The Australian indie music scene is something that I have been involved in since I started high school and found that there was more music out there than what was in the top charts on iTunes. Getting wifi in my house after years of a plug-in internet dongle and my first mobile phone also helped my new music discoveries. Reflecting on the ways in which I’ve found music, specifically of the Australian indie persuasion, over the past few years has inspired me to discover how others have found the same music.

Problematisation

As I stated in my last blogpost, I have problematised my media niche by focusing on the ways (WHERE?/HOW?) in which listeners of Australian indie discover new music within the genre.

Through my own personal experiences, I have found that the locality of the genre has allowed me to discover new music in many ways, both physically and digitally. This means that for each band and artist within the genre, there are many ways in which they could be discovered by an individual.

Some of these discoveries may also involve special stories or memories that are linked to a specific song or band. This is something that has really interested me and is something I want to uncover through my research.

A personal example is one of my first physical experiences of Australian indie music. I was offered a free ticket to the all ages day of the ‘Yours & Owls Festival‘ in 2015. I rocked up as a barely 15-year-old girl for my first festival and was introduced to bands such as ‘Gang of Youths‘, ‘The Rubens‘, ‘Skegss‘, ‘The Delta Riggs‘ and ‘The Smith Street Band‘. All of these bands have since become big players in the Australian indie music scene, and I still listen to some of them to this day.

Research Plan

The methodologies of observation and auto ethnography will be key to my research on my niche.

Observation is a procedure for generating understanding about the way of life of others (Dawson, 2002). This is done through the researcher immersing themselves into the community they are studying (Dawson, 2002). As a major consumer of all things Australian indie, I am already heavily involved in the community in a number of ways, so this will come somewhat naturally to me.

This fits in with auto ethnography. According to Leon Anderson, “analytic auto-ethnography requires being fully immersed as a participant self-observer in the field of research” (Anderson, 2006). As Chris also further highlighted in the Week 3 lecture, “it is not enough simply to look in, you have to participate and do, to experiment, tangle with, look at the experience from different perspectives and speak to others that are similarly engaged.”

By engaging more in the Facebook fan discussion groups I’m a member of, speaking with other Aus indie fans and reflecting on my own practises of discovering music, I’ll be doing just that.

To keep track of all my research, I’ll be combining any notes, screenshots and quotes into a desktop folder on my computer. I’ll also keep any handwritten notes together in a notebook dedicated to my work in this subject.

Research Schedule

References

Anderson, L. 2006. Analytic Autoethnography, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 35, No. 4, pp. 373-393.

Dawson Catherine (2002)  How to Carry Out Participant Observation, in Practical Research Methods A User-Friendly Guide to Mastering Research Techniques and Projects, HowTo Books: Oxford.