Author: Eric Drott
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 1478027878
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 230
Book Description
In Streaming Music, Streaming Capital, Eric Drott analyzes the political economy of online music streaming platforms. Attentive to the way streaming has reordered the production, circulation, and consumption of music, Drott examines key features of this new musical economy, including the roles played by data collection, playlisting, new methods of copyright enforcement, and the calculation of listening metrics. Yet because streaming underscores how uneasily music sits within existing regimes of private property, its rise calls for a broader reconsideration of music’s complex and contradictory relation to capitalism. Drott's analysis is not simply a matter of how music is formatted in line with dominant measures of economic value; equally important is how music eludes such measures, a situation that threatens to reduce music to a cheap, abundant resource. By interrogating the tensions between streaming’s benefits and pitfalls, Drott sheds light on music’s situation within digital capitalism, from growing concentrations of monopoly power and music’s use in corporate surveillance to issues of musical value, labor, and artist pay.
Streaming Music, Streaming Capital
Author: Eric Drott
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 1478027878
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 230
Book Description
In Streaming Music, Streaming Capital, Eric Drott analyzes the political economy of online music streaming platforms. Attentive to the way streaming has reordered the production, circulation, and consumption of music, Drott examines key features of this new musical economy, including the roles played by data collection, playlisting, new methods of copyright enforcement, and the calculation of listening metrics. Yet because streaming underscores how uneasily music sits within existing regimes of private property, its rise calls for a broader reconsideration of music’s complex and contradictory relation to capitalism. Drott's analysis is not simply a matter of how music is formatted in line with dominant measures of economic value; equally important is how music eludes such measures, a situation that threatens to reduce music to a cheap, abundant resource. By interrogating the tensions between streaming’s benefits and pitfalls, Drott sheds light on music’s situation within digital capitalism, from growing concentrations of monopoly power and music’s use in corporate surveillance to issues of musical value, labor, and artist pay.
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 1478027878
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 230
Book Description
In Streaming Music, Streaming Capital, Eric Drott analyzes the political economy of online music streaming platforms. Attentive to the way streaming has reordered the production, circulation, and consumption of music, Drott examines key features of this new musical economy, including the roles played by data collection, playlisting, new methods of copyright enforcement, and the calculation of listening metrics. Yet because streaming underscores how uneasily music sits within existing regimes of private property, its rise calls for a broader reconsideration of music’s complex and contradictory relation to capitalism. Drott's analysis is not simply a matter of how music is formatted in line with dominant measures of economic value; equally important is how music eludes such measures, a situation that threatens to reduce music to a cheap, abundant resource. By interrogating the tensions between streaming’s benefits and pitfalls, Drott sheds light on music’s situation within digital capitalism, from growing concentrations of monopoly power and music’s use in corporate surveillance to issues of musical value, labor, and artist pay.
Spotify Teardown
Author: Maria Eriksson
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262038900
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 287
Book Description
An innovative investigation of the inner workings of Spotify that traces the transformation of audio files into streamed experience. Spotify provides a streaming service that has been welcomed as disrupting the world of music. Yet such disruption always comes at a price. Spotify Teardown contests the tired claim that digital culture thrives on disruption. Borrowing the notion of “teardown” from reverse-engineering processes, in this book a team of five researchers have playfully disassembled Spotify's product and the way it is commonly understood. Spotify has been hailed as the solution to illicit downloading, but it began as a partly illicit enterprise that grew out of the Swedish file-sharing community. Spotify was originally praised as an innovative digital platform but increasingly resembles a media company in need of regulation, raising questions about the ways in which such cultural content as songs, books, and films are now typically made available online. Spotify Teardown combines interviews, participant observations, and other analyses of Spotify's “front end” with experimental, covert investigations of its “back end.” The authors engaged in a series of interventions, which include establishing a record label for research purposes, intercepting network traffic with packet sniffers, and web-scraping corporate materials. The authors' innovative digital methods earned them a stern letter from Spotify accusing them of violating its terms of use; the company later threatened their research funding. Thus, the book itself became an intervention into the ethics and legal frameworks of corporate behavior.
