Kiliman - MA thesis

Running head: HOW MATERIAL TECHNOLOGIES EMBED WEB SITES 1
How Material Technologies Embed Web Sites:
Analyzing the Cultural Expressiveness of Beatport.com
Daymon Kiliman
University of Illinois at Springfield

HOW MATERIAL TECHNOLOGIES EMBED WEB SITES 2
Contents
Abstract.........................................................................................................................................................3
Introduction .................................................................................................................................................4
Literature Review.........................................................................................................................................6
Application of the Multimodal Framework for Analyzing Web Sites.......................................................21
Preservation of First Impressions and Reactions..................................................................................22
Inventory of Salient Features and Topics..............................................................................................24
In-depth Analysis of Content and Formal Choices................................................................................32
Embedded Point(s) of View or “Voice” and Implied Audience(s) and Purposes .................................54
Analysis of Information Organization and Spatial Priming Strategies .................................................57
Contextual Analysis, Provenance, and Inference..................................................................................60
Discussion...................................................................................................................................................66
References ..................................................................................................................................................76

Abstract
This paper analyzes the cultural expressiveness of Beatport.com, a digital music retail web site,
using Pauwels’ (2012) framework for multimodal analysis. It attempts to fulfill the conceptual
aim of “connecting off line and online practices of different cultures in transition” (Pauwels,
2012, p. 260) by providing some specificity as to what the concept of “embeddedness” may
mean when analyzing web sites. In the case of Beatport.com, it may mean incorporating
complementary theoretical and practical approaches that acknowledge the significance of
material technologies in cultural communication. Beatport.com is a “virtual subcultural
clearinghouse,” a site of embedded interrelations between offline and online spaces (Orgad,
2006) wherein users enact significant aspects of this music subculture. This grounded theory
describes the web site as a site of convergence, not just of modes of media and consumption, but
also of practices, creative expressions, and material forms of engagement. The analysis unites
three aims in the literature: (1) to recognize user experience and materiality as constituencies to
researching online artifacts and subjects; (2) to start producing analyses that explore the interplay
between modes and that attempt to locate the aesthetic power of multimodal texts; and (3) to
account for the embeddedness of online activity by exploring the significance of material
technologies to subcultural practice and maintenance. Thus, this research proves the framework’s
effectiveness as a tool for analyzing the cultural expressiveness of web sites but also suggests
methods for increasing its effectiveness when applied to a range of research interests.

How Material Technologies Embed Web Sites:
Analyzing the Cultural Expressiveness of Beatport.com
As “unique expressions of contemporary culture” (Pauwels, 2012, p. 247), web sites are
created for and used by individuals and groups for myriad purposes, from accomplishing work-
related tasks to expressing personal desires and providing a means for fulfilling them. All of
these expressions share the medium of the World Wide Web. Providing both a means for identity
building and a flexible platform emphasizing social interaction, the web’s central place in culture
supports the contention by Shirky (2008, p. 17) that “[w]hen we change the way we
communicate, we change society.”
This research analyzes the cultural expressiveness of Beatport.com
(http://www.beatport.com), the web site of Beatport, LLC, using the multimodal framework
proposed by Pauwels (2012). Beatport is a digital music retailer specializing in electronic dance
music. My personal experience with their catalog prior to this research reveals they also sell
music in other genres, such as rock and hip hop, but Beatport specializes in electronic dance
music. (I avoid using the acronym “EDM” because it has become a loaded term within the
subculture. Some subcultural participants worldwide associate the acronym with particular styles
of electronic dance music precipitating the meteoric rise of certain sub-genres in US, thus using
it to refer to commercialized, “trendy” music (see, e.g., Gomori, 2013)). According to the “About
us” page on Beatport.com:
Founded in 2004, Beatport is the largest music store for DJs in the world. Beatport offers
music in premium digital formats and provides unique music discovery tools created for
and by DJs. Each week, Beatport’s music collection is refreshed with hundreds of

exclusive tracks by the world’s top dance music artists. Beatport is privately held and
headquartered in Denver, USA and Berlin, Germany.
The claim of being the “largest music store for DJs in the world” is not tested, but a press release
by SFX Entertainment, Inc., which acquired the company for approximately $50 million (Sisario,
2013), has claimed the web site enjoys nearly “40 million unique users per year” (SFX
Entertainment, 2013).
Beatport.com is a customer service storefront; the primary delivery method for digital
music products; a catalog of songs, albums, music labels, and artists; a repository of commercial
“sample packs,” which are royalty-free sounds available for purchase and use by artists
(commonly called “producers”); a destination for industry, entertainment, and technology news;
and a promotional platform for amateur and professional DJs and artists. In this manner, the web
site represents the diversity of its audience and customers, a group comprised of globetrotting
professional DJs, bedroom producers and remixers, electronic music enthusiasts, and dance club
and festival audiences.
My personal use of Beatport.com prompted me to begin thinking about how the web site
is situated within a community that has a unique history of engagement with analog and digital
technologies. Sirois (2008, p. 18) has reflected on the hip-hop DJ’s manipulation of vinyl records
with turntables and audio mixers: “Through these dexterous acts, he emancipates those
mechanical sounds from their spatial and temporal constraints giving them newfound life.”
Similar practices are a central part of dance music cultures, but now with some 21st
century
updates. Professional and amateur DJs purchase music from a web site, such as Beatport.com,
and then interact with it through hardware and software interfaces, producing new performances
and creating the opportunity for shaping their own identities. So while Beatport.com does not

present traditional means of interactivity and community building, such as online discussion
forums, this shared history is communicated through its design and content. I test these insights
against other scholarly knowledge to see how the web site itself is positioned in relation to
contemporary and historical practices of electronic music fans, producers, and performers,
thereby developing a fuller understanding of the cultural expressiveness of the web site through
exploring its use within the community it serves. Therein lies the significance of this study: to
use a framework “focused on discovering the metaphorical and symbolic dimensions of websites
… to unravel[] their intended and even unintended meanings” (Pauwels, p. 252) in an effort to
bring to light a subculture’s consumption and production practices when “[t]he merger of audio
technologies with computer technologies [has] converted music into an information product”
(Sen, 2010, p. 7).
Literature Review
Pauwels (2012) developed the “multimodal framework for analyzing web sites as cultural
expressions” to assist researchers in their efforts to tap the “huge repository of potential data
about contemporary ways of doing and thinking” (p. 247). The framework includes six phases.
The early phases prompt the researcher to record initial, readily observable characteristics of the
web site under study. These characteristics range from quantifiable aspects, such as a general
inventory of the web site’s features, to the researcher’s affective impressions. The latter phases
prompt in-depth analysis of values and assumptions — apparent and hidden — in order to
decode the web site’s implied meanings and to make inferences regarding author and audience
using qualitative methods. The framework is “focused on discovering the metaphorical and
symbolic dimensions of websites … to unravel[] their intended and even unintended meanings”
(Pauwels, p. 252).

According to Pauwels (2012), the framework is useful for exploring characteristics
specific to certain segments of society, such as organizational cultures, and articulating
differences between groups (p. 248). Pauwels has differentiated the framework from other
analytical methods that evaluate web sites according to appropriateness or effectiveness and seek
to determine how well a web site communicates a message or influences consumer behavior, for
example. In other words, Pauwels’ framework is not intended to evaluate usability or
commercial effectiveness. Rather, it focuses on “how to decode/disclose the cultural information
that resides both in the form and content … of web sites” (Pauwels, p. 248). Pauwels has further
differentiated the framework from other research efforts that limit their focus to phenomenon
that may be analyzed according to “more or less established, verbally oriented, methods” (p.
247) and thus neglect the interplay between modes, those that rely on “questionable
operationalizations of the cultural aspects into observable aspects” without attempting an in-
depth reading of the meaning for audiences (p. 249), and those that utilize predetermined
categories of interpretation based on assumed cultural norms (p. 251).
An important component of the present research is determining whether the existing
literature and Pauwels’ (2012) framework provide a means for understanding the cultural
expressiveness of a web site catering to a subculture with a continuing tradition of engagement
with analog and digital audio technologies through which subcultural members now use to
interact with digital products. In other words, when the most pervasive and central practices of
many visitors to this web site occur outside of it but are facilitated by it, what insights can be
gained by analyzing the web site with the framework?
This research considers a general category of material technologies — interfaces used to
manipulate and create music in digital and analog environments — in tandem with Beatport.com

much in the same way as Ytre-Arne (2011) studied the user experience of the general category of
printed magazines and their online equivalents. Ytre-Arne explained the approach as follows: “If
my analysis had been limited to the informants’ or my own interpretations of selected texts from
print and online magazines, the differences between these forms of media — as experienced by
readers — would have been a lot less clear” (p. 476). This reasoning shows how the exploration
of experiential differences can be tied to the material properties of media. Although the present
research analyzes a particular “text,” in this case the web site Beatport.com, it does so while
recognizing the culturally significant practices of its users that integrally influence the web site’s
design and content, specifically the general category of material technologies that participants
utilize in the electronic dance music subculture.
Magaudda (2011) found materiality to be one in a series of influential strains of thought
in the literature that could be used to account for digital versus analog music consumption
behaviors:
[T]hree dimensions that contribute to shape practices as socially shared patterns of
activities are: (1) that of meanings and representations; (2) that consisting of objects,
technologies and material culture in general; and (3) that represented by embodied
competences, activities and “doing” … Thus, “practices” represent the outcome of the
performative linkage of these three elements, a linkage in which materiality plays a
crucial role in the creation, change and stabilization of the whole range of activities and
practices. (p. 20)
Material audio technologies figure prominently in the practices of practitioners in the electronic
dance music subculture. These technologies and their associated practices influence the design

