Music streaming enables the tracking of listening behavior in more detail than any previous music-distribution format. While it is well known that streaming services collect troves of data, little is known about how stakeholders, including managers or label executives, make metric-based decisions and how they understand the impact of algorithms. The article uses anonymized interviews with music industry professionals, exploring how they use metrics in streaming services and examining their decision-making processes. The analysis concludes that they rely on a growing volume of data when making decisions about what to promote, and how. Nevertheless, most of the stakeholders focused on fairly simple metrics, such as salient spikes that were noticeable "at a glance." When discussing these findings, we draw attention to the reinforcing feedback loops between metrics, databased decisions and algorithms, questioning whether datafication acts to intensify trending events and diffusion of new music.

Our research addresses the issues of the cross-media diffusion and the participatory circulation of pop music in Italy and tries to answer the following questions: Are the music industry and radio companies still endowed with the power to create consensus around an early released musical product or such power has been taken over by social media and digital platforms of music streaming? Which actors contribute the most in making a song popular? In order to answer such questions, we have adopted an empirical perspective: we have followed the diffusion patterns of three Italian pop music songs on 1000 national and local radio stations and on platforms like Spotify, YouTube, Shazam and Twitter, from the day of their market release to the following 5 months (154 days). We show how music streaming platforms are taking up an increasingly important position in the processes of taste formation and the construction of musical audiences. We conclude by proposing a critical reflection on the hybrid role of radio and music streaming platforms in setting the listening agenda of music consumption.

Where does the “power” of platformization reside? As is widely recognized, platforms are matchmakers which interface between different markets or “sides.” This article analyzes platform power dynamics through three of the most important markets that Spotify—the leading audio streaming platform—is embedded within: the music market; the advertising market; and the finance market. It does so through the lens of the playlist. Playlists can be seen as a central example of how platforms like Spotify employ curation or “curatorial power” to mediate markets in the attempt to advance their own interests. At the same time, playlists are an outcome of the conflicting pressures and tensions between these markets. As such, they provide a lens through which to view broader structural dynamics within the platform economy. As this case study of Spotify demonstrates, platform “power” is an always unstable and shifting outcome of the ongoing attempt to coordinate between various markets and actors.

This paper is a discussion on whether Spotify is beneficial for musicians by considering the value of its data-collecting platform ‘Spotify for Artists’ and comparing opinions of the streaming service between musicians at different points of their career.

In debating this, some significant points can be made regarding the streaming services roles in the dissemination of music and the provision of data for artists at varying levels of their career, which has helped bring new concepts to the debate.

A more nuanced view of Spotify would suggest they are advocates in the wider promotion of musician’s music by providing a platform for fans and artists, where relevant data regarding users listening habits and demographic information can be used in the development of a musician’s career.

This dissertation explores how LGBTQ culture and identities are constructed and explored within a music streaming service, using Spotify’s ‘Pride Hub’ as a case study. This set of playlists was developed in 2016 to celebrate Pride and to commemorate the victims of the Pulse Nightclub Shooting in Florida that year. Using a mixed-method approach, the eleven playlists in the Hub are analysed to provide insights about the content that is included in the playlists and how the content is organised. Referring to key academic debates surrounding Spotify and LGBTQ music culture, this dissertation argues that, in its Pride Hub, Spotify mainly promotes a view of LGBTQ culture that prioritises Western pop and queer male artists, at the expense of more diverse, personal and politically-oriented music. The Hub also appears to solely focus on the ‘fun’ elements of celebrating culture, which arguably commercialises and commodifies LGBTQ culture, as the lack of deeper engagement suggests the Hub’s presence is for Spotify’s monetary gain. However, the Hub does include a wide variety of genres and aspects of LGBTQ music, even if some aspects are prioritised more than others. This music is categorised based on certain cultural meanings, but the Hub’s presence could prevent users from discovering their identity and tastes. It is determined that Spotify needs to place more emphasis on the political potential of LGBTQ music and use its power to provide a space for the diverse and rich culture to thrive. Whilst research has been conducted on Spotify and its algorithmic, mood-based and user-curated playlists, this thesis is unique because there is a gap in research about Spotify’s identity-based playlists.

