kiliman - ma thesis

Running head: HOW MATERIAL TECHNOLOGIES EMBED WEB SITES 1

How Material Technologies Embed Web Sites:

Analyzing the Cultural Expressiveness of Beatport.com

Daymon Kiliman

University of Illinois at Springfield

HOW MATERIAL TECHNOLOGIES EMBED WEB SITES 2

Contents

Abstract ......................................................................................................................................................... 3

Introduction ................................................................................................................................................. 4

Literature Review ......................................................................................................................................... 6

Application of the Multimodal Framework for Analyzing Web Sites ....................................................... 21

Preservation of First Impressions and Reactions .................................................................................. 22

Inventory of Salient Features and Topics .............................................................................................. 24

In-depth Analysis of Content and Formal Choices ................................................................................ 32

Embedded Point(s) of View or “Voice” and Implied Audience(s) and Purposes ................................. 54

Analysis of Information Organization and Spatial Priming Strategies ................................................. 57

Contextual Analysis, Provenance, and Inference .................................................................................. 60

Discussion ................................................................................................................................................... 66

References .................................................................................................................................................. 76


Abstract

This paper analyzes the cultural expressiveness of Beatport.com, a digital music retail web site,

using Pauwels’ (2012) framework for multimodal analysis. It attempts to fulfill the conceptual

aim of “connecting off line and online practices of different cultures in transition” (Pauwels,

2012, p. 260) by providing some specificity as to what the concept of “embeddedness” may

mean when analyzing web sites. In the case of Beatport.com, it may mean incorporating

complementary theoretical and practical approaches that acknowledge the significance of

material technologies in cultural communication. Beatport.com is a “virtual subcultural

clearinghouse,” a site of embedded interrelations between offline and online spaces (Orgad,

2006) wherein users enact significant aspects of this music subculture. This grounded theory

describes the web site as a site of convergence, not just of modes of media and consumption, but

also of practices, creative expressions, and material forms of engagement. The analysis unites

three aims in the literature: (1) to recognize user experience and materiality as constituencies to

researching online artifacts and subjects; (2) to start producing analyses that explore the interplay

between modes and that attempt to locate the aesthetic power of multimodal texts; and (3) to

account for the embeddedness of online activity by exploring the significance of material

technologies to subcultural practice and maintenance. Thus, this research proves the framework’s

effectiveness as a tool for analyzing the cultural expressiveness of web sites but also suggests

methods for increasing its effectiveness when applied to a range of research interests.


How Material Technologies Embed Web Sites:

Analyzing the Cultural Expressiveness of Beatport.com

As “unique expressions of contemporary culture” (Pauwels, 2012, p. 247), web sites are

created for and used by individuals and groups for myriad purposes, from accomplishing work-

related tasks to expressing personal desires and providing a means for fulfilling them. All of

these expressions share the medium of the World Wide Web. Providing both a means for identity

building and a flexible platform emphasizing social interaction, the web’s central place in culture

supports the contention by Shirky (2008, p. 17) that “[w]hen we change the way we

communicate, we change society.”

This research analyzes the cultural expressiveness of Beatport.com

(http://www.beatport.com), the web site of Beatport, LLC, using the multimodal framework

proposed by Pauwels (2012). Beatport is a digital music retailer specializing in electronic dance

music. My personal experience with their catalog prior to this research reveals they also sell

music in other genres, such as rock and hip hop, but Beatport specializes in electronic dance

music. (I avoid using the acronym “EDM” because it has become a loaded term within the

subculture. Some subcultural participants worldwide associate the acronym with particular styles

of electronic dance music precipitating the meteoric rise of certain sub-genres in US, thus using

it to refer to commercialized, “trendy” music (see, e.g., Gomori, 2013)). According to the “About

us” page on Beatport.com:

Founded in 2004, Beatport is the largest music store for DJs in the world. Beatport offers

music in premium digital formats and provides unique music discovery tools created for

and by DJs. Each week, Beatport’s music collection is refreshed with hundreds of


exclusive tracks by the world’s top dance music artists. Beatport is privately held and

headquartered in Denver, USA and Berlin, Germany.

The claim of being the “largest music store for DJs in the world” is not tested, but a press release

by SFX Entertainment, Inc., which acquired the company for approximately $50 million (Sisario,

2013), has claimed the web site enjoys nearly “40 million unique users per year” (SFX

Entertainment, 2013).

Beatport.com is a customer service storefront; the primary delivery method for digital

music products; a catalog of songs, albums, music labels, and artists; a repository of commercial

“sample packs,” which are royalty-free sounds available for purchase and use by artists

(commonly called “producers”); a destination for industry, entertainment, and technology news;

and a promotional platform for amateur and professional DJs and artists. In this manner, the web

site represents the diversity of its audience and customers, a group comprised of globetrotting

professional DJs, bedroom producers and remixers, electronic music enthusiasts, and dance club

and festival audiences.

My personal use of Beatport.com prompted me to begin thinking about how the web site

is situated within a community that has a unique history of engagement with analog and digital

technologies. Sirois (2008, p. 18) has reflected on the hip-hop DJ’s manipulation of vinyl records

with turntables and audio mixers: “Through these dexterous acts, he emancipates those

mechanical sounds from their spatial and temporal constraints giving them newfound life.”

Similar practices are a central part of dance music cultures, but now with some 21st century

updates. Professional and amateur DJs purchase music from a web site, such as Beatport.com,

and then interact with it through hardware and software interfaces, producing new performances

and creating the opportunity for shaping their own identities. So while Beatport.com does not


present traditional means of interactivity and community building, such as online discussion

forums, this shared history is communicated through its design and content. I test these insights

against other scholarly knowledge to see how the web site itself is positioned in relation to

contemporary and historical practices of electronic music fans, producers, and performers,

thereby developing a fuller understanding of the cultural expressiveness of the web site through

exploring its use within the community it serves. Therein lies the significance of this study: to

use a framework “focused on discovering the metaphorical and symbolic dimensions of websites

… to unravel[] their intended and even unintended meanings” (Pauwels, p. 252) in an effort to

bring to light a subculture’s consumption and production practices when “[t]he merger of audio

technologies with computer technologies [has] converted music into an information product”

(Sen, 2010, p. 7).

Literature Review

Pauwels (2012) developed the “multimodal framework for analyzing web sites as cultural

expressions” to assist researchers in their efforts to tap the “huge repository of potential data

about contemporary ways of doing and thinking” (p. 247). The framework includes six phases.

The early phases prompt the researcher to record initial, readily observable characteristics of the

web site under study. These characteristics range from quantifiable aspects, such as a general

inventory of the web site’s features, to the researcher’s affective impressions. The latter phases

prompt in-depth analysis of values and assumptions — apparent and hidden — in order to

decode the web site’s implied meanings and to make inferences regarding author and audience

using qualitative methods. The framework is “focused on discovering the metaphorical and

symbolic dimensions of websites … to unravel[] their intended and even unintended meanings”

(Pauwels, p. 252).


According to Pauwels (2012), the framework is useful for exploring characteristics

specific to certain segments of society, such as organizational cultures, and articulating

differences between groups (p. 248). Pauwels has differentiated the framework from other

analytical methods that evaluate web sites according to appropriateness or effectiveness and seek

to determine how well a web site communicates a message or influences consumer behavior, for

example. In other words, Pauwels’ framework is not intended to evaluate usability or

commercial effectiveness. Rather, it focuses on “how to decode/disclose the cultural information

that resides both in the form and content … of web sites” (Pauwels, p. 248). Pauwels has further

differentiated the framework from other research efforts that limit their focus to phenomenon

that may be analyzed according to “more or less established, verbally oriented, methods” (p.

247) and thus neglect the interplay between modes, those that rely on “questionable

operationalizations of the cultural aspects into observable aspects” without attempting an in-

depth reading of the meaning for audiences (p. 249), and those that utilize predetermined

categories of interpretation based on assumed cultural norms (p. 251).

An important component of the present research is determining whether the existing

literature and Pauwels’ (2012) framework provide a means for understanding the cultural

expressiveness of a web site catering to a subculture with a continuing tradition of engagement

with analog and digital audio technologies through which subcultural members now use to

interact with digital products. In other words, when the most pervasive and central practices of

many visitors to this web site occur outside of it but are facilitated by it, what insights can be

gained by analyzing the web site with the framework?

This research considers a general category of material technologies — interfaces used to

manipulate and create music in digital and analog environments — in tandem with Beatport.com


much in the same way as Ytre-Arne (2011) studied the user experience of the general category of

printed magazines and their online equivalents. Ytre-Arne explained the approach as follows: “If

my analysis had been limited to the informants’ or my own interpretations of selected texts from

print and online magazines, the differences between these forms of media — as experienced by

readers — would have been a lot less clear” (p. 476). This reasoning shows how the exploration

of experiential differences can be tied to the material properties of media. Although the present

research analyzes a particular “text,” in this case the web site Beatport.com, it does so while

recognizing the culturally significant practices of its users that integrally influence the web site’s

design and content, specifically the general category of material technologies that participants

utilize in the electronic dance music subculture.

Magaudda (2011) found materiality to be one in a series of influential strains of thought

in the literature that could be used to account for digital versus analog music consumption

behaviors:

[T]hree dimensions that contribute to shape practices as socially shared patterns of

activities are: (1) that of meanings and representations; (2) that consisting of objects,

technologies and material culture in general; and (3) that represented by embodied

competences, activities and “doing” … Thus, “practices” represent the outcome of the

performative linkage of these three elements, a linkage in which materiality plays a

crucial role in the creation, change and stabilization of the whole range of activities and

practices. (p. 20)

Material audio technologies figure prominently in the practices of practitioners in the electronic

dance music subculture. These technologies and their associated practices influence the design


and content of Beatport.com, as the present study shows, and should be accounted for when

attempting a meaningful analysis of the web site.

In much of the literature analyzing web site use, though, the user experience is considered

completely within the boundaries of the web site. The web site’s design elements and content are

considered the ending point of where its job ends and the user’s begins. These studies tend to

focus on the content of messages composed by users as a way of arriving at culturally significant

observations. For example, Davis (2011) analyzed a web site for “transabled” individuals

(defined as people who believe their “true[] bodies are physically impaired in some way” (p.

599)) by reading blog posts, online member introductions, and interactions through a messaging

forum. The findings explored aspects of online communication for identity formation in terms of

“prosumption,” a concept also important to understanding electronic music culture, but only

through ethnographic research of members’ online messages. Therefore, the analysis was not in

multimodal terms because the research did not look beyond the verbal mode to the “complex

forms of interplay between the different modes” (Pauwels, 2012, pp. 247, 253).

More than that, though, this type of study imposes analytical distinctions between online

and offline activities by not accounting for the ways in which online activities “bleed” into

offline activities or the ways in which the design of a web site responds to and is informed by

subcultural practices outside of it. Orgad (2006) has problematized online-offline distinctions,

finding in a multinational ethnographic study of breast cancer patients’ use of medical web sites

that “online spaces do not evolve in isolation from existing social and cultural processes and

institutions” (p. 878). In contrast to research on the transcendent nature of online communication,

the study found that several cultural dimensions tied to offline characteristics were significant to

understanding users’ experience of these online contexts.


Websites and their services are constructed often as though they transcend physical,

geographical, national and cultural borders, and for many patients the online space indeed

represents a place beyond the contexts of their locale that transcends the social and

cultural barriers that they encounter in their daily contexts. However, while space and

time are stretched … they certainly do not disappear as constitutive factors. (p. 893)

According to Orgad, “how cultural values, norms and forces shape experiences of internet use

and design” (p. 878) is essential to understanding the Internet as a site of embedded interrelations

between online and offline spaces. The concept of embeddedness is important to any analysis of

Internet activities and artifacts because a distinct online-offline division assumes “subjects are

just traveling through these spaces and that the spaces are fixed and nonproductive” (Aarsand,

2008, p. 148), which fails to “see identity as the evolving product of diverse influences and

motives played out in specific contexts” (Jordan, 2003, p. 265).

As to their methodology, the studies by Orgad (2006), Aarsand (2008), and Jordan (2003)

fall short of Pauwels’ (2012) call to look beyond the verbal mode (p. 247), but they provide

useful understandings of embeddedness. The studies also share with Pauwels’ framework the

tendency to undervalue the significance of material technologies and how associated practices

may influence communities and efforts to study them. Pauwels has stated that “almost all media

fail to transmit tactile, olfactory or gustatory experiences” (p. 250) and has mentioned the

importance of “material culture” when cultivating a “broader sociological/anthropological view

on society” in analyses of cultural expressiveness (p. 248). Despite such affordances, though, the

framework could benefit from greater specificity on this point so as to encourage analyses that

account for materialities and offline realities. However, this may prove difficult given the

framework’s reliance on the concept of multimodality, at least as far as it is understood by some


theorists. Multimodality is a semiotic concept (Hull & Nelson, 2005; Kress, 2010), which deals

with the symbolic nature of signs rather than materialities. Hull and Nelson (2005) have alluded

to the significance of material culture by quoting anthropologist Ruth Finnegan who “describes

humans’ communicative resources as encompassing ‘… their embodied interactions in and with

the external environment,’” but they conceded much research has yet to live up to this

expectation:

The big challenge yet to be taken up within the study of multimodality is how to locate

and define the deeper aesthetic power of multimodal texts…. Kress (2003, p. 36)

discusses the accordant, complementary processes of transformation and transduction

(the reshaping of semiotic resources and the migration of semiotic material across modes,

respectively) as the locus of creativity in multimodal communication. However, what has

yet to be fully conceived and adequately demonstrated, in our estimation, is an approach

to understanding how these processes of transformation and transduction actually play

out and to what effect. (p. 229)

While Hull and Nelson aimed to “locat[e] the semiotic power of multimodality,” in some

instances an exclusively semiotic approach may limit the effort to look at “embodied

interactions,” as Finnegan stated, because such an approach tends to produce analyses based

solely on the symbolic nature of signs.

