Introduction

Abstract

The introduction to Streaming Music, Streaming Capital offers an overview of the major features of the streaming ecosystem. A key argument is that the development of streaming platforms since the late aughts provides important insights into music’s complicated relation to capitalism. Not only does the platform model respond to crises that have afflicted the capitalist world-system since the 1970s (long-run stagnation, declining rates of productivity and profitability, a drying up of attractive sites of private investment, and so on), it also illuminates the degree to which processes of capital accumulation depend on domains that lie on the margins of or outside capitalism, including music. As a result, even as music continues to be commodified or assetized, it simultaneously functions as one of the “‘non-economic’ background conditions” identified by Nancy Fraser, a resource like social reproduction or the “free gifts” of nature that capital relies on without accounting for this reliance.