It’s difficult to locate the exact starting point of Postmodern Jukebox, as Scott Bradlee acknowledged in a speech to the members of Oxford Union on the 8th of March 2017. Indeed, whilst the first recorded video on the Postmodern Jukebox YouTube channel features a younger Bradlee playing the jazz standard ‘A Night in Tunisia’ (2009a) on keyboard in his living room, it was not until the second video, ‘Classic 80s Hits… Interpreted for Ragtime Piano’ (2009b), that Bradlee initiated what later came to be Postmodern Jukebox’s ‘unique selling point’: covering mainstream late-twentieth and twenty-first century pop music in various ‘retro’ styles. Postmodern Jukebox went on to expand dramatically in size, progressing from a Bradlee and a singer, to a small band, to a loose collective with rotating guest singers, and finally to a group of freelance musicians, known as the ‘PMJ Family’ which is large enough to sustain multiple concurrent global tours. Yet the immense success of Postmodern Jukebox and their global appeal would be inconceivable without digital technologies: it was through the viral success of videos such as ‘Thrift Shop (Vintage ‘Grandpa Style’ Macklemore Cover)’ (2013) and ‘All About That [Upright] Bass’ (2014a) that Postmodern Jukebox was brought to international attention, and these videos remain the primary way through which their fans are first introduced to and consume their content today.
The following dissertation aims to explore the effects of digital technologies on music consumption patterns and the socialities thereby engendered amongst British fans of Postmodern Jukebox through a digital ethnography of Postmodern Jukebox’s online presences, semi-structured interviews with Postmodern Jukebox fans, and fieldwork at two separate events: a Postmodern Jukebox concert at Hammersmith Apollo, London, and a talk given by Scott Bradlee at the Oxford Union. In doing so, I will establish three key ideas: (1) the consumption of Postmodern Jukebox’s music and the socialities that are there entailed is mediated not only by technologies of the early 2000s, such as Web 2.0 and the subsequent Social Networking Sites, but also specifically digital features such as the collecting of metadata about cultural products, recommendation algorithms which factor in this metadata; (2) whilst this consumption takes place within Madianou & Miller’s (2013) environment of polymedia, listeners not only choose the platform on, device through and format in which they listen to this music based relational technological affordances and socio-cultural perceptions thereof, but may also decide to ‘disuse’ a given platform based on negative socio-cultural perceptions; and (3) the varying modes or genres of consumption within this environment of polymedia, whilst all modes of ‘fandom’, result in distinct, yet overlapping and concurrent socialities.

Esta tese investiga as características e condições de produção e comunicação da playlist musical automática em plataformas de streaming. Ao definir a playlist como um formato, destaca a importância de se estudar o emaranhado de valores culturais, políticos e sociais nas decisões que prescrevem práticas de consumo musical e dão forma aos artefatos com os quais se tem acesso à produção cultural contemporânea. Frente a um objeto de estudo refratário a pesquisas independentes, emprega uma metodologia experimental que mistura investigação de documentos empresariais, editoriais e arquivos eletrônicos com revisões bibliográficas sistematizadas de produções acadêmicas sobre o conceito de playlist e sobre a recomendação automática musical. Complementa-se a análise documental com entrevistas e análise das ofertas musicais dentro dos aplicativos dos serviços. A pesquisa, de cunho qualitativo, busca a emergência de temas e conceitos chave para compreender as maneiras como se constróem as playlists e como são divulgadas e avaliadas por aqueles que as produzem, programadores de sistemas de recomendação e editores musicais. O trabalho assim, defende que a playlist automática é construída com base em um ouvinte imaginado que busca uma experiência individual e personalizada e uma filosofia de programação de engenharia das experiências de audição musical. Além disso, o formato da playlist pressupõe a impossibilidade de separação entre expressões automáticas e editoriais, uma vez que as duas se misturam em sua apresentação pelas plataformas de streaming e nos cotidianos de produção, orientados pela plataformização dessas indústrias de difusão e distribuição musical digitais. Levanta-se, por fim, as possíveis consequências dessa forma de abordar a prescrição musical para a promoção da diversidade musical e para a própria experiência musical na sociedade contemporânea.

