INTRODUCTION

In Chapter 4 we explored how the Internet has been employed by musicians and fans to shift the emphasis of musical production away from corporate control towards more libertarian and collectivist ways of production and circulation. The use of open source licensing is one such attempt to encourage radical ways of making music. The discussion of Internet radio in Chapter 5 developed these issues further, demonstrating the ways in which the application of new technology to a traditional medium might prompt audiences to create their own forms of creative communication. The present chapter focuses on these audiences as fans and examines how the online fanzine has developed as a means of building and maintaining taste communities across geographic boundaries. It will develop some of the arguments made in the previous chapter through its continued emphasis on avant-garde and experimental forms of contemporary popular music. Its aim is to identify particular fanzine projects that have emerged on the Internet and to examine them in terms of their historical connections with the printed fanzine, and to assess the extent to which the online fanzine is presenting new opportunities for fan production. It will also explore the creative potential of such publications and the opportunities they offer for fans to become creative artists themselves. The shifts in attitudes towards creativity we identified at the close of Chapter 4 are not only played out in the creativity of artists and the gift economies of fans.