Progressive rock fandom: Creating, curating and archiving through blogs and bootlegs

This presentation examines the role of music fans as cultural intermediaries who are active in the curation, archiving and promotion of progressive rock music. Fans not only work with the official products of the music industries, but also create, organise, discuss and circulate their own materials/information. In each case, fans act as ?expert filters? (Baym Burnett, 2009) to source, sort, and upload/distribute music which has either been ?forgotten? by the mainstream recorded music industries (i.e. unavailable to purchase or to stream legally), or which has never otherwise been made officially available to the public by the bands or their representatives. The latter relates to live concert recordings (also known as ROIO, or ?records of illegitimate origin?) which are sourced, edited, remastered and packaged by fans as not-for-profit bootlegs (Anderton, 2006). The former includes a range of internet blogs that publish links to music downloads via cyberlockers or video streaming sites. The blogs to be discussed in this paper typically focus on rare, private press or OOP (out-of-print) recordings, and may be themed (though not exclusively) around specific musical sub-genres or eras, or on music produced within specific countries. These activities raise interesting questions about cultural memory and archivism; the provision of ?free labour? (Terranova, 2004) by fans; and the contested terrain of online copyright.