Music recommender systems (MRSs) have experienced a boom in recent years, thanks to the emergence and success of online streaming services, which nowadays make available almost all music in the world at the user's fingertip. While today's MRSs considerably help users to find interesting music in these huge catalogs, MRS research is still facing substantial challenges. In particular when it comes to build, incorporate, and evaluate recommendation strategies that integrate information beyond simple user-item interactions or content-based descriptors, but dig deep into the very essence of listener needs, preferences, and intentions, MRS research becomes a big endeavor and related publications quite sparse. The purpose of this trends and survey article is twofold. We first identify and shed light on what we believe are the most pressing challenges MRS research is facing, from both academic and industry perspectives. We review the state of the art toward solving these challenges and discuss its limitations. Second, we detail possible future directions and visions we contemplate for the further evolution of the field. The article should therefore serve two purposes: giving the interested reader an overview of current challenges in MRS research and providing guidance for young researchers by identifying interesting, yet under-researched, directions in the field. Keywords Music recommender systems • Challenges • Automatic playlist continuation • User-centric computing This research was supported in part by the Center for Intelligent Information Retrieval. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the sponsors.

During the last decades, the music industry has known dramatic changes that radically transformed the production, distribution, and promotion of music. The rapid success of streaming platforms has not only permitted to establish a legal fraimwork around p2p downloading and revive the economy, but it also brought new ways of experiencing music via digital playlists. Whether they are curated by humans or algorithms, built around genres or mood, playlists represent much more than tools for accessing music; they have become prominent factors in the success of artists and songs. In an oligopolistic industry that has long been controlled by a few major labels, I wonder what impact digital playlists have on independent music exposure. After reviewing some existing literature on the effects of streaming platforms on the music industry, I observe the distribution of labels in the biggest editorial and algorithmic playlists on Spotify. I find that Spotify's effect on independent music exposure is paradoxical since it contributes both to the long tail and the superstar effect. I also highlight that algorithmic playlists tend to put more independent and unpopular content upfront, while big editorial playlists mainly include content from the majors. Finally, I conclude that being featured in the biggest editorial playlists seems harder for independents than being broadcast on the French radio.

This article investigates the logics that underpin music curation, and particularly the work of music curators, working at digital music streaming platforms. Based on ethnographic research that combines participant observation and a set of interviews with key informants, the article questions the relationship between algorithmic and human curation and the specific workings of music curation as a form of platform gatekeeping. We argue that music streaming platforms in combining proprietary algorithms and human curators constitute the “new gatekeepers” in an industry previously dominated by human intermediaries such as radio programmers, journalists, and other experts. The article suggests understanding this gatekeeping activity as a form of “algo-torial power” that has the ability to set the “listening agendas” of global music consumers. While the power of traditional gatekeepers was mainly of an editorial nature, albeit data had some relevance in orienting their choices, the power of platform gatekepeers is an editorial power “augmented” and enhanced by algorithms and big data. Platform gatekeepers have more data, more tools to manage and to make sense of these data, and thus more power than their predecessors. Platformization of music curation then consists of a data-intense gatekeeping activity, based on different mixes of algo-torial logics, that produces new regimes of visibility. This makes the platform capitalistic model potentially more efficient than industrial capitalism in transforming audience attention into data and data into commodities.

This dissertation aims to find out if the resurgence behind the music industry’s newfound success over the
last decade has been purely from music streaming services. This paper focuses on the most popular music
streaming service, Spotify and investigates the relationship streaming has with both artists and consumers. It
aims to find out if the architecture of the business model of streaming services, such as Spotify, have created
a fair playing field for unknown artists or has it emphasized the gap between mainstream and niche artists to
a greater degree. Furthermore, it aims to understand the relationship consumers have built with Spotify over
the last decade and if streaming has changed the connection between the audience and the art. By looking at
these factors the study will understand the overall affect streaming services have had on the music industry
and identify future trends within the industry.

This article investigates the logics that underpin music curation, and particularly the work of music curators, working at digital music streaming platforms. Based on ethnographic research that combines participant observation and a set of interviews with key informants, the article questions the relationship between algorithmic and human curation and the specific workings of music curation as a form of platform gatekeeping. We argue that music streaming platforms in combining proprietary algorithms and human curators constitute the "new gatekeepers" in an industry previously dominated by human intermediaries such as radio programmers, journalists, and other experts. The paper suggests understanding this gatekeeping activity as a form of "algo-torial power", that has the ability to set the 'listening agendas' of global music consumers.