and content of Beatport.com, as the present study shows, and should be accounted for when
attempting a meaningful analysis of the web site.
In much of the literature analyzing web site use, though, the user experience is considered
completely within the boundaries of the web site. The web site’s design elements and content are
considered the ending point of where its job ends and the user’s begins. These studies tend to
focus on the content of messages composed by users as a way of arriving at culturally significant
observations. For example, Davis (2011) analyzed a web site for “transabled” individuals
(defined as people who believe their “true[] bodies are physically impaired in some way” (p.
599)) by reading blog posts, online member introductions, and interactions through a messaging
forum. The findings explored aspects of online communication for identity formation in terms of
“prosumption,” a concept also important to understanding electronic music culture, but only
through ethnographic research of members’ online messages. Therefore, the analysis was not in
multimodal terms because the research did not look beyond the verbal mode to the “complex
forms of interplay between the different modes” (Pauwels, 2012, pp. 247, 253).
More than that, though, this type of study imposes analytical distinctions between online
and offline activities by not accounting for the ways in which online activities “bleed” into
offline activities or the ways in which the design of a web site responds to and is informed by
subcultural practices outside of it. Orgad (2006) has problematized online-offline distinctions,
finding in a multinational ethnographic study of breast cancer patients’ use of medical web sites
that “online spaces do not evolve in isolation from existing social and cultural processes and
institutions” (p. 878). In contrast to research on the transcendent nature of online communication,
the study found that several cultural dimensions tied to offline characteristics were significant to
understanding users’ experience of these online contexts.

Websites and their services are constructed often as though they transcend physical,
geographical, national and cultural borders, and for many patients the online space indeed
represents a place beyond the contexts of their locale that transcends the social and
cultural barriers that they encounter in their daily contexts. However, while space and
time are stretched … they certainly do not disappear as constitutive factors. (p. 893)
According to Orgad, “how cultural values, norms and forces shape experiences of internet use
and design” (p. 878) is essential to understanding the Internet as a site of embedded interrelations
between online and offline spaces. The concept of embeddedness is important to any analysis of
Internet activities and artifacts because a distinct online-offline division assumes “subjects are
just traveling through these spaces and that the spaces are fixed and nonproductive” (Aarsand,
2008, p. 148), which fails to “see identity as the evolving product of diverse influences and
motives played out in specific contexts” (Jordan, 2003, p. 265).
As to their methodology, the studies by Orgad (2006), Aarsand (2008), and Jordan (2003)
fall short of Pauwels’ (2012) call to look beyond the verbal mode (p. 247), but they provide
useful understandings of embeddedness. The studies also share with Pauwels’ framework the
tendency to undervalue the significance of material technologies and how associated practices
may influence communities and efforts to study them. Pauwels has stated that “almost all media
fail to transmit tactile, olfactory or gustatory experiences” (p. 250) and has mentioned the
importance of “material culture” when cultivating a “broader sociological/anthropological view
on society” in analyses of cultural expressiveness (p. 248). Despite such affordances, though, the
framework could benefit from greater specificity on this point so as to encourage analyses that
account for materialities and offline realities. However, this may prove difficult given the
framework’s reliance on the concept of multimodality, at least as far as it is understood by some

theorists. Multimodality is a semiotic concept (Hull & Nelson, 2005; Kress, 2010), which deals
with the symbolic nature of signs rather than materialities. Hull and Nelson (2005) have alluded
to the significance of material culture by quoting anthropologist Ruth Finnegan who “describes
humans’ communicative resources as encompassing ‘… their embodied interactions in and with
the external environment,’” but they conceded much research has yet to live up to this
expectation:
The big challenge yet to be taken up within the study of multimodality is how to locate
and define the deeper aesthetic power of multimodal texts…. Kress (2003, p. 36)
discusses the accordant, complementary processes of transformation and transduction
(the reshaping of semiotic resources and the migration of semiotic material across modes,
respectively) as the locus of creativity in multimodal communication. However, what has
yet to be fully conceived and adequately demonstrated, in our estimation, is an approach
to understanding how these processes of transformation and transduction actually play
out and to what effect. (p. 229)
While Hull and Nelson aimed to “locat[e] the semiotic power of multimodality,” in some
instances an exclusively semiotic approach may limit the effort to look at “embodied
interactions,” as Finnegan stated, because such an approach tends to produce analyses based
solely on the symbolic nature of signs.
Researchers have proposed alternative methods for studying modern media culture, such
as that found on web sites. Ytre-Arne (2011), for example, has argued for the relevance of
phenomenology and audience studies as a way to focus on “perceptual experiences” and their
interaction with “technological and aesthetic experiences” (p. 476):

Rather than focusing on the intellect as the sole arena for the production of knowledge, a
phenomenologist position will emphasize the importance of the body in how we
experience the world, through sense and perceptions…. Thinking in terms of media
experiences does not imply that there is something wrong with researching interpretations
of media texts — but it does imply that there are other dimensions which have not yet
been thoroughly explored. (pp. 474, 475)
The present research makes a similar argument for studying online environments through the
specific case of Beatport.com by looking at its embedded nature as expressed through users’
engagement with material technologies.
Swidler (2010) has developed this point by studying the manner in which technology is
utilized by and for culture. By focusing attention on the tools of cultural production, Swidler has
avoided “the Bourdieunian preoccupation with cultural distinction” (p. 285). Pauwels (2012, p.
248), too, has distinguished the multimodal framework from analytical approaches based on
binary distinctions, such as Hofstede’s dimensions of culture, but Swidler arrived at the
following conclusion:
If cultural vitality and aesthetic pleasure derive from the structural features of systems of
cultural production and distribution, rather than from the supposed qualities of elite
versus less-elite culture consumers, then technological changes can alter culture and the
possibilities of aesthetic pleasure in fundamental ways. As the Internet has made it
possible for musicians to find and to produce music for tiny, geographically dispersed
audiences — and as websites that critique and recommend music to those with shared
musical tastes proliferate — there has been a revolution in the amount of musical

creativity (and the consequent possibilities for powerful aesthetic experience for both
creators and audiences). (p. 292)
Swidler has introduced into the discussion the concept of power, which Carpentier (2011) and
Mcnamara (2010) have also done. Carpentier addressed power issues while arguing for the
continued relevance of audience theory:
Audience theory also allows us to avoid the conflation of interaction and participation,
which in many cases prevents us from noticing that in the present-day media
configuration the maximimalist forms of participation have remained rare whilst at the
same time the opportunities for interaction have structurally increased. (p. 529)
For Mcnamara (2010), humans and technology both form constitutive factors in culture in a
powered relationship:
Power relations between technologies and users shift back and forth in a sometimes
conflicted but ultimately mutually interdependent exchange. Without users, technology
becomes redundant and is forgotten; without technology humans lack extensions of their
capabilities and capacities. (p. 96)
Mcnamara (p. 93) identified the heart of the debate as between McLuhanesque technological
determinism (“technology shapes society”) and social constructionism (“society shapes
technology”) and proposed that a middle ground between the two extremes of technological
determinism and social constructionism has settled according to the needs of accomplishing
individual (or consumer) versus institutional (or producer) goals:
Users increasingly do not come to content by way of selecting a particular medium such
as choosing to watch ‘“television” or read a ‘“newspaper” — often irrespective of what is
on. They seek out content and applications for a particular use and expect it to be

available on a device or platform convenient to them. Distribution systems and
materiality of media are of decreasing interest except to the manufacturers and technical
managers of those systems, the technorati of media. (p. 120)
Any attention paid to the physicality of technologies in research of digital media, in Mcnamara’s
estimation, has resulted from “nostalgia … and a privileging of physicality, along with a distrust
of what cannot be seen” because testing such accounts has revealed “little evidence that physical
objects provide a more beneficial communication experience” (p. 118).
Ytre-Arne (2011) has sought possible explanations for such lack of attention paid to
physical properties of media and found as a possible cause an overwhelming concern with
studying mass audiences rather than “how these properties are experienced by actual audiences”
(p. 475). Phenomenology provided Ytre-Arne an avenue for substituting the concept of “media
experiences” for those of “media use” or “consumption” (pp. 467 – 468): “The central argument
is that thinking about the relationship between audiences and media as a form of experience
might highlight different dimensions regarding the place of media in people’s lives” (p. 468).
Ytre-Arne used this reasoning to investigate women’s magazine reading online versus in print,
finding choices were made for aesthetic reasons because the medium impacted readers’
experience, the content notwithstanding. Women interviewed for the study recounted the
importance of the surroundings they chose to accompany the act of reading and their subjective
judgment of being at work or enjoying leisure as factors accompanying choices to read
comparable publications online or in printed magazines.
Similar to Ytre-Arne’s (2011) “media experiences,” Magaudda (2011) proposed
“practices” because “people and material objects [are] crucial terrain for studying consumer
practices, and how they take shape, evolve and change” (p. 33). Magaudda observed that average

