Wk 5: Prosume-ing Identity... As a Fan

When I discover a new band, song or album, I tend to consume it more times than really necessary. After discovering something new - either on the radio, through friends, YouTube, Spotify, iTunes or random web searches - I generally download it on (the free version of) Spotify. If I end up listening to it to death and want access to it beyond my laptop, then comes the proper download. For many poor uni students, peer-to-peer (p2p) file sharing and free downloading comes in handy when in need of cheap and fast entertainment. 

Prosumers, first proposed by Alvin Toffler (1980), is described by Ritzter & Jurgenson (2010) as the merging of producers and consumers into one more inclusive category, specifically the exploitation of free workers/creators, and is incredibly relevant to the use of the Web 2.0. Sites that exemplify the Web 2.0 paradigm (e.g. Wikipedia, Flickr and social networking sites like Facebook) “together...are taken to represent how a new class of cultural producers (or “prosumers”) relates to cultural production” (Jakobsson & Stiernstedt, 2010:1).

This diagram shows the ecology of file sharing as an act of prosumerism:

Jenkins, H 2009, '"Geeking Out" For Democracy (Part 1)', Ecology of Education, May 11, >http://ecologyofeducation.net/wsite/?p=638<

Whether through Spotify or bitTorrent, I would argue that file sharing can be seen as a form of prosumerism. While many using these methods don’t necessarily produce anything new, they do produce avenues - or seeds/peers - of access. Before the internet, the same concept applies, potentially even more so, to the making of mixtapes and the like. It is an epitome of the cyber-libertarianism of the open-source movement which is theoretically more concerned with individual freedom and freedom of information than capitalistic ends (Levy, 1984). In exchange for products free of charge at almost inconceivable levels of abundance, we, the poor uni students, are more willing to be more forgiving for poorer quality. 

Programs like Spotify, even more so, allows you to be prosumers in a way bitTorrent sites don’t. The social media aspect of it that allows users to create playlists and follow friends allows the creation of an online identity, specifically through music. It attempts to enter the capitalist area of the internet while also keeping one foot in the traditional user-first social media environment by having, as Ritzer and Jurgenson point out, a “‘freemium’ model (basic and free for most, premium and paid for some)” (ibid, 2010: 30). 

When it comes to creativity, I am significantly musically challenged. Fortunately for me, and sometimes unfortunately for the big music industry, I become a prosumer by contributing to the production of accessibility while also consuming what others provide access too. 

References:
Levy, S 1984, ‘Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution’, Anchor Press/Doubleday, Garden City, NY

Jakobsson, P & Stiernstedt, F 2010, ‘Pirates of Silicon Valley: State of Exception and Dispossession in Web 2.0’, First Monday, Vol. 15, No. 7 >http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/2799/2577%20Accessed%20on%206/09/thepiratebay.org/thepiratebay.org/<

Jenkins, H 2009, '"Geeking Out" For Democracy (Part 1)', Ecology of Education, May 11, >http://ecologyofeducation.net/wsite/?p=638<

Ritzer, G & Jurgenson, N 2010, ‘Production, Consumption, Prosumption: The Nature of Capitalism in the Age of the Digital “Prosumer”’, Journal of Consumer Culture, Vol. 10, No. 13, pp 13-36