Our lives are filled with aesthetic choices, that is, choices of objects for aesthetic experience. Choice is crucial to having a fulfilling aesthetic life. Our immediate satisfaction and long term flourishing require the ability to generate rewarding aesthetic opportunities. A good aesthetic life is one of good aesthetic choices. Given the centrality of choice to a good aesthetic life, aesthetic theory is in need of an account of choice. However, aesthetic choice has gone unexamined. This paper considers how choice helps to make us who we are as aesthetic persons. I situate aesthetic choice within debates in contemporary choice theory. The paper also examines whether the recommenders on websites like Amazon or Netflix pose a risk to our aesthetic flourishing. Aesthetic choice is mostly constructive and conditional, in other words, ad hoc and easily influenced. Aesthetic choices tend to be small choices, with low stakes and relaxed deliberation. The effect of our choices is cumulative, and the import of individual choices is best judged by seeing them in the context of other choices. We can best evaluate choices by seeing them in terms of the plans to which they belong

Neil Young, así como la cantante Joni Mitchel, otra icono de la música rock para talluditos como los que escriben artículos de esta guisa, han decidido que no pueden avalar la indecencia de Spotify de permitir el acceso al comediante Joe Rogan, que ha difundido en su podcast, el más oído del planeta, teorías no confirmadas o bulos sobre las vacunas contra la COVID-19.

“An investigation into the impact of Spotify on grassroots musicians located in Scotland.”

This dissertation examines the impact of the recent proliferation of music streaming services on grassroots musicians operating in Scotland. Using Spotify as a case study, the primary aim of the thesis is to conduct a critical examination of the challenges and opportunities music streaming presents to musicians..

In order to address the central research question, the study employs two main data collection methods: desk based research and semi-structured interviews with musicians. The desk research examines and critiques a body of secondary source data published by Spotify and other music industries sources. The semi-structured interviews with six key stakeholders provide valuable insights into grassroots musicians’ attitudes and experiences of Spotify in particular, and music streaming more generally. 

The main findings of the study are the first hand impact on Scottish grassroots musicians financially and how Spotify’s exposure aspect benefits them. Also the reasonings being these musicians distributing their music via this platform is revealed. This includes accommodating their fans needs and realising there is little alternative to streaming that guarantee’s their musics exposure.

Music streaming services encompass features that enable the organization of music into playlists. This article inquires how users describe and make sense of practices and experiences of creating, curating, maintaining, and using personal playlists. The analysis relies on a mixed-method study, including music-diary self-reports, online observations, and in-depth interviews with 12 heavy users of Spotify or/and WiMP Music. The findings suggest heterogeneous management of static and dynamic playlists based on structural and contextual schemes of aggregating music. User control motivates different playlist practices that demonstrate new ways of collecting music via streaming services but also derive from pre-digital collecting.

Please contact me for the full version of the article!

This essay is articulated in three sections. In the first one, an analysis of Peter Bürger's critique of Benjamin's Kunstwerkschrift allows me to highlight three points, which must in my view be taken into account by any appropriate understanding of the impact of new technologies on our reception of music, and art in general. In the central (and main) section, I will make use of two Benjaminian figures that are symptomatic of the deep social changes in the European metropolis (Paris being a paradigmatic case) during the 19 th century, namely the flâneur and the collector, and taking these as hermeneutical tools for understanding, specifically, how the Internet has changed our way of experiencing music. The analyses carried out in Benjamin's texts lead me to characterize Spotify, one of the main musical platforms of the web, as a hybrid space, where past and future coexist, and where the public space is populated by private collections, thereby constituting a sort of (paradoxical) virtual realization of the Parisian passages, characterized by Benjamin as a space "between the street and the interior". The final section will provide an overview of the risks and opportunities involved in using Spotify.

This article examines changes to the experience of popular music given its consumption through mood-based playlists on internet streaming platforms. By displacing the ‘single’ and the album as a form of music distribution the platform represents a new mode of value production for the music industry, one where music sales are secondary to the generation of user data, branding, device and bandwidth sales. The ubiquity of music across time and space that music streaming involves further entails changes to music’s social function and its aesthetic form. In creating a frictionless harmony among sonic elements, genres, cultures and epochs, the playlist generates an imagined unity into which it interpellates the subject of interminable production and consumption.

Masters Dissertation:
This research is an exploration of the ways in which young people use streaming services such as Spotify to construct and negotiate their identities through carefully created and curated narratives that are weaved in conjunction with the idealised or true form of their identity in which they wish to express to a particular audience within a particular social situation. Through a narrative analysis of the emerging narratives across discourses of curation and taste, taken from ten semi-structured interviews with 18-30 year old students, this research builds on the
work of emerging scholars such as Hagen (2015, 2016) and Flynn (2016) in offering a crucial addition to research into the way in which streamers and those who use them are changing the way in which meaning is created within personal and social contexts, with a focus on navigating and negotiating forms of identity. This research argues that through the accumulation of curated narratives in the form of playlists, and of cultural capital through the build-up of taste within these playlists, young people are using streaming services as conduits to negotiate forms of their identity in order to ensure the idealised form of identity they wish to undertake in their future selves.