music consumers tended to use new technologies, such as MP3 players, alongside older ones,
such as vinyl records, recognizing distinct value in both formats. The digital revolution in music
consumption has resulted in a paradox, according to Magaudda, where “the reconfiguration of
the relationship between materiality and culture lead[] to a renewed role played by material
objects in people’s life and activities” (p. 16). Thus, vinyl records have “outlive[d] the ongoing
process of technical innovation” for “practical and symbolic reasons in different musical
subcultures,” “especially in many dance-based musical genres” (p. 28).
Experiences (Ytre-Arne, 2011) and practices (Magaudda, 2011) are central to electronic
dance music culture and, by extension, important to analyzing Beatport.com. Web sites catering
to a particular subculture must consider the subculture’s experience of digital products. An
important aspect of that experience, in this case, is the use of analog and digital technologies —
both virtual and material — to manipulate and perform digital music. This gets at not only the
significance of the immediate audience for Beatport.com — the music consumer — but also
intended (or imagined) audiences that the raw materials sold on Beatport.com reach through their
performance by DJs/artists using sound manipulation technologies, which significantly points to
the media’s use, how it is experienced, and a set of practices surrounding digital music in tandem
with material technologies. Borschke (2011, p. 933) illustrated how the intersection of
technologies and performance may give rise to new forms of composition:
Vinyl’s material qualities made re-composition possible but it would be mistaken to focus
on these qualities alone, as it was the use of the medium in tandem with sound
reproduction technologies (mixer, turntable and sound system) in a social context
(nightclub, party, etc.) that gave rise to the innovation. It was in a particular time and
space that a DJ played and listened to records in the presence of dancers listening and

dancing to records. The space is communal, the moment shared and the media experience
is interactive, marked by several intersections of human bodies with media technologies.
In other words, “in EDM, performance corresponds to this actualization: human movements
making visible what machine sounds are making audible” (Ferreira, 2008, p. 18).
More on point to the present study, perhaps, are the ways in which the significance of the
intersection of bodies and media in performance through dance influence other decisions made
regarding media choices. Borschke (2011, p. 931) argued that “edits,” defined as when a DJ
manipulates and re-records a song in order to make it more “DJ friendly,” “are a music form
anchored in a culture of media use: an artifact that owes its existence to both the studio and the
dance floor.” Borschke has explored the ways in which the relationship between “dancers, DJs,
recordings and audio technologies troubles the idea that reception was ever passive and
highlights how the intersection of human bodies with electronic technologies inscribed itself in
this compositional strategy. To omit dancers is to omit the body from the story of ‘body music’”
(p. 935). Thus, Borschke has revealed, not only the socially constructed nature of authorship, but
also the dismantling of the separation between consuming and producing and its connection to
performance:
The real-time use of recorded music disregards the romantic construction of the artist as
originator and isolated genius and, as a recording must be enacted to be experienced,
questions the divide between ‘“active” producers and ‘“passive” consumers. (p. 934)
In this quote, Borschke has touched on several important points: the concept of prosumerism in
the DJ’s mastery of analog and digital technology for a performance that exposes the
increasingly complex role of “author” in the present “remix culture” (Lessig, 2008) and the
significance of enacting and interacting with digital information products by individuals in time

and place. (It is important to note that Borschke and other researchers have questioned whether
“the enthusiastic adoption of ‘remix’ overshadows the aesthetic priorities and political
implications of a variety of creative strategies that involve media use” (pp. 929 – 930), a point
taken up, if not explicitly, by Ytre-Arne (2011) who also explored the impact of the aesthetic
properties of media on user experience.)
Prior (2008, 2010) has written extensively on the practices of electronic music artists and
fans, revealing the ways in which they utilize technology for creative endeavors that position
them as both producers and consumers, professional and amateur (2010, p. 405). In looking at
how the laptop computer has become central to electronic music composition and performance,
Prior explained that it is “not merely an inert tool at the creative behest of the musician, but …
itself implicit in the transformation of music, particularly regarding the unsettling and
dismantling of expectations around practices of music production, creativity, and performance”
(Prior, 2008, p. 915). This point resonates with Swidler (2010), discussed above, who wrote that
“technological changes can alter culture” (p. 292). The laptop, Prior has argued, is “where
digitized music and code meet the material properties of technologies and the everyday practices
of bodies” (p. 928).
The concepts of mediology (Debray, 1997) and prosumption (Toffler, 1980) also prove
useful for their focus on the power of technologies and practices for cultural transmission.
Mediology, as developed by Debray, is the theoretical support and prosumption, often first
credited to Toffler and expanded upon by subsequent research, is the practical result of the
proliferation of analog and digital technologies and a concept through which to understand how
consumers and producers merge.

Papoulias (2004) has provided an effective shorthand explanation of Debray’s concept of
mediology. In Debray’s understanding, “culture is what technologies make possible” (Papoulias,
p. 166). Mediology is more than yet another method for studying media and technology; it is a
study of “cultural mediation”:
Debray intends this term to refer not only to the technological pathways through which
cultural realities are constituted, but, in addition, to the forms of sociality which
undergird such constitutions…. Technology, then, is only one aspect of the process of
mediation: it forms its material supports (as printing press, archive, video). (p. 166)
Important to this process of cultural transmission is the relationship between past and present and
“the recognition of an absent other” (Papoulias, p. 167), both points that are significant for the
electronic dance music subculture, its use of material technologies to manipulate digital and
analog music (or information products), and by extension web sites such as Beatport.com.
The “absent other” is apparent in performance. Debray used the example of a pianist
interpreting a piece by Bach written for the harpsichord. In this example, the piano provides the
“technological infrastructure” through which audiences receive a performance that at once erases
the “materiality of mediation” and the temporal distance of the origin of the piece with Bach
(Papoulias, p. 168). The “performance creates the effect of immediacy” (Papoulias, p. 168). A
similar process of supplanting the original occurs in many electronic dance music performances,
which most often feature DJs. DJs play songs composed by other artists alongside recordings of
their own, if they play their own at all, and seldom perform their own songs on musical
instruments in any traditional sense. Despite this, “[f]or the vast majority of electronic music
fans, the DJ is the author behind the music, the personality who stands outside the music and
serves as its causal explanation, the creator to whom the sound points” (Herman, 2006, p. 32).

Herman has demonstrated that authorship is a social construction (p. 31), an important point for
Debray as can be seen in the example of a modern-day pianist performing a composition by
Bach. Despite the pianist’s and the DJ’s medium being prima facie dissimilar, their performances
involve related practices, as Ferreira (2008) explained. “EDM makes audible a present sonorous-
motor event, more than any supposedly original past musical performance” in the same way that
the original composition performed by the pianist and the recorded music played by the DJ
“traverse[] time and space,” while the latter in particular invokes a “technological mediation of
the sound-movement relation” (Ferreira, p. 19).
Mediology or mediation studies sees research solely based on semiotics as limited
because “semiotics studies culture, but omits the material conditions of its diffusion"
(Vandenberghe, 2007, p. 25). According to Vandenberghe, mediology overcomes the limitations
of other approaches by presenting an “interdisciplinary analysis of culture and technology that
aims to integrate the social sciences and overcome their limitations” (pp. 24 – 25).
Mediation studies not only enjoins the analyst to investigate the medium of transmission
as a practical process of transmission, but also to consider its objects of analysis in
relational terms. The medium is not a thing, but a dynamic, dialectical praxis and process
that interrelates and integrates objects, peoples and texts. (Vandenberghe, p. 29)
Thus, the place of the technologies is elevated but not overstated in such a way so as to make the
analysis a story of tools. Prior (2010) also expressed caution when emphasizing the tools of
transmission: “It is clearly perilous to assume that free-floating technologies in themselves have
revolutionized music. New technologies do not create music worlds from scratch. But they have
facilitated or afforded new possibilities” (p. 405). Such a tendency in the literature may explain,
in part, why Debray’s concept of mediology has not gained much traction and Pauwels’ (2012)

framework only briefly touches on the role of materiality in understanding the cultural
expressiveness of web sites.
There are two additional benefits of accounting for the significance of material
technologies besides, as some researchers have argued, more completely describing media use
(Ytre-Arne, 2011) and its embedded nature. First, it may help researchers avoid preconceived
cultural categories that tend to “pre-mould the outcomes and focus the researcher’s attention on
just a limited set of aspects” (Pauwels, p. 249). Second, there is a practical advantage afforded by
this approach when the web site studied has no commonly apparent means for interactivity, such
as messaging forums, as is the case with Beatport.com. The lack of data in the form of visitor
messages requires the researcher to explore other ways in which visitors interact with the web
site and other ways in which culture influences its design and vice versa.
As it pertains to the cultural analysis of Beatport.com, the review of the literature reveals
the need “[t]o understand how contemporary music is shaped by digital networks” by
confronting “the proliferation of perfect copies, their documentation and their use” (Borschke,
2011, p. 941, emphasis added). The case of Beatport.com represents a unique opportunity to
unite three aims in the reviewed literature: (1) to recognize user experience and materiality as
constituencies to researching online artifacts and subjects; (2) to start producing multimodal
analyses that explore the interplay between modes and that attempt to locate the aesthetic power
of multimodal texts; and (3) to account for the embeddedness of online activity by exploring the
significance of the general category of material technologies to subcultural practice and
maintenance. Through this process the community served by Beatport.com is better understood
and, in turn, so is the web site itself. Pauwels (2012, p. 253) makes clear that the researcher
should bring “specific knowledge of the genre and the broader culture under study” to aid the

