Impact of social media on artistic ecosystems: An overview of DIY music cultures in India

Abstract

This article offers an overview of the Indian DIY (do-it-yourself) music ecosystem in relation to current broad debates on DIY scenes, their connections to mainstream cultural industries, platform capitalism, and national policies. This article specifically focuses on the impact of social media on India's artistic ecosystem as social media have been one of the most recent influencing socio-technological factors that have changed the dynamics of India's DIY music cultures. The author examines how the Internet has fuelled and transformed DIY music in India with special attention to three trends—rise of the regional; rise of the small town; and rise of the independent. This article also draws attention to concerning influences of social media on the art ecosystem ranging from precarity and exploitation, trolling and scams to compromising collective solidarity in favor of neo-liberal notions of individual success. This article argues that social media participation for DIY artists is not equitable and fair. Social media, however, facilitates building of social and commercial capital for artists who have had no access to it in the deeply hierarchical conventional system in India. Social media also opens the possibility of negotiating the hegemonic cultural norms, be it with reference to gender, class, caste, or rules imposed on art by established powers. It is ultimately the techno-capitalist power that dominates the artistic eco-systems but through social media, DIY artists find and create small agentic and resistive opportunities, and make themselves a force to reckon with in the Indian and global art and entertainment ecosystem.