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262038900
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 287
Book Description
An innovative investigation of the inner workings of Spotify that traces the transformation of audio files into streamed experience. Spotify provides a streaming service that has been welcomed as disrupting the world of music. Yet such disruption always comes at a price. Spotify Teardown contests the tired claim that digital culture thrives on disruption. Borrowing the notion of “teardown” from reverse-engineering processes, in this book a team of five researchers have playfully disassembled Spotify's product and the way it is commonly understood. Spotify has been hailed as the solution to illicit downloading, but it began as a partly illicit enterprise that grew out of the Swedish file-sharing community. Spotify was originally praised as an innovative digital platform but increasingly resembles a media company in need of regulation, raising questions about the ways in which such cultural content as songs, books, and films are now typically made available online. Spotify Teardown combines interviews, participant observations, and other analyses of Spotify's “front end” with experimental, covert investigations of its “back end.” The authors engaged in a series of interventions, which include establishing a record label for research purposes, intercepting network traffic with packet sniffers, and web-scraping corporate materials. The authors' innovative digital methods earned them a stern letter from Spotify accusing them of violating its terms of use; the company later threatened their research funding. Thus, the book itself became an intervention into the ethics and legal frameworks of corporate behavior.
Mood Machine
Author: Liz Pelly
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1668083507
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 288
Book Description
An unsparing investigation into Spotify’s origins and influence on music, weaving unprecedented reporting with incisive cultural criticism, illuminating how streaming is reshaping music for listeners and artists alike. Drawing on over one hundred interviews with industry insiders, former Spotify employees, and musicians, Mood Machine takes us to the inner workings of today’s highly consolidated record business, showing what has changed as music has become increasingly playlisted, personalized, and autoplayed. Building on her years of wide-ranging reporting on streaming, music journalist Liz Pelly details the consequences of the Spotify model by examining both sides of what the company calls its two-sided marketplace: the listeners who pay with their dollars and data, and the musicians who provide the material powering it all. The music business is notoriously opaque, but here Pelly lifts the veil on major stories like streaming services filling popular playlists with low-cost stock music and the rise of new payola-like practices. For all of the inequities exacerbated by streaming, Pelly also finds hope in chronicling the artist-led fight for better models, pointing toward what must be done collectively to revalue music and create sustainable systems. A timely exploration of a company that has become synonymous with music, Mood Machine will change the way you think about and listen to music.
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1668083507
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 288
Book Description
An unsparing investigation into Spotify’s origins and influence on music, weaving unprecedented reporting with incisive cultural criticism, illuminating how streaming is reshaping music for listeners and artists alike. Drawing on over one hundred interviews with industry insiders, former Spotify employees, and musicians, Mood Machine takes us to the inner workings of today’s highly consolidated record business, showing what has changed as music has become increasingly playlisted, personalized, and autoplayed. Building on her years of wide-ranging reporting on streaming, music journalist Liz Pelly details the consequences of the Spotify model by examining both sides of what the company calls its two-sided marketplace: the listeners who pay with their dollars and data, and the musicians who provide the material powering it all. The music business is notoriously opaque, but here Pelly lifts the veil on major stories like streaming services filling popular playlists with low-cost stock music and the rise of new payola-like practices. For all of the inequities exacerbated by streaming, Pelly also finds hope in chronicling the artist-led fight for better models, pointing toward what must be done collectively to revalue music and create sustainable systems. A timely exploration of a company that has become synonymous with music, Mood Machine will change the way you think about and listen to music.