Researchers have proposed alternative methods for studying modern media culture, such

as that found on web sites. Ytre-Arne (2011), for example, has argued for the relevance of

phenomenology and audience studies as a way to focus on “perceptual experiences” and their

interaction with “technological and aesthetic experiences” (p. 476):


Rather than focusing on the intellect as the sole arena for the production of knowledge, a

phenomenologist position will emphasize the importance of the body in how we

experience the world, through sense and perceptions…. Thinking in terms of media

experiences does not imply that there is something wrong with researching interpretations

of media texts — but it does imply that there are other dimensions which have not yet

been thoroughly explored. (pp. 474, 475)

The present research makes a similar argument for studying online environments through the

specific case of Beatport.com by looking at its embedded nature as expressed through users’

engagement with material technologies.

Swidler (2010) has developed this point by studying the manner in which technology is

utilized by and for culture. By focusing attention on the tools of cultural production, Swidler has

avoided “the Bourdieunian preoccupation with cultural distinction” (p. 285). Pauwels (2012, p.

248), too, has distinguished the multimodal framework from analytical approaches based on

binary distinctions, such as Hofstede’s dimensions of culture, but Swidler arrived at the

following conclusion:

If cultural vitality and aesthetic pleasure derive from the structural features of systems of

cultural production and distribution, rather than from the supposed qualities of elite

versus less-elite culture consumers, then technological changes can alter culture and the

possibilities of aesthetic pleasure in fundamental ways. As the Internet has made it

possible for musicians to find and to produce music for tiny, geographically dispersed

audiences — and as websites that critique and recommend music to those with shared

musical tastes proliferate — there has been a revolution in the amount of musical


creativity (and the consequent possibilities for powerful aesthetic experience for both

creators and audiences). (p. 292)

Swidler has introduced into the discussion the concept of power, which Carpentier (2011) and

Mcnamara (2010) have also done. Carpentier addressed power issues while arguing for the

continued relevance of audience theory:

Audience theory also allows us to avoid the conflation of interaction and participation,

which in many cases prevents us from noticing that in the present-day media

configuration the maximimalist forms of participation have remained rare whilst at the

same time the opportunities for interaction have structurally increased. (p. 529)

For Mcnamara (2010), humans and technology both form constitutive factors in culture in a

powered relationship:

Power relations between technologies and users shift back and forth in a sometimes

conflicted but ultimately mutually interdependent exchange. Without users, technology

becomes redundant and is forgotten; without technology humans lack extensions of their

capabilities and capacities. (p. 96)

Mcnamara (p. 93) identified the heart of the debate as between McLuhanesque technological

determinism (“technology shapes society”) and social constructionism (“society shapes

technology”) and proposed that a middle ground between the two extremes of technological

determinism and social constructionism has settled according to the needs of accomplishing

individual (or consumer) versus institutional (or producer) goals:

Users increasingly do not come to content by way of selecting a particular medium such

as choosing to watch ‘“television” or read a ‘“newspaper” — often irrespective of what is

on. They seek out content and applications for a particular use and expect it to be


available on a device or platform convenient to them. Distribution systems and

materiality of media are of decreasing interest except to the manufacturers and technical

managers of those systems, the technorati of media. (p. 120)

Any attention paid to the physicality of technologies in research of digital media, in Mcnamara’s

estimation, has resulted from “nostalgia … and a privileging of physicality, along with a distrust

of what cannot be seen” because testing such accounts has revealed “little evidence that physical

objects provide a more beneficial communication experience” (p. 118).

Ytre-Arne (2011) has sought possible explanations for such lack of attention paid to

physical properties of media and found as a possible cause an overwhelming concern with

studying mass audiences rather than “how these properties are experienced by actual audiences”

(p. 475). Phenomenology provided Ytre-Arne an avenue for substituting the concept of “media

experiences” for those of “media use” or “consumption” (pp. 467 – 468): “The central argument

is that thinking about the relationship between audiences and media as a form of experience

might highlight different dimensions regarding the place of media in people’s lives” (p. 468).

Ytre-Arne used this reasoning to investigate women’s magazine reading online versus in print,

finding choices were made for aesthetic reasons because the medium impacted readers’

experience, the content notwithstanding. Women interviewed for the study recounted the

importance of the surroundings they chose to accompany the act of reading and their subjective

judgment of being at work or enjoying leisure as factors accompanying choices to read

comparable publications online or in printed magazines.

Similar to Ytre-Arne’s (2011) “media experiences,” Magaudda (2011) proposed

“practices” because “people and material objects [are] crucial terrain for studying consumer

practices, and how they take shape, evolve and change” (p. 33). Magaudda observed that average


music consumers tended to use new technologies, such as MP3 players, alongside older ones,

such as vinyl records, recognizing distinct value in both formats. The digital revolution in music

consumption has resulted in a paradox, according to Magaudda, where “the reconfiguration of

the relationship between materiality and culture lead[] to a renewed role played by material

objects in people’s life and activities” (p. 16). Thus, vinyl records have “outlive[d] the ongoing

process of technical innovation” for “practical and symbolic reasons in different musical

subcultures,” “especially in many dance-based musical genres” (p. 28).

Experiences (Ytre-Arne, 2011) and practices (Magaudda, 2011) are central to electronic

dance music culture and, by extension, important to analyzing Beatport.com. Web sites catering

to a particular subculture must consider the subculture’s experience of digital products. An

important aspect of that experience, in this case, is the use of analog and digital technologies —

both virtual and material — to manipulate and perform digital music. This gets at not only the

significance of the immediate audience for Beatport.com — the music consumer — but also

intended (or imagined) audiences that the raw materials sold on Beatport.com reach through their

performance by DJs/artists using sound manipulation technologies, which significantly points to

the media’s use, how it is experienced, and a set of practices surrounding digital music in tandem

with material technologies. Borschke (2011, p. 933) illustrated how the intersection of

technologies and performance may give rise to new forms of composition:

Vinyl’s material qualities made re-composition possible but it would be mistaken to focus

on these qualities alone, as it was the use of the medium in tandem with sound

reproduction technologies (mixer, turntable and sound system) in a social context

(nightclub, party, etc.) that gave rise to the innovation. It was in a particular time and

space that a DJ played and listened to records in the presence of dancers listening and


dancing to records. The space is communal, the moment shared and the media experience

is interactive, marked by several intersections of human bodies with media technologies.

In other words, “in EDM, performance corresponds to this actualization: human movements

making visible what machine sounds are making audible” (Ferreira, 2008, p. 18).

More on point to the present study, perhaps, are the ways in which the significance of the

intersection of bodies and media in performance through dance influence other decisions made

regarding media choices. Borschke (2011, p. 931) argued that “edits,” defined as when a DJ

manipulates and re-records a song in order to make it more “DJ friendly,” “are a music form

anchored in a culture of media use: an artifact that owes its existence to both the studio and the

dance floor.” Borschke has explored the ways in which the relationship between “dancers, DJs,

recordings and audio technologies troubles the idea that reception was ever passive and

highlights how the intersection of human bodies with electronic technologies inscribed itself in

this compositional strategy. To omit dancers is to omit the body from the story of ‘body music’”

(p. 935). Thus, Borschke has revealed, not only the socially constructed nature of authorship, but

also the dismantling of the separation between consuming and producing and its connection to

performance:

The real-time use of recorded music disregards the romantic construction of the artist as

originator and isolated genius and, as a recording must be enacted to be experienced,

questions the divide between ‘“active” producers and ‘“passive” consumers. (p. 934)

In this quote, Borschke has touched on several important points: the concept of prosumerism in

the DJ’s mastery of analog and digital technology for a performance that exposes the

increasingly complex role of “author” in the present “remix culture” (Lessig, 2008) and the

significance of enacting and interacting with digital information products by individuals in time


and place. (It is important to note that Borschke and other researchers have questioned whether

“the enthusiastic adoption of ‘remix’ overshadows the aesthetic priorities and political

implications of a variety of creative strategies that involve media use” (pp. 929 – 930), a point

taken up, if not explicitly, by Ytre-Arne (2011) who also explored the impact of the aesthetic

properties of media on user experience.)

Prior (2008, 2010) has written extensively on the practices of electronic music artists and

fans, revealing the ways in which they utilize technology for creative endeavors that position

them as both producers and consumers, professional and amateur (2010, p. 405). In looking at

how the laptop computer has become central to electronic music composition and performance,

Prior explained that it is “not merely an inert tool at the creative behest of the musician, but …

itself implicit in the transformation of music, particularly regarding the unsettling and

dismantling of expectations around practices of music production, creativity, and performance”

(Prior, 2008, p. 915). This point resonates with Swidler (2010), discussed above, who wrote that

“technological changes can alter culture” (p. 292). The laptop, Prior has argued, is “where

digitized music and code meet the material properties of technologies and the everyday practices

of bodies” (p. 928).

The concepts of mediology (Debray, 1997) and prosumption (Toffler, 1980) also prove

useful for their focus on the power of technologies and practices for cultural transmission.

Mediology, as developed by Debray, is the theoretical support and prosumption, often first

credited to Toffler and expanded upon by subsequent research, is the practical result of the

proliferation of analog and digital technologies and a concept through which to understand how

consumers and producers merge.


Papoulias (2004) has provided an effective shorthand explanation of Debray’s concept of

mediology. In Debray’s understanding, “culture is what technologies make possible” (Papoulias,

p. 166). Mediology is more than yet another method for studying media and technology; it is a

study of “cultural mediation”:

Debray intends this term to refer not only to the technological pathways through which

cultural realities are constituted, but, in addition, to the forms of sociality which

undergird such constitutions…. Technology, then, is only one aspect of the process of

mediation: it forms its material supports (as printing press, archive, video). (p. 166)

Important to this process of cultural transmission is the relationship between past and present and

“the recognition of an absent other” (Papoulias, p. 167), both points that are significant for the

electronic dance music subculture, its use of material technologies to manipulate digital and

analog music (or information products), and by extension web sites such as Beatport.com.

The “absent other” is apparent in performance. Debray used the example of a pianist

interpreting a piece by Bach written for the harpsichord. In this example, the piano provides the

“technological infrastructure” through which audiences receive a performance that at once erases

the “materiality of mediation” and the temporal distance of the origin of the piece with Bach

(Papoulias, p. 168). The “performance creates the effect of immediacy” (Papoulias, p. 168). A

similar process of supplanting the original occurs in many electronic dance music performances,

which most often feature DJs. DJs play songs composed by other artists alongside recordings of

their own, if they play their own at all, and seldom perform their own songs on musical

instruments in any traditional sense. Despite this, “[f]or the vast majority of electronic music

fans, the DJ is the author behind the music, the personality who stands outside the music and

serves as its causal explanation, the creator to whom the sound points” (Herman, 2006, p. 32).


Herman has demonstrated that authorship is a social construction (p. 31), an important point for

Debray as can be seen in the example of a modern-day pianist performing a composition by

Bach. Despite the pianist’s and the DJ’s medium being prima facie dissimilar, their performances

involve related practices, as Ferreira (2008) explained. “EDM makes audible a present sonorous-

motor event, more than any supposedly original past musical performance” in the same way that

the original composition performed by the pianist and the recorded music played by the DJ

“traverse[] time and space,” while the latter in particular invokes a “technological mediation of

the sound-movement relation” (Ferreira, p. 19).

Mediology or mediation studies sees research solely based on semiotics as limited

because “semiotics studies culture, but omits the material conditions of its diffusion"

(Vandenberghe, 2007, p. 25). According to Vandenberghe, mediology overcomes the limitations

of other approaches by presenting an “interdisciplinary analysis of culture and technology that

aims to integrate the social sciences and overcome their limitations” (pp. 24 – 25).

Mediation studies not only enjoins the analyst to investigate the medium of transmission

as a practical process of transmission, but also to consider its objects of analysis in

relational terms. The medium is not a thing, but a dynamic, dialectical praxis and process

that interrelates and integrates objects, peoples and texts. (Vandenberghe, p. 29)

Thus, the place of the technologies is elevated but not overstated in such a way so as to make the

analysis a story of tools. Prior (2010) also expressed caution when emphasizing the tools of

transmission: “It is clearly perilous to assume that free-floating technologies in themselves have

revolutionized music. New technologies do not create music worlds from scratch. But they have

facilitated or afforded new possibilities” (p. 405). Such a tendency in the literature may explain,

in part, why Debray’s concept of mediology has not gained much traction and Pauwels’ (2012)


framework only briefly touches on the role of materiality in understanding the cultural

expressiveness of web sites.

