This collection presents a range of essays on contemporary music distribution and consumption patterns and practices. The contributors to the collection use a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches, discussing the consequences and effects of the digital distribution of music as it is manifested in specific cultural contexts.The widespread circulation of music in digital form has far-reaching consequences: not least for how we understand the practices of sourcing and consuming music, the political economy of the music industries, and the relationships between format and aesthetics. Through close empirical engagement with a variety of contexts and analytical frames, the contributors to this collection demonstrate that the changes associated with networked music are always situationally specific, sometimes contentious, and often unexpected in their implications. With chapters covering topics such as the business models of streaming audio, policy and professional discourses around the changing digital music market, the creative affordances of format and circulation, and local practices of accessing and engaging with music in a range of distinct cultural contexts, the book presents an overview of the themes, topics and approaches found in current social and cultural research on the relations between music and digital technology. 

Raphaël Nowak is a cultural sociologist interested in issues of music consumption and technologies. He currently teaches in popular music, social theory and cultural sociology at the University of Bristol, UK. He published his first manuscriptConsuming Music in the Digital Age in 2015 with Palgrave Macmillan. Andrew Whelan is a sociologist based at the University of Wollongong in New South Wales, Australia. He has published previously on digital media, Australian media regulation policy, extreme music and underground electronic music subcultures, peer-to-peer file-sharing and online interaction about music.

Editors' Introduction  Raphaël Nowak and Andrew Whelan.- 1.The Peoples Mixtape: Peer-to-Peer File Sharing Without the Internet in Contemporary Cuba  Tom Astley.- 2.Musica Analytica: The Datafication of Listening  Robert Prey.- 3.The Legacy of Napster  Matthew David.- 4.Streaming Music in Japan: Corporate Cultures as Determinants of Listening Practice Noriko Manabe.- 5.Making Sense of Acquiring Music in Mexico City  Víctor Ávila-Torres.- 6.Reading Songs, Experiencing Music: Co-creation, Materiality and Expertise in Beck's Song Reader  Antoni Roig and Gemma San Cornelio.- 7.The Digital Music Boundary Object  Raphaël Nowak and Andrew Whelan.- 8.A Step Back to the Dark Ages of the Music Industry: Experiencing the Democratization of Record Production and Discourses on Spotify in the Finnish Music Industries Communication Group 'Kuka Mitä Häh?'  Juho Kaitajärvi-Tiekso.- 9.Off the Charts: The Implications of Incorporating Streaming Data into the Charts  Steve Collins and Pat OGrady.- 10.Rethinking the Digital Playlist: Mixtapes, Nostalgia, and Emotionally Durable Design  Kieran Fenby-Hulse.- 11.A Song for Ireland? Policy Discourse and Wealth Generation in the Music Industry in the Context of Digital Upheavals and Economic Crisis  Jim Rogers and Anthony Cawley.- 12.Pachelbel this Aint: Mashups and Canon (De)formation  Anthony Cushing .- 13.Streaming the Everyday Life  Anja Nylund Hagen