Rap Capital
Author: Joe Coscarelli
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1982107901
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 289
Book Description
An “impassioned tribute” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) to the most influential music culture today, Atlanta rap—a masterful, street-level story of art, money, race, class, and salvation from acclaimed New York Times reporter Joe Coscarelli. From mansions to trap houses, office buildings to strip clubs, Atlanta is defined by its rap music. But this flashy and fast-paced world is rarely seen below surface level as a collection not of superheroes and villains, cartoons and caricatures, but of flawed and inspired individuals all trying to get a piece of what everyone else seems to have. In artistic, commercial, and human terms, Atlanta rap represents the most consequential musical ecosystem of this century. Rap Capital tells the dramatic stories of the people who make it tick and the city that made them that way. The lives of the artists driving the culture, from megastars like Lil Baby and Migos to lesser-known local strivers like Lil Reek and Marlo, represent the modern American dream but also an American nightmare, as young Black men and women wrestle generational curses, crippled school systems, incarceration, and racism on the way to an improbably destination atop art and commerce. Across Atlanta, rap dreams power countless overlapping economies, but they’re also a gamble, one that could make a poor man rich or a poor man poorer, land someone in jail or keep them out of it. Drawing on years of reporting, more than a hundred interviews, dozens of hours in recording studios and on immersive ride-alongs, acclaimed New York Times reporter Joe Coscarelli weaves a cinematic tapestry of this singular American culture as it took over in the last decade, from the big names to the lesser-seen prospects, managers, grunt-workers, mothers, DJs, lawyers, and dealers that are equally important to the industry. The result is a deeply human, era-defining book that is “required reading for anyone who has ever wondered how, exactly, Atlanta hip-hop took over the world” (Kelefa Sanneh, author of Major Labels). Entertaining and profound, Rap Capital is an epic of art, money, race, class, and sometimes, salvation.
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1982107901
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 289
Book Description
An “impassioned tribute” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) to the most influential music culture today, Atlanta rap—a masterful, street-level story of art, money, race, class, and salvation from acclaimed New York Times reporter Joe Coscarelli. From mansions to trap houses, office buildings to strip clubs, Atlanta is defined by its rap music. But this flashy and fast-paced world is rarely seen below surface level as a collection not of superheroes and villains, cartoons and caricatures, but of flawed and inspired individuals all trying to get a piece of what everyone else seems to have. In artistic, commercial, and human terms, Atlanta rap represents the most consequential musical ecosystem of this century. Rap Capital tells the dramatic stories of the people who make it tick and the city that made them that way. The lives of the artists driving the culture, from megastars like Lil Baby and Migos to lesser-known local strivers like Lil Reek and Marlo, represent the modern American dream but also an American nightmare, as young Black men and women wrestle generational curses, crippled school systems, incarceration, and racism on the way to an improbably destination atop art and commerce. Across Atlanta, rap dreams power countless overlapping economies, but they’re also a gamble, one that could make a poor man rich or a poor man poorer, land someone in jail or keep them out of it. Drawing on years of reporting, more than a hundred interviews, dozens of hours in recording studios and on immersive ride-alongs, acclaimed New York Times reporter Joe Coscarelli weaves a cinematic tapestry of this singular American culture as it took over in the last decade, from the big names to the lesser-seen prospects, managers, grunt-workers, mothers, DJs, lawyers, and dealers that are equally important to the industry. The result is a deeply human, era-defining book that is “required reading for anyone who has ever wondered how, exactly, Atlanta hip-hop took over the world” (Kelefa Sanneh, author of Major Labels). Entertaining and profound, Rap Capital is an epic of art, money, race, class, and sometimes, salvation.