There are two additional benefits of accounting for the significance of material

technologies besides, as some researchers have argued, more completely describing media use

(Ytre-Arne, 2011) and its embedded nature. First, it may help researchers avoid preconceived

cultural categories that tend to “pre-mould the outcomes and focus the researcher’s attention on

just a limited set of aspects” (Pauwels, p. 249). Second, there is a practical advantage afforded by

this approach when the web site studied has no commonly apparent means for interactivity, such

as messaging forums, as is the case with Beatport.com. The lack of data in the form of visitor

messages requires the researcher to explore other ways in which visitors interact with the web

site and other ways in which culture influences its design and vice versa.

As it pertains to the cultural analysis of Beatport.com, the review of the literature reveals

the need “[t]o understand how contemporary music is shaped by digital networks” by

confronting “the proliferation of perfect copies, their documentation and their use” (Borschke,

2011, p. 941, emphasis added). The case of Beatport.com represents a unique opportunity to

unite three aims in the reviewed literature: (1) to recognize user experience and materiality as

constituencies to researching online artifacts and subjects; (2) to start producing multimodal

analyses that explore the interplay between modes and that attempt to locate the aesthetic power

of multimodal texts; and (3) to account for the embeddedness of online activity by exploring the

significance of the general category of material technologies to subcultural practice and

maintenance. Through this process the community served by Beatport.com is better understood

and, in turn, so is the web site itself. Pauwels (2012, p. 253) makes clear that the researcher

should bring “specific knowledge of the genre and the broader culture under study” to aid the


analysis. To understand the electronic and dance music community, and the significance of

Beatport.com to it, research must consider the digital and analog technologies facilitating cultural

practices and creative engagement, which in turn assists with conceptualizing the Internet as a

nexus of embedded activities, expressions, and practices.

RQ 1: What role does materiality, particularly of technologies used to interface with

digital information and individuals’ use of them, play in the embedded nature of

the Internet?

RQ 2: How can focusing on material technologies and associated practices, and the

related concept of embeddedness, assist in analyzing the cultural expressiveness

of web sites and locating the aesthetic power of multimodality?

Application of the Multimodal Framework for Analyzing Web Sites

The research below, which constitutes the data for this project, applies the framework for

multimodal analysis of the cultural expressiveness of web sites developed by Pauwels (2012). I

apply the six-phase framework as faithfully possible, moving sequentially through initial

impressions and an inventory to more in-depth, contextual analysis of explicit and implicit

meanings occurring both intra-modally and through cross-modal interplay. Thus, the discussion

is organized according to the framework in order to maintain the “logic of discovery” (p. 251)

Pauwels intended. While the inventory is fairly exhaustive as to prominent design features of the

web site, my research interest steers the in-depth, analytical and interpretive sections. Pauwels

has stated such a selective approach is appropriate when applying the framework:

To avoid being forced to look at all of the possible signifiers of a website or in other

words, to reduce the efforts to more manageable proportions, new research can at times


be based on choices made in previous research or depart from an “on face” value selected

set of parameters that seem to be most indicative of a given cultural issue. (p. 260)

To produce culturally “thick” research, Pauwels recommends a grounded theory approach

because “cultural knowledge (etic and emic) should inform the construction of

categories/concepts and empirical observations should be used to revisit those

categories/concepts” (p. 260).

Although this research follows the six-phase analytical framework by Pauwels (2012), it

includes several of its own methodological considerations. Pauwels proposed a framework with a

solid theoretical footing that may be used to account for the unique characteristics of hybrid

media forms and that has enough flexibility to be adapted for a wide range of research interests.

The methodological considerations of this research stem, in part, from that flexibility but also

because this research tests the framework’s effectiveness. I have attempted research that does

“not conceal or exclude a theoretical focus, a clear methodological framework and a set of

expectations,” which could render “blind or impressionistic” conclusions based on “unfocused

and under-theorized observation[s]” (Pauwels, p. 251). My interest in analyzing this web site

comes from many years invested in this culture, which forms the basis of my affective

interpretations of Beatport.com, interpretations that Pauwels’ framework values.

Preservation of First Impressions and Reactions

This research does not represent my first experience with the web site Beatport.com, so it

may, in Pauwels’ (2012) understanding, be impossible for me to truly record my first

impressions of the web site before they are “eradicated or supplanted by further, more in-depth

research insights” (p. 253). Nonetheless, I endeavor to provide my impressions of the “look and


feel” of the web site (p. 253), as Pauwels has instructed, according to what attracts me, what

features intrigue me, whether anything puzzles me, what I do not like about it, and so on.

The landing page for http://www.beatport.com tightly controls the use of space to present

a good deal of options and information in a slick manner. My eye is immediately drawn to the

upper left of the screen where the art accompanying new music releases refresh every couple of

seconds. This is the only moving element on the page. Hovering the mouse cursor over the music

art stops the automatic scrolling and presents the “follow link” cursor, meaning a mouse click

would take me to a page with more information on that release.

The home page is very colorful but most of this is owing to the art accompanying music

releases and not static elements built into the page design. The headings use a simple, sans serif

font in white on a black or gray-gradient background. Beyond the borders of the interactive and

informative section of the web site occupying the middle half of the page is a silhouette of half of

a pair of headphones that fades behind the web site’s logo. The logo uses a vaguely retro-looking

font reminiscent of the boxy, low resolution type produced by early computers but in a green

color, lying somewhere between the neons of the early 1990s and the garish warning of unknown

radioactive contagion used in a low-budget science fiction movie. At the very least, there are no

qualities to this green that suggest nature. It is an other-worldly green.

All of this suggests excitement, refinement, and precision — or, as I mentioned above, a

tightly controlled experience, like one might expect in a high-end dance club. This comparison is

made more apt when noticing that some releases on the home page are marked as a “Beatport

Exclusive” or simply “Exclusive.” Exclusivity and the promise of access to a unique, luxurious

experience are hallmarks of many high-end clubs. Add to this the headshots, many in black and

white, of artists under the “DJ Charts” heading next to a listing of “The Beatport Top 10,” and


there is a sense of a catered experience where the visitor is both entering a community of like-

minded fans and possibly enjoying a backstage pass.

The flashy veneer dissolves a bit, though, when I scroll down the home page to see more

headings for top releases; DJ charts; “[r]oyalty free loops, samples, sound effects and patches”;

and another scrolling advertisement for web site features. This is when it becomes apparent that,

although the album art and pictures of artists/DJs caught my eye at first, there is so much

information on the home page for which I would not understand the significance of without

greater familiarity with the web site. For example, many of the releases featured on the home

page include three lines of text underneath the album art for artist, release title, and recording

label. None of this information is labeled, though, so it is difficult at first glance to know what

the artist’s name is versus the release title or recording label.

Inventory of Salient Features and Topics

The features and attributes of Beatport.com may be divided into web site categories and

content categories within which more advanced interactive features exist. Some interactive

features are gateways for user-generated content while others simply provide options for locating

desired content. Because Beatport.com, as with many digital music retail sites, has an extensive

catalog of digital music content, it is useful to analyze web site categories, which allow a visitor

to navigate different sections of the web site, separately from content categories, which assist

visitors when browsing and searching for digital music content. Not surprisingly, there is overlap

between these two categories and content categories could be considered merely nested within

web site categories, but this distinction is useful as a way to begin categorizing elements

according to “theoretical insights” and a “specific research interest,” as Pauwels (2012, p. 253)

has recommended. Pauwels developed the framework recognizing that “[w]hat is significant or


not [to a research project] may require both deliberation and specific knowledge of the genre and

the broader culture under study” (p. 253). In this instance, Beatport.com shares with many other

web sites interactive features that allow visitors to navigate it, but the content categories contain

more significance for this study as they uniquely facilitate practices of the culture under study,

practices that occurred prior to the digital age but that are now evident in this digital context.

Web site categories. The web site categories are a natural place to start this inventory, as

they provide visitors the means to navigate the main parts of the web site and act as an

introduction before delving into the culturally significant content categories. Beatport.com has

five web site categories or “tabs” listed along the top of the web site that are consistently

displayed on all pages:

1. “Music” — This is the home page where visitors first land when entering the web site. It

acts as the initial entryway into the digital music catalog. Several content categories, such as new

releases and top selling songs, and content features, such as a search bar, are displayed.

2. “Sounds” — The second web site category takes a visitor to a catalog of, according to the

web site, “Royalty free loops, samples, sound effects and patches for your DJ sets and

productions.” As with the “Music” category, several content categories are initially displayed

upon visiting this section, including featured, new, and popular collections of sounds.

3. “Mixes” — The “Mixes” category takes the visitor to a catalog of pre-recorded DJ sets,

each comprised of songs selected (and sometimes composed) by a DJ/artist and blended

seamlessly together. As with the previous web site categories, several content categories, such as

new and most popular releases and artists, are available. It is noteworthy that, in addition to the

content categories shared with the above web site categories, the “Mixes” web site category


provides the first instance of an option for user-generated content with the “Upload Your Mix”

button. This feature provides visitors the opportunity to upload a digital mixes they have created.

4. “DJs” — This web site category collects profiles of DJs/artists that include a biography,

links to social media accounts, dates of upcoming live events, new songs available for purchase

on Beatport.com, and more. Visitors also may create their own profile, making this a web site

category that includes user-generated content.

5. “Play” — This is the only web site category that relies heavily on user-generated content.

Beatport hosts remix contests where visitors may download “stems” — isolated fragments of a

song — that they then can manipulate using software and hardware to create a new version of the

original song. Visitors then upload their remix and solicit votes from other participants and their

own fan base. The artist, usually in consultation with a record label, chooses a winning remix

and community votes choose the runner-up. Winners receive hardware or software packages and,

often, the winning remixes are released by the participating record label.

6. “News” — All industry-related news items are presented in blog-like format under this

web site category. The news items most often point visitors to longer stories of interest on other

web sites or present music videos, information on new releases, and interviews with DJs/artists.

Anything of value to fans of electronic dance music could be posted: festival announcements,

news impacting popular artists, and items of cultural interest such as histories of the electronic

music scene. Of particular interest to this research is the frequency of news items featuring

tutorials or composition/performance-related products appealing to visitors who DJ or compose

their own music.

Additional web site categories, divided into three main categories with sub-categories,

are listed at the bottom of the web site. The web site category “Company” includes ten sub-


categories. “About Us” links to a short paragraph outlining the company’s mission, history, and

purpose. “Contact Us” provides the visitor with contact information for customer and marketing

inquiries. “Redeem Invite Code” allows some visitors to preview new web site features ahead of

public release. “Careers” links to job openings. “Logos & Images” provides high quality versions

of company logos for commercial purposes, as well as a style guide detailing display and use

restrictions. “Terms and Conditions” links to a long document outlining copyright issues and

general web site usage restrictions. “Privacy and Cookie Policy” discloses the information

Beatport collects from visitors and how this information is shared. “Copyright Information”

provides information on filing an intellectual property right dispute with Beatport. “Customer

Support” includes many frequently asked questions regarding site functionality, the company

itself, and the terms and conditions of using the web site. “Give user feedback” allows visitors

with a registered account to suggest improvements to the web site’s design and functionality and

to vote on other users’ suggestions. Moderators then label responses as “under review,”

“planned,” “started,” “customer care,” “praise,” “completed,” or “declined.”

The second web site category at the bottom of the page, “Network,” includes links to

specialty web sites falling directly under Beatport’s brand or web sites somehow associated with

it. “Sounds to Sample” links to http://www.soundstosample.com, the web site for

Sounds/To/Sample, a company acquired by Beatport in 2010 that sells digital sample packs and

loops (Beatport and Sounds/To/Sample introduce Element packs, 2010). The sub-category

“Beatport News” simply links to the “News” web site category discussed above. “Beatport Gear”

includes short descriptions of three product lines produced in conjunction with Beatport for a

model of headphones, audio and USB cables and connectors, and a line of t-shirts. “Distribution

by Baseware” links to a short description and information request form for a digital music


distribution service that assists artists with distributing music through partnering sites, such as

Beatport, iTunes, AmazonMP3, Stompy.com, and Spotify. “Beatport Pro” links to a web site

where visitors can download the Mac OS X desktop application of the same name and read an

overview of features. This application integrates with the web site to add functionality and

customization options when searching for and purchasing music from Beatport.com. The next

sub-category, “Beatport Downloader,” provides details and a download link for a program of the

same name, which similarly interfaces with Beatport.com to assist with purchasing and

downloading content, but is less fully featured than Beatport Pro. “Beatport Mobile” presents a

version of the web site optimized for mobile browsing devices. The final sub-category,

“Mashbox,” advertises a software application for mobile devices with which users may

download short portions of commercially released songs that can then be blended together and

manipulated in new ways. Social media icons for Beatport’s profiles on Facebook, Twitter, and

Google+ are also included at the end of the “Network” web site category.

The third web site category at the bottom of the page allows visitors to view the web site

in a language other than English. Options include German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese,

and Japanese.

Content categories. Some of the content categories are consistent across the web site

categories above. “Music,” “Sounds,” “Mixes,” and “DJs” allow for sorting and browsing by

content categories relating to genre or style. Taking the web site category “Music” as

representative, Table 1 lists the 23 genre categories, each pertaining to a style of music.


