this is a very interesting topic. if the indie record store is understood as a space of communication that creates social bonds in the cultural realm and also symbolic capital that differentiates lifestyles from other lifestyles, then the question is if the indie record store is going to vanish due to p2p and web 2.0. my contention is that indie rock fans don't stop buying music in local indie record stores, they now consume more music, from more different sources. they don't just download everything from the net, because there seems to be a certain passion for collecting original records, especially of artists whom one likes. also they don't just order on amazon because there seems to be a certain distrust in economic monopolies, and indie rock fans more like to support small distributors and stores. this might be due to the traditional values immanent in this scene. maybe the indie music scence is now more globalized because fans from different localities meet in cyberspace on myspace etc. then this seems to be a networking of local scences and people, i don't think that local scenes and spaces vanish. indie rock concercts are still important, record stores are as well, as places to talk about and listen to music, network with people, etc. it seems to be necessary for indie rock fans to accumulate a certain symbolic capital of distinction in social relations together with others. my contention is that this is still done offline, and functions better offline than online. indie rock fans now seem to have the possibilities to network locally and globally, the global doesn't destroy local scenes, but networks individuals and localities. mtv in the 1990ies was a sort of globalization medium of indie rock. but it was one-dimensional and one-to-many, web 2.0 now seems to be a networked glocalization (roland robertson) of indie rock functioning in many-to-many-communication. maybe there is a potential for a shift from discursive indie rock globalization to dialogic indie rock globalization in the sense of vilem flusser's notions of discourse and dialogue. i also find it interesting to think about how web 2.0 changes commercialization and economic colonization processes in indie rock, if there can be a certain decolonization in the sense of strengthening independent distributors and weakening transnational corporations that are interested in micro-marketing alternative rock. these are some subjective impressions that i have as an indie rock fan. christian -- _____________________________ Univ.Ass. Dr. Christian Fuchs Assistant Professor for Internet and Society ICT&S Center - Advanced Studies and Research in Information and Communication Technologies & Society http://www.icts.uni-salzburg.at University of Salzburg Sigmund Haffner Gasse 18 5020 Salzburg Austria christian.fuchs@sbg.ac.at Phone +43 662 8044 4823 Fax +43 662 6389 4800 Information-Society-Technology: http://fuchs.icts.sbg.ac.at http://www.icts.uni-salzburg.at/fuchs/ Managing Editor of tripleC - peer reviewed open access online journal for the foundations of information science: http://triplec.uti.at Forthcoming BOOK: Fuchs, Christian (2008) Internet and Society: Social Theory in the Information Age. New York: Routledge.