Renegade Software: Identity-Driven Cultural Economies of UK Drum & Bass Music

Drum & Bass [DnB] is a form of electronic dance music which has undergone rapid social and economic change since the COVID-19 Pandemic.

With dance music making up a substantial part of the UK's creative economy, my research wants to highlight how the experiences of and access to DnB's economies is often highly dependent on an individual's identity; specifically investigating the role of gender, sexuality and race.

Akin to other sub-cultural scenes such as skateboarding, DnB actors frequently utilise online social networks and digital media platforms to market their work and connect with others.

My method will use a hybrid online/offline interview method, where the participants engage in conversation with myself whilst demonstrating their digital practices to gain an enhanced understanding.

The conclusions from the research will not only contribute to academic literature, but also will help make DnB's economies more equitable to all actors, regardless of personal identity.

The UK dance music events sector represents a significant part of the UK's creative economy, generating upwards of £1.75bn of the £5.8bn a year UK music sector (Morrison, 2022; UK Music, 2020), and yet has been the subject of comparatively little social science research, in contrast with other forms of cultural production, such as cinema and videogames.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, UK Drum & Bass music [henceforth: DnB] underwent a period of rapid growth (Petridis, 2022; Matos, 2022), elevating the music from an 'underground' music scene to a prominent genre within the popular music industry (Peterson & Bennett, 2004; Aiken, 2023).

Throughout the genre's 30-year history (Murphy & Loben, 2021), research into DnB has focused on embodied spaces of consumption within nightclubs (e.g.: Fraser, 2008; Pini, 2001) and material distribution networks for CDs and Vinyl records (e.g.: Fraser & Ettlinger, 2012; Smith & Maughan, 1998).

Previous research predominantly focuses on the performative embodied sexual politics in hedonistic spaces (Fraser, 2012) and identifying the post-Fordist nature of sub-cultural economies (Hesmondhalgh, 1997; Hracs et al., 2014).

There are, however, no studies investigating the differences in access to and experiences of the DnB sector along lines of gender, race and sexuality.

This research directly addresses the lacuna in literature concerning intersectionality and inclusion by examining how gendered and racial identities are promoted and/or excluded in contemporary DnB digital economies of peer production (Benckler, 2006) and 'influencer' marketing (Hund, 2023).

Specifically, as an experienced DJ and promoter in the Southwest DnB sector, this research will mobilise my position as an 'insider' researcher to investigate the rapidly changing hybrid digital networks between various actors who intermediate economic growth [e.g.: artists, disc jockeys, record labels, inter alios] to better understand the interplay between identity and social capital within sub-cultural scenes.

With female engagement and media reports of racial discrimination proliferating in this post-COVID era (Matos, 2022; Jenkins, 2021), the genre's largely white-male nexus has become destabilised (Murphy & Loben, 2021), inspiring an intersectional approach for this research to best identify socio-economic networks of heteronormative, gendered and racial discrimination.

Recent controversies surrounding representations of race in DnB have involved numerous prominent record labels (Raphael, 2020). 'Gatekeeping' has been variously studied in relation to music production and promotion (e.g.: Balaji, 2012; Galan, 2012), though less so within geography, and yet there remains an absence of research focusing on intersectionality of diversity and inclusion within UK dance music economies.

In preparation, I have gained preliminary support from two influential regional promoters active in the Southwest DnB sector and a nationally significant record label.