analysis. To understand the electronic and dance music community, and the significance of
Beatport.com to it, research must consider the digital and analog technologies facilitating cultural
practices and creative engagement, which in turn assists with conceptualizing the Internet as a
nexus of embedded activities, expressions, and practices.
RQ 1: What role does materiality, particularly of technologies used to interface with
digital information and individuals’ use of them, play in the embedded nature of
the Internet?
RQ 2: How can focusing on material technologies and associated practices, and the
related concept of embeddedness, assist in analyzing the cultural expressiveness
of web sites and locating the aesthetic power of multimodality?
Application of the Multimodal Framework for Analyzing Web Sites
The research below, which constitutes the data for this project, applies the framework for
multimodal analysis of the cultural expressiveness of web sites developed by Pauwels (2012). I
apply the six-phase framework as faithfully possible, moving sequentially through initial
impressions and an inventory to more in-depth, contextual analysis of explicit and implicit
meanings occurring both intra-modally and through cross-modal interplay. Thus, the discussion
is organized according to the framework in order to maintain the “logic of discovery” (p. 251)
Pauwels intended. While the inventory is fairly exhaustive as to prominent design features of the
web site, my research interest steers the in-depth, analytical and interpretive sections. Pauwels
has stated such a selective approach is appropriate when applying the framework:
To avoid being forced to look at all of the possible signifiers of a website or in other
words, to reduce the efforts to more manageable proportions, new research can at times

be based on choices made in previous research or depart from an “on face” value selected
set of parameters that seem to be most indicative of a given cultural issue. (p. 260)
To produce culturally “thick” research, Pauwels recommends a grounded theory approach
because “cultural knowledge (etic and emic) should inform the construction of
categories/concepts and empirical observations should be used to revisit those
categories/concepts” (p. 260).
Although this research follows the six-phase analytical framework by Pauwels (2012), it
includes several of its own methodological considerations. Pauwels proposed a framework with a
solid theoretical footing that may be used to account for the unique characteristics of hybrid
media forms and that has enough flexibility to be adapted for a wide range of research interests.
The methodological considerations of this research stem, in part, from that flexibility but also
because this research tests the framework’s effectiveness. I have attempted research that does
“not conceal or exclude a theoretical focus, a clear methodological framework and a set of
expectations,” which could render “blind or impressionistic” conclusions based on “unfocused
and under-theorized observation[s]” (Pauwels, p. 251). My interest in analyzing this web site
comes from many years invested in this culture, which forms the basis of my affective
interpretations of Beatport.com, interpretations that Pauwels’ framework values.
Preservation of First Impressions and Reactions
This research does not represent my first experience with the web site Beatport.com, so it
may, in Pauwels’ (2012) understanding, be impossible for me to truly record my first
impressions of the web site before they are “eradicated or supplanted by further, more in-depth
research insights” (p. 253). Nonetheless, I endeavor to provide my impressions of the “look and

feel” of the web site (p. 253), as Pauwels has instructed, according to what attracts me, what
features intrigue me, whether anything puzzles me, what I do not like about it, and so on.
The landing page for http://www.beatport.com tightly controls the use of space to present
a good deal of options and information in a slick manner. My eye is immediately drawn to the
upper left of the screen where the art accompanying new music releases refresh every couple of
seconds. This is the only moving element on the page. Hovering the mouse cursor over the music
art stops the automatic scrolling and presents the “follow link” cursor, meaning a mouse click
would take me to a page with more information on that release.
The home page is very colorful but most of this is owing to the art accompanying music
releases and not static elements built into the page design. The headings use a simple, sans serif
font in white on a black or gray-gradient background. Beyond the borders of the interactive and
informative section of the web site occupying the middle half of the page is a silhouette of half of
a pair of headphones that fades behind the web site’s logo. The logo uses a vaguely retro-looking
font reminiscent of the boxy, low resolution type produced by early computers but in a green
color, lying somewhere between the neons of the early 1990s and the garish warning of unknown
radioactive contagion used in a low-budget science fiction movie. At the very least, there are no
qualities to this green that suggest nature. It is an other-worldly green.
All of this suggests excitement, refinement, and precision — or, as I mentioned above, a
tightly controlled experience, like one might expect in a high-end dance club. This comparison is
made more apt when noticing that some releases on the home page are marked as a “Beatport
Exclusive” or simply “Exclusive.” Exclusivity and the promise of access to a unique, luxurious
experience are hallmarks of many high-end clubs. Add to this the headshots, many in black and
white, of artists under the “DJ Charts” heading next to a listing of “The Beatport Top 10,” and

there is a sense of a catered experience where the visitor is both entering a community of like-
minded fans and possibly enjoying a backstage pass.
The flashy veneer dissolves a bit, though, when I scroll down the home page to see more
headings for top releases; DJ charts; “[r]oyalty free loops, samples, sound effects and patches”;
and another scrolling advertisement for web site features. This is when it becomes apparent that,
although the album art and pictures of artists/DJs caught my eye at first, there is so much
information on the home page for which I would not understand the significance of without
greater familiarity with the web site. For example, many of the releases featured on the home
page include three lines of text underneath the album art for artist, release title, and recording
label. None of this information is labeled, though, so it is difficult at first glance to know what
the artist’s name is versus the release title or recording label.
Inventory of Salient Features and Topics
The features and attributes of Beatport.com may be divided into web site categories and
content categories within which more advanced interactive features exist. Some interactive
features are gateways for user-generated content while others simply provide options for locating
desired content. Because Beatport.com, as with many digital music retail sites, has an extensive
catalog of digital music content, it is useful to analyze web site categories, which allow a visitor
to navigate different sections of the web site, separately from content categories, which assist
visitors when browsing and searching for digital music content. Not surprisingly, there is overlap
between these two categories and content categories could be considered merely nested within
web site categories, but this distinction is useful as a way to begin categorizing elements
according to “theoretical insights” and a “specific research interest,” as Pauwels (2012, p. 253)
has recommended. Pauwels developed the framework recognizing that “[w]hat is significant or

not [to a research project] may require both deliberation and specific knowledge of the genre and
the broader culture under study” (p. 253). In this instance, Beatport.com shares with many other
web sites interactive features that allow visitors to navigate it, but the content categories contain
more significance for this study as they uniquely facilitate practices of the culture under study,
practices that occurred prior to the digital age but that are now evident in this digital context.
Web site categories. The web site categories are a natural place to start this inventory, as
they provide visitors the means to navigate the main parts of the web site and act as an
introduction before delving into the culturally significant content categories. Beatport.com has
five web site categories or “tabs” listed along the top of the web site that are consistently
displayed on all pages:
1. “Music” — This is the home page where visitors first land when entering the web site. It
acts as the initial entryway into the digital music catalog. Several content categories, such as new
releases and top selling songs, and content features, such as a search bar, are displayed.
2. “Sounds” — The second web site category takes a visitor to a catalog of, according to the
web site, “Royalty free loops, samples, sound effects and patches for your DJ sets and
productions.” As with the “Music” category, several content categories are initially displayed
upon visiting this section, including featured, new, and popular collections of sounds.
3. “Mixes” — The “Mixes” category takes the visitor to a catalog of pre-recorded DJ sets,
each comprised of songs selected (and sometimes composed) by a DJ/artist and blended
seamlessly together. As with the previous web site categories, several content categories, such as
new and most popular releases and artists, are available. It is noteworthy that, in addition to the
content categories shared with the above web site categories, the “Mixes” web site category

provides the first instance of an option for user-generated content with the “Upload Your Mix”
button. This feature provides visitors the opportunity to upload a digital mixes they have created.
4. “DJs” — This web site category collects profiles of DJs/artists that include a biography,
links to social media accounts, dates of upcoming live events, new songs available for purchase
on Beatport.com, and more. Visitors also may create their own profile, making this a web site
category that includes user-generated content.
5. “Play” — This is the only web site category that relies heavily on user-generated content.
Beatport hosts remix contests where visitors may download “stems” — isolated fragments of a
song — that they then can manipulate using software and hardware to create a new version of the
original song. Visitors then upload their remix and solicit votes from other participants and their
own fan base. The artist, usually in consultation with a record label, chooses a winning remix
and community votes choose the runner-up. Winners receive hardware or software packages and,
often, the winning remixes are released by the participating record label.
6. “News” — All industry-related news items are presented in blog-like format under this
web site category. The news items most often point visitors to longer stories of interest on other
web sites or present music videos, information on new releases, and interviews with DJs/artists.
Anything of value to fans of electronic dance music could be posted: festival announcements,
news impacting popular artists, and items of cultural interest such as histories of the electronic
music scene. Of particular interest to this research is the frequency of news items featuring
tutorials or composition/performance-related products appealing to visitors who DJ or compose
their own music.
Additional web site categories, divided into three main categories with sub-categories,
are listed at the bottom of the web site. The web site category “Company” includes ten sub-

