Dreaming of a diy Career: Platform Practices, Motivational Discourses, and the Self-Entrepreneurial diy of Up-and-Coming Indie Bands in China

Abstract While China’s platformised cultural industries promote musical entrepreneurism, up-and-coming indie bands in China face several challenges in their journey towards a career in the music industries: a high regulatory threshold for participating in the live scene, little space for live experimentation, limited choice of online self-releasing platforms, and a censorship regime that limits criticism and creativity. This paper examines how up-and-coming indie bands, often overlooked in academia, navigate the precarious and competitive environment of professionalisation and regulation in China’s platformised music industry. Drawing on ethnographic methods and discourse analysis, it investigates the platform practices and motivations of three up-and-coming indie bands based around Shanghai: Protostar, Acid Room, and Blue Liquid. The paper identifies six discursive repertoires that these bands use to motivate their approach to a diy ethos – entrepreneurism, professionalism, authenticity, independence, convenience, and necessity – and argues that they adopt a self-entrepreneurial diy approach to actively shape their career.