Tribal Entrepreneurship a Netnographic Study of Heavy-Metal Bands in Facebook

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 arsc or moral aspiraon — music, food, good works, what have you — is expressed in those terms. Call it Generaon 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 lile businesses, something to be managed and promoted.

Deresiewicz (2012) introducon data & methodology ﬁndings & proposions conclusions

“… the arst stands between the two worlds of the audience and the media, and the transacon is one in which the audience pays the media to deliver an arst to it. Here the arst funcons 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) arst

audience arst

audience Facebook has 845 Million acve proﬁles, with half of them acvated on a daily basis, making it the most widespread social media plaorm in 2012. According to Facebook own stascs, 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 acve 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 identy.

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 informaon 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 mulple purposes of design and logiscs, such as for tour roung (demographics, cies, countries), album releases, seng up ad campaigns, and using mulple languages in posts and newsleers. netnographic ethnomusicological ethnographic

netnographic ethnomusicological ethnographic

netnographic ethnomusicological ethnographic “Hello there! We have two new t-shirts designed for summer fesvals! 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 intenon of the post commercial

2500000" Nightwish$

2000000"

Children$of$ Bodom$ 1500000"

HIM$ 1000000"

Number$of$fans$on$Facebook$ Sonata$Arc-ca$ 500000" Stratovarius$ Lordi$ Korpiklaani$ Ensiferum$ Turisas$ Amorphis$ 0" 0" 50" 100" 150" 200" 250"

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.

0,4500#

Amorphis# 0,4000#

0,3500# Korpiklaani#

Turisas# 0,3000# Nightwish# Children#of# 0,2500# Ensiferum# Bodom#

0,2000#

0,1500# Stratovarius#

0,1000# HIM# Sonata#Arc0ca#

0,0500#

Fan#ac0vity#–#i.e.#umber#of#reac0ons#per#fan# Lordi#

0,0000# 0# 50# 100# 150# 200# 250# Number#of#posts#per#year#

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

0,45"

0,4" Amorphis" Korpiklaani" 0,35"

0,3" Turisas" Ensiferum" Nightwish" 0,25" Children"of" 0,2" Bodom" Stratovarius"

0,15" Sonata"Arc.ca" 0,1" HIM" Lordi" 0,05"

0" 0" 1" 2" 3" 4" 5" 6" Fan"ac.vity"–"i.e."umber"of"reac.ons"per"fan"per"year" Non?commercial"posts"per"commercial"posts"" Figure 4. The relation of non-commercial posts to commercial posts on x-axis and activity per fan per year on y-axis.

0,4500#

Amorphis# 0,4000#

0,3500# Korpiklaani#

Turisas# 0,3000# Nightwish# Children#of# 0,2500# Ensiferum# Bodom#

0,2000#

0,1500# Stratovarius#

0,1000# HIM# Sonata#Arc0ca#

0,0500#

Fan#ac0vity#–#i.e.#umber#of#reac0ons#per#fan# Lordi#

0,0000# 0# 50# 100# 150# 200# 250# Number#of#posts#per#year#

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

0,45"

0,4" Amorphis" Korpiklaani" 0,35"

0,3" Turisas" Ensiferum" Nightwish" 0,25" Children"of" 0,2" Bodom" Stratovarius"

0,15" Sonata"Arc.ca" 0,1" HIM" Lordi" 0,05"

30 P1: Facebook strategies of arsts in many heavy-metal bands reﬂect the values and tradions of the ‘tribes’ that have aached themselves to the band in the social media world.

P2: Arsts need not engage in commercial transacons in social media. Links to external websites for commercial transacons have the benefit of funconing as virtual gatekeepers between the cultural field and the field of symbolic power. P3: In social media, arsts are promoters and marketers of their creave content, of themselves as arsts and potenal celebries, and of cultural meanings that provide purpose for their audiences. Middlemen

Fans Arst Arst Fans

Middlemen Thank you!