Conference Program

Over the last ten years, music has undergone a radical metamorphosis, driven by the pervasiveness of the digital as a cultural environment, a space of interaction and an affective infrastructure. Following Pierre Lévy (2023), the digital is not merely technology, but a cultural and social ecosystem that structures thought, emotions and relationships. Henry Jenkins (2014), with his theory of participatory culture, emphasizes how users are no longer passive spectators but prosumers, actively involved in the production and reinterpretation of content. These theoretical approaches allow us to interpret digital music as a performative, educational and identity-forming device, where aesthetic experience intertwines with social practices and dynamics of collective participation.

The aim of this contribution is to explore how digital music operates as an arena of cultural democratization, fostering informal learning, the development of digital and aesthetic skills, and the construction of individual and collective identities. In particular, the role of algorithmic platforms (TikTok, Spotify, YouTube) is examined in shaping tastes, behaviors and spaces of social interaction, highlighting the tensions between democratizing potential and the risks of polarization or homogenization.

Philip Auslander, as highlighted by Gemini and Brilli (2024), analyzes “mediated performance” as a process in which identity is never fixed, but constantly negotiated and represented in digital public spaces. In this sense, music—integrated with video, images and text—is one of the most effective tools for this negotiation, allowing individuals to construct and communicate their personal stories in an immediate and recognizable way. In the algorithmic context, music takes on the function of the emotional soundtrack of digital life, making visible and amplifying a process of identity construction that in the past manifested itself in more implicit and private ways.

The analysis is based on a socio-technical and qualitative approach, integrating a historical analysis of transformations in musical media, from vinyl to digital; an analysis of digital trends and viral phenomena on social platforms; and observation of user behavior as prosumers, through the documentation of mashups, choreographies, challenges and creative reinterpretations.

Within the contribution, two emblematic phenomena illustrating these dynamics will be examined:

1. the digital mashup Celebrate the Good Times by DJ Earworm, which combines more than one hundred pop hits, generating a modular and shared musical flow;
2. the viral trend Savage Love on TikTok, which exploded during the lockdown, where choreographies, remixes and videos created collective memory, a sense of community and widespread social participation.

Digital music emerges as a space of educational and cultural innovation, with the potential to develop media literacy, creative skills and practices of digital citizenship. Future challenges include the critical analysis of algorithmic influence on musical preferences, the inclusion of micro-scenes and emerging genres, and the construction of resilient online communities capable of transforming music consumption into a democratic, participatory and conscious experience.