Table 1

Music Genre Content Categories Used on Beatport.com

Breaks Hip-Hop Chill Out House

DJ Tools Indie Dance/Nu Disco Deep House Minimal

Drum & Bass Pop/Rock Dubstep Progressive House

Electro House Psy-Trance Electronica Raggae/Dub

Funk/R&B Tech House Glitch Hop Techno

Hard Dance Trance Hardcore/Hard Techno

“Sounds” has some styles unique to it, listed in Table 2, which are substituted for some of the

more specific sub-genres in “Music.”

Table 2

Content Categories Unique to Samples on Beatport.com

Drums MIDI Orchestral Presets/Patches Sound FX Vocal

“Music” also includes the option for DJ charts, which are collections of songs chosen by DJs and

artists that represent the style of music they tend to play and may include songs they would use

while DJing professionally.

The web site category “Play” does not include the option for sorting current contests by

genre. Rather, visitors may browse contests according to the following classifications: “Open for

submission,” “Open for voting,” “Winner announcements,” and “Currently in judging.” When

visitors click on a contest that is currently open for submissions, four tabs are available. “Intro”

includes a contest schedule of dates when submissions are accepted, when community voting is

allowed, when judging begins and ends, and when the winner will be announced. There is also

an embedded audio clip of the original song, some contest details that may include a biography

of the artist and an introduction to the song, a list of prizes, three of the latest submissions with

audio playback buttons, and an area where visitors may comment on the contest as a whole. The


second tab, “Remixes,” displays all currently submitted remixes with embedded audio clips. The

remixes may be sorted by most recent or most played. When visitors click on a specific remix,

they are presented with a larger waveform display of the audio file, the total number of plays and

comments, information about the remix submitted by the participant, an area to read and leave

comments, and buttons to share the remix on social media platforms. The “Rules” tab displays a

summary of the contest rules with a link to the full rules, and the “Upload” tab page simply has a

button with which to select and upload a remix file in MP3 format.

The web site category “News” allows visitors to sort news articles in three ways, with

additional sorting tags associated with each news article. The content category “Music News”

collects most of the stories ranging from product reviews, festival announcements, links to

videos of interest, interviews with artists, and stories relating to the history and culture of

electronic and dance music scenes. “Beatport Alerts” are announcements relating to

Beatport.com, such as upcoming live web casts, new remix contests, staff picks, and more.

Lastly, the content category “Genres” allows visitors to sort stories according to the genre

classifications outlined in “Music” web site category. Additionally, each story might include

embedded videos or audio files, links to stories on other web sites, buttons for sharing on social

media platforms, and “tags” culled from significant details from that particular story (e.g., an

artist, genre, record label, or topic) that visitors may click on to view other stories with that tag.

Content tools/features. In addition to the content categories discussed above, which

allow visitors to locate desired content based on genre, for example, Beatport.com provides other

tools for customizing the web site experience and evaluating content according to other qualities.

Visitors with a registered account can choose to “follow” artists and record labels, which will

save them to a visitor’s profile and can be accessed in a tab that slides open from the left side of


the web page. This tab, called “My Beatport,” provides a listing of new releases by artists and

labels the visitor follows. The tab also provides a link to an expanded version of “My Beatport”

where a visitor is presented with more sorting options such as by album or mix, release date,

beats per minute, and genre.

A consistent feature throughout the site is the audio playback button. Associated with

every song in the catalog is a button with two functions: (a) to begin audio playback of the

selected song or list of songs immediately and (b) to queue the song or list of songs for later

playback. When playback of a song begins, a narrow window opens directly beneath the web site

categories at the top of the page. A play button pauses and restarts playback and two seek buttons

move to the next or previous song in the queue. The title of the currently playing track, the artist

and remixer (if applicable), the date of release, total running time of the individual song, the

record label it is released on, and the song’s genre are displayed. A waveform display (i.e., audio

data represented visually) of the currently playing song shows which portion of the 30-second

preview is currently playing. A visitor may click anywhere within the waveform to jump to a

particular section, and the display can be expanded to show the 30-second portion previewed in

relation to the song as a whole. Small type in the corner of the waveform provides the song’s

beats per minute (BPM) and musical key. A link to “Key commands,” to the right of the

waveform, displays a list of keyboard shortcuts for common tasks, such as seeking playback

forward and playing the next song in the queue. Next to the waveform display is a buy button

that shows a shopping cart and the price of the currently playing track. Clicking this button adds

the song to a visitor’s shopping cart.

The shopping cart displays “releases” (collections of songs in an album or compilation)

and “tracks” (individual songs) separately, and it allows for saving anything in the shopping cart


to a “hold bin” for later purchase. The cost of each song or collection of songs is displayed and

may be previewed or removed from the cart. Visitors may also choose to upgrade any purchase

from the default MP3 format to WAV or AIFF formats. WAV and AIFF are uncompressed audio

formats that result in larger file sizes than with MP3 but without the compromised audio quality

perceived with compressed audio.

In-depth Analysis of Content and Formal Choices

Intra-modal analysis.

Verbal/written signifiers. Guided by my interest in uncovering the ways in which

experiential factors, materiality, and practice/performance assist in exploring the embedded

nature of the Internet, it is potentially significant to analyze how Beatport.com positions itself in

relation to traditional practices of artists and DJs, as this is one way in which the World Wide

Web may reach through the online into the offline worlds of users. In order to begin exploring

the “potential culturally specific meanings that reside in the explicit and implicit content of the

written utterances” (Pauwels, 2012, p. 253), it seems natural to start with the web site’s “about

us” statement, which reads:

Founded in 2004, Beatport is the largest music store for DJs in the world. Beatport offers

music in premium digital formats and provides unique music discovery tools created for

and by DJs. Each week, Beatport’s music collection is refreshed with hundreds of

exclusive tracks by the world’s top dance music artists. Beatport is privately held and

headquartered in Denver, USA and Berlin, Germany.

Immediately, Beatport states that the web site “is the largest music store for DJs [emphasis

added] in the world.” To bolster its claim, the statement identifies some perceived values of that

consumer group: (a) “unique music discovery tools,” (b) design elements created “for and by


DJs,” (c) a large catalog of songs updated weekly, (d) high quality audio, and (e) “exclusive

tracks.” These values emphasize the unique practices of DJs that the web site creators believe

must be reflected in its design. A digital music retail web site for DJs must do more than assist

them in finding music they like, listening, and purchasing. Beatport.com uses the input of DJs

and gives visitors those same tools to discover music that is exclusive, fresh, and high quality

and that may be difficult to find. Such statements may be contrasted with digital retailers who

emphasize ease of searching, economical products, and fast delivery. Beatport.com intends to

win over existing DJs and create new ones by giving amateurs access to similar resources as

experienced DJs.

A banner ad promoting the option to upgrade any purchase to “lossless” format –

uncompressed AIFF or WAV files – appears periodically on the site and reads, in part, “Deliver

the Highest Quality Music to Your Fans.” The justification for paying more overall for a higher

quality version of the same content rests not with the enjoyment of the consumers but that of

their fans. The music will be manipulated and presented by the consumer to other listeners.

Those listeners evaluate DJs through their performances. The original artist who composed the

music is less important in this context, and the language shows the web site’s attention to the

intersection of technology, practice, and aesthetics in relation to its digital products. The

trademarked slogan, “play with music,” supports the notion that Beatport perceives that its

audience engages with their content and web site in unique ways when compared to other digital

music retailers. The word “play” in this slogan may refer to activities such as remixing and

otherwise manipulating, DJing and performing, and dancing and listening. All of these practices,

in the context of electronic dance music, involve technological mediation.


The web site category “Customer Support” includes many frequently asked questions

regarding site functionality, the company itself, and the terms and conditions of using the web

site and has the potential for verbal signifiers important for this study. While many of the

questions and answers merely cover web site functionality, some show the company’s awareness

and expectations regarding consumers’ use of its digital products. For example, the following

question appears under the category, “General Site Questions”: “What can I do with the tracks I

purchased from Beatport?” The two-part answer only states that files may be played on

computers or digital audio devices or burned to CD but that they cannot be traded or shared with

others. After this warning, the answers states:

This is a community of DJs and artists and we do not support the sharing of files. This

hurts the artists who create the music and the labels that support those artists.

Interestingly, this shows that the company considers its visitors, DJs/artists, and record labels a

“community” that convenes with the web site. The site is not merely a digital retail outlet, in

other words. This answer, however, offers no guidance to customers who are also DJs and who

use copyrighted music in live or recorded performances.

More on point to the latter issue is this question in the same category of “General Site

Questions”: “Can I DJ with the track that I purchase from Beatport?” The answer circumvents a

clear-cut answer, however:

In the United States and UK buying a track from the site is just like buying a record from

the record store. The same legal implications are in effect. However, certain regions have

different restrictions regarding the legality of playing Digital Music files. We suggest you

visit the website of your local publishing /mechanical service to get a more detailed


answer. We also recommend that you keep a copy of your order receipts with your music

to prove that you have purchased your music legally.

Four links are provided to the web sites of the Intellectual Property Office in the UK; the UK

Copyright Service; the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers; and the MCPS-

PRS Alliance Limited (or PRS for Music) in the UK. The legality of publicly broadcasting

copyrighted music is beyond the scope of this research, but the presence of this question and

answer in the customer support web site category shows an understanding of how the site’s

digital products are used by customers that goes beyond mere listening and enjoyment.

Under the questions and answers regarding the royalty-free samples and loops sold on

Beatport.com is the question, “How can I use the samples I have purchased?” The answer

follows:

When you buy sounds from Beatport Sounds — no matter who the producer — then you

buy a license to use the samples in your own productions. Note that you are not obtaining

OWNERSHIP of the sounds — you are in fact purchasing a LICENSE to use the sounds

within your musical compositions, whether or not your compositions are released

commercially. The license is non-transferable, so if you are using an illegal copy of the

product, you are not authorized to use the sounds. The original producer of the sounds

will always remain the owner of the actual sounds.

Unlike with the question regarding what purchasers can do with purchased songs, this answer

avoids addressing playback or technical issues and instead goes directly to the issues of practice

and performance. The answer also dissolves any significant difference between so-called

amateur and professional artists, emphasizing that “no matter who the producer” they both have


the opportunity to use these high quality products, “whether or not your compositions are

released commercially.”

The banner at the top of the “Sounds” web site category introduces the types of royalty-

free sounds offered that can be used in “your DJ sets and productions.” This wording shows just

how close the relationship is between DJing other artists’ songs and creating one’s own. The

skills cultivated for both complement each other and many modern hardware devices and

software packages have both capabilities. Boundaries between the two activities blur as

DJs/artists remix, manipulate, re-purpose, re-contextualize, and reinvent audio. The headline for

this banner, “Create your own sound,” might seem misleading considering that consumers are

purchasing audio clips, short performances, and programmed synthesizer presets that do not

originate with them. The raw materials can be combined in innumerable ways, however; they can

be sculpted through effects and audio editors where they are stretched, truncated, looped, and

twisted beyond recognition or they may be kept largely intact, as a starting point for an artist’s

creation or as an addition to a DJ set.

In addition to the content sub-categories organizing the web site category, “News,”

discussed above, stories are further collected through tags. Beatport News uses two categories of

labels: one called “filed under” and the other called “tagged as.” A story may be tagged

according to the DJs/artists and record labels featured and other content specific to that article.

The links designated “filed under” often correspond with content categories for the “News” web

site category. For example, a story may be filed under “Beatport news” and thus corresponds to

the content category “Beatport Alerts” at the top of the page. Additionally, a story may be filed

under a genre content category (e.g., electro house or techno) and other labels, such as “track of


the day,” “morning roundup,” “Friday matinée,” “moving pictures” (for videos), “festivals,” and

“interview.”

Of particular interest to this study are stories filed under “Tools of the Trade,” “DJ Tips,”

“Production Tips,” and “Culture.” Stories filed under “Tools of the Trade” feature reviews of

new hardware and software and interviews with DJs/artists regarding the software and hardware

they use. “DJ Tips” and “Production Tips” provide advice when performing and composing

music, respectively. “Culture” stories tend to cover histories and electronic music’s influence in

other arenas, such as television, visual art, etc. These four categories of stories show the ways in

which the web site moves beyond covering news directly impacting the purchasing activities of

customers on the web site, which constitute the core of its business, to the practices,

technologies, and histories that form the fabric its target audiences’ interest and participation in

the sub-culture.

These interests and practices intersect with the company’s business model and its web

site’s design when it comes to helping consumers find new music to purchase, a desire that the

company is, unsurprisingly, intent on meeting but one that also constitutes an important part of

the art of DJing. The web site category for “Beatport Pro,” a software application that adds

functionality when searching for music to purchase on Beatport.com, explicitly references the

tradition of searching for and collecting music that can form a DJs signature sound. Where the

description of the application explains that the audio player with which consumers preview songs

can continuously run in the background, it reads, “Now there is no excuse for not crate digging

24/7.” Sirois (2008, p. 21) has defined “record digging” or “crate digging” in the hip hop

community as “the task of actively leafing through records in order to find a specific record —

similar to a hunt to find the right song or sound.” While Sirois has shown the ways in which the


DJ community has a complex relationship with digital music, the present research takes interest

in how the verbal content on Beatport.com attempts to thread into the practices of its target

subculture by invoking its traditions. Searching through stacks of vinyl for new music is

“considered an art form” (Sirois, p. 21), particularly by other DJs, because the DJ’s taste and

style defines him or her to audiences. Sirois has called this “consumption as production”: “It is

the record-buying DJ (the cultural consumer) who moves into the role of cultural producer by re-

imagining the turntable and records as modes of production” (p. 15).

