This ethnographic study examines the transformation of Italian indie culture under platform capitalism, tracing how digital infrastructures have reconfigured the relationship between independence and mainstream commercial logic. Drawing on fieldwork with musicians, industry professionals, and audiences across Italy, it argues that the semantic and aesthetic coordinates of indie have shifted from oppositional autonomy to a stylised modality compatible with platform logics, where visibility and metric optimisation increasingly dictate artistic legitimacy through commercial imperatives and through the internalisation of platform-mediated evaluative frameworks. The Italian case, rooted in a tradition of politicised independence, reveals how local infrastructures and cultural histories mediate these global transformations. Synthesising grounded, abductive analysis with historical reconstruction, the study identifies three intertwined processes – mainstreamisation, semantic drift, and platform gravity – through which visibility metrics and sponsorship logics recalibrate artistic practice, legitimacy, and audience address, recognising that these dynamics interact with diverse cultural trajectories and do not operate as a uniform homogenising force. The emerging configurations still depend on established intermediaries, informal circuits, and human decision-making embedded in longstanding power structures, even as platform mediation intensifies the circulation and repetition of certain stylistic and organisational practices. To theorise these shifts, the article advances ‘poptimism’ as a structural condition. The analysis shows how this gravitational field is absorbed into existing professional sensibilities, where platform mentalities recur within industry judgements shaped by longstanding organisational logics.

Online music streaming has emerged as a central mode of consumption in Europe and many other parts of the world, representing a distinct break from older forms of music media such as compact discs or broadcast radio. Instead of the one-to-many models that have historically dominated music dissemination – where an individual’s listening habits could only be guessed at through aggregate sales figures or broadcast audience estimates – streaming has introduced a one-to-one model. This shift, which gradually gained momentum during the last two decades (Drott 2024, p. 1), hinges on platforms and devices that also allow unprecedented observation of how individual listeners engage with recorded music. Consequently, hundreds of millions of people are now individually tracked in near-real time, generating vast amounts of granular data.

Cinco do Oriente is Timor-Leste’s most famous band. It was active for a relatively short period (1972 to 1975) and mainly performed songs made famous by Western groups. Yet Cinco do Oriente is praised today as a pioneer of the local music scene. The band was definitely popular, but it was not the only one performing at the time, and it was not the first. It is argued here that Cinco do Oriente has become a legend, not because of its music, but as a symbol of the resistance movement against Indonesia. This is because three of its members are believed to have been killed by the Indonesian military due to alleged revolutionary activities. This is discussed referencing various popular culture theorists. The article also examines the development of other bands of the era, Portuguese and Indonesian cultural missions in Timor, the Indonesian invasion and occupation, and other matters.

This paper explores the literary value of popular song lyrics through the lens of intertextuality, using the Beatles’ songbook as a case study. It aims to bridge the gap between reader-oriented and author-oriented approaches to intertextual research, emphasizing the importance of viewing texts from a broad, interconnected perspective. The study analyses a selected corpus of 27 Beatles songs, ranging from their early hit “I Saw Her Standing There” to their final recordings such as “The End,” to uncover how intertextuality manifests itself in their lyrics. By doing so, the paper seeks to highlight the depth and complexity of pop lyrics, advocating for their recognition as a legitimate subject of academic inquiry. The findings suggest that the Beatles’ lyrics, rich with literary and cultural references, exemplify the postmodern characteristics of pop music, blending high and low culture and showcasing the dynamic, dialogical nature of language and texts. This research aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of the literary qualities of popular music and underscores the enduring cultural significance of the Beatles.

In the 1990s, a protest rock movement developed on the American continent within informational capitalism, the democratisation of information and communication technologies, and the development of transnational social movements that fought against global powers. To complement the interpretations that understand this type of musical practice as a cultural aspect of social movements, or as commodities that obey the imperatives of the market, I use Auslander’s concept of performance to analyse how these protest rock groups deploy political ideologies linked to international leftist struggles, in the space and time of concerts and other types of mediations. Through an interpretive analysis, I identify some spatial, gestural, corporeal, and sound elements used to act out leftist political ideologies.

Making a living from music is an endeavour fraught with challenges associated with building a career in a rapidly changing, digitalised world and a labour market characterised by intermittency and the need for diversification. It is difficult to achieve a sustainable career that provides sufficient income to make music one’s primary occupation. As a result, many musicians explore different opportunities beyond performance to make ends meet. This article focuses on artists working in jazz and other popular genres on Barcelona’s music scene, with the aim of analysing how contemporary musicians in these genres combine artistic and professional activities. Using a qualitative methodology, including semi-structured interviews and participant observation, the study examines musicians who have attained relative stability and recognition. It identifies three key profiles of the professional musician (the ‘musician-teacher’, the ‘musician-composer’, the ‘musician-performer’) and reveals how these roles often overlap and contribute to the complex multiactivity of artistic careers.

This article examines the paradoxical relationship between discourses of sincerity and an aesthetics of imperfection in twenty-first-century pop culture, with special attention to the Russian music scene. We focus on the career of cult musician Sergei Shnurov to address this broader question: What do present-day anxieties around sincerity tell us about pop-cultural production and consumption processes? First, we offer a genealogy of post-Soviet sincerity rhetoric. We then use this genealogy to unpack the approach to sincere expression that Shnurov and his critics and fans adopt. Two recurring artistic strategies stand out. First, Shnurov creates a sincere effect by insisting on insincerity. Second, he amplifies this ‘insincerely sincere’ rhetoric by foregrounding a visual aesthetics of imperfection. We argue that these strategies play an important role not only in Shnurov’s biography but also in a broader story: that of sincere expression as a prime concern of twenty-first-century media and popular culture.