categories. “About Us” links to a short paragraph outlining the company’s mission, history, and
purpose. “Contact Us” provides the visitor with contact information for customer and marketing
inquiries. “Redeem Invite Code” allows some visitors to preview new web site features ahead of
public release. “Careers” links to job openings. “Logos & Images” provides high quality versions
of company logos for commercial purposes, as well as a style guide detailing display and use
restrictions. “Terms and Conditions” links to a long document outlining copyright issues and
general web site usage restrictions. “Privacy and Cookie Policy” discloses the information
Beatport collects from visitors and how this information is shared. “Copyright Information”
provides information on filing an intellectual property right dispute with Beatport. “Customer
Support” includes many frequently asked questions regarding site functionality, the company
itself, and the terms and conditions of using the web site. “Give user feedback” allows visitors
with a registered account to suggest improvements to the web site’s design and functionality and
to vote on other users’ suggestions. Moderators then label responses as “under review,”
“planned,” “started,” “customer care,” “praise,” “completed,” or “declined.”
The second web site category at the bottom of the page, “Network,” includes links to
specialty web sites falling directly under Beatport’s brand or web sites somehow associated with
it. “Sounds to Sample” links to http://www.soundstosample.com, the web site for
Sounds/To/Sample, a company acquired by Beatport in 2010 that sells digital sample packs and
loops (Beatport and Sounds/To/Sample introduce Element packs, 2010). The sub-category
“Beatport News” simply links to the “News” web site category discussed above. “Beatport Gear”
includes short descriptions of three product lines produced in conjunction with Beatport for a
model of headphones, audio and USB cables and connectors, and a line of t-shirts. “Distribution
by Baseware” links to a short description and information request form for a digital music

distribution service that assists artists with distributing music through partnering sites, such as
Beatport, iTunes, AmazonMP3, Stompy.com, and Spotify. “Beatport Pro” links to a web site
where visitors can download the Mac OS X desktop application of the same name and read an
overview of features. This application integrates with the web site to add functionality and
customization options when searching for and purchasing music from Beatport.com. The next
sub-category, “Beatport Downloader,” provides details and a download link for a program of the
same name, which similarly interfaces with Beatport.com to assist with purchasing and
downloading content, but is less fully featured than Beatport Pro. “Beatport Mobile” presents a
version of the web site optimized for mobile browsing devices. The final sub-category,
“Mashbox,” advertises a software application for mobile devices with which users may
download short portions of commercially released songs that can then be blended together and
manipulated in new ways. Social media icons for Beatport’s profiles on Facebook, Twitter, and
Google+ are also included at the end of the “Network” web site category.
The third web site category at the bottom of the page allows visitors to view the web site
in a language other than English. Options include German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese,
and Japanese.
Content categories. Some of the content categories are consistent across the web site
categories above. “Music,” “Sounds,” “Mixes,” and “DJs” allow for sorting and browsing by
content categories relating to genre or style. Taking the web site category “Music” as
representative, Table 1 lists the 23 genre categories, each pertaining to a style of music.

Table 1
Music Genre Content Categories Used on Beatport.com
Breaks Hip-Hop Chill Out House
DJ Tools Indie Dance/Nu Disco Deep House Minimal
Drum & Bass Pop/Rock Dubstep Progressive House
Electro House Psy-Trance Electronica Raggae/Dub
Funk/R&B Tech House Glitch Hop Techno
Hard Dance Trance Hardcore/Hard Techno
“Sounds” has some styles unique to it, listed in Table 2, which are substituted for some of the
more specific sub-genres in “Music.”
Table 2
Content Categories Unique to Samples on Beatport.com
Drums MIDI Orchestral Presets/Patches Sound FX Vocal
“Music” also includes the option for DJ charts, which are collections of songs chosen by DJs and
artists that represent the style of music they tend to play and may include songs they would use
while DJing professionally.
The web site category “Play” does not include the option for sorting current contests by
genre. Rather, visitors may browse contests according to the following classifications: “Open for
submission,” “Open for voting,” “Winner announcements,” and “Currently in judging.” When
visitors click on a contest that is currently open for submissions, four tabs are available. “Intro”
includes a contest schedule of dates when submissions are accepted, when community voting is
allowed, when judging begins and ends, and when the winner will be announced. There is also
an embedded audio clip of the original song, some contest details that may include a biography
of the artist and an introduction to the song, a list of prizes, three of the latest submissions with
audio playback buttons, and an area where visitors may comment on the contest as a whole. The

second tab, “Remixes,” displays all currently submitted remixes with embedded audio clips. The
remixes may be sorted by most recent or most played. When visitors click on a specific remix,
they are presented with a larger waveform display of the audio file, the total number of plays and
comments, information about the remix submitted by the participant, an area to read and leave
comments, and buttons to share the remix on social media platforms. The “Rules” tab displays a
summary of the contest rules with a link to the full rules, and the “Upload” tab page simply has a
button with which to select and upload a remix file in MP3 format.
The web site category “News” allows visitors to sort news articles in three ways, with
additional sorting tags associated with each news article. The content category “Music News”
collects most of the stories ranging from product reviews, festival announcements, links to
videos of interest, interviews with artists, and stories relating to the history and culture of
electronic and dance music scenes. “Beatport Alerts” are announcements relating to
Beatport.com, such as upcoming live web casts, new remix contests, staff picks, and more.
Lastly, the content category “Genres” allows visitors to sort stories according to the genre
classifications outlined in “Music” web site category. Additionally, each story might include
embedded videos or audio files, links to stories on other web sites, buttons for sharing on social
media platforms, and “tags” culled from significant details from that particular story (e.g., an
artist, genre, record label, or topic) that visitors may click on to view other stories with that tag.
Content tools/features. In addition to the content categories discussed above, which
allow visitors to locate desired content based on genre, for example, Beatport.com provides other
tools for customizing the web site experience and evaluating content according to other qualities.
Visitors with a registered account can choose to “follow” artists and record labels, which will
save them to a visitor’s profile and can be accessed in a tab that slides open from the left side of

the web page. This tab, called “My Beatport,” provides a listing of new releases by artists and
labels the visitor follows. The tab also provides a link to an expanded version of “My Beatport”
where a visitor is presented with more sorting options such as by album or mix, release date,
beats per minute, and genre.
A consistent feature throughout the site is the audio playback button. Associated with
every song in the catalog is a button with two functions: (a) to begin audio playback of the
selected song or list of songs immediately and (b) to queue the song or list of songs for later
playback. When playback of a song begins, a narrow window opens directly beneath the web site
categories at the top of the page. A play button pauses and restarts playback and two seek buttons
move to the next or previous song in the queue. The title of the currently playing track, the artist
and remixer (if applicable), the date of release, total running time of the individual song, the
record label it is released on, and the song’s genre are displayed. A waveform display (i.e., audio
data represented visually) of the currently playing song shows which portion of the 30-second
preview is currently playing. A visitor may click anywhere within the waveform to jump to a
particular section, and the display can be expanded to show the 30-second portion previewed in
relation to the song as a whole. Small type in the corner of the waveform provides the song’s
beats per minute (BPM) and musical key. A link to “Key commands,” to the right of the
waveform, displays a list of keyboard shortcuts for common tasks, such as seeking playback
forward and playing the next song in the queue. Next to the waveform display is a buy button
that shows a shopping cart and the price of the currently playing track. Clicking this button adds
the song to a visitor’s shopping cart.
The shopping cart displays “releases” (collections of songs in an album or compilation)
and “tracks” (individual songs) separately, and it allows for saving anything in the shopping cart

to a “hold bin” for later purchase. The cost of each song or collection of songs is displayed and
may be previewed or removed from the cart. Visitors may also choose to upgrade any purchase
from the default MP3 format to WAV or AIFF formats. WAV and AIFF are uncompressed audio
formats that result in larger file sizes than with MP3 but without the compromised audio quality
perceived with compressed audio.
In-depth Analysis of Content and Formal Choices
Intra-modal analysis.
Verbal/written signifiers. Guided by my interest in uncovering the ways in which
experiential factors, materiality, and practice/performance assist in exploring the embedded
nature of the Internet, it is potentially significant to analyze how Beatport.com positions itself in
relation to traditional practices of artists and DJs, as this is one way in which the World Wide
Web may reach through the online into the offline worlds of users. In order to begin exploring
the “potential culturally specific meanings that reside in the explicit and implicit content of the
written utterances” (Pauwels, 2012, p. 253), it seems natural to start with the web site’s “about
us” statement, which reads:
Founded in 2004, Beatport is the largest music store for DJs in the world. Beatport offers
music in premium digital formats and provides unique music discovery tools created for
and by DJs. Each week, Beatport’s music collection is refreshed with hundreds of
exclusive tracks by the world’s top dance music artists. Beatport is privately held and
headquartered in Denver, USA and Berlin, Germany.
Immediately, Beatport states that the web site “is the largest music store for DJs [emphasis
added] in the world.” To bolster its claim, the statement identifies some perceived values of that
consumer group: (a) “unique music discovery tools,” (b) design elements created “for and by

