Música en línea (con los flujos de información), historia, lógica y programa en las plataformas de streaming musical : el modelo Spotify

Mundo, Daniel

spa

145 p.

info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

Atribución-NoComercial-SinDerivadas 2.0 Genérica (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

application/pdf

The relationship between Spotify and the listening subject is the relationship between a platform and a user, whose contact occurs through a navigation surface. That which is presented before the eyes while browsing, and which is usually called the graphical user interface, is the visual representation of a series of operations that occurs outside the reach of the eye that travels the screen, of the finger that selects the song and of the ear that finally listens. In these operations, both technical and political, data and algorithms intervene on a complex computational infrastructure that is often understood through metaphors that evoke images of networks and clouds. What does this complex computational infrastructure consist of and how is it distributed? What role does circulating data play? How do the algorithms involved in the process work? And what does sound and music have to do with all this, which, ultimately, are for the subject the entrance and exit door in this convoluted machinic coupling? What happens when music becomes data? What happens, when music becomes data, with the subject of listening? These are the questions that guide the development of the investigation. Behind and below the level of the user, an attempt is made to go through and analyze some of the layers (technical, material, economic, industrial, political, subjective) that make up the world of music streaming platforms and the power relations that, as lines of force, the fabric and intercalation of said layers brings into play.

Following the schematization proposed by Deleuze in his "Postscript on control societies", the thesis is divided into three chapters entitled, respectively: History, Logic, Program. If it had to be summed up in one word, it would be said that if the control societies have a history, a logic and a program, so do the music streaming platforms, only that, in the case of our object, its history, its logic and its program would be part of the era that Deleuze characterizes as "control." Or, to put it more precisely, we start from the hypothesis of thinking of music streaming platforms as a particular and concrete manifestation of a more general and epochal dynamic that unfolds oriented in such a way that the platforms express, ratify, reproduce and amplify. This dynamic or spirit of time characterized and in a certain way anticipated by Deleuze will constitute for us the program within which and as an expression of which musical listening to platforms takes place. But the question from which it will be necessary to start, in order to eventually establish the relationship -in the third chapter- between a particular modality and a more general order, is the following: how did such a listening modality become culturally possible, and what were the socio-technical conditions of possibility for the emergence of music streaming platforms? It is the question of history, to which the first chapter is devoted, and it is approached from a genealogical perspective. Between the two generalities -that of the history of these platforms, in the plural, and that of the program in which they are enrolled-, the highlighting of a singular case: Spotify, to be treated -both nationally and internationally and throughout the last decade- of the maximum reference among music streaming platforms, a fact that can be seen both in its massive use and in its market position. It will be through Spotify that the logic of existence and operation of music streaming platforms will be analyzed in the second chapter, because beyond the differences that could be found between them in the how, a background of similarity generally subsists in the what, that is, in the use, storage and analysis of the data supplied by users, which implies, in all cases, some form of algorithmic performance, big data, data mining and cloud computing -terms and relationships that are timely treated in depth and detail.

Algorithmic assists are multiplying along with the spread of digital platforms and mobile applications. This means that the relationships analyzed in Spotify between the data, the algorithms and the platform, and between them and the user profile and the subject to whom they refer, are not exclusive to our research object. If, in principle, music streaming platforms could be presented as a banal case, they nevertheless take on body and real dimension in a general recommendation and assistance dynamic that, as it is attempted to be contrasted, refer to a systematic logic of processing, classification, segmentation, hierarchization and selection of infra-individual information (via data collection) and supra-individual information (via correlation of the collected data) that tends to produce an avoidance of the subject, resulting in a certain way indifferent as it appeals to him indirectly through his profile, capturing it fragmented in its digital double. This logic includes and exceeds the scope of music streaming platforms, which can thus be presented as a smaller, modest, innocuous and secondary sample, but oriented in the same direction and reinforcing the same orientation.

Magister de la Universidad de Buenos Aires en Comunicación y Cultura

Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Sociales