Thus, the music content categories and searching tools, more than mere web site

conventions for organizing a large catalog of digital content, assist visitors in fulfilling this

central activity of DJ culture. The genre categories are important for more than just guiding a

visitor’s taste to an appropriate section of the catalog. When building a DJ set based on the genre

tech-house, for instance, a consumer familiar with the genre classifications would know that

minimal, electronica, and deep house songs would be a natural fit, whereas hard dance,

progressive house, and raggae/dub might sound out of place. The ability to sort songs by beats

per minute (BPM), see the musical key of previewed songs, filter results to include only music

exclusive to Beatport.com, and the ability to select sub-genre sorting within larger genres all

assist DJs when building sets. Therefore, these features are strongly connected to the practices,

performance, and identities of DJs.

Typographic signifiers. One font is nearly consistently used throughout the web site,

though the weight, capitalization, and color vary. This sans-serif font in the Helvetica genre is

clean and clearly legible. The spacing between words and letters looks smaller than with some

fonts. This makes the text compact and lends some flair but does not impact readability. The

color varies primarily between white, black, and gray tones, although the signature green is used


at times for emphasis. When visitors play an audio preview, for example, information for the

currently playing clip uses three colors of fonts to produce a hierarchy of information: song title

and mix name in white; artist name(s) in signature green; and date of release, total length of

song, releasing label, and genre in gray separated by subtle “pipe” characters.

Figure 1. Example of details provided for currently playing audio preview.

The consistency of this font contrasts dramatically, at times, with the often stylish and heavily

artistic fonts used in the artwork for music releases, which are created independent from Beatport

and submitted by artists, labels, and music distribution services. The precise nature of the font

used throughout the web site could reflect on the genre of electronic music generally, which

comes from the certainty of voltages and the mathematical calculations of digital processes.

The Beatport logo differs from the font used consistently throughout the web site

primarily for textual information. It uses a much more stylized, distinctive font in the site’s

signature green with the addition of two artistic flourishes: a graphical silhouette of a pair of

headphones with a downward facing arrow between the ear cups and the same downward facing

arrow elongating the “r.” Each letter is created with one solid, thick line with a clear beginning

and end that stops just short of overlapping within the letter. Except for small portions of some

letters, curves are made with swift changes in direction so that an angle is created, but the angle

is softened by the curvature of the line. The font reflects on a futuristic aesthetic, resembling the

pathways of a circuit board or the low resolution fonts of early digital devices, a reference also

seen in the signature green that is reminiscent of monochromatic computer monitors.

Visual representational signifiers. Although Beatport.com is an image heavy web site,

few of those images were created specifically for or by the designers of Beatport.com. Labels


and DJs/artists create or commission graphics for use on their releases, and DJs/artists submit

their own images for their profiles. Additionally, the images used in the “News” web site

category come from the full stories linked therein. Although all these images could be fruitful for

analysis, the sheer number and variety, and the fact that these images do not originate with those

involved with the design of Beatport.com, put them beyond the scope of this research. What

might yield some insights into the web site’s cultural expressiveness in relation to these images,

though, are their ratio, borders, size, sequencing, and position, all characteristics Pauwels (2012,

pp. 254 – 255) has identified as key aspects of visual signifiers.

On the home page, the largest image is a rectangular, automated “flip book” of music

releases newly added to the catalog. Where applicable, administrators have placed the “Beatport

exclusive” icon over the top left of the image.

Figure 2. Example of exclusive icon overlaying the artwork of a new release.

Colored a distinct light blue, this exclusive badge has a small, five-sided star to the right of the

text and overlays a small portion of the release art, with the art wrapping around it and giving it

prominence. To the right of this automated scroller, a selection of three currently featured DJ

charts, with three additional charts available if the user clicks the scroll button, displays what a

(often high-contrast) photograph of the artist(s) with the name typed in a corner. Presumably, the


typed name is added by administrators of Beatport.com, because its custom placement needs to

suit this display area and the font matches that used elsewhere on the web site but with more

weight (i.e., bold). All of these pictures – the music release cover images and the photographs of

DJ/artists – are active links to their respective content.

As stated earlier, Beatport.com is an image-heavy web site, in part, because there is a

picture “attached” to every piece of content and it is displayed, in different ratios (i.e., sizes) and

as an active link, in many different places. For example, if visitors click on the art for a new

release on the home page, they are taken to a more detailed content page for that music release,

which includes the same art in a smaller ratio. Then, if visitors click to listen to a preview of that

content, an even smaller thumbnail version of the art appears in the playback window that

appears directly under the web site category tabs. The art is displayed smaller still in visitors’

listening queue. Interestingly, the standard encoding and delivery method for digital content

purchased from Beatport.com, MP3, cannot carry with them the art information. Despite the

many ways in which the web site utilizes visual signifiers for its content, this data resides only on

the web site, for the most part.

Although DJs/artists upload their own pictures to fill out their profile on the web site,

some of these pictures have been re-purposed in advertisements for web site services. How and

which images are presented potentially provide insight into the cultural expressiveness of the

web site. For example, five cropped images of DJs/artists are used in a web advertisement

promoting the feature that allows visitors to upload DJ mixes and sell them through the web site

if they exclusively contain original songs and/or music purchased from Beatport.com.


Figure 3. Advertisement for "mixes" using DJ/artist pictures in nominal mode.

The photographs are all black and white, tightly focused on the faces looking at the lens directly

or in profile with great degrees of shadow and contrast. In part, these photographs are likely used

for the recognition associated with these DJs/artists, which is reinforced by the text that actually

names them, inviting visitors to “join [their] ranks.” The DJ/artist profile images are presented in

the “physical mode” elsewhere on the web site — that is, they present a particular person — but

here the images are used in the “nominal mode,” representing a class of people (Pauwels, 2012,

p. 254). Presenting these dramatic photographs while inviting user-generated content attempts to

connect the mystique of performance, of commanding a fan base, to participatory means

available to any visitor who purchases music from the web site and has the technical knowledge

and resources to create new content.

Many of the advertisements promoting Beatport.com services, in fact, use images in the

nominal mode, which create linkages between the content and services offered and visitors’

active engagement through practice and performance. For example, an advertisement for

upgrading audio files to lossless formats pictures a traditional hardware DJ set up.


Figure 4. Advertisement picturing traditional DJ audio hardware.

The two turntables and a mixer are pictured in black and white with no performer visible. This is

a general class of musical equipment. The nature of the referent is material and inorganic, but the

style lends dramatic mystique to the promising thrill of performance. The need to understand this

picture in the nominal mode is particularly evident considering that Beatport.com is not in the

business of selling vinyl records or DJ hardware, and a laptop computer, which is nearly

ubiquitous today regardless of other hardware used, is not pictured, despite this being one of the

primary ways in which DJs/artists interact with the content they purchase from the web site.

Another advertisement that pictures DJ equipment may be contrasted with the one

promoting lossless formats. This advertisement promoting the DJ charts — lists of

approximately 10 songs selected by DJs/artists as current favorites and available for sale on

Beatport.com — shows hands manipulating a mixer and a turntable with a vinyl record on it.

Figure 5. Advertisement picturing hands manipulating DJ hardware.


The person’s face is not visible, but the hands appear to be male and may belong to a person of

color. The choice to picture an anonymous person of color, nominally standing in for “DJs … all

over the world,” invokes the history of a sub-culture that, as has been stated in many

publications, was traditionally black and gay (e.g., Garcia, 2014).

The Beatport name comprises a good portion of its logo, but it includes two additional

graphical elements: a silhouette of headphones with an arrow pointing down between the ear

cups and the same downward pointing arrow extending from the “r” in the name.

Figure 6. Primary Beatport.com logo.

As discussed above, the logo appears at the top of the homepage in light, neon-like green.

Elsewhere, though, it appears in white, usually when against a dark background. The styling of

the graphical headphones shows cups that surround the ear, a style generally preferred by DJs

who need to be able to hear or “cue” the next song to blend into the one currently playing over

loudspeakers. The downward pointing arrow used twice in the logo is likely a play on the word

“download,” and so acts as a graphical representation of the act of receiving musical content in

digital form over the Internet. The headphones and downward pointing arrow are used in

combination elsewhere on the web site as a kind of shorthand for the full logo. For instance, the

“My Beatport” feature spells out both the name of the feature and uses a shorthand with the

combination of “my” and the headphones graphic.


Figure 7. Close-up of "My Beatport" tab showing adapted use of logo.

Also, account holders “follow” DJs/artists and record labels, which adds them as a favorited item

to the “My Beatport” feature, using a button comprised of the word “follow” and the headphones

graphic.

Figure 8. "Follow" graphical button using adapted logo.

Other functional buttons use graphical elements that signify how they are used by

visitors. When visitors hover the cursor over the artwork for a music release or view the detailed

product page, a blue, oval shaped button provides the option to play a preview of a song

immediately, using the traditional filled triangle pointing to the right, or to queue the preview for

later listening, using three stacked lines that represent a list.

Figure 9. Audio preview playing and queuing button.

After clicking to play or queue a music clips, the previewing pane that opens at the top of the

screen has its own dedicated play button similarly styled but with “seek” buttons — two triangles


closely aligned pointing right for forward and left for backward — as a way to move forward or

backward in the queue.

The previewing pane also includes a graphical representation of the currently playing

song in a waveform display. Two views are available: the default that shows just the previewed

portion of the song and a full song display that shows where the previewable portion is in

relation to the rest of the song.

Figure 10. Expanded audio preview waveform display.

Visitors may click anywhere within the previewable portion to skip playback forward or

backward. Although the waveform display is a relatively “rough” view of the audio data, it

allows visitors to see peaks and valleys in the song, which typically correspond with portions of

relative quiet and high energy or louder portions. Whereas songs of other genres of music, such

as rock, are typically broken down into verses and choruses, for example, some electronic dance

music genres are thought of in terms of intros (where the beat is introduced), build ups (where

the energy of the song gradually increases), breakdowns (where the primary beat or melody is

changed in some way and the energy is decreased), and outros (where the primary beat repeats to

allow the DJ to seamlessly transition between two songs by synching the beat of the outgoing

song with the incoming one). Build ups, breakdowns, and high energy portions of the song are

generally visible where applicable, allowing visitors to skip to the portion that may inform their

purchasing decision because they can evaluate how the song might fit within a DJ set.

Visitors add items to their “shopping cart” by clicking on an icon that, unsurprisingly,

graphically represents a shopping cart. More interesting, though, is how the web site graphically

represents the functionality of the “hold bin.”


Figure 11. “Hold bin” icon.

The hold bin acts as a wish list, a place to store items for future purchase that visitors do not

want to check out with immediately. Visitors move items from the shopping cart to the hold bin

by clicking an icon resembling a 3.5-inch diskette, the dominant portable data storage device of

20th

century computing, now rendered obsolete.

Sonic signifiers. Visitors to digital music retailers expect to be able to hear audio to

inform their purchasing decisions. On Beatport.com, there is no automated audio that starts

playing upon visiting the site. Visitors must choose what and when music plays. While this

discourages a comprehensive analysis of sonic signifiers because of the large catalog, an analysis

of the web site features that facilitate visitors’ listening activities and the ways in which the web

site steers visitors towards certain sonic content may be analyzed for cultural meaning.

As mentioned above, graphical buttons allow visitors to instantly play audio previews or

add them to a queue for later listening. The audio preview pane that opens at the top of the screen

when visitors play or queue an audio clip includes several features: seek buttons for skipping

forward and backwards in the queue; a waveform display that provides a visual representation of

the audio currently playing and allows visitors to jump to particular sections of the audio; a

thumbnail display of the music release’s art; information on the artist, recording label, genre,

release date, tempo, and musical key; a button to add the currently playing song to the shopping

cart; and an optional extended pane that displays a portion of the queue.

As detailed above, the concept of “crate digging” — discovering new and exciting music

to bring to audiences through performance — is an “art” important to DJ culture (Sirois, 2008, p.

21). To facilitate browsing and searching activities, Beatport.com gives a degree of precedence


to sonic content by programming the listening pane to act independently of the searching and

browsing window. In other words, visitors may continue following new links and performing

new searches while keeping their queue and currently playing preview constant. This allows for

continuous background listening while performing other activities on the web site. Simultaneous

listening and searching is further facilitated by the available “key commands,” which are

keyboard shortcuts for controlling the playback of audio previews (moving forwards or

backwards within a song, for example) and the listening queue (skipping to the next preview or

placing a song in the shopping cart).

The highly customizable nature of visitors’ experience with the web site does not mean

that there are no efforts to steer visitors to particular sonic content, though. The homepage

promotes new and exclusive content, DJ charts from high profile DJs/artists, new royalty-free

sound packs, the top 10 songs overall, the top 5 releases of the week, and a link to the top 100

releases overall. In addition, each genre has top 10 and top 100 listings. Thus, the design of the

web site allows for the freedom to search and explore, but there is plenty of curated sonic content

that guides visitors to the most popular content.

