Emergence and evolution of community structure in Rock
music
Background:
Creating music is often a collaborative process requiring talent in diverse instruments, styles
and influences to come together. However, musical ties are often made for other reasons, for
example due to existing friendships or convenience due to proximity. Other factors can play
an important role. For example, community structure in the network of Jazz musicians
revealed a clear split along racial lines between black and white musicians in the Swing Era
[1].
How such communities emerge and evolve over time and in space remains an open question.
However, detailed data is necessary to answer these, even in part.
Objectives:
Using the Band-to-Band website (bandtoband.com), the aim is to gain an understanding of the
evolution of the network of collaborations of Rock musicians.
What the student will do:
The project will be based around collecting and analysing the data available on the website.
There is some flexibility on the exact direction of the project, depending on the interests of
the student.
1) Data collection (3-4 weeks):
a. Script writing to collect the data from www.bandtoband.com
b. Liaising with webmasters
2) Network building and analysis (3-4 weeks)
a. Musician network, where nodes are band members and links are made when
musicians make a record together.
b. Bands network, where nodes are bands, and links are made when musicians
appear on records made by different bands.
3) Temporal analysis of communities (3-4 weeks)
a. Community detection methods in complex networks [2]
b. Identification of emergence of genres via community detection
c. Case study (e.g. Punk in the UK [3], grunge in Seattle)
Skills, techniques and follow on:
This project is ideally suited to a student with strong computational skills and some
knowledge of graph theory and analysis. The student will have the opportunity to acquire the
knowledge necessary to embark upon a PhD on social network analysis. Although it is not
immediately envisaged that this project could be expanded into a PhD, ideas from exceptional
students could make that happen.
References:
1) Gleiser, P. and Danon, L., Community structure in Jazz, Advances in Complex
Systems, (2003). http://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0307434
2) Danon, L. Duch, J., Diaz-Guilera, A. and Arenas A., Comparing community structure
identification, JSTAT, P09008, http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1742-5468/2005/09/P09008
(2005).
3) Crossley N., Pretty Connected: The Social Network of the Early UK Punk Movement,
Theory, Culture & Society, 25:89 (2008), http://tcs.sagepub.com/content/25/6/89