This thesis is an ethnographic account of a musically oriented online milieu. It draws primarily on discourse analysis, ethnomethodology, semantic anthropology, and sociolinguistics to critically explore the interaction of ‘amateur’ electronic musicians within this environment. Following a preliminary discussion of the dominant theoretical terms in which the relationship between music and technology is conceptualised (‘rationalisation’ and ‘democratisation’), with specific reference to the agent construed as subject to these forces, the peer-to-peer environment is described.

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