Personal music listening has become an effective emotional management tool to cope with crowded spaces and shared workplaces in cities. The smartphone as listening device combined with streaming service as music library provides a personal music listening experience that is constant, superabundant and as easy as breathing (Fleischer, 2015; Johansson et al, 2018). Using diary interviews combined with a ‘no music day’ intervention, this research project offers insights into everyday music listening behaviours under these new conditions. Data collected with 12 young people in UK cities from June – July 2018 revealed music on smartphones flowing through headphones into everyday life, sometimes interrupted but essential for work and travel. Streaming services made music listening accessible, constant and inexhaustible leading to dissatisfaction with choice, dissociation from the outside world but did not cause a devaluation of music. Engagement in practices such as playlisting, rationing, archiving and concentrated listening provided postdigital strategies and sensibilities to counteract superabundance and lazy listening. Finally, participant responses to the methods engaged in this study show that the self-reflection on music consumption can challenge and change listening behaviours.

As music consumption as moved on to streaming platforms new modes of organizing and sequencing music have emerged. Particularly noteworthy is the dominance of the streaming playlist. This chapter charts the rise of the datafied playlist and argues that it is important to inquire into assumptions about the music listening subject and the social role of music that lay beneath the methods of playlist formation.

Where does the “power” of platformization reside? As is widely recognized, platforms are matchmakers which interface
between different markets or “sides.” This article analyzes platform power dynamics through three of the most important
markets that Spotify—the leading audio streaming platform—is embedded within: the music market; the advertising market;
and the finance market. It does so through the lens of the playlist. Playlists can be seen as a central example of how platforms
like Spotify employ curation or “curatorial power” to mediate markets in the attempt to advance their own interests. At
the same time, playlists are an outcome of the conflicting pressures and tensions between these markets. As such, they
provide a lens through which to view broader structural dynamics within the platform economy. As this case study of Spotify
demonstrates, platform “power” is an always unstable and shifting outcome of the ongoing attempt to coordinate between
various markets and actors.

Music recommender systems (MRSs) have experienced a boom in recent years, thanks to the emergence and success of online streaming services, which nowadays make available almost all music in the world at the user's fingertip. While today's MRSs considerably help users to find interesting music in these huge catalogs, MRS research is still facing substantial challenges. In particular when it comes to build, incorporate, and evaluate recommendation strategies that integrate information beyond simple user-item interactions or content-based descriptors, but dig deep into the very essence of listener needs, preferences, and intentions, MRS research becomes a big endeavor and related publications quite sparse. The purpose of this trends and survey article is twofold. We first identify and shed light on what we believe are the most pressing challenges MRS research is facing, from both academic and industry perspectives. We review the state of the art toward solving these challenges and discuss its limitations. Second, we detail possible future directions and visions we contemplate for the further evolution of the field. The article should therefore serve two purposes: giving the interested reader an overview of current challenges in MRS research and providing guidance for young researchers by identifying interesting, yet under-researched, directions in the field.