DJs,” (c) a large catalog of songs updated weekly, (d) high quality audio, and (e) “exclusive
tracks.” These values emphasize the unique practices of DJs that the web site creators believe
must be reflected in its design. A digital music retail web site for DJs must do more than assist
them in finding music they like, listening, and purchasing. Beatport.com uses the input of DJs
and gives visitors those same tools to discover music that is exclusive, fresh, and high quality
and that may be difficult to find. Such statements may be contrasted with digital retailers who
emphasize ease of searching, economical products, and fast delivery. Beatport.com intends to
win over existing DJs and create new ones by giving amateurs access to similar resources as
experienced DJs.
A banner ad promoting the option to upgrade any purchase to “lossless” format –
uncompressed AIFF or WAV files – appears periodically on the site and reads, in part, “Deliver
the Highest Quality Music to Your Fans.” The justification for paying more overall for a higher
quality version of the same content rests not with the enjoyment of the consumers but that of
their fans. The music will be manipulated and presented by the consumer to other listeners.
Those listeners evaluate DJs through their performances. The original artist who composed the
music is less important in this context, and the language shows the web site’s attention to the
intersection of technology, practice, and aesthetics in relation to its digital products. The
trademarked slogan, “play with music,” supports the notion that Beatport perceives that its
audience engages with their content and web site in unique ways when compared to other digital
music retailers. The word “play” in this slogan may refer to activities such as remixing and
otherwise manipulating, DJing and performing, and dancing and listening. All of these practices,
in the context of electronic dance music, involve technological mediation.

The web site category “Customer Support” includes many frequently asked questions
regarding site functionality, the company itself, and the terms and conditions of using the web
site and has the potential for verbal signifiers important for this study. While many of the
questions and answers merely cover web site functionality, some show the company’s awareness
and expectations regarding consumers’ use of its digital products. For example, the following
question appears under the category, “General Site Questions”: “What can I do with the tracks I
purchased from Beatport?” The two-part answer only states that files may be played on
computers or digital audio devices or burned to CD but that they cannot be traded or shared with
others. After this warning, the answers states:
This is a community of DJs and artists and we do not support the sharing of files. This
hurts the artists who create the music and the labels that support those artists.
Interestingly, this shows that the company considers its visitors, DJs/artists, and record labels a
“community” that convenes with the web site. The site is not merely a digital retail outlet, in
other words. This answer, however, offers no guidance to customers who are also DJs and who
use copyrighted music in live or recorded performances.
More on point to the latter issue is this question in the same category of “General Site
Questions”: “Can I DJ with the track that I purchase from Beatport?” The answer circumvents a
clear-cut answer, however:
In the United States and UK buying a track from the site is just like buying a record from
the record store. The same legal implications are in effect. However, certain regions have
different restrictions regarding the legality of playing Digital Music files. We suggest you
visit the website of your local publishing /mechanical service to get a more detailed

answer. We also recommend that you keep a copy of your order receipts with your music
to prove that you have purchased your music legally.
Four links are provided to the web sites of the Intellectual Property Office in the UK; the UK
Copyright Service; the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers; and the MCPS-
PRS Alliance Limited (or PRS for Music) in the UK. The legality of publicly broadcasting
copyrighted music is beyond the scope of this research, but the presence of this question and
answer in the customer support web site category shows an understanding of how the site’s
digital products are used by customers that goes beyond mere listening and enjoyment.
Under the questions and answers regarding the royalty-free samples and loops sold on
Beatport.com is the question, “How can I use the samples I have purchased?” The answer
follows:
When you buy sounds from Beatport Sounds — no matter who the producer — then you
buy a license to use the samples in your own productions. Note that you are not obtaining
OWNERSHIP of the sounds — you are in fact purchasing a LICENSE to use the sounds
within your musical compositions, whether or not your compositions are released
commercially. The license is non-transferable, so if you are using an illegal copy of the
product, you are not authorized to use the sounds. The original producer of the sounds
will always remain the owner of the actual sounds.
Unlike with the question regarding what purchasers can do with purchased songs, this answer
avoids addressing playback or technical issues and instead goes directly to the issues of practice
and performance. The answer also dissolves any significant difference between so-called
amateur and professional artists, emphasizing that “no matter who the producer” they both have

the opportunity to use these high quality products, “whether or not your compositions are
released commercially.”
The banner at the top of the “Sounds” web site category introduces the types of royalty-
free sounds offered that can be used in “your DJ sets and productions.” This wording shows just
how close the relationship is between DJing other artists’ songs and creating one’s own. The
skills cultivated for both complement each other and many modern hardware devices and
software packages have both capabilities. Boundaries between the two activities blur as
DJs/artists remix, manipulate, re-purpose, re-contextualize, and reinvent audio. The headline for
this banner, “Create your own sound,” might seem misleading considering that consumers are
purchasing audio clips, short performances, and programmed synthesizer presets that do not
originate with them. The raw materials can be combined in innumerable ways, however; they can
be sculpted through effects and audio editors where they are stretched, truncated, looped, and
twisted beyond recognition or they may be kept largely intact, as a starting point for an artist’s
creation or as an addition to a DJ set.
In addition to the content sub-categories organizing the web site category, “News,”
discussed above, stories are further collected through tags. Beatport News uses two categories of
labels: one called “filed under” and the other called “tagged as.” A story may be tagged
according to the DJs/artists and record labels featured and other content specific to that article.
The links designated “filed under” often correspond with content categories for the “News” web
site category. For example, a story may be filed under “Beatport news” and thus corresponds to
the content category “Beatport Alerts” at the top of the page. Additionally, a story may be filed
under a genre content category (e.g., electro house or techno) and other labels, such as “track of

the day,” “morning roundup,” “Friday matinée,” “moving pictures” (for videos), “festivals,” and
“interview.”
Of particular interest to this study are stories filed under “Tools of the Trade,” “DJ Tips,”
“Production Tips,” and “Culture.” Stories filed under “Tools of the Trade” feature reviews of
new hardware and software and interviews with DJs/artists regarding the software and hardware
they use. “DJ Tips” and “Production Tips” provide advice when performing and composing
music, respectively. “Culture” stories tend to cover histories and electronic music’s influence in
other arenas, such as television, visual art, etc. These four categories of stories show the ways in
which the web site moves beyond covering news directly impacting the purchasing activities of
customers on the web site, which constitute the core of its business, to the practices,
technologies, and histories that form the fabric its target audiences’ interest and participation in
the sub-culture.
These interests and practices intersect with the company’s business model and its web
site’s design when it comes to helping consumers find new music to purchase, a desire that the
company is, unsurprisingly, intent on meeting but one that also constitutes an important part of
the art of DJing. The web site category for “Beatport Pro,” a software application that adds
functionality when searching for music to purchase on Beatport.com, explicitly references the
tradition of searching for and collecting music that can form a DJs signature sound. Where the
description of the application explains that the audio player with which consumers preview songs
can continuously run in the background, it reads, “Now there is no excuse for not crate digging
24/7.” Sirois (2008, p. 21) has defined “record digging” or “crate digging” in the hip hop
community as “the task of actively leafing through records in order to find a specific record —
similar to a hunt to find the right song or sound.” While Sirois has shown the ways in which the

DJ community has a complex relationship with digital music, the present research takes interest
in how the verbal content on Beatport.com attempts to thread into the practices of its target
subculture by invoking its traditions. Searching through stacks of vinyl for new music is
“considered an art form” (Sirois, p. 21), particularly by other DJs, because the DJ’s taste and
style defines him or her to audiences. Sirois has called this “consumption as production”: “It is
the record-buying DJ (the cultural consumer) who moves into the role of cultural producer by re-
imagining the turntable and records as modes of production” (p. 15).
Thus, the music content categories and searching tools, more than mere web site
conventions for organizing a large catalog of digital content, assist visitors in fulfilling this
central activity of DJ culture. The genre categories are important for more than just guiding a
visitor’s taste to an appropriate section of the catalog. When building a DJ set based on the genre
tech-house, for instance, a consumer familiar with the genre classifications would know that
minimal, electronica, and deep house songs would be a natural fit, whereas hard dance,
progressive house, and raggae/dub might sound out of place. The ability to sort songs by beats
per minute (BPM), see the musical key of previewed songs, filter results to include only music
exclusive to Beatport.com, and the ability to select sub-genre sorting within larger genres all
assist DJs when building sets. Therefore, these features are strongly connected to the practices,
performance, and identities of DJs.
Typographic signifiers. One font is nearly consistently used throughout the web site,
though the weight, capitalization, and color vary. This sans-serif font in the Helvetica genre is
clean and clearly legible. The spacing between words and letters looks smaller than with some
fonts. This makes the text compact and lends some flair but does not impact readability. The
color varies primarily between white, black, and gray tones, although the signature green is used

