unknown band international  
> record contracts, financially benefiting the labels and the band  
> but not himself). I am trying to make sense of what motivates the  
> fans to do this, and how the labels and musicians make sense of  
> what these fans are doing.
>
> I'm also intrigued by the shifting power dynamic in which fans are  
> the tastemakers and filters rather than the labels and traditional  
> media (in this case radio and music magazines). I might add that I  
> do a bit of this myself on a small scale, in that I write reviews  
> for one of the mp3 blogs about which I'm writing.
>
> I'm hoping that someone can point me to some smart ways or  
> resources to theorize the free-labor dimensions of what I'm getting  
> at above.
>
> Thanks,
> Nancy
>
>
> --
> Nancy Baym      http://www.ku.edu/home/nbaym
> Communication Studies, University of Kansas
> Blog: http://www.onlinefandom.com
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