Part of the fascination with end of year roundups is that they’re a stocktake of the year – but they also give insights into the way we listen to music that might surprise some people.
Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow’s new book reveals the tricks behind ‘Chokepoint Capitalism’ – how big corporations use low prices to lock in users and creators, while locking out real competition.
Ye, formerly Kanye West, lost some of his corporate partners after expressing antisemitic remarks.
AP Photo/Evan Vucci
Whether we’re talking songs that are popular on Spotify, or were Billboard hits through the ‘40s up to recent years, popularity cannot be attributed solely to quantifiable acoustic elements.
One of the recent shifts in podcasting has been the introduction of paywalls and exclusive content.
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By implementing paywalls, making exclusive content deals and incorporating ad tech, big media companies have reshaped what was once an entirely free and open ecosystem.
Irina Surdu, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick
The mud rarely sticks.
Neil Young isn’t the first artist to speak out about musicians’ relationships with large streaming servies.
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A Spotify boycott wouldn’t fix the working conditions of most musicians. Fostering a more equitable, community-based music culture requires changing how we listen to music and support its production.
Tech giants such as Spotify like to claim they are platforms, not publishers, and aren’t editorially responsible for the content they host. But with COVID threatening lives, they have to do better.
Spotify will pull Neil Young’s music after the musician demanded the streaming service remove The Joe Rogan Experience from its platform, as an episode of the podcast promoted COVID misinformation.
30, going on 33 1/3.
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Adele released her fourth studio album 30 and wants people to listen to the songs in the order she intended - asking Spotify to remove the “shuffle” function from her album.
The iPod was a marvel: a sleek device that let you pocket your favourite tunes and roam around town. Today it’s more or less obsolete — but its impact has been evident.
A new study using music streaming data to measure national mood underlines how much stock markets are governed by emotion rather than rational calculation.
Podcasting exploded due to the lack of gatekeepers. Now big tech companies are starting to act like traditional media networks, signing popular hosts to exclusive contracts and establishing paywalls.
Playlists curated by major music streaming platforms tend to reduce the revenue of smaller artists.
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