Queen is really a great example of participatory culture. Their songs are also popular in youth group in China.
The performance showed in seminar in week 11 let me think of one popular band in Taiwan — 100% Band. They won the ‘Most Popular Band’ Prize this year in Taiwan.
One of their music videos is a participatory one. They have a simple dance along with their song and hope every fan to learn the dance. Then, after selection, good dancers can participate in the production music video of that song. Now the dance is very famous in Taiwan. A lot of people can do this dance. And the fans of this band , of course, dance. I saw this music video in youtube and a lot of different people joined in, interestingly. They are students, dance teachers, club performancers, and so on.
Actually, this form of music video has won an excellent success in Taiwan. It makes more people know the band and know what they are doing now. I suppose that it is really a smart strategy.
Another thing is American Idol, I think it is another good example of participatory culture. And it is very successful as well. Even when the US went into the recession in 2008&2009, the show was also popular and supported by music fans. They got a large numbers of votes for those singers. Especially in the show in 2009, it broke the record of votes and it was really a memorable one.
American Idol is successful. It lets producers in other countries also join into this participatory culture’s production, such as Australia and China. Its slogan is always about ‘dream’, ‘join’, ‘do your best’, ‘vote for your favorite singer’, etc. They are saying they provide an opportunity to make everyone wants to be a professional singer to be a super star.
The fans of one particular singer complete in American Idol become a fans communities. They set up ‘Fans group’ online or off-line. They are supporting the singer by voting for him/her, upload/downloading the songs he/she once performanced, producing webpages to let more people know about the idol, etc. They are talking about their idol together and also support each other as well. This is typical Fan community I think.
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