SamBop NYC
Author: Marc Gidal
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019761907X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 257
Book Description
In New York City during the first decades of the new millennium, over two hundred professional musicians play music that combines jazz with Brazilian genres. Blending American and Brazilian music, these musicians continue the legacies of bossa nova, samba jazz, and other styles, while expanding their skills, cultural understandings, and identities. SamBop NYC explores Brazilian jazz in New York City--the music, musicians, cultural issues, and jazz industry. It draws on interviews with over fifty musicians active between the years 2000 and 2020, featuring experts like Eliane Elias, Dom Salvador, Eumir Deodato, Maúcha Adnet, Vinícius Cantuária, Luciana Souza, Duduka Da Fonseca, Romero Lubambo, Anat Cohen, and Cidinho Teixeira. The book provides a new framework to interpret the mutual developments of musicianship, intercultural competencies, and affinities with Brazil and the U.S. To understand the imbalanced demographic diversity among musicians, the book analyses nationality, race, class, and gender among the musicians, as well as their instrumentation and professional dynamics. Navigating these social, cultural, and capitalist forces, the musicians in this book have applied their natural talents, determination, family support, and decades of hard work to pursue their artistic interests and career goals, to audience delight.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019761907X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 257
Book Description
In New York City during the first decades of the new millennium, over two hundred professional musicians play music that combines jazz with Brazilian genres. Blending American and Brazilian music, these musicians continue the legacies of bossa nova, samba jazz, and other styles, while expanding their skills, cultural understandings, and identities. SamBop NYC explores Brazilian jazz in New York City--the music, musicians, cultural issues, and jazz industry. It draws on interviews with over fifty musicians active between the years 2000 and 2020, featuring experts like Eliane Elias, Dom Salvador, Eumir Deodato, Maúcha Adnet, Vinícius Cantuária, Luciana Souza, Duduka Da Fonseca, Romero Lubambo, Anat Cohen, and Cidinho Teixeira. The book provides a new framework to interpret the mutual developments of musicianship, intercultural competencies, and affinities with Brazil and the U.S. To understand the imbalanced demographic diversity among musicians, the book analyses nationality, race, class, and gender among the musicians, as well as their instrumentation and professional dynamics. Navigating these social, cultural, and capitalist forces, the musicians in this book have applied their natural talents, determination, family support, and decades of hard work to pursue their artistic interests and career goals, to audience delight.
Capital
Author: Kenneth Goldsmith
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1784781576
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 928
Book Description
Acclaimed artist Kenneth Goldsmith’s thousand-page homage to New York City Here is a kaleidoscopic assemblage and poetic history of New York: an unparalleled and original homage to the city, composed entirely of quotations. Drawn from a huge array of sources—histories, memoirs, newspaper articles, novels, government documents, emails—and organized into interpretive categories that reveal the philosophical architecture of the city, Capital is the ne plus ultra of books on the ultimate megalopolis. It is also a book of experimental literature that transposes Walter Benjamin’s unfinished magnum opus of literary montage on the modern city, The Arcades Project, from nineteenth-century Paris to twentieth-century New York, bringing the streets and its inhabitants to life in categories such as “Sex,” “Central Park,” “Commodity,” “Loneliness,” “Gentrification,” “Advertising,” and “Mapplethorpe.” Capital is a book designed to fascinate and to fail—for can a megalopolis truly ever be captured in words? Can a history, no matter how extensive, ever be comprehensive? Each reading of this book, and of New York, is a unique and impossible project.
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1784781576
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 928
Book Description
Acclaimed artist Kenneth Goldsmith’s thousand-page homage to New York City Here is a kaleidoscopic assemblage and poetic history of New York: an unparalleled and original homage to the city, composed entirely of quotations. Drawn from a huge array of sources—histories, memoirs, newspaper articles, novels, government documents, emails—and organized into interpretive categories that reveal the philosophical architecture of the city, Capital is the ne plus ultra of books on the ultimate megalopolis. It is also a book of experimental literature that transposes Walter Benjamin’s unfinished magnum opus of literary montage on the modern city, The Arcades Project, from nineteenth-century Paris to twentieth-century New York, bringing the streets and its inhabitants to life in categories such as “Sex,” “Central Park,” “Commodity,” “Loneliness,” “Gentrification,” “Advertising,” and “Mapplethorpe.” Capital is a book designed to fascinate and to fail—for can a megalopolis truly ever be captured in words? Can a history, no matter how extensive, ever be comprehensive? Each reading of this book, and of New York, is a unique and impossible project.
