‘What's So Funny?’: Videomemes and the Circulation of Contemporary Music in Social Media

Abstract

Prosumers use sound and music as parodic tools to transform the meaning of the original content. These practices give rise to the audio-visual phenomena of videomemes—mash-ups, shreds, literal versions, … —which have become popular in everyday communication through social media. The selection of a particular piece, genre, or repertoire has social and political implications: it helps establish the position of the person making the selection in online networks and contributes to the negotiation of meaning and canons. Thus, both prosumers and consumers use musical videomenes as cultural artefacts in communication, configuring processes of mutual recognition and interacting in different ways in online communities. In this article, I analyse the circulation of contemporary music videomemes in social media. First, I contextualise the relevance of these amateur productions in the digital era. Then, I discuss the power of parody to reinforce and subvert discourses in this repertoire. Finally, I explore three categories of videomemes—covers, collisions, and shreds—analysing paradigmatic case studies in order to illustrate the most common processes in the creation and circulation of these productions.

Keywords:

• Memes
• Social Media
• Parody
• Canon
• Prosumers

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Nowadays, all social media platforms host videos, and some of the most popular in recent years, such as Instagram and TikTok, are developing strategies to improve video sharing.

2 The data on followers was retrieved on 29 July 2021. This date also applies to further, similar data in this article.

3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krDxhnaKD7Q&t=26s.

4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpFrhKQWq4Y&ab_channel=BIMM.

5 https://www.youtube.com/user/twosetviolin.

6 https://www.tiktok.com/@brahmsstan?lang=es&is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v1.

7 https://www.youtube.com/c/MelodicaMen/videos.

8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4-M0GPy8rY&ab_channel=MelodicaMen.

9 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZLshuD1gmc&ab_channel=MelodicaMen.

10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aidKzrYAo8E&ab_channel=MelodicaMen.

11 https://www.melodicamen.com/about-melodica-men.html.

12 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmbGoYMi1zQ&ab_channel=ChrisOttMusic.

13 https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=256821439088649.

14 https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=835320983539480.

15 https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanwasoba/video/6962203972551658758?sender_device=pc&sender_web_id=6928317585265313286&is_from_webapp=v1&is_copy_url=0.

16 https://www.facebook.com/martim.gueller/videos/4136274309721402/.

17 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScxXYjgf3PU&ab_channel=JeffTriggs.

18 https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=647706925784206.

19 https://www.facebook.com/jose.besada.portas/videos/10217979228853184/UzpfSTE0Mjg5MTUyNDQwNzAxODc6MTkyNzYzMDkyNDE5ODYxNA/.

20 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4DLH4aTjhRBISRVbms5j5g.

21 https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=408198766626818.

22 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44QsooE8xE4&ab_channel=massbetelnut.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Eduardo Viñuela

Eduardo Viñuela is Associate Professor in the Department of Musicology at the University of Oviedo (Spain). He has published books and articles on popular music and audiovisual media, focusing particularly on music video. Viñuela was visiting researcher at the universities of Liverpool, Oxford and República de Uruguay, and Fulbright visiting scholar at Stanford University. He has chaired the Spanish branch of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM) and he is the Journal editor of Transcultural Music Review.