Tribal!entrepreneurship!! - Aalto

Tribal entrepreneurship A netnographic study of heavy-‐metal bands in Facebook

Laaksonen Ainamo Karjalainen

Today’s ideal social form is not the commune or the movement or even the individual creator as such; it’s the small business. Every arBsBc or moral aspiraBon — music, food, good works, what have you — is expressed in those terms. Call it GeneraBon Sell. We’re all in showbiz now, walking on eggshells, relentlessly tending our customer base. We’re all selling something today, because even if we aren’t literally selling something (though thanks to the Internet as well as the entrepreneurial ideal, more and more of us are), we’re always selling ourselves. We use social media to create a product — to create a brand — and the product is us. We treat ourselves like liOle businesses, something to be managed and promoted. Deresiewicz (2012)

introducBon data & methodology

findings & proposiBons

conclusions

“… the arBst stands between the two worlds of the audience and the media, and the transacBon is one in which the audience pays the media to deliver an arBst to it. Here the arBst funcBons in two ways, as a commodity for the media to sell and as a cultural hero for the audience to admire. That is the structure of the concert.” Weinstein (2000: 199)

arBst

audience

Facebook has 845 Million acBve profiles, with half of them acBvated on a daily basis, making it the most widespread social media plaZorm in 2012. According to Facebook own staBsBcs, there are more than 900 Million ‘objects’ (pages, groups, events and community pages) that users interact with. An average user is connected to 80 community pages, groups and events. More than 350 Million acBve users currently access Facebook through their mobile devices.

For consumers, social media websites such as Facebook now provided means to communicate their personality to their friends and to the rest of the world. They carefully constructed their Facebook profiles as tokens of their idenBty. They tried to describe themselves by referring to elements, not exclusively theirs, such as interests and favorite music.

Facebook provided the bands with access to detailed informaBon about the fans who liked their Facebook page: where their fans were (i.e. what country and what city they announced as their home), and of what age and sex they were. Managers, promoters and marketers used data provided by Facebook for mulBple purposes of design and logisBcs, such as for tour rouBng (demographics, ciBes, countries), album releases, sebng up ad campaigns, and using mulBple languages in posts and newsleOers.

netnographic ethnomusicological

ethnographic

“Hello there! We have two new t-‐shirts designed for summer fesBvals! Please order them directly from www.rokkikauppa.com. First shirt can be seen from this link.” (Lordi) ”Dear Stratovarius fans, I am afraid we have some quite terrible news. News of the worst imaginable kind. It's about our friend and drummer Jörg Michael. Jörg has cancer.” (Stratovarius)

First round of coding: types of posts (FB standards) Second round more specific analysis of content Third: was the intenBon of the post commercial

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0"

500000"

1000000"

1500000"

2000000"

2500000"

0" 50" 100" 150" 200" 250"

HIM$

Sonata$Arc-ca$

Stratovarius$

Lordi$ Korpiklaani$

Amorphis$Ensiferum$

Turisas$

Nightwish$

Children$of$Bodom$

Num

ber$of$fans$on$Facebo

ok$

Number$of$posts$on$Facebook$(per$year)$

Figure 2. Number of posts per year in relation to number of fans on Facebook. In the

fiture, blue color indicates mainstream position in the world of metalheads, green color

indicates pagan-metal position, and red color indicates power-metal. In black are marked

two bands that are outliers to these main genres: ‘COB’ of Children of Bodom was black

metal, while Nightwish was a combination of power metal, folk metal, and symphonic

metal.

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0,0000#

0,0500#

0,1000#

0,1500#

0,2000#

0,2500#

0,3000#

0,3500#

0,4000#

0,4500#

0# 50# 100# 150# 200# 250#

HIM#

Fan#ac0vity

#–#i.e.#umbe

r#of#re

ac0o

ns#per#fan#

Number#of#posts#per#year#

Nightwish# Children#of#Bodom#

Sonata#Arc0ca#

Stratovarius#

Lordi#

Korpiklaani#

Amorphis#

Ensiferum#

Turisas#

Figure 3. The number of reactions per fan in relation to number of band generated

posts per year.

0"

0,05"

0,1"

0,15"

0,2"

0,25"

0,3"

0,35"

0,4"

0,45"

0" 1" 2" 3" 4" 5" 6"

Fan"ac.vity

"–"i.e."umbe

r"of"re

ac.o

ns"per"fan"pe

r"year"

Non?commercial"posts"per"commercial"posts""

Nightwish"

Children"of"Bodom"

Korpiklaani"

Amorphis"

Ensiferum"Turisas"

Sonata"Arc.ca"

Stratovarius"

Lordi"HIM"

Figure 4. The relation of non-commercial posts to commercial posts on x-axis and

activity per fan per year on y-axis.

P1: Facebook strategies of arBsts in many heavy-‐metal bands reflect the values and tradiBons of the ‘tribes’ that have aOached themselves to the band in the social media world.

P2: ArBsts need not engage in commercial transacBons in social media. Links to external websites for commercial transacBons have the benefit of funcBoning as virtual gatekeepers between the cultural field and the field of symbolic power.

P3: In social media, arBsts are promoters and marketers of their creaBve content, of themselves as arBsts and potenBal celebriBes, and of cultural meanings that provide purpose for their audiences.

Middlemen

ArBst Fans

ArBst Fans

Middlemen

Thank you!

Tribal!entrepreneurship!! - Aalto

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