Layout and design signifiers. The web site categories that sell digital products to

consumers — namely, “Music,” “Sounds,” and “Mixes” — present an open structure, in that

visitors may search for particular artists or songs, follow links to explore new labels, browse

genres, and more. However, there are efforts to steer visitors to curated selections. This is

particularly evident on the home page, which presents visitors with DJ charts, new and exclusive

releases, and top selling songs. The genre categories, in themselves, also could be considered

restricting, or at least guiding, visitors’ use of the web site because visitors are encouraged to

compartmentalize styles of music. This serves a function within the DJ community because


visitors with specialized knowledge of these genres seek music to fit within their performance

style and even consumers just interested in listening to music may have genres they prefer. In

addition, there is plenty of overlap between the genres, as a collection of songs in an album may

appear primarily under one genre with individual songs cross-classified with other genres. Even

so, the web site clearly presents genres as a primary method of directing visitor activity.

The centered orientation of written and visual elements, with a good deal of surrounding

white space, and clear top-bottom expectations, particularly in the “News” web site category

where stories are ordered chronologically according to publication, are fairly common design

characteristics shared with other web sites. Moreover, even though aspects of the web site’s

visual design lend a futuristic or forward-thinking tone — such as the signature green, slick but

classy graphical elements, and advanced queuing and playback options — the approach to selling

and leading consumers to new content is fairly traditional and conservative rather than

innovative. Despite some peculiarities granted to the subcultural audience, such as providing

beats per minute and key signatures for songs, lists of top-selling songs and new releases began

with traditional media long ago. Moreover, using the catalog seems a functional, rather than

revolutionary, experience.

Beatport.com sets itself apart from other music retail web sites in the range and

placement of features not directly associated with selling digital content and the types of user-

generated content solicited. The three web site categories not directly associated with selling

digital content — “DJs,” “Play,” and “News” — receive equal placement at the top of the

window as primary web site categories, rather than being subordinated and potentially receiving

less attention farther down the page.


Figure 12. Web site category orientation.

Moreover, whereas many online retailers with large catalogs of digital content offer the

opportunity to submit reviews of products as the primary interactive feature and the main source

of user-generated content, Beatport.com does not have an option for submitting music reviews.

The web site categories “News” and “Play” allow visitors with registered accounts to comment

on news stories and review user-generated remix submissions, respectively, but the unique

interactive features of Beatport.com either require technical knowledge of audio editing and

production. They are suited to visitors whose involvement in the subculture goes beyond casual

listening. The web site category “Play” offers audio “stems” of songs from which visitors may

produce their own remixes using music software and hardware, requiring knowledge of those

music-making systems. The web site category “DJs” allows visitors to create a DJ profile and

include upcoming live engagements, chart selections, music videos, DJ mixes uploaded to

Beatport’s “Mixes” web site category, and embedded audio files available on Soundcloud.com, a

popular audio streaming web site.

Analysis of cross-modal interplay.

Image/written text relations and typography-written text relations. Every music release

for sale on Beatport.com has artwork or a “cover,” in the traditional sense of albums and CDs.

This artwork “travels” with the music and appears in different contexts: as a highlighted or new

release on the homepage, as a zoomable image on the detailed product page, and as a thumbnail

image in the audio preview queue. Often, the image includes text with the artist name, release

title, and the releasing label, but the web site also provides this information as hyperlinked text,

so a visitor can click on any piece of this information in the detailed product page or in the queue


and find more music composed or curated by that DJ/artist or released by that music label. The

web site additionally provides the date of release, the total length of songs, genre classification,

price, beats per minute, and musical key signature. The text of the BPM and key signature

overlay a corner of the graphical representation of the waveform of the currently playing audio

preview, essentially “tagging” that image with this textual information.

The Beatport logo itself is an instance of cross-modal interplay. The logo has a distinctive

typography, which has a vaguely futuristic aesthetic communicated through the shape of

individual letters and the color. This typography is not duplicated in any other headings. Two

graphical elements accompany the logo: a silhouette of headphones with a downward-pointing

arrow between the ear cups and the same arrow extending from the bottom of the “r” in

“Beatport.” The headphones do not always accompany this unique typeface. Some headings,

such as “My Beatport,” use the unique typeface for the word “Beatport” but do not include the

headphones. The downward-pointing arrow extending the “r” always accompanies the Beatport

name if it is in the unique typeface, though. Watzman and Re (2012) have explored the purpose

of such textual logos in their prescriptions for usable visual design:

Because they are essentially typographic fashion statements, decorative typefaces can

either reinforce or distract from the overall message or brand of a particular product or

organization. (p. 326)

Although the present research does not determine effectiveness or usability, the elements of this

logo can be viewed as reinforcing the company’s brand by explicitly and symbolically

integrating aspects both new and traditional to the its target audience. The headphones are a

traditional piece of hardware equipment utilized by DJs in performance, while the downward-


pointing arrow represents the relatively new adoption of digital music (in the sense of

downloading) as the primary source of content for performances.

By reinforcing the coupling of these graphical and textual elements through repetition, it

seems natural that they may be de-coupled in various ways elsewhere and still stand for the

whole — the Beatport brand itself. For example, the “My Beatport” window replaces the

graphical headphones with “MY” in a blue oval followed by “Beatport” in the distinctive font,

but less obviously the top of the window combines the blue “MY” with only the graphical

headphones. The implication is that the graphical headphones with the downward pointing arrow

by themselves stand in for the full logo and reinforce the brand.

Sound/image-relations. As detailed above, the music art travels with each release and

adapts to various uses through ratio (i.e., visual size) changes, thus reinforcing the relationship

between the images and sounds. While digital artwork attached to digital music is not unusual in

Web 2.0 environments and with mobile devices, it has particular significance in DJ culture

because an album’s artwork was usually the first contact DJs would have with a record while

“crate digging” (Sirois, 2008, p. 21) for new sounds and became the primary method by which

they located that record in their collection during a DJ performance.

The images used to begin playback of audio previews and navigate to the next or

previous song in the queue are familiar and standard, both in analog and digital environments.

The waveform display, on the other hand, is less common. When audio playback of a preview

starts, a green highlight moves along the waveform synched with the audio. Visitors may jump

ahead or backward in the playback by clicking on a portion of the playback or using shortcut

keys to move forwards or backwards.


Overall design/linguistic, visual and auditory interplay. Beatport.com presents a

“unified view” (Pauwels, 2012, p. 256) with a design aesthetic, textual signifiers, and auditory

features that give the sense of appealing to the technological and “futuristic.” Despite the fact

that many of the technologies for music creation and playback have been available for years, the

aesthetic of “machine music” still tends to be considered with an eye towards the future. This

may owe itself partially to the “other worldly” and unnatural sounds achieved by sound synthesis

and partially to the technologies employed by its practitioners, which often incorporate current

trends for sound production and manipulation.

Beatport.com also positions itself in a supportive role for the subculture by being a

resource, not only for new content forming the basis of performance and composition, but also as

a source of news and information to entertain and inform. The resources for discovering music

are tailored to the unique ways in which DJs utilize music (e.g., the importance of beats per

minute, key signature, interactive waveforms, and genre), the royalty-free samples are similarly

organized by genre and the function they might serve in original compositions, and the news

content features tutorials on both the technical and business aspects of music production and

DJing, as well as entertainment updates for fans. The overall design aesthetic and the textual,

visual, and sonic signifiers work together in this sense.

In-Depth “Negative” Analysis. Beatport.com does not offer visitors the opportunity to

review music releases or sound production packs on the web site. This is notable because many

retail web sites, whether selling digital content or physical items (or both, in the case of

Amazon.com, for example), use customer-generated reviews as a way of informing consumers

and encouraging engagement with and loyalty to the web site. What is perhaps most surprising in

this regard, beyond Beatport.com’s apparent similarity with other digital retailers in other


respects, is that the web site does not include consumer reviews when, through its design and

verbal signifiers, it purports to support and foster a community of subcultural participants, rather

than just consumers. Because of this Beatport.com also seems a likely host for messaging

forums, where visitors could discuss, share, and comment on techniques, technologies, and

trends, but it does not include this feature. Some discussions could occur on the web site

category “News” as visitors comment on linked articles, videos, and interviews, but there is no

dedicated messaging forum with topics and threads.

Embedded Point(s) of View or “Voice” and Implied Audience(s) and Purposes

Analysis of POVs and constructed personae. Beatport.com conveys a strong sense of a

unified point of view (POV), despite showcasing a wide variety of artists with different musical

styles, experience, and demographic backgrounds. The designers choose to organize this catalog

of information according to what they see as the most immediate needs of their customer base,

which ultimately characterize the practices of electronic music DJs/artists. This results in the

option for sorting almost all information available on the web site, including purchasable music

content but also news stories, according to genre. Moreover, such organizational strategies

require DJs/artists to speak through constructed personae defined in terms of information the

web site identifies as key. Thus, for example, DJs/artists are unable to identify themselves as

multi-instrumentalists or as members of an ethnic, religious, or age group. While it seems

obvious that some of these possibilities simply have no place on a music retail web site, they are

important for illuminating how the web site presents and shapes content. DJs/artists are invited to

construct personae through the music they compose and the music they select to DJ, both of

which must fit within pre-defined genre categories allowed by the web site, as well as a

promotional image, presented quite literally through a photograph or graphic submitted to the


web site, and a short biography. In a sense, they are asked to “speak through” their music, for the

most part.

Another effect of this unified POV can be seen in the web site category “News.” Almost

every news story has a byline, and some include a short biography of the author at the end of the

article. However, the nature of the articles tends to prevent against the authors establishing a

unique voice. Many of the articles alert readers through short descriptions to content of interest

from around the web. Some of the interviews and product reviews offer more latitude and

opportunity for developing a voice, but it seems unlikely that visitors would be tempted to follow

certain authors based on such short samples of their writing. Moreover, there is no option for

displaying all stories written by a particular author. Stories may only be displayed according to

pre-defined web site categories.

Analysis of intended/implied primary and secondary audience(s). Visitors who are

fans of electronic and dance music could certainly use Beatport.com to consume music they

enjoy, but they would not be utilizing the web site in full. The web site category “Play,” for

example, requires specialized technical knowledge in order for visitors to fully participate

beyond just commenting on other visitors’ remix submissions. Visitors must bring with them an

understanding of audio editing, sequencing, and composition — skills both artistic and technical

— in order to fully participate by submitting their own remixes. While no technical knowledge is

necessary to create a DJ/artist profile for the web site category “DJs,” and visitors may use the

category simply to keep up with DJs/artists whose work they enjoy, the range of options

available gears the creation and maintenance of a profile towards visitors who engage in a range

of subcultural practices: composing original music and creating DJ mixes, collecting songs for

DJ mixes into charts, and highlighting upcoming performances. The web site categories “News”


and “Mixes” similarly may be useful to the average music consumer, but “Mixes” invites visitors

to submit their own DJ mixes using their music collections and technical/artistic knowledge and

“News” includes an entire category of stories, “Tools of the trade,” that speaks to visitors role

not only focused on consumption but also production. Even the basic activities of searching for

and purchasing music have an element of subcultural specific activities, as explained above with

the concept of “crate digging” and the additional information provided with an eye towards the

needs of DJs (e.g., beats per minute and musical key signatures). Beatport.com also has an

industry-insider audience. As one of the largest and most influential digital musical retailers

specializing in electronic and dance music, journalists, DJs/artists, music labels, and other music

industry professionals use the web site’s top selling music releases as a barometer for “hot”

artists and trends.

Analysis of embedded goals and purposes. The most apparent goal of Beatport.com is

to sell music, but there is also a sense of supporting the practices of DJs/artists, both fostering

and promoting the electronic and dance music subculture, and acting in a tastemaker capacity

with curated selections and influential lists of top-selling music. In this sense, the web site also

sells a role —the technical mastery and artistry of the electronic music DJ/artist — and, with it,

the incumbent lifestyle, which may range from rock star-like hedonist to deftly serious artisan.

There comes with this a sense that certain ways of doing and being conform to this subculture

and others lie in opposition to it. Music should fit within certain genre categories, DJs/artists are

often a single individual or a duo but seldom more than that, acoustic musical instruments are

used sparingly or not at all, and so on.


Analysis of Information Organization and Spatial Priming Strategies

Structural and navigational options and constraints (dynamic organization). Visitors

to Beatport.com navigate the music catalog through various interactive tools and features.

Hyperlinked artist names, music labels, and genres allow visitors to move fluidly between

various categories of connected content, adding audio clips to the queue as they go and

previewing these songs, moving content to the shopping cart, and digging further. “My Beatport”

provides visitors with ready access to new content released by their favorite artists and labels,

and “DJs” provides visitors with a feed that updates them on the activities of DJs/artists they

follow. Moreover, the six primary web site categories, which provide different types and varying

degrees of interactivity, and only a portion of which entail selling content to the visitor, enjoy

relatively equal status as links at the top of the home page, rather than being subordinated under

multiple menus.

Analysis of priming strategies and gate keeping tools. While such navigational options

provide visitors a relatively open and customizable experience, there are efforts to guide visitors

to particular content and to encourage viewing content through established lenses. The tension

apparent between these two approaches may be explained through the design principles of

“adaptable” and “adaptive” systems.