A Resonant Ecology
Author: Max Ritts
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 1478059885
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 123
Book Description
In A Resonant Ecology, Max Ritts traces how sound’s integration into the environmental politics of Canada’s North Coast has paved the way for massive industrial expansion. While conservationists hope that the dissemination of whale songs and other nature sounds will showcase the beauty of local wildlife for people around the world, Ritts reveals how colonial capitalism can co-opt sonic efforts to protect the coast. He demonstrates how digital technologies allow industry to sonically map new shipping lanes and facilitate new ways of experiencing sound—premised not on listening, but on sound’s exploitable status as a data resource. By outlining how sound can both perpetuate and refuse capitalist colonialism, Ritts challenges the idea that the sonic realm is inherently liberatory and reveals sound to be a powerfully uncertain object. Through a situated geographical approach, he makes the case that only a decolonial and multigenerational environmental politics can counter the false promise of “sustainable marine development” held up by industry and the state.
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 1478059885
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 123
Book Description
In A Resonant Ecology, Max Ritts traces how sound’s integration into the environmental politics of Canada’s North Coast has paved the way for massive industrial expansion. While conservationists hope that the dissemination of whale songs and other nature sounds will showcase the beauty of local wildlife for people around the world, Ritts reveals how colonial capitalism can co-opt sonic efforts to protect the coast. He demonstrates how digital technologies allow industry to sonically map new shipping lanes and facilitate new ways of experiencing sound—premised not on listening, but on sound’s exploitable status as a data resource. By outlining how sound can both perpetuate and refuse capitalist colonialism, Ritts challenges the idea that the sonic realm is inherently liberatory and reveals sound to be a powerfully uncertain object. Through a situated geographical approach, he makes the case that only a decolonial and multigenerational environmental politics can counter the false promise of “sustainable marine development” held up by industry and the state.
Capitalism without Capital
Author: Jonathan Haskel
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691183295
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 292
Book Description
Early in the twenty-first century, a quiet revolution occurred. For the first time, the major developed economies began to invest more in intangible assets, like design, branding, and software, than in tangible assets, like machinery, buildings, and computers. For all sorts of businesses, the ability to deploy assets that one can neither see nor touch is increasingly the main source of long-term success. But this is not just a familiar story of the so-called new economy. Capitalism without Capital shows that the growing importance of intangible assets has also played a role in some of the larger economic changes of the past decade, including the growth in economic inequality and the stagnation of productivity. Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake explore the unusual economic characteristics of intangible investment and discuss how an economy rich in intangibles is fundamentally different from one based on tangibles. Capitalism without Capital concludes by outlining how managers, investors, and policymakers can exploit the characteristics of an intangible age to grow their businesses, portfolios, and economies.
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691183295
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 292
Book Description
Early in the twenty-first century, a quiet revolution occurred. For the first time, the major developed economies began to invest more in intangible assets, like design, branding, and software, than in tangible assets, like machinery, buildings, and computers. For all sorts of businesses, the ability to deploy assets that one can neither see nor touch is increasingly the main source of long-term success. But this is not just a familiar story of the so-called new economy. Capitalism without Capital shows that the growing importance of intangible assets has also played a role in some of the larger economic changes of the past decade, including the growth in economic inequality and the stagnation of productivity. Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake explore the unusual economic characteristics of intangible investment and discuss how an economy rich in intangibles is fundamentally different from one based on tangibles. Capitalism without Capital concludes by outlining how managers, investors, and policymakers can exploit the characteristics of an intangible age to grow their businesses, portfolios, and economies.
From Capital to Commons
Author: Hannes Gerhardt
Publisher: Policy Press
ISBN: 1529224543
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 264
Book Description
A Choice Outstanding Academic Title in Economics 2023. In this stimulating analysis, Hannes Gerhardt outlines the potentials and challenges of a technology-enabled, commons-focused transition out of capitalism. The book shows that openness and cooperation are more beneficial in today’s economies and societies than competition and profit-seeking. Driven by this conviction, Gerhardