Social media has introduced complex learning ecologies that have raised interest among music education scholars in recent years. However, the economic conditions of these new learning ecologies remain largely unexplored in music education research. To understand such conditions, we need to examine how music learners seek, find, produce, share, and exchange musical meanings in digitally mediated value networks. Using Jacques Attali’s political economy of music, literature on musical prosumption, and YouTube as a concrete example, this chapter explores the implications of the commodification of music-related practices and identities in social media, highlighting the need for music educators to understand the complexity of cultural consumption and production in such environments. In this way, the author suggests, music educators can best answer the needs of learners who need to be able to navigate the 21st-century musical-economic landscape.
Book review (E-learning ecologies: Principles for new learning and assessment, by Cope & Kalatzis)