at times for emphasis. When visitors play an audio preview, for example, information for the
currently playing clip uses three colors of fonts to produce a hierarchy of information: song title
and mix name in white; artist name(s) in signature green; and date of release, total length of
song, releasing label, and genre in gray separated by subtle “pipe” characters.
Figure 1. Example of details provided for currently playing audio preview.
The consistency of this font contrasts dramatically, at times, with the often stylish and heavily
artistic fonts used in the artwork for music releases, which are created independent from Beatport
and submitted by artists, labels, and music distribution services. The precise nature of the font
used throughout the web site could reflect on the genre of electronic music generally, which
comes from the certainty of voltages and the mathematical calculations of digital processes.
The Beatport logo differs from the font used consistently throughout the web site
primarily for textual information. It uses a much more stylized, distinctive font in the site’s
signature green with the addition of two artistic flourishes: a graphical silhouette of a pair of
headphones with a downward facing arrow between the ear cups and the same downward facing
arrow elongating the “r.” Each letter is created with one solid, thick line with a clear beginning
and end that stops just short of overlapping within the letter. Except for small portions of some
letters, curves are made with swift changes in direction so that an angle is created, but the angle
is softened by the curvature of the line. The font reflects on a futuristic aesthetic, resembling the
pathways of a circuit board or the low resolution fonts of early digital devices, a reference also
seen in the signature green that is reminiscent of monochromatic computer monitors.
Visual representational signifiers. Although Beatport.com is an image heavy web site,
few of those images were created specifically for or by the designers of Beatport.com. Labels

and DJs/artists create or commission graphics for use on their releases, and DJs/artists submit
their own images for their profiles. Additionally, the images used in the “News” web site
category come from the full stories linked therein. Although all these images could be fruitful for
analysis, the sheer number and variety, and the fact that these images do not originate with those
involved with the design of Beatport.com, put them beyond the scope of this research. What
might yield some insights into the web site’s cultural expressiveness in relation to these images,
though, are their ratio, borders, size, sequencing, and position, all characteristics Pauwels (2012,
pp. 254 – 255) has identified as key aspects of visual signifiers.
On the home page, the largest image is a rectangular, automated “flip book” of music
releases newly added to the catalog. Where applicable, administrators have placed the “Beatport
exclusive” icon over the top left of the image.
Figure 2. Example of exclusive icon overlaying the artwork of a new release.
Colored a distinct light blue, this exclusive badge has a small, five-sided star to the right of the
text and overlays a small portion of the release art, with the art wrapping around it and giving it
prominence. To the right of this automated scroller, a selection of three currently featured DJ
charts, with three additional charts available if the user clicks the scroll button, displays what a
(often high-contrast) photograph of the artist(s) with the name typed in a corner. Presumably, the

typed name is added by administrators of Beatport.com, because its custom placement needs to
suit this display area and the font matches that used elsewhere on the web site but with more
weight (i.e., bold). All of these pictures – the music release cover images and the photographs of
DJ/artists – are active links to their respective content.
As stated earlier, Beatport.com is an image-heavy web site, in part, because there is a
picture “attached” to every piece of content and it is displayed, in different ratios (i.e., sizes) and
as an active link, in many different places. For example, if visitors click on the art for a new
release on the home page, they are taken to a more detailed content page for that music release,
which includes the same art in a smaller ratio. Then, if visitors click to listen to a preview of that
content, an even smaller thumbnail version of the art appears in the playback window that
appears directly under the web site category tabs. The art is displayed smaller still in visitors’
listening queue. Interestingly, the standard encoding and delivery method for digital content
purchased from Beatport.com, MP3, cannot carry with them the art information. Despite the
many ways in which the web site utilizes visual signifiers for its content, this data resides only on
the web site, for the most part.
Although DJs/artists upload their own pictures to fill out their profile on the web site,
some of these pictures have been re-purposed in advertisements for web site services. How and
which images are presented potentially provide insight into the cultural expressiveness of the
web site. For example, five cropped images of DJs/artists are used in a web advertisement
promoting the feature that allows visitors to upload DJ mixes and sell them through the web site
if they exclusively contain original songs and/or music purchased from Beatport.com.

Figure 3. Advertisement for "mixes" using DJ/artist pictures in nominal mode.
The photographs are all black and white, tightly focused on the faces looking at the lens directly
or in profile with great degrees of shadow and contrast. In part, these photographs are likely used
for the recognition associated with these DJs/artists, which is reinforced by the text that actually
names them, inviting visitors to “join [their] ranks.” The DJ/artist profile images are presented in
the “physical mode” elsewhere on the web site — that is, they present a particular person — but
here the images are used in the “nominal mode,” representing a class of people (Pauwels, 2012,
p. 254). Presenting these dramatic photographs while inviting user-generated content attempts to
connect the mystique of performance, of commanding a fan base, to participatory means
available to any visitor who purchases music from the web site and has the technical knowledge
and resources to create new content.
Many of the advertisements promoting Beatport.com services, in fact, use images in the
nominal mode, which create linkages between the content and services offered and visitors’
active engagement through practice and performance. For example, an advertisement for
upgrading audio files to lossless formats pictures a traditional hardware DJ set up.

Figure 4. Advertisement picturing traditional DJ audio hardware.
The two turntables and a mixer are pictured in black and white with no performer visible. This is
a general class of musical equipment. The nature of the referent is material and inorganic, but the
style lends dramatic mystique to the promising thrill of performance. The need to understand this
picture in the nominal mode is particularly evident considering that Beatport.com is not in the
business of selling vinyl records or DJ hardware, and a laptop computer, which is nearly
ubiquitous today regardless of other hardware used, is not pictured, despite this being one of the
primary ways in which DJs/artists interact with the content they purchase from the web site.
Another advertisement that pictures DJ equipment may be contrasted with the one
promoting lossless formats. This advertisement promoting the DJ charts — lists of
approximately 10 songs selected by DJs/artists as current favorites and available for sale on
Beatport.com — shows hands manipulating a mixer and a turntable with a vinyl record on it.
Figure 5. Advertisement picturing hands manipulating DJ hardware.

The person’s face is not visible, but the hands appear to be male and may belong to a person of
color. The choice to picture an anonymous person of color, nominally standing in for “DJs … all
over the world,” invokes the history of a sub-culture that, as has been stated in many
publications, was traditionally black and gay (e.g., Garcia, 2014).
The Beatport name comprises a good portion of its logo, but it includes two additional
graphical elements: a silhouette of headphones with an arrow pointing down between the ear
cups and the same downward pointing arrow extending from the “r” in the name.
Figure 6. Primary Beatport.com logo.
As discussed above, the logo appears at the top of the homepage in light, neon-like green.
Elsewhere, though, it appears in white, usually when against a dark background. The styling of
the graphical headphones shows cups that surround the ear, a style generally preferred by DJs
who need to be able to hear or “cue” the next song to blend into the one currently playing over
loudspeakers. The downward pointing arrow used twice in the logo is likely a play on the word
“download,” and so acts as a graphical representation of the act of receiving musical content in
digital form over the Internet. The headphones and downward pointing arrow are used in
combination elsewhere on the web site as a kind of shorthand for the full logo. For instance, the
“My Beatport” feature spells out both the name of the feature and uses a shorthand with the
combination of “my” and the headphones graphic.

Figure 7. Close-up of "My Beatport" tab showing adapted use of logo.
Also, account holders “follow” DJs/artists and record labels, which adds them as a favorited item
to the “My Beatport” feature, using a button comprised of the word “follow” and the headphones
graphic.
Figure 8. "Follow" graphical button using adapted logo.
Other functional buttons use graphical elements that signify how they are used by
visitors. When visitors hover the cursor over the artwork for a music release or view the detailed
product page, a blue, oval shaped button provides the option to play a preview of a song
immediately, using the traditional filled triangle pointing to the right, or to queue the preview for
later listening, using three stacked lines that represent a list.
Figure 9. Audio preview playing and queuing button.
After clicking to play or queue a music clips, the previewing pane that opens at the top of the
screen has its own dedicated play button similarly styled but with “seek” buttons — two triangles

closely aligned pointing right for forward and left for backward — as a way to move forward or
backward in the queue.
The previewing pane also includes a graphical representation of the currently playing
song in a waveform display. Two views are available: the default that shows just the previewed
portion of the song and a full song display that shows where the previewable portion is in
relation to the rest of the song.
Figure 10. Expanded audio preview waveform display.
Visitors may click anywhere within the previewable portion to skip playback forward or
backward. Although the waveform display is a relatively “rough” view of the audio data, it
allows visitors to see peaks and valleys in the song, which typically correspond with portions of
relative quiet and high energy or louder portions. Whereas songs of other genres of music, such
as rock, are typically broken down into verses and choruses, for example, some electronic dance
music genres are thought of in terms of intros (where the beat is introduced), build ups (where
the energy of the song gradually increases), breakdowns (where the primary beat or melody is
changed in some way and the energy is decreased), and outros (where the primary beat repeats to
allow the DJ to seamlessly transition between two songs by synching the beat of the outgoing
song with the incoming one). Build ups, breakdowns, and high energy portions of the song are
generally visible where applicable, allowing visitors to skip to the portion that may inform their
purchasing decision because they can evaluate how the song might fit within a DJ set.
Visitors add items to their “shopping cart” by clicking on an icon that, unsurprisingly,
graphically represents a shopping cart. More interesting, though, is how the web site graphically
represents the functionality of the “hold bin.”

