“First Week Is Editorial, Second Week Is Algorithmic”: Platform Gatekeepers and the Platformization of Music Curation

Abstract

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.

Locating Power in Platformization: Music Streaming Playlists and Curatorial Power

“…However, playlists can be seen as both a mechanism through which a platform may exert curatorial power and an outcome of the conflicting pressures and tensions between markets. Platform curation is not only shaped by a blend of editorial and algorithmic logic (Bonini & Gandini, 2019), but by the interplay between the various markets a platform is embedded within. Curatorial power is contingent upon the relative position of a platform in relation to its platform-competitors, the various markets a platform must engage in, and the tensions between these markets.…”

“…Spotify instructs artists and labels that their tracks first need to perform well on smaller playlists before they are considered for Spotify-curated playlists. However, while a song's playlist placement is determined in part by engagement, impressions, listening duration, and skip rates (Bonini & Gandini, 2019), there is no way for an artist or their label to know precisely why a particular track was placed, or replaced, on a playlist. As Nick Holmsten-Spotify's Global Head of Music admitted: "The number one question we get from labels, artists and their teams is: who do I speak to (in order) to get on Rap Caviar, Hot Country, Viva Latino, Ultimate Indie or other Spotify playlists?"…”

Is music streaming bad for musicians? Problems of evidence and argument

“…A new wave of critical research has appeared since the consolidation and relative stabilisation of musical production and consumption around MSS. 1 Important strands of research focus on ways in which MSS recommend, playlist and 'curate' music (Barna, 2017;Bonini and Gandini, 2019;Drott, 2018;Prey et al, 2020), and on changing ways in which musicians, intermediaries and musical communities negotiate new ways of relating to audiences and achieving their aesthetic and political goals, including, of course, the important role of social media (Powers, 2015;Baym, 2018). Some of this research places the new system in historical and industrial context, often emphasising change and continuity in political-economic control and power (Hesmondhalgh and Meier, 2018;Meier and Manzerolle, 2019;Negus, 2019).…”

Datafication and the push for ubiquitous listening in music streaming

“…This shift accommodates the multitude of different listening practices that listeners engage in in their daily lives. For example, playlists sorted into what Spotify calls "Genres & Moods" provide an alternative to the lean-back listening traditionally offered by radio by expanding the range to include activities such as workouts, focus and gaming, as well as introducing personalized recommendations, sometimes in the form of algotorial recommendations that combine algorithmic and editorial approaches (Bonini & Gandini, 2019).…”