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ABSTRACT
As algorithms have emerged as a key site of power in contemporary culture and society, they have been scrutinised by a number of media scholars, variously focusing on their opacity, bias and social implications. There has also been important work calling for a shift of attention away from the algorithms themselves to the actors that control them: the fundamental questions we should be asking of algorithms, after all, concern more than the specifics of code. This paper applies the arguments developed by Gillespie and Bucher to the algorithms utilised by music streaming services – the powerful but opaque curatorial systems that suggest songs to users. Although there has been important work on algorithms in the context of music streaming, this focus on music streaming remains relatively unusual. Even in the context of music streaming algorithms, our approach is also novel, in that we focus not on the possible effects upon users of music streaming platforms – that is, music fans – but, rather, on the possible effects on music creators. What, then, might be the effects upon songwriters and artists of the increasing prevalence of recommendation systems in music streaming?
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Marcus O’Dair
Marcus O’Dair is Associate Dean of Knowledge Exchange and Enterprise at University of the Arts London (UAL). He is the author of Distributed Creativity (Palgrave 2018), about the potential impact of blockchain technology on the creative economy, and Different Every Time: The Authorised Biography of Robert Wyatt (Serpent’s Tail 2014), a Radio 4 book of the week that was shortlisted for the Penderyn prize. He is co-editor of Mute Records: Artists, Business, History (Bloomsbury 2018) and has contributed to edited collections including Business Transformation Through Blockchain (Palgrave 2019), Jazz and Totalitarianism (Routledge 2017) and Punk Pedagogies (Routledge 2018). He has also contributed to peer-reviewed journals including Strategic Change, Popular Music, IASPM@Journal, Life Writing and the International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Marcus has also written for the Guardian, the Independent, the Times, the Financial Times and the Irish Times, and appeared on CNN, Radio 1, 6 Music, Radio 3 and the World Service. He has released three acclaimed albums and performed across Europe as one half of Grasscut. He was previously a session musician with Passenger.
Andrew Fry
Andrew Fry runs Sounds et al, a creative label and music publisher exploring sound, curation and collaboration, founded in Portland, OR and now based in Brooklyn, NY. The label has released work from artists such as Grasscut, manabu shimada, Kaori Suzuki, Ant'lrd & Benoît Pioulard, Dolphin Midwives, and Sonnet/Matsumoto, and has organized and promoted events for TBA Festival, Design Week Portland, Ace Hotel, Nike and DISJECTA. He worked in the London music industry for nearly a decade, and completed his MA at London South Bank University with a final dissertation on Cage's 4'33". First published in Popular Music In The Post Digital Age (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019), he continues to write about the intersection of sound and technology.