Copenhagen.
We move on at COST298 to Stijn Bannier, who focusses on the musical network in the context of Web 2.0 (or 3.0, as the case may be). By 'musical network', Stijn means the network of artists, producers, labels, distributors, and other music industry institutions, which together constitute the industry itself. These are affected by the rise of Web 2.0, not least as it enables users to create, consume, share and remix music; this is potentially exacerbated by further developments towards Web 3.0.
Stijn points as an example to artist self-promotion and self-distribution on MySpace and elsewhere; to musical reproduction, tagging, and metadata sharing (e.g. on last.fm), which may also be analysed quantitatively; to distribution networks built on social networks, peer-to-peer filesharing, and other Web 2.0 media; and to the abundance of content which this creates. This is where Web 3.0 may come in, with its increased emphasis on metadata generation and evaluation.
For the musical network 3.0, Stijn notes sites such as Sellaband and Kompoz as tools to watch - sites which enable and support creativity and collaboration; he also points to machine-generated medata attached to MP3 files, new forms of distribution in the Internet of Things which integrates physical products (e.g. iPods and mobile phones) and online services, and new networks of consumption based on personalised recommendations and machine-generated metadata.
Many questions remain, though. How much of this will be driven by user-generated content, how much by machine-generated metadata? Will the music industry finally react to Web 2.0/3.0 in a constructive fashion, and can such developments be translated to other creative industries, beyond music?
