First week is editorial, second week is algorithmic : platform gatekeepers and the platformization of music curation

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 \u201cnew gatekeepers\u201d 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 \u201calgo-torial power\u201d that has the ability to set the \u201clistening agendas\u201d 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 \u201caugmented\u201d 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

“The perfect guide in a crowded musical landscape:” Online music platforms and curatorship

Curatorship or curation has become a widely used term in music industry and popular music discourse recently, used not only in a museum or exhibition context, but also in connection with music festivals, and increasingly, playlists and other functions related to online music platforms. Through a case study of 22tracks, an online, playlist-based music discovery service currently based in four European cities, I look at the role and position of the music curator, and provide a critical analysis of the dominant discourses around music curation. I place the discourse of music curation into a context of dominant narratives accompanying music as well as digital and online technology, including that of the “long tail” and the “tyranny of choice.” I then proceed to explore the relationship of curation to place, scenes and genres, and conceptualise curatorship as an increasingly professionalised tastemaking and promoting function

Matchmakers or tastemakers? Platformization of cultural intermediation & social media’s engines for ‘making up taste’

There are long-standing practices and processes that have traditionally mediated between the processes of production and consumption of cultural content. The prominent instances of these are: curating content by identifying and selecting cultural content in order to promote to a particular set of audiences; measuring audience behaviours to construct knowledge about their tastes; and guiding audiences through recommendations from cultural experts. These cultural intermediation processes are currently being transformed, and social media platforms play important roles in this transformation. However, their role is often attributed to the work of users and/or recommendation algorithms. Thus, the processes through which data about users’ taste are aggregated and made ready for algorithmic processing are largely neglected. This study takes this problematic as an important gap in our understanding of social media platforms’ role in the transformation of cultural intermediation. To address this gap, the notion of platformization is used as a theoretical lens to examine the role of users and algorithms as part of social media’s distinct data-based sociotechnical configuration, which is built on the so-called ‘platform-logic’. Based on a set of conceptual ideas and the findings derived through a single case study on a music discovery platform, this thesis developed a framework to explain ‘platformization of cultural intermediation’. This framework outlines how curation, guidance, and measurement processes are ‘plat-formed’ in the course of development and optimisation of a social media platform. This is the main contribution of the thesis. The study also contributes to the literature by developing the concept of social media’s engines for ‘making up taste’. This concept illuminates how social media operate as sociotechnical cultural intermediaries and participates in tastemaking in ways that acquire legitimacy from the long-standing trust in the objectivity of classification, quantification, and measurement processes

"Watching the room where the music is happening": An Examination of Live Streaming in the Vancouver Independent Music Scene During the Global Pandemic

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the city of Vancouver, B.C. has long been home to a thriving independent music scene. However, with the onset of the COVID pandemic, musicians lost their main source of income and means of communication with the audience: live performances. As a consequence, from 2020 to 2022, digital platforms and social media became music venues of the new age, and a primary way for artists to stay connected with listeners and each other. Thus, COVID-19 challenged the relationship between digital and physical spaces and made online mediums the key ‘performance spaces’ for both mainstream and independent artists. In this Master’s thesis, I examine how live streams became the dominant music venues in 2020 and explore the way these streams remade social and physical connections as well as the relationships between physical and digital spaces within the Vancouver independent music scene during the global pandemic. This study is inductive, qualitative, and exploratory in its orientation, and the main research method is a series of semi-structured interviews with the local independent music scene members who have been especially active on streaming platforms during COVID. The study finds that while live streaming has been a critical medium for performance during the pandemic, musicians view it as a complement rather than a replacement or substitute for in-person performance concerts, owing to the distinct dynamics and aesthetics of the medium. The findings underscore the critical place of concert venues continue to hold for the Vancouver scene and the need for greater government support for sustaining these physical spaces as well as for leveraging new technologies and virtual spaces. As there is currently limited literature touching upon the connection between music and COVID-19, this study contributes to understanding what this crisis has meant for the music industry, and how musical artists have been able to adapt during the challenging times. Most significantly, an examination of the current experiences with the ‘digital’ lends insight into possible future development trajectories for the city’s music scene and the kinds of policies that can support Vancouver’s independent music scene