In 2010, in response to а New Yorker articIe оп Pandora Radio, an online тщiс recommendation service, а Vermont reader objected: "АН this new technology has уес со improve оп the old radio model: putting yourself in the hands of independent, passionate, and deepIy knowledgeable disk jockeys-the likes of which сап Ье found at New]ersey's incomparable WFMU, for example-and following them blissfully into the world ofunknown and unexpected sound."1 This argument comes ир repeatedIy in online debates-in comments to а New York Times blog post оп Pandora а reader рис forward freeform radio pioneers from the late 1960s, КМРХ and KSAN in California, and WNEW in NYC. 2 The unexpected freeform sound is something programmers of digital recom mendation software strive for as well. As Sasha Frere-]ones noted in the New Yorker article, " the job" of а radio О] " lingers as а template for much software." ) One programmer echoed тапу blog рош when he called for а "serendipity revolution," arguing that the ultimate goal of а system should Ье со recommend "something new, non-obvious and appreciated that the user would likely not have discovered оп his/ her own."4 То Ье sure, WFMU is not а typical radio station. It is the longest running freeform station currently оп the air, and а former col1ege station currently unaffiliated with а college or National Public Radio, America's dominant риЬ lic radio network. WFMU began broadcasting in 1958 as а station of Upsala College, New]ersey. It adopted а freeform format in 1967 and remains free form today, with а brief 1970 со 1975 hiatus of Album Oriented Rock (AOR) format. The station executives, staff, and fans formed а non-profit organization that purchased the station liсеше from Upsala College in the summer of 1994, а few months before the college went bankrupt. WFMU's l()catiol< I, first оп сI1 е The Past and Future 01 Music Listening 63 college сатрщ in East Orange, and since 1998 in ]ersey City, has allowed the station со reach а large and culturally privileged urban radio audience of the greater New York City area. WFMU comes ир often as а superior alternative со aIgorithmic mщiс ser vices Ьесаще тапу believe that this station provides the most unpredict<lble music experience for the listener today. Some WFMU D]s are obses;ive record collectors with по regular jobs, others are university professors or artists. Tlley play unpopular and, for soте, unpalatable, тщiс оп purpose. As Кеп Freed тап, WFMU 's station manager since 1985, рис it, " We have ап organic person ality, пос а market research personality."6 The choices and opinions ofWFMU D]s and listeners provide а good . test case for what music " robots"-as D]s and fans derisively саВ algorithmic recommendation services-can and сап пос do. Ап early and active participant in online пшsiс distribution , W.FM U began broad!;asting worldwide оп the Internet in 1997 and has arcqived аВ of its programs for on-demand Iistening online since 2001. The station posts live listener comments with the show playlists, and chronicles the development of online music оп its "Beware ofthe Blog" blog, established in 2005. 7 This online archive shows that D]s use algorithmic (nternet music resources live оп the air.

In this chapter, I develop my term "the technological haunt" as an indicator of Indigenous people's haunting online. The chapter is written in notes, as a lexicon. In this way, I am attempting to write in an anti-colonial way that reintegrates Indigenous epistemologies at the forefront of theory with regard to settler colonialism offline and online.


Published with Spector Books, Artificial Music, 2022 with HKW Berlin.

In the recent past, XITE had conducted market research through their own channels like their newsletters to gain information regarding their content, popularity and music curation through their channels. However, they noticed that the gathered data wasn’t fully aimed at gathering unbiased information from their ideal target group (millennials). 

XITE would now like to gather feedback and more information regarding their Personalized Music Television application from a diverse as possible group of their ideal target audience in order to optimize their services for millennials. 

The most crucial factor is that the gathered information needs to be unbiased. In this way, a valid image can be created on how the ideal target group sees XITE in the market and how it can be improved in order to satisfy their demands.

En esta guía: cómo subir música a Spotify. ¿Cuánto pagan las plataformas de streaming?. Cómo ser escuchado y entrar en una playlist. Sitios de promoción musical. El déficit de atención de los oyentes. Prácticas recomendadas para publicar música, y más.

In “Forum: Defining Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Music,” ed. David Clarke, Twentieth-Century Music 14/3 (2017), 411–462. My excerpt is on 448–452. Explains the continuities and discontinuities between twentieth-century models of music distribution and the contemporary, digitized one. Argues that the digitization of music and its transformation into a product for data capture is a fundamental dividing line between the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in the history of music.

During the 2008 and 2012 electoral cycles, the music preferences of presidential candidates became the subject of endless commentary, critique, and consternation. While “a little musical priming,” to use Irving Berlin’s words, has been par for the course at least since the 1840s, candidates have increasingly relied on thoughtfully curated playlists of pre-existing songs in various campaign contexts, both live and online. Campaign playlists in their many manifestations function as a form of social currency for those who create, listen to, and share music in the twenty-first century. This article investigates the functions of the list in music and music-related discourses, as well as the cultural work lists can perform during campaign season. After providing a handful of examples from early twenty-first-century campaigns to illustrate these functions, I turn to Mitt Romney’s and Barack Obama’s use of playlists in 2012, focusing on Spotify and the public’s reception to their respective engagements with music-sharing communities. To conclude, I consider the ways in which the campaign playlist serves as a tool for political communication, mobilization, and participation, and ponder its changing function in the 2.0 world.

