IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/jculte/v13y2020i4p415-427.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The editorial playlist as container technology: on Spotify and the logistical role of digital music packages

Author

Listed:
  • Maria Eriksson

Abstract

This article explores the role of editorial playlists in Spotify’s streaming economy. In particular, it approaches Spotify’s playlists as container technologies – i.e. technical solutions that assemble, preserve, and transport music objects and thereby uphold logistical operations within the music industry. Such an approach seeks to complement previous research concerning playlists, which has often analyzed their emotional and affective dimensions but paid less attention to how playlists enhance calculative, mathematical, and logistical retail flows within the online music economy. On the one hand, the article considers how playlists – like containers in general – materialize principles of modularization and automation in ways that enhance control and remote oversight. On the other hand, it discusses how the playlist is far from a perfected means of measurement and control, and sometimes acts as an unruly transport device. Ultimately, the article shows how the playlist format occupies an uneasy position between order and disorder within the digital music economy which has not yet been fully accounted for in the context of music-oriented media studies.

Suggested Citation

  • Maria Eriksson, 2020. "The editorial playlist as container technology: on Spotify and the logistical role of digital music packages," Journal of Cultural Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(4), pages 415-427, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:jculte:v:13:y:2020:i:4:p:415-427
    DOI: 10.1080/17530350.2019.1708780
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/17530350.2019.1708780
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/17530350.2019.1708780?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:jculte:v:13:y:2020:i:4:p:415-427. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RJCE20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.