The Interface of Spotify - A Socio-cultural inquiry into Spotify's influence on music
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2021-06-25
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en
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Abstract
This paper researches the sudden, swift motion towards streaming music, and the impact it has had on both the consumer of music and the producers of music. It will use streaming giant Spotify, one of the most innovative and biggest ones globally, as a case study. Following the methods and notions of the novel field of research ‘Software Studies’, developed at M.I.T., this paper will study Spotify´s interface and the proper complemented back-end of this software in a cultural-sociological way. The interface and user experience are critically analysed and subsequently used to affirm or disprove three major future scenarios for the global music industry presumed by scholars and music and tech journalists. The first one is the ‘homogenisation of music’ or better described ‘the disappearance of the so-called ‘long tail’ and the second one encompasses the ‘devaluation of music’ as art. The latter is what I want to entitle the ‘anonymisation of the musicians’, which describes an alienation from the consumer towards the music and their producers that they’re listening to. Which scenario goes for the future, and which one is fed too much by the fear of technological disruption?
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