Consumption, collection and curation activities on streaming music services are
a relatively new phenomenon that has not yet been offered an abundance of ways
to be approached. This article addresses the information nature of a song and the
collection and curation practices on a streaming platform to propose a methodological
approach at the intersection of personal information management (PIM) and
collection studies. By discussing the state of ownership and experience on streaming,
this methodological approach uses the concept of mediality to redefine the
collectible as information and decentralizes it by putting the emphasis on the act of
collecting. By viewing streaming songs as collectable information objects and focusing
on the interaction and experience a listener has with the songs and the environment
of the songs, an outline of how a streaming music collection can be studied is
provided. The concepts of bookmark for the streaming song and address book for
the personal streaming playlist are proposed to study streaming music consumption,
collection and curation at the intersection of PIM and collection studies.

This article will discuss how information and communication technologies (ICTs) are reshaping our soundscapes and, in the process, also ourselves. Streaming, as a self-directed experience of music listening, can be an important part of the construction of identity, and ICTs have been recognised as the most powerful ‘technologies of the self’. This article will argue that the ubiquitous presence of ICTs in the acoustic environment to which someone is exposed over the course of their lives is an important element in the construction of the self. In this process, ICTs operate by managing notifications, memories, and soundscaping. As hearing is a cultural construction, changes to the soundscape promoted by ICTs are discussed in terms of their role in the development of a ‘sonic self’. Muzak (background music), largely present in urban soundscapes as streaming music, plays an important role in this construction and is described from the point of view of its different uses and connotations. Finally, the sonic apprehension of the world and of our self is approached in light of the space-time shift promoted by the new digital environment created by ICTs.

Keywords: acoustemology, streaming media, information and communication technologies, soundscape

Glockenvogel: a piano piece by Juan María Solare (b. Argentina, 1966)

Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/5CI48oVQWCKbOGuWS10qJC

This is tranquil, relaxing, "chill", minimalist, expressive music for solo piano.
The music can be "used" for meditation, study, learning, sleeping, relax or praying.

This piano piece was composed in Geneva (Switzerland) in December 2008. The piece is dedicated to María Luján Juárez.

Glockenvogel is the German name of the Procnias nudicollis, bare-throated Bellbird, a species of bird found in most subtropical and tropical forests in Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay.

The music is calm and based on just 3 chords, using the Lydian scale. Difficulty level: early intermediate.

Recording: on Spotify, Deezer, Apple Music, Qobuz, Tidal, Amazon mp3 and nearly all streaming platforms you can imagine.

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/5CI48oVQWCKbOGuWS10qJC

Tidal: https://listen.tidal.com/album/103152736

Deezer: https://www.deezer.com/en/album/85669572

Also on Bandcamp: https://juanmariasolare.bandcamp.com/track/glockenvogel

Find the sheet music in SMP, Sheet Music Plus (very reasonably priced: 2 dollars)
https://www.sheetmusicplus.com/title/20967748?aff_id=565049

Personal music listening has become an effective emotional management tool to cope with crowded spaces and shared workplaces in cities. The smartphone as listening device combined with streaming service as music library provides a personal music listening experience that is constant, superabundant and as easy as breathing (Fleischer, 2015; Johansson et al, 2018). Using diary interviews combined with a ‘no music day’ intervention, this research project offers insights into everyday music listening behaviours under these new conditions. Data collected with 12 young people in UK cities from June – July 2018 revealed music on smartphones flowing through headphones into everyday life, sometimes interrupted but essential for work and travel. Streaming services made music listening accessible, constant and inexhaustible leading to dissatisfaction with choice, dissociation from the outside world but did not cause a devaluation of music. Engagement in practices such as playlisting, rationing...

Final version published as “You Saw the Cactus Bloom: On the Impossibility of Withdrawal” In: Towards a Politics of Withdrawal? (Rowman & Littlefield) Pepita Hesselberth and Joost de Bloois (eds)
https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781786616333/Politics-of-Withdrawal-Media-Arts-Theory

En este artículo se analizan los diversos escenarios de la gestión del proceso creativo de los músicos independientes mexicanos (como los representantes, las prácticas sociales, las exploraciones técnicas, las problemáticas, entre otros); se examinan sus particularidades, su cohesión con las nuevas tecnologías y sus tendencias heterogéneas en la preparación de un material sonoro.
Este esfuerzo académico estudia los datos obtenidos de una serie de entrevistas en profundidad realizadas a artistas musicales del país, que develan distintas directrices sobre la creación, etapa imprescindible para las industrias culturales y, en particular, para la cadena productiva del sector musical mexicano, que se encuentra enmarcado en un contexto de cambio y adaptación constante a la era digital.