Using autoethnography to research independent music production as household innovation

Abstract

Digitalization and datafication have brought structural changes to the music industry globally, creating new innovation opportunities as well as risks for industry role-players, including within the artist-audience relationship. In this context, extending the research understanding of independent music production, as Walzer has suggested, is increasingly important. This paper makes a methodological contribution to this research agenda, by demonstrating the use of autoethnography in the study of a household innovation system, and the use of autoethnographic data for reflection on knowledge acquisition and knowledge combination as well as barriers to and enablers of innovation. The paper also makes a conceptual contribution to the literature on innovation capabilities within African informal settings, arguing for a conception of knowledge informality as a distinct feature of knowledge that can be combined with more formal codified knowledges during innovation processes. For public policy to orient to resource-constrained and knowledge-diverse creative communities, new sources of data and types of analysis widen and deepen the evidence-base for creative industry development broadly, and independent music production in particular.