Eric Drott, "Streaming Music, Streaming Capital" (Duke UP, 2024)
Dec 6, 2024
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Eric Drott, Associate Professor of Music Theory at the University of Texas at Austin, delves into the complex relationship between streaming music and capitalism. He highlights how streaming services have reshaped music categorization and consumer behavior, often reflecting identity in the digital economy. Drott tackles issues like consumer surveillance, revenue distribution inequities for artists, and the impact of AI-generated music. His analysis pushes us to reconsider the commodification of music and its implications for the future.
The shift from physical music sales to streaming services has decommodified music's accessibility, benefiting listeners but complicating fair compensation for artists.
Streaming platforms create a multi-sided marketplace with diverse user groups, altering audience dynamics and complicating the definition of who truly constitutes the music audience.
Extensive user data collection by streaming services raises ethical dilemmas regarding targeted advertising and the potential systemic biases it reinforces against certain demographics.
Deep dives
The Role of Streaming Platforms in Music Distribution
Streaming platforms have fundamentally transformed music consumption by shifting the industry from physical sales to digital access. With services like Spotify, users can listen to an extensive library of music for a subscription fee, which effectively commodifies music while simultaneously decommodifying its accessibility. This model allows listeners to enjoy music without directly purchasing individual tracks, thereby fostering a more casual engagement with musical content. However, this transition raises questions about the sustainability of compensation for artists, as revenue flows predominantly favor the platforms and major record labels.
Audience Dynamics in the Streaming Economy
The streaming economy introduces a complex dynamic regarding the audience and their relationship to music. Various user groups, including listeners, artists, advertisers, and investors, are all integral to the functioning of these platforms, leading to a multi-sided marketplace. This complexity makes it challenging to define who the true audience is, as each group has different expectations and influences on the music available. Streaming platforms dynamically adjust to cater to these varied audiences, affecting how music is distributed and consumed.
Data Capture and Profiling in Music Streaming
Streaming platforms collect extensive user data, which they utilize to create detailed profiles that can be leveraged for targeted advertising. Through this data collection, listeners are often unknowingly categorized based on their listening habits, which can have broader implications for marketing and risk assessment in sectors such as insurance. Such practices highlight the potential ethical dilemmas posed by aggregating and analyzing personal data, especially when music is used as a proxy for understanding individual personalities and behaviors. Companies may exploit this information in ways that contribute to systemic biases, particularly against certain demographic groups.
The Impact of Genre on Music Consumption
Music genres continue to play a pivotal role in how streaming services categorize and recommend content. However, the rise of mood and activity-based categorization—such as playlists for workouts or relaxation—has shifted focus away from traditional genre definitions. This blurring of categorization reflects a broader trend toward utilizing music for specific contexts rather than solely for artistic expression. Such changes may alter listeners' interactions with music, encouraging a more utilitarian perspective that prioritizes functionality over artistic appreciation.
Economic Structures and the Future of Artists
The economic structure of streaming services often favors major label artists at the expense of independent musicians, leading to significant disparities in income. Recent attempts to reform revenue sharing, such as proposals for an artist-centric payment model, indicate growing recognition of these inequalities within the industry. However, initiatives like these can also lead to unintended consequences, potentially restructuring income distribution upwards rather than providing equitable support for emerging artists. The ongoing evolution of the streaming economy underscores the need for continuous scrutiny of its impact on music creators and the sustainability of their livelihood.
Streaming Music, Streaming Capital(Duke University Press, 2024) provides a much-needed study of the political economy of music streaming, drawing from Western Marxism, social reproduction theory, eco-socialist thought and more to approach the complex and highly contested relationship between music and capital. By attending to the perverse ways in which recorded music has been ultimately decommodified under the current regime of music production, circulation and consumption, Eric Drott explores issues that far exceed music - consumer surveillance, Silicon Valley monopolism, the crisis of care, capitalist extractivism and the climate emergency - while showing us how the streaming economy is thoroughly imbricated, and implicated, in these processes. Drott's rigorous and wide-ranging analysis thus offers novel ways of understanding music, culture, digitalisation and capitalism in present and future tenses .
Eric Drott is Associate Professor of Music Theory at the University of Texas at Austin.