Comments on: How good a friend is a Last.fm friend? http://www.onlinefandom.com/archives/how-good-a-friend-is-a-lastfm-friend/ news & perspectives on fan communication and online social life Tue, 17 Jan 2012 19:03:24 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Nancy Baym http://www.onlinefandom.com/archives/how-good-a-friend-is-a-lastfm-friend/comment-page-1/#comment-1269 Nancy Baym Thu, 01 May 2008 13:26:17 +0000 http://www.onlinefandom.com/archives/how-good-a-friend-is-a-lastfm-friend/#comment-1269 Yes I was also surprised that friending on account of shared musical taste had nothing to do with relational development and think you're right that it indicates the need to think about the role of music in its broader relational contexts. And PLEASE don't apologize for your English! You should hear my Danish! -- there was actually a time in my childhood when I had near-perfect Danish comprehension, and there was a time in college when I actually studied Danish, but now... well, sometimes I can kind of catch a word here and there, and I can read menus. Yes I was also surprised that friending on account of shared musical taste had nothing to do with relational development and think you’re right that it indicates the need to think about the role of music in its broader relational contexts.

And PLEASE don’t apologize for your English! You should hear my Danish! — there was actually a time in my childhood when I had near-perfect Danish comprehension, and there was a time in college when I actually studied Danish, but now… well, sometimes I can kind of catch a word here and there, and I can read menus.

]]> By: Lasse Nielsen http://www.onlinefandom.com/archives/how-good-a-friend-is-a-lastfm-friend/comment-page-1/#comment-1266 Lasse Nielsen Tue, 29 Apr 2008 12:46:05 +0000 http://www.onlinefandom.com/archives/how-good-a-friend-is-a-lastfm-friend/#comment-1266 Wow, this is very interesting! Being a very music-oriented social networking site one would expect to see some kind of connection between musical homophily and relational strentgh. At least Last.fm's automatically generated musical “neighbours" could be seen as an attempt to foster strong relations on a background of similar musical taste. I see a couple of possible explanations. First people may keep the social networking part of Last.fm rather isolated from the music recommendation part. Second may be a lot of people become “friends" on Last.fm because they are “neighbours" this way they will probably need quite some time and effort before their relation become strong since they could be from different countries etc. I wonder if one could conclude that as we see that relationships based on internet mediated encounters typically need to spread to other communication forms to become strong, relationships based on similar musical preferences will also have to contain other forms of interaction to become strong. In the sociological part of musicology it is commonly considered that music is a very strong media with regards to identity and community. Your research seems to point to a need of exploring not only the context in which music is done (in the widest sense - consumed, produced and all in between) but also the context in which the musical relations exist together with other kinds or modes of relations. Researching for my thesis about identity and community based on musical references on Last.fm this is really interesting stuff to think about. Thank you very much for this abstract. Is there any chance of getting to read the whole paper before the Aoir-conference in october? All the best Lasse P.S. Please excuse my English – I’m Danish :-) Wow, this is very interesting!
Being a very music-oriented social networking site one would expect to see some kind of connection between musical homophily and relational strentgh. At least Last.fm’s automatically generated musical “neighbours” could be seen as an attempt to foster strong relations on a background of similar musical taste.

I see a couple of possible explanations. First people may keep the social networking part of Last.fm rather isolated from the music recommendation part. Second may be a lot of people become “friends” on Last.fm because they are “neighbours” this way they will probably need quite some time and effort before their relation become strong since they could be from different countries etc.

I wonder if one could conclude that as we see that relationships based on internet mediated encounters typically need to spread to other communication forms to become strong, relationships based on similar musical preferences will also have to contain other forms of interaction to become strong.
In the sociological part of musicology it is commonly considered that music is a very strong media with regards to identity and community. Your research seems to point to a need of exploring not only the context in which music is done (in the widest sense – consumed, produced and all in between) but also the context in which the musical relations exist together with other kinds or modes of relations.

Researching for my thesis about identity and community based on musical references on Last.fm this is really interesting stuff to think about.
Thank you very much for this abstract. Is there any chance of getting to read the whole paper before the Aoir-conference in october?

All the best
Lasse
P.S. Please excuse my English – I’m Danish :-)

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