Adaptable systems … use information obtained directly from the user — which in most

cases will represent that user’s desire. Because need and desire are not necessarily the

same thing, there is potential for a conflict of interests. When considering adaptive

systems, the underlying assumption is that the system knows better than the user what is

most appropriate. (Ashman et al., 2012, p. 577)


Beatport.com does not employ an adaptive architecture in the sense that it attempts to predict

visitor desire and suggest content based on previous purchases or searches, but the considerations

involved in designing adaptive systems are similar to those used by Beatport.com. Whereas some

adaptive systems, such as that used by Amazon.com, actively suggest content based on

personalized history, Beatport.com suggests content by tapping the tastes of accomplished and

recognized DJs/artists. DJ charts represent those artists’ top picks of the moment, which do not

necessarily correlate with top-selling or trending songs and more likely reflect those DJs’/artists’

ability to find under-recognized, yet quality, content that also imparts their own style.

Genre classifications, too, could be considered a type of adaptive system, but instead of

adapting individually to visitors, they reflect community-based classifications developed over

time by the subculture. These genre classifications evolve and fluctuate over time. In the web site

category, “Give us feedback,” visitors often request new or revised categories to reflect changing

trends or, in their opinion, to more accurately reflect new sounds or historically established ones.

Beatport’s response to one comment requesting a new genre classification summarizes the

administrators’ approach:

[W]e recognize the need to update our genre classification system. With the rapidly and

constant changing nature of music we are developing a system that will be more flexible

to adapt to changing styles and genres. Thanks for your patience while we work to get

things up and running. (Kljungberg, 2011)

Nearly 700 comments from other visitors to this post show what an important and often

contentious issue genre classifications are within the subculture. This issue gains significance in

the context of Beatport.com because visitors rely on these categories to search for and find


content useful and exciting to them, so there is a disconnect when the content they find through

these categories does not conform to their sense of the meaning of the genres.

Featured releases chosen by content specialists working for Beatport.com, furthermore,

guide visitors to new or interesting content. These curating efforts primarily present songs

according to how they could operate in a DJ set. Some examples include “Build-ups,

breakdowns, and the biggest drops”; “Losing the dancefloor? Save your set. Can’t-miss tracks to

bring them back”; and “Secret weapons: Surefire floor fillers.”

Analysis of outer directed and/or interactive features. As discussed above, the types

of interactivity prompted by Beatport.com differ from other online retailers of digital content.

Rather than soliciting reviews of products visitors participate in remix contests or upload their

own DJ mixes, both activities requiring technical expertise and artistry, and conduct image-

oriented maintenance activities by creating and updating a DJ profile, which highlight their

performance, composition, remixing, and “crate digging” skills. While visitors may share any

audio content they have uploaded to Soundcloud.com on their DJ profile, the web site exerts

tighter restrictions on content submitted by visitors that will be hosted on Beatport.com. An

uploaded DJ mix for the web site category “Mixes” must only feature songs purchased through

Beatport.com, and remixes uploaded to the contests may contain only royalty-free samples or

original sounds in combination with those copyrighted sounds provided from the original song

for the remixer to incorporate and manipulate.

Analysis of external hyperlinks. The web site category “News” contains the majority of

external hyperlinks. (Visitors may include external hyperlinks to social networking sites, videos,

and personal web sites on their DJ profile, but the web site’s staff do not have any direct

involvement with these profiles.) Much of the content in the “News” category links to external


web content with brief comments provided by the writer of that article. Because of the huge

variety of external content hyperlinked, a comprehensive review is beyond the scope of this

research project, but the content categories for articles are indicative of the values communicated

by the web site and how the target subculture is understood. There is a blend of both content

categories for fans of the music (e.g., “Festivals” and “Music video”) and those with a greater

degree of participation in technical and performance aspects (e.g., “Tools of the trade”), and

others content that could be useful to all levels of involvement (e.g., “Music news,” “Track of the

day,” “Morning roundup,” “Interview,” and “On rotation”).

Although the wide range of external links could be interpreted as an unfocused or clumsy

attempt to appeal to the widest swath of consumers, in the case of Beatport.com it speaks to the

many levels of subcultural participation, not only between visitors, but potentially within each

visitor. Many fans of electronic and dance music now create their own DJ mixes and compose

original songs and remixes as a result of the accessibility of relatively low-cost hardware,

software, and large catalogs of music and samples available for instant download.

Contextual Analysis, Provenance, and Inference

Pauwels (2012) introduced the contextual analysis phase of the framework with the

following:

When researching websites it is not only key to identify the most significant cultural

indicators, but furthermore to attribute these traits to cultural actors (culture of software

producers, community of users, peer group or sub cultures, personal preferences) and to

find out how this all amalgamates in extremely complex multi-authored cultural

expressions. (p. 258)


Application of the previous phases of the framework suggests that Beatport.com represents many

subcultural values, goals, and practices, which indirectly reflect a “community of users,” even

though the users themselves do not create the substantive content of the web site in the same

way, for example, that social networking sites rely on their users for content. The designers and

administrators of the web site profess that they value such a sense of community, stating that the

digital retail outlet is “for and by” DJs and articulating activities that support the community

(e.g., participating in remix contests, creating a DJ profile, uploading DJ mixes of purchased

music) and those that damage it (e.g., sharing purchased music, using unlicensed samples in

compositions).

Electronic dance music subcultures have historically pushed against legal boundaries,

particularly in regards to sampling and public performance of copyrighted sounds but also as a

result of defying private property regulations (i.e., illegal “warehouse raves”), association with

controlled substances, and alignment with disempowered and minority peoples (i.e., the roots of

house music are with the LGBTQ community and people of color (Garcia, 2014)). Electronic

dance music subculture still faces scrutiny and regulation despite moving into the mainstream. A

recent example is the revival of the body of laws known as “fueiho” that effectively outlaws

dancing in Japan, resulting in the closure of large and small clubs (Mie, 2012). After

mainstreaming, though, the music now has a diverse, international audience and institutional

support for clubs and festivals, some of which are held in key geographic locations of the genre’s

history, such as the Detroit Electronic Music Festival.

The proliferation of digital music, software, and affordable hardware technologies has

also had a mainstreaming and democratizing effect, which has influenced the sub-culture’s

relation to legal boundaries, production, and distribution.


The digital lies at the center of claims regarding root-and-branch changes in the way

culture is produced, disseminated, and consumed…. [A] new, less aristocratic, breed of

amateur has emerged. These are technologically literate, seriously engaged, and

committed practitioners… [T]he objects and tools that once separated amateur and

professional now travel between them more readily. The complex machines and spaces

that once imposed financial barriers to production are no longer necessary prerequisites

for quality. And boundaries around technical expertise are more permeable with the rise

of mass higher education and dispersed digital technologies of communication. (Prior,

2010, pp. 399, 401 – 402)

The analysis of Beatport.com presented here reveals how the blending of traditional subcultural

practices with new technologies and an expanded pool of consumers and producers results in a

negotiation between valued traditions (including the sense of exclusivity meant to maintain a

subcultural “grand syntagma” (Pauwels, 2012, p. 257)) and transformative, democratizing

influences. The dialectic between preservationist tendencies and revolutionary circumstances has

further transformed concepts of authorship, performance, and authenticity, all of which is evident

in the cultural expressiveness of Beatport.com.

In a video interview with Ali Shirazinia, the techno DJ/artist known as Dubfire, linked to

in the web site category “News,” he described some of the issues surrounding modern-day

mediated performance and the role of hardware and software technologies:

The key is to use this technology to find your own sort of voice within it….We all have

access to the same tools, but it’s how you use it, how you give it a personality — your

personality — that makes you unique, makes you stand out from everyone else, because

everyone’s a DJ now. (Jackson, 2013)


The affordability of hardware and software and the proliferation of digital content and

communication may mean that “everyone’s a DJ now,” but Beatport.com expresses some

acceptable, authentic, and legal ways in which visitors may participate in the subculture. These

ways of being and doing facilitate the sentiment for “finding your own sort of voice” described

by Shirazinia but also create barriers for entry that tend to, unsurprisingly, coincide with the

company’s business model.

The phrase “create your own sound,” used in the banner ad for royalty-free packs sold by

Beatport.com, points to the larger issue of authorship in modern music making, particularly in

electronic and hip hop genres where sampling and other technologies are integral. Sirois and

Martin (2006) found the following through interviews with various hip hop artists:

The overwhelming feeling that most of these producers have is that sampling is hip-hop.

The Akai MPC [a digital sampling instrument] is to the producer what the ivory keys

were to Monk or Ellington, and the artists’ use of both tools is essentially the backbone to

their respective musical genres. (p. 25)

The significance of such tools, whether hardware or software based, is a theme referenced by

another ad created by Beatport to tie together both its remix contests and its samples library.

While any portion of an artist’s remix may come from parts of the original song, adding

additional layers of sounds or replacing elements is common, and Beatport.com hopes to meet

customer by presenting its sample library as “tools for your remix.” The tools offered by

Beatport.com may be digital, but the practice of working with existing audio to create something

new that reflects as much (often, more so) on the remixer as it does the original artist is part of a

tradition.


The modern remix, with its roots in dancehall, disco and dub reggae, is not invented with

digital production, of course. In fact, the production of dance floor remixes was a feature

both of multi-track recording devices and of DJ techniques in the 1960s and 1970s. What

software applications such as Logic do, however, is favour the instantaneous malleability

of music on screen, as moveable chunks rather than as potentialities achieved through the

employment of laborious tape edits or tools such as razor blades. (Prior, 2009, p. 87)

Therefore, while techniques and tools may have evolved over time, the verbal signifiers

contained in these ads reflect upon this tradition of music making and performance. At the same

time, though, two barriers to participation are communicated: 1) knowledge and understanding of

music-making technologies and 2) the sanctioned use of legal sounds. As Pauwels (2012, p. 259)

has stated, the design of web sites may act to “preclude[] certain uses or users (e.g. because a

certain expensive tool is needed or when a particular knowledge or skill is required) or

stimulate[] a certain conduct or choice.” In this case, the tools provided by Beatport.com (i.e.,

samples) are not particularly expensive or scarce, although the knowledge and other tools used to

produce a remix must be acquired individually. The result reigns in the activities of today’s

DJs/artists in contradiction to a long history of indiscriminate sampling and public performance

of copyrighted sounds characteristic of the subculture.

The web site category “Sounds” further exemplifies the give-and-take between

democratization and thresholds for entry. This web site category refers to the content categories

as “Styles” instead of “genres.” While it shares some styles with the genres under the web site

category “Music,” it has some that are unique to it. There are two reasons why these unique

styles appear here, both of which pertain to how these products are used by DJs/artists. First,

“Drums,” “Orchestral,” “Sound FX,” and “Vocal” take visitors to the section of the catalog with


those particular types of samples and loops. When visitors choose “Orchestral,” for example,

they are presented only with collections of sounds that relate to orchestral instruments and

arrangements, such as violins, movie scores, and concert piano. Second, “MIDI” and

“Presets/Patches” relate to music technologies used by artists. Artists use presets and patches to

expand the sound creation possibilities of digital instruments. A collection of presets, for

example, give artists a set of programs to be interpreted by a software synthesizer to create

sounds, which then can be modified using the synthesizer’s parameters. MIDI stands for

“Musical Instrument Digital Interface” and was developed in the early 1980s to facilitate

“communication between two or more electronic instruments” (Mueth, 1993, p. 49). Today,

MIDI transmits the same information regarding note pitch, duration, and performance whether

the communication occurs between hardware or software instruments.

In general terms, MIDI communications systems enable, for example, a computer to

control a keyboard or drum machine, or to receive, store and manipulate data (finally,

sounds) generated by such an ‘instrument’ (instruments in this context are often referred

to as, ‘MIDI controllers’). During the time that the musical information (textures,

rhythms, melodies, tempi, etc) is stored in digital form, it can be manipulated and edited

like other kinds of computer data. (Durant, 1990, p. 181)

Thus, the MIDI packs available on Beatport.com contain coded performances that may be used

with any platform — hardware or software — able to interpret standardized MIDI signals. The

terms “patch” and “MIDI” have their own historical context and speak to an audience with

technical knowledge of music creation technology.

While the use of such terms is understandable given their established history, they are

used without any indication of what those terms mean to the uninitiated, which may have the


effect of excluding beginners by establishing knowledge prerequisites. Sirois (2008, pp. 22 – 23)

found that many DJs in the hip hop community believe new DJs must conscientiously “pay their

dues” by learning, researching, and enacting the traditions of the sub-culture to avoid being

branded “microwave DJs” — those who take advantage of accessible digital technologies and

brand themselves a DJ without what many in the community believe is the proper amount of

respect given through knowledge and experience. Beatport.com, in some senses, also erects

thresholds for entry while at the same time benefitting from digital technologies and

democratization.

Thus, tension arises in the relationship between modern and historical music distribution,

production, and performance. Beatport.com does not mythologize the past or disregard its

influence. The web site expects certain competencies from visitors wishing to substantively

participate in the sub-culture — competencies that are rooted in a historical context aided by

analog technologies and the subcultural practices that developed around them. At the same time,

digital technology enables the web site to operate: digitization being the very thing that has

democratized information and has, in turn, increased the accessibility of hardware technologies.

In other words, the “community” Beatport.com operates within utilizes the exclusivity of its

traditions and specialized competencies alongside the modern-day, democratic, “free and equal

access for all” ethos still pervasive since the early days of the public Internet, wrought by the

promise of infinitely duplicable and accessible digital resources and rampant media convergence.

