A methodology for studying transmedia album launches in post-digital music culture
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3145/infonomy.26.030Keywords:
Music, Music industry, Cultural industries, Communication, Marketing, Digital marketing, Social media, Digital platforms, Digital culture, Popular culture, Cultural participation, Qualitative researchAbstract
The paper examines transmedia album launches in post-digital music culture as complex communicative processes shaped by the articulation of music, image, platforms, live experience, fan participation, artistic branding and cultural positioning. It starts from the need to move beyond approaches focused on isolated promotional actions and proposes understanding the album launch as an integrated cultural architecture. Its main aim is to design a methodological matrix for the analysis of these campaigns through axes, categories and operational indicators, applicable to different musical genres, industrial scales and cultural contexts. The study follows a qualitative, interpretative and propositional approach, based on a literature review of transmedia, platform culture, music marketing and artistic branding, together with documentary analysis of recent research and the identification of recurring features in contemporary campaigns. As a result, the article presents a matrix structured around eight axes: visual identity, narrative and persona, transmedia architecture, fan participation, live experience, cultural extension, symbolic positioning, and reception and impact. The conclusions emphasise the value of the model for comparing campaigns, identifying patterns and critically analysing the relationships between creativity, community, industry, visibility and the market, while requiring rigorous archiving, clear temporal delimitation and regular methodological updating to preserve ephemeral materials and reconstruct changing communicative processes over time.
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Copyright (c) 2026 José-Patricio Pérez-Rufí, Carmen Navarro-González, Sevie Pastrana-Crespillo, Jorge Sánchez-Carrión
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
