Sosyal Sermaye, İlişkiler ve Müzik Dünyası: Yeni Medyada Ağlar
Social Capital, Relations and Music World: Networks in New Media
This paper focuses on social capital in the music world. The music and entertainment industry have different actors, who work together collaboratively. The necessity of social and financial capital can be found in both local and global music businesses. The actions and decisions of the actors affect each other because of the network and its ties. This paper seeks to address the following questions: Do actors such as musicians, programmers, managers and sponsors trust each other and their way of doing business? Are social credits important for actors? Can we mention a professional network? What is the meaning of the relations between actors of the music business? I mostly did my research on music and the media world in Turkey.Social capital as a topic has been underrepresented in musicology. In the music world, however, many different actors and institutions produce together and they need to trust each other to maintain their relations. I would like to present a perspective about networks in the music world by using results of interviews and survey. I took advantage of the approaches to social capital and network theories of Coleman, Bourdieu, and Granovetter mostly. Especially, Bourdieu’s critical and comprehensive analysis on economical inequalities and opportunities affected the approach of this paper. The norms of social capital can be observed and interpreted in the music industry easily. The reason is that music is a social fact and it affects a different part of the cultural world in everyday life. Music makes people build interpersonal and collective works. In this research, the relations between musician, audience and music/ media industry have been viewed via social capital principles. First of all, the reason and necessity of the choice of this subject have been explained. Afterwards, I’ve gathered the theories of musicology and sociology together. The dynamics between musician and music industry have been explained. The opinions of musicians and employers/ employees of music companies, radio and TV channels have been analysed and compared. I have interviewed professional and independent musicians and more generally people in creative industries. In doing so, the reader can recognize the importance of social capital in the cultural world. Secondly, I focused on the relations between audience and musician. The audience is accepted as a social capital source in this article, although reaching out to the audience is one of the main aims for producers. The study showed the significance of a loyal audience for a musician. Artists have an opportunity to make a living thanks to their audience. On the other hand, I found that the differences between audience/ fan or follower of social media, which take the research to the next level. What has changed after digital technologies and new media? I made surveys with users of social media. They follow different official social media accounts of artists. This study claims that the relations have changed after digital media era, therefore, we need to define the principles of social capital again. While audiences or fans of an artist tend to consume artist’ music products, followers don’t buy albums, singles or go to the concert of an artist, who they follow most of the time. Overproduction creates overconsumption in new media era and the relations are getting more flexible. This research indicated that followers don’t have to be an audience necessarily. The norms of social capital have been interpreted by comparing the differences between traditional and new media. Socialisation, social credits, unequal economic conditions, reciprocity, and trust, as the most important aspects of social capital, have been indicated in terms of music and media industries.