Discussion

Beatport.com brings together the web site design concept of “personas” — “fictitious,

specific, and concrete representations of target users” (Pruitt & Adlin, 2012, p. 1056) — and

various subculturally-specific identity formation theories, such as “aura” — the transmutation of


recordings into social sounds through technologically mediated dexterous acts (Sirois, 2008, p.

17) — and “brand-name author-god” — the amplification of the impact of recorded music

through recontextualization and performance (Herman, 2006, pp. 22, 25), by explicitly and

implicitly recognizing in a digital context the significance of technologies, both digital and

material, and technologically mediated social performance to the practices and traditions of its

target audience: the electronic dance music subculture. Present in Beatport.com’s “design”

(Kress, 2010) are coded representations of material technologies, both past and present. The web

site’s design reveals how it is a “realization” of individuals’ “interest in their world” (Kress, p.

6) and the ways in which culture is “transmitted,” in Debray’s (1997) sense, through

technologies. Ultimately, this research applies the framework developed by Pauwels (2012) to a

particular case, thus proving its effectiveness as a tool for analyzing the cultural expressiveness

of web sites using multimodal means. At the same time, the particularities of Beatport.com and

the subculture it serves point out opportunities for revising the theoretical underpinnings of the

framework — particularly with regards to the embedded nature of web site activities — to

increase its effectiveness when applied a wide range of research interests.

Contextual changes have altered the landscape of this music culture and set the stage for

the web site, but it has not abandoned the traditional ways of being and doing in the subculture.

On the contrary, the historical practices and circumstances have clearly informed the design of

Beatport.com. As a result of both the democratizing influence of digitization and the

continuation of certain key practices and values, Beatport.com expresses, in part, the changing

landscape of DJ/artist communities, electronic dance music culture, music production, and music

distribution. While there is less emphasis in contemporary DJ communities on specific tactile

skills (e.g., vinyl record and turntable manipulation) because of the increase of options for


performance and composition, some technical competencies still characterize the community and

are prerequisites for substantive participation, as is evident in the cultural expressiveness of

Beatport.com. These practices and types of knowledge, coupled with increased accessibility of

digital content and hardware interfaces, have substantially increased the number of potential

participants, but the knowledge and experience thresholds remain in place to create the sense of a

“community” with shared values, and goals. Thus, both the subculture and the web site itself are

also cultural actors, in this sense.

Beatport.com may be characterized as a “virtual subcultural clearinghouse,” in contrast to

other retail web sites for the consumption of digital goods. Tepper, Hargittai, and Touve (2008)

have identified two ways in which scholars see virtual media catalogs influencing consumer

behavior: (1) “the sheer size of the new virtual catalogues will incite people to experiment and

discover new things … [and] technology has reduced the cost of searching and browsing” and

(2) virtual catalogs become a part of existing “social networks for helping individuals find

information and make purchasing decisions” (p. 207). The concept of a “virtual subcultural

clearinghouse” proposes a third possible explanation, which combines these two seemingly polar

positions but also focuses on the ways in which consumer behavior online intersects with

experiential factors, use, and practices. This grounded theory describes a site of embedded

interrelations between offline and online spaces (Orgad, 2006) wherein users act out significant

aspects of, in this case, the dance and electronic music subculture. Beatport.com is a site of

convergence, not just of modes of media and consumption but also of practices, creative

expressions, and technologically mediated forms of engagement. While many retail web sites

include participatory elements, such as eliciting customer reviews of products, as a method of

increasing engagement, Beatport.com relies on certain forms of active participation, many of


which occur outside of the web site and that require technical knowledge and use of material

technologies not sold by Beatport.

The term “clearinghouse” is useful in this instance for two reasons. First, as many have

observed, traditional media gatekeepers have all but disappeared in the wake of media

convergence on the Internet. Beatport.com has an open, free-roaming structure where visitors

choose to explore content according to a variety of characteristics, such as genre, releasing label,

and newness. Many of the traditional gatekeeping practices are likely preserved behind the

scenes, which is beyond the scope of this research, but Beatport.com distinguishes itself from a

digital retail outlet where consumer activity is largely limited to consumption with little attention

to how users engage with the information products sold, particularly with regards to material

technologies and the practices used in relation to them. Thus, the signifiers analyzed in this

research build a picture of a web site that contradicts understandings of the media landscape that

characterize the materiality of production and dissemination as the sole purview of media

“technorati” (Mcnamara, 2010, p. 120). The design and content of the web site reflect past and

present practices of its audience — their unique forms of engagement with and performance of

the information products sold through physical pieces of analog and digital audio equipment —

and operate amidst the negotiation between these valued traditions and the transformative

influence of digital media.

Following closely on this point, the second way in which the “clearinghouse” concept

applies is that the term imagines a user who brings specialized knowledge and objectives to bear

on the information products available. The design and content of Beatport.com reveal an appeal

to “prosumers” whose activities are rooted in mastery of analog and digital technologies used to

manipulate those information products. Many of the cultural practices of DJ/artist communities


persist, such as “crate digging,” through multimodal signifiers. As Carpentier (2011, p. 521)

observed, “‘[N]ew’ technologies have often led to the formulation of strong claims of novelty

and uniqueness, in combination with processes of forgetfulness in relation to the societal roles of

old media technologies.” Though the digital represents a relatively new technology to electronic

DJ/artist communities, practices and developments evident in the web site’s design have clearly

been informed by the traditions of those communities, traditions that persist through shared

competencies, vocabulary, practices, values, and goals. While Carpentier has proposed

specifications for the types and extent of participation and interaction with media, particularly in

regards to how old media power structures persist in new media environments, the point here is

made less to explore the intricacies of this power relationship and more to uncover the full range

of signifiers available to researchers of online artifacts.

Such contextual considerations, which comprise an important part of this analysis, also

form an integral portion of the framework developed by Pauwels (2012), but the present research

suggests some additional factors that may be taken into account when conducting a multimodal

analysis of the cultural expressiveness of web sites. Pauwels has stated:

[A]ll inferences with respect to possible cultural significance and meaning need to be

based on a solid insight into the origin and circumstances of the different constituting

elements. However “authorship” and “origin,” and in this case the question of who to

attribute certain choices to is an increasingly complex matter with websites, not only

because of the multi-authored nature of many sites (especially SNSs), but also because of

the supporting technologies of multiple sources (which are themselves forms of

materialized culture) and the strongly intertextual and globalizing aspects of

contemporary media. [Emphasis added.] (pp. 258 – 259)


My analysis of Beatport.com expands the notion of “supporting technologies” beyond, perhaps,

what was originally envisioned by the framework. While I argue that the attribution of “certain

choices” here are clearly guided by material realities, they are socially interpreted and actively

expressed culturally. I am not suggesting that the technologies determined the outcome in

McLuhanesque fashion, but they are a constituting element. “The medium is not a thing, but a

dynamic, dialectical praxis and process that interrelates and integrates objects, peoples and texts”

(Vandenberghe, 2007, p. 29). By way of example, these material technologies may be two

turntables and an audio mixer that interfaces with a laptop filled with digital music, a set of

touch-sensitive pads that trigger loops or single hits of sounds digitally stored either in the device

or on a laptop, and so on. Locating the aesthetic power of multimodal expressions, in this case

embodied by a range of material technologies used by DJs/artists to manipulate and perform

digital music, increases the analytical power of the present analysis because these technologies

form an integral part of the context in which the web site exists, and it ensures this research

touches on the embedded nature of online activities.

The framework developed by Pauwels (2012) focuses on web-specific signifiers and their

cross-modalities, but just as significant in regards to the activities of visitors to Beatport.com are

those practices, and the material technologies used therein, occurring outside of the web site that

supplement and inform online behavior and the design of the web site itself. Thus, an analysis of

cross-modal interplay can and should account for the practices and material technologies, not

only of producers in relation to the web site (e.g., coders, editors, etc.) but also those of visitors

who bring a host of cultural practices to bear on the digital platform. Pauwels has made this point

when explaining the need to attribute significant cultural indicators to cultural actors, but many

of the examples provided focus on producer-related signifiers within the context of web site


design, such as “modes of address, camera angles, personal and possessive pronouns” (p. 257).

One of the benefits of exploring the full fabric of the user experience through the aesthetic

qualities of material technologies, mediated performances, and cultural traditions outside of the

context of the web site, but integral to it, is acknowledging the embeddedness of online activity.

Pauwels (2012) has cautioned that research should move beyond viewing the Internet as

merely reflecting offline cultures and applying definitions of culture to it that rely on

“preconceived cultural differences” (p. 249):

The internet is not considered here simply as a data repository that merely reflects distinct

offline cultures or a venue that embodies a confined work of experiences and expressions.

It is a highly multi-authored cultural meeting place, connecting off line and online

practices of different cultures in transition. To some extent it can be considered a cultural

agent in its own right, exemplifying processes of globalization and glocalization in an

unparalleled manner. (p. 260)

Thus, two theoretical approaches work together in the framework: a more expansive conception

of culture that moves beyond binary differences and the use of multi-modal analyses for online

artifacts. This research shows how the case of Beatport.com may expand the notion of multi-

modal analyses in such a way that supports Pauwels’ notion of culture but also that ensures the

insights into cultural actors account for the material technologies integral to the lived traditions

and present livelihood of users. In this way, the chain of cultural action is clear, and the analysis

illuminates how online activities reach through the screen into offline worlds, and vice versa.

This diverges with some theories regarding multimodality, which focus on its semiotic

qualities (i.e., the significance of signs) while avoiding material, aesthetic, and practical ones.

Just as Pauwels (2012) directs researchers to a notion of culture that more accurately accounts


for the “hybrid medium” and avoids “questionable operationalizations” (p. 249), the concept of

multimodality may need equal amounts of attention in order to ensure that research fulfills the

goals set out by scholars to “locate and define the deeper aesthetic power of multimodal texts”

(Hull & Nelson, 2005, p. 229) and efforts to explore the embeddedness of online activities. Part

of the challenge comes from not enough being done to distinguish between the concepts of

multimedia and multimodality. Although Pauwels has attempted to show how the distinction was

both practically and theoretically integral to the development of the framework, elsewhere the

concepts have been conflated by using the terms “hybrid” (p. 249) and “advanced (multi)media”

(p. 250) and referring to “tools used to attract and invoke [and] also convey producer-related

ideas” while providing little guidance for grappling with the significance of those tools,

particularly from the perspective of the web site visitors. Researchers, such as Ytre-Arne (2011),

have strengthened the multimedia-multimodal distinction by incorporating into their analysis

experiential aspects of the materiality of technologies. In this way, “rather than focusing on the

properties of different media and the experiences they might encourage,” which is how Pauwels

has characterized multimedia, “analysis of media experiences will focus on how these properties

are experienced by actual audiences” (Ytre-Arne, p. 474 – 475).

The case of Beatport.com presents the opportunity to differentiate multimodality from

multimedia along the lines of user experience. Such an analysis includes related aspects of

performance and practice through material technologies, which act to embed the activities of

visitors to the web site. Thus, complete reliance on semiotics as an aspect of the concept of

multimodality, to the exclusion of complementary theories, may limit the power of the

framework for some research topics. Without complementary approaches, the framework may

tend to produce outdated “passive receiver” explanations, which are weak compared to those


insights that can be gained by including additional theoretical approaches alongside

multimodality. As Carpentier (2011, p. 519) has observed:

The “traditional” active/passive dimension … often takes an idealist position by

emphasizing the active role of the individual viewer in processes of signification. This

position risks reducing social activity to these processes of signification, excluding other

— more materialist — forms of human praxis.

By allowing space for other theoretical approaches that diverge from the emphasis on symbolic

expression, such as phenomenology (Ytre-Arne, 2011), mediology (Debray), and materialities in

practice (Magaudda, 2011), additional insights may be produced from exploring the interplay

between offline and online, author and audience, consumer and producer — in other words,

insights based on the embedded nature of online activity.

The present research attempts to fulfill the conceptual aim of “connecting off line and

online practices of different cultures in transition” (Pauwels, 2012, p. 260) by providing some

specificity in the framework as to what the concept of “embeddedness” may possibly mean when

analyzing the cultural expressiveness of web sites. In the case of Beatport.com, it may mean

expanding theoretical and practical approaches to acknowledge the significance of material

technologies to cultural communication, something Pauwels accounts for from the producer side

when encouraging the researcher to consider, for example, the “camera angles” employed in

pictures on the web site (p. 257). Equally important are the ways in which the web site users

bring with them a history of creative engagement with material technologies that are then

reinforced by the web site’s design and the content it delivers, which becomes new raw materials

for performance and identity formation in the hands of web site visitors.


Some have theorized that semiotics is less useful for research subjects with an apparent

technical component because the technologies themselves take a back seat to a story of implied

meanings (e.g., Vandenberghe, 2007). An exclusively semiotic approach is particularly

ineffective for subcultures emphasizing participation and interplay, not only between modes but

also between material analog and digital technologies and digital media or information products,

performance and playback, and production and remixing. In light of the fact that Pauwels’ (2012)

framework is a cultural approach for studying digital phenomenon, a complementary set of

theoretical approaches that provide the researcher a means for acknowledging the technologies at

play is appropriate. In this way, studies can begin to see Internet activities as embedded and

move beyond the limits of a message-response pattern of analysis.


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