A Social Network Analysis of Musician Co-creation on Digital Platform

Music creation involves collaborative efforts from various individuals, including composers, lyricists, singers, producers, distributors, and others. The rise of digital platforms has enabled musicians to collaborate more efficiently across disciplines, facilitating the co-creation and release of musical works. This collaboration mode has influenced the evolution of musical genres and promoted diverse musical culture through innovation and integration. This paper uses social network analysis to select a relatively popular digital platform for the young Chinese generation, Bilibili and ACG music, as the research object. The study analysed the cooperation network of 136 ACG music content creators (Up zhu) in 27 music works to reveal how musicians collaborate to co-create, release and distribute their music works through the platform. The network shows a high clustering coefficient, indicating the formation of close-knit groups among music content creators. The analysis identified 14 cohesive groups and 10 key bridge-builders, facilitating isolated groups’ connection. This co-creation has a profound impact on the relationships between creators, diversifies the styles of music that are produced, and fosters the growth of culturally diverse subcultures. The role of key bridge-builders is to enhance the network’s influence and support marginal creators, thereby promoting the creation of diverse musical works and cultural communities.