[Air-L] My new book is out now!

[Nancy Baym]

Hi all,

I'm happy to share the news that my new book, Playing to the Crowd: Musicians, Audiences, and the Intimate Work of Connection is now officially out from NYU Press.  I would appreciate your help spreading the word and, if you are so inclined, giving it online ratings.

Here is the website for it where you can get a PDF of the introduction and order it direct from the press:  https://nyupress.org/books/9781479821587/

Here is its chapter about audiences which was republished today in WIRED: https://www.wired.com/story/book-excerpt-playing-to-the-crowd/

Here is a Spotify playlist I made to go with it so you can hear the music I write about: https://open.spotify.com/user/popgurl/playlist/51Jo8zp4xSF2Ew8xwRZcTz?si=l7u3AxFZTomGRJvZFLsZFA

And last but not least, here are the blurbs and an early review:

*         "Nancy K. Baym's Playing to the Crowd is a major advance in our understanding of new media, music and audiences. Through careful ethnographic and historical work, Baym offers a definitive reception history of popular music as it went online. She also offers a transformative theory of music in the age of social media. Methodologically rich, beautifully written, and full of great storytelling, Playing to the Crowd explains the novel aspects of our emergent online environment, all while linking it to music as a cultural practice that transcends any one context, and insisting that we understand online relationships as fundamentally human relationships. It will change the way you think about music, technology and people."

-Jonathan Sterne, author of MP3: The Meaning of a Format

*         "Nancy K. Baym was researching the impact of emerging technologies and music when most of us did not have the foresight to anticipate the changing music landscape. This is not her first pioneering work, and it certainly won't be her last, but it is, as always, fun and intriguing. An innovative wordsmith and an engaging storyteller, Baym explains how musicians transition from technologies designed to render them remote deities to those that invite them to be irrevocably intimate. Her observations carry weight and her interpretations are timely and timeless. She is a sharp researcher with a curious mind-the type that unfailingly seduces, educates and inspires you with their writing."

-Zizi Papacharissi, University of Illinois at Chicago

*         "Baym's enthusiasm and experience makes this academic study accessible to professional musicians as well as musicology and communication scholars."

-Library Journal



Thanks!

Nancy