Enabling Virtual Music Performance Communities

The chapter provides an overview of virtual music communities focusing on novel collaboration environments aiming to support networked and geographically dispersed music performance. A key objective of the work reported is to investigate online collaborative practices during virtual music performances in community settings. To this effect, the first part of the chapter is devoted to reviewing different kinds of communities and their corresponding practices as manifested through social interaction. The second part of the chapter presents a case study, which elaborates on the realization of virtual music communities using a generic technological platform, namely DIAMOUSES. DIAMOUSES was designed to provide a host for several types of virtual music communities, intended for music rehearsals, live performances and music learning. Our recent experiments provide useful insights to the distinctive features of these alternative community settings as well as the practices prevailing in each case. The chapter is concluded by discussing open research issues and challenges relevant to virtual music performance communities.