Figure 11. “Hold bin” icon.
The hold bin acts as a wish list, a place to store items for future purchase that visitors do not
want to check out with immediately. Visitors move items from the shopping cart to the hold bin
by clicking an icon resembling a 3.5-inch diskette, the dominant portable data storage device of
20th
century computing, now rendered obsolete.
Sonic signifiers. Visitors to digital music retailers expect to be able to hear audio to
inform their purchasing decisions. On Beatport.com, there is no automated audio that starts
playing upon visiting the site. Visitors must choose what and when music plays. While this
discourages a comprehensive analysis of sonic signifiers because of the large catalog, an analysis
of the web site features that facilitate visitors’ listening activities and the ways in which the web
site steers visitors towards certain sonic content may be analyzed for cultural meaning.
As mentioned above, graphical buttons allow visitors to instantly play audio previews or
add them to a queue for later listening. The audio preview pane that opens at the top of the screen
when visitors play or queue an audio clip includes several features: seek buttons for skipping
forward and backwards in the queue; a waveform display that provides a visual representation of
the audio currently playing and allows visitors to jump to particular sections of the audio; a
thumbnail display of the music release’s art; information on the artist, recording label, genre,
release date, tempo, and musical key; a button to add the currently playing song to the shopping
cart; and an optional extended pane that displays a portion of the queue.
As detailed above, the concept of “crate digging” — discovering new and exciting music
to bring to audiences through performance — is an “art” important to DJ culture (Sirois, 2008, p.
21). To facilitate browsing and searching activities, Beatport.com gives a degree of precedence

to sonic content by programming the listening pane to act independently of the searching and
browsing window. In other words, visitors may continue following new links and performing
new searches while keeping their queue and currently playing preview constant. This allows for
continuous background listening while performing other activities on the web site. Simultaneous
listening and searching is further facilitated by the available “key commands,” which are
keyboard shortcuts for controlling the playback of audio previews (moving forwards or
backwards within a song, for example) and the listening queue (skipping to the next preview or
placing a song in the shopping cart).
The highly customizable nature of visitors’ experience with the web site does not mean
that there are no efforts to steer visitors to particular sonic content, though. The homepage
promotes new and exclusive content, DJ charts from high profile DJs/artists, new royalty-free
sound packs, the top 10 songs overall, the top 5 releases of the week, and a link to the top 100
releases overall. In addition, each genre has top 10 and top 100 listings. Thus, the design of the
web site allows for the freedom to search and explore, but there is plenty of curated sonic content
that guides visitors to the most popular content.
Layout and design signifiers. The web site categories that sell digital products to
consumers — namely, “Music,” “Sounds,” and “Mixes” — present an open structure, in that
visitors may search for particular artists or songs, follow links to explore new labels, browse
genres, and more. However, there are efforts to steer visitors to curated selections. This is
particularly evident on the home page, which presents visitors with DJ charts, new and exclusive
releases, and top selling songs. The genre categories, in themselves, also could be considered
restricting, or at least guiding, visitors’ use of the web site because visitors are encouraged to
compartmentalize styles of music. This serves a function within the DJ community because

visitors with specialized knowledge of these genres seek music to fit within their performance
style and even consumers just interested in listening to music may have genres they prefer. In
addition, there is plenty of overlap between the genres, as a collection of songs in an album may
appear primarily under one genre with individual songs cross-classified with other genres. Even
so, the web site clearly presents genres as a primary method of directing visitor activity.
The centered orientation of written and visual elements, with a good deal of surrounding
white space, and clear top-bottom expectations, particularly in the “News” web site category
where stories are ordered chronologically according to publication, are fairly common design
characteristics shared with other web sites. Moreover, even though aspects of the web site’s
visual design lend a futuristic or forward-thinking tone — such as the signature green, slick but
classy graphical elements, and advanced queuing and playback options — the approach to selling
and leading consumers to new content is fairly traditional and conservative rather than
innovative. Despite some peculiarities granted to the subcultural audience, such as providing
beats per minute and key signatures for songs, lists of top-selling songs and new releases began
with traditional media long ago. Moreover, using the catalog seems a functional, rather than
revolutionary, experience.
Beatport.com sets itself apart from other music retail web sites in the range and
placement of features not directly associated with selling digital content and the types of user-
generated content solicited. The three web site categories not directly associated with selling
digital content — “DJs,” “Play,” and “News” — receive equal placement at the top of the
window as primary web site categories, rather than being subordinated and potentially receiving
less attention farther down the page.

Figure 12. Web site category orientation.
Moreover, whereas many online retailers with large catalogs of digital content offer the
opportunity to submit reviews of products as the primary interactive feature and the main source
of user-generated content, Beatport.com does not have an option for submitting music reviews.
The web site categories “News” and “Play” allow visitors with registered accounts to comment
on news stories and review user-generated remix submissions, respectively, but the unique
interactive features of Beatport.com either require technical knowledge of audio editing and
production. They are suited to visitors whose involvement in the subculture goes beyond casual
listening. The web site category “Play” offers audio “stems” of songs from which visitors may
produce their own remixes using music software and hardware, requiring knowledge of those
music-making systems. The web site category “DJs” allows visitors to create a DJ profile and
include upcoming live engagements, chart selections, music videos, DJ mixes uploaded to
Beatport’s “Mixes” web site category, and embedded audio files available on Soundcloud.com, a
popular audio streaming web site.
Analysis of cross-modal interplay.
Image/written text relations and typography-written text relations. Every music release
for sale on Beatport.com has artwork or a “cover,” in the traditional sense of albums and CDs.
This artwork “travels” with the music and appears in different contexts: as a highlighted or new
release on the homepage, as a zoomable image on the detailed product page, and as a thumbnail
image in the audio preview queue. Often, the image includes text with the artist name, release
title, and the releasing label, but the web site also provides this information as hyperlinked text,
so a visitor can click on any piece of this information in the detailed product page or in the queue

and find more music composed or curated by that DJ/artist or released by that music label. The
web site additionally provides the date of release, the total length of songs, genre classification,
price, beats per minute, and musical key signature. The text of the BPM and key signature
overlay a corner of the graphical representation of the waveform of the currently playing audio
preview, essentially “tagging” that image with this textual information.
The Beatport logo itself is an instance of cross-modal interplay. The logo has a distinctive
typography, which has a vaguely futuristic aesthetic communicated through the shape of
individual letters and the color. This typography is not duplicated in any other headings. Two
graphical elements accompany the logo: a silhouette of headphones with a downward-pointing
arrow between the ear cups and the same arrow extending from the bottom of the “r” in
“Beatport.” The headphones do not always accompany this unique typeface. Some headings,
such as “My Beatport,” use the unique typeface for the word “Beatport” but do not include the
headphones. The downward-pointing arrow extending the “r” always accompanies the Beatport
name if it is in the unique typeface, though. Watzman and Re (2012) have explored the purpose
of such textual logos in their prescriptions for usable visual design:
Because they are essentially typographic fashion statements, decorative typefaces can
either reinforce or distract from the overall message or brand of a particular product or
organization. (p. 326)
Although the present research does not determine effectiveness or usability, the elements of this
logo can be viewed as reinforcing the company’s brand by explicitly and symbolically
integrating aspects both new and traditional to the its target audience. The headphones are a
traditional piece of hardware equipment utilized by DJs in performance, while the downward-

pointing arrow represents the relatively new adoption of digital music (in the sense of
downloading) as the primary source of content for performances.
By reinforcing the coupling of these graphical and textual elements through repetition, it
seems natural that they may be de-coupled in various ways elsewhere and still stand for the
whole — the Beatport brand itself. For example, the “My Beatport” window replaces the
graphical headphones with “MY” in a blue oval followed by “Beatport” in the distinctive font,
but less obviously the top of the window combines the blue “MY” with only the graphical
headphones. The implication is that the graphical headphones with the downward pointing arrow
by themselves stand in for the full logo and reinforce the brand.
Sound/image-relations. As detailed above, the music art travels with each release and
adapts to various uses through ratio (i.e., visual size) changes, thus reinforcing the relationship
between the images and sounds. While digital artwork attached to digital music is not unusual in
Web 2.0 environments and with mobile devices, it has particular significance in DJ culture
because an album’s artwork was usually the first contact DJs would have with a record while
“crate digging” (Sirois, 2008, p. 21) for new sounds and became the primary method by which
they located that record in their collection during a DJ performance.
The images used to begin playback of audio previews and navigate to the next or
previous song in the queue are familiar and standard, both in analog and digital environments.
The waveform display, on the other hand, is less common. When audio playback of a preview
starts, a green highlight moves along the waveform synched with the audio. Visitors may jump
ahead or backward in the playback by clicking on a portion of the playback or using shortcut
keys to move forwards or backwards.

Kiliman - MA thesis

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