‘Who’ll Stop the Rain’? The Dissemination and Regulation of Protest Songs Online

This paper focuses on the protest song as a form of public contestation and on the way in which it circulates and is regulated online. Music is here treated as a form of political communication, but one that is often overlooked by political scientists. This paper argues that by analysing the particular case of protest music in the digital sphere, we can enrich and expand our understanding of the form and dynamics of public contention. It is commonly argued that the protest song had its heyday in the 1960s, and that it is now in terminal decline. My paper begins by questioning the basis of such claims, before going on to investigate protest music’s presence online. This is done by using streaming services such as Spotify, from which some 35 million tracks are available, to identify songs that speak to subjects such as ‘austerity’ and ‘war’, and to establish evidence for the frequency and focus of online protest music. This database is used to identify a smaller sample of songs and to trace how, on sites such as YouTube, they are interpreted and reacted to by fans and other followers. This allows us to see how ‘protest songs’ are understood by those who listen to them. Finally, the paper examines the extent to which YouTube’s automated ‘notice and takedown’ regime, among other regulatory interventions, is used to target protest music (particularly that which relies upon parody), and to explore how this operates within different jurisdictions. In summary, this paper is an attempt to establish protest music as a form of public contention in the online sphere and to identify methods and approaches to the analysis of its use and regulation. The paper draws on research funded by the Leverhulme Trust and the AHRC’s CREATe programme.