Meme is a New Music Genre: On the Role of Production, Transformation and Circulation of Music in the Digital Culture of Internet Memes

Initially proposed by Richard Dawkins (1976), the term 'meme' refers to the processes of circulation and transformation of an idea, object and/or cultural product, being a deposit unit of symbols and cultural practices that can be transmitted through various formats. In the age of the internet and participatory culture (Jenkins 2006), memes are one of the main forms of co-creativity, production, circulation and transformation of content by users mainly associated with pop culture, focusing on parodies, satires and other humorous characteristics that are always propagating and constantly changing their meanings. Among images, videos, social networks, forums and other online spaces, one of the objects of extensive production, mainly on YouTube and scarcely present in scientific literature, is music. The term 'meme' results in thousands of videos and playlists that compile, aggregate, and associate pre-existing songs with memes, songs created for memes, and, mainly, songs that 'are' memes. I propose in this chapter to examine the processes of production, reception and propagation of what is entitled 'meme music' on online platforms of memes, particularly Youtube. Setting on the theoretical models of Shifman (2011, 2014) and Milner (2016), my aim is to shed some light on the relevance of music in the transformation of memetic contents and how these rely on the audiovisual literacy of the users who produce and renegotiate them, engaging on different levels of meaning in the context of fandom and participatory culture.