«control over artist metadata is frequently outsorced in several steps. Indeed, music metadata now forms an industry in itself, as is shown by the multitude of companies that deal with such data».
From *Spotify Teardown. Inside the Black Box of Streaming Music*
Some interesting excerpts from *Spotify Teardown. Inside the Black Box of Streaming Music*
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OCR Output (chars: 2825)
@leodurruti
Image 1:
ngs might help!”
The use of music as a functional device has a
ong history, especially in terms of productivity
requirements in workplaces and the exercise of
and resistance to power more broadly.24 However,
while the idea that music can be used to control
one’s body and mind is not new, the mode of
“ubiquitous listening” facilitated by streaming
services seems to correlate with a broader turn
toward a utilitarian approach to music, whereby
music consumption is increasingly understood as
situational and functional for certain activities
(rather than, for instance, a matter of identity work
or an aesthetic experience).35 This shift is evident
not only in Spotify’s classification scheme (figure
3.2) but also in other features delivered by the
service. The previously mentioned Spotify Running
is one example, as well as the short-lived Party
feature, which included a mood slider that allowed
users to indicate their desired music energy
level.2® More recently, Spotify has called out to
users to “Show your mind some love” w
partner Headspace, an app for
Image 2:
litations that will “help you feel happier,
hier, and more confident.”24 Whereas these
nples suggest that music streaming and
stening should be used for utilitarian purposes,
hey also privilege specific ways of thinking,
feeling, and acting. In particular, they insist on
self-governance through mood control, which can
also be seen in how the Mood and Chill categories
are found among the top music categories in all
our explored countries, and how supposedly
productivity-enhancing playlists are collected
under the mood-related label “Focus” rather than,
say, “Work.”
Figure 3.2
Spotify’s top eight Genres & Moods categories, as seen
Image 3:
darkness.#2
In this sense, the positive thinking characteristic
of prepackaged playlists is intimately tied to the
privileging of “entrepreneurial subjectivity,” as
users are encouraged to direct their desire for
change inwards and “capably manage difficulties
and hide injuries.”42 Spotify, however, also offers a
small number of playlists that provide a corrective
to the happiness imperative, such as the “Life
Sucks” list (“Feeling like everything just plain
sucks? We've all been there. These songs will
probably only make you feel worse, but at least
they’ll let you know you’re not alone”)—or “Down
in the Dumps” (“It’s a horrible day and nothing can
change your mind”). These rare examples of
negative sentiment open up spaces for reflection
on the compulsory positivity of the interface,
precisely because of their otherness in this
context.
The general self-help ethos and cheerfulness of
playlist descriptions is echoed in the graphical
display of playlists, as seen in the (mostly) brightly —
colored covers of the top Mood playlists. The
OCR Output (chars: 2473)
@leodurruti
Image 1:
Figure 3.3
Spotify’s top eight Mood playlists, as seen from a US
account in June 2017.
Such visual elements also come to constitute
gender and gender relations in specific ways. The
visual materializations of curated playlists tend to
foreground people presenting as women,
especially in the Mood and Chill categories:
laughing women, smiling women, bubble
gum-—chewing women,
dreamy-looking women i
53%
relaxing women,
n nature. While the use of
Image 2:
women as playlist-marketing instruments might
be understood as building on historical gender
conventions in advertising, it could also be
considered in light of one of our previous case
studies. There, we found that an overwhelming
majority of Spotify’s recommended artists were
male, suggesting that Spotify’s curatorial authority
is deployed in ways that maintain male privilege in
the music industries.46 Pitted against the visual
aesthetic of playlists, this indicates that while the
service reproduces an often-criticized notion of
music production as a domain of masculinity,
music consumption—especially for the sake of
mood management—is portrayed as a female
undertaking. The alluring promise of happiness
and positive thinking gleaned from Spotify’s mood
boards can thus be seen as reproducing a
gendered form of neoliberal subjectivity, where
young women in particular are invited to identify —
themselves as entrepreneurial ‘subjects: and mi
Image 3:
=manded of contemporary cultural workers, as
liscussed by Rosalind Gill, it seems to favor myths
of egalitarianism and individual achievement while
disavowing structural power relations.42
While implicit modes of governance through
mood management and calls for self-enhancement
are pervasive throughout the service, it should be
noted—as we discussed in “Intervention: The
Swedish Unicorn”—that Spotify has also been
known to occasionally raise traditional and overt
political issues. For instance, our collected data
included the somewhat controversial “Refugee
Playlist,” which was published in early 2017 in
response to Donald Trump’s travel ban.42 In 2016,
Spotify published the “Black Lives Matter” playlist,
which was removed shortly after its publication,
possibly due to fierce criticism.22 Furthermore,
during the US elections in 2016, Spotify launched
“Clarify,” a podcast targeted at young voters.5!
The causes supported in these examples clez
target a specific audience and ‘medtiy soa
Some interesting excerpts from *Spotify Teardown. Inside the Black Box of Streaming Music*
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@OCRbot
#MastoLibri #MastoLetture #MastoBooks #Spotify