[csaa-forum] CFP Reminder - Napster, 15 years on: Rethinking digital music distribution. A themed special edition of First Monday

[Andrew Whelan]

With apologies for cross-posting:

*Call for papers - First Monday themed special edition*

*Napster, 15 years on: Rethinking digital music distribution*



*Guest editors: Rapha**ë**l Nowak (Griffith University, Australia) and
Andrew Whelan (University of Wollongong, Australia)*



2014 marks the fifteenth anniversary of the release of the peer-to-peer
application Napster. Developed by a student, Shawn Fanning, with the help
of his friend Shawn Parker and uncle John Fanning, Napster established
music downloading as a mass phenomenon. By 2001, 50 million users had
downloaded content with Napster. Many other applications followed -
Gnutella, Kazaa, LimeWire, eMule, Soulseek, BitTorrent, among others
-further developing and entrenching p2p technology.

Online music distribution has been fiercely contested since Napster. Online
availability has changed the way music is produced, sold, distributed,
shared and consumed. While these changes are often decried or celebrated
through well-rehearsed positions, their implications can also be
exaggerated, as attending to contemporary industry business models and
persisting analog formats would suggest.

Building on multi- and cross-disciplinary approaches addressing
developments in the 15 years since the advent of Napster, we seek papers
that advance contemporary debates associated with music downloading
(authorized and illicit) and its consequences and ramifications. We welcome
300 word abstracts reflecting on the last 15 years in the realm of online
music distribution and consumption. While attending to this broad aim,
proposed articles will also address a more specific theme. Potential themes
may include, but are not limited to:

·      Exchange relations and the circulation of digital objects

·      Politics and ethics of p2p practices

·      Hyper-consumption, curatorialism and open access music archives

·      Online music subcultures and (social) networks

·      Domestication of p2p and p2p as/in technoculture

·      Communications, transfer, storage, and playback hardware and
infrastructure

·      Discursive framing: leeches, pirates, free music

·      Contemporary music celebrity culture

·      Suppression and criminalization of downloading and 'copyfight'

·      Aesthetic experiences and qualities of digital music practices and
rituals

·      0day, release groups, pre-releases and leaks

·      Affordances, affects and materialities of the mp3 format

·      The evolution and ecology of music downloading

·      Direct downloads, music blogging, and online visibility

·      Monetization, markets and the business of p2p

·      Analog formats: continuity and resurgence

·      Pre-histories and futures of digital music distribution

300 word abstracts should be submitted to Raphaël Nowak (
raph.nowak at gmail.com) by *February 21, 2014*. On the basis of these
abstracts, invitations to submit papers will be sent out in early March
2014. Full papers should be submitted by June 20, 2014, and will undergo
the usual *First Monday* peer-review process. Invitation to submit a full
paper does not therefore guarantee acceptance into the issue. The themed
special edition will be published November 2014.

This Call for Papers can be found in pdf format at http://bit.ly/Nxp5k8.
Please forward as appropriate to interested parties.



Raphaël Nowak <raph.nowak at gmail.com>

Andrew Whelan <awhelan at uow.edu.au>
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