Unpacking the ‘digital habitus’ of music fans in Santiago’s indie music scene

Technology is central to the configuration of a music marketplace but attention is
typically focused on producers and the means of distribution. Much less is known
about the role consumers play and how fans use digital technologies to participate,
shape, and co-produce music scenes (see also Leyshon et al. this volume). This
chapter is about the practices of a group of music fans who create and maintain
websites about music scenes, with special emphasis on Santiago’s indie music
scene. These fans spend a lot of time in front of their computers, programming,
surfing the web, uploading content on their websites, redesigning them to include
new applications, as well as managing Facebook and Twitter accounts, exchanging
links, pictures, and various types of content. They do the same thing using their
mobile phones, communicating with the audiences they construct through their
websites. Digital communications technologies are present everywhere in their
everyday lives. It is therefore impossible to understand how they structure their lives
without observing the centrality that the internet, mobile phones, flows of
information, and links, clicks, “tweets” or “likes” have in their daily activities. These
technologies enable individuals to situate themselves in networks where different
flows of objects and symbols (Appadurai 1986) circulate regarding their interests,
particularly around music.