New Media Enterprise in the Age of Suspicion

Abstract

This is a study of individual economic struggle. Its subject is an Internet pioneer based in a British provincial city who bears little resemblance to the stereotype of the trendy young metropolitan entrepreneur that was beloved of investors in the ‘dot.com’ boom of the closing years of the 20th century. From the mid-1990s, when the potential of the Internet for distributing and downloading music was only beginning to be recognised, this middle-aged woman, whom I shall call Joan, was using it to give a platform to minority-interest music. She received plaudits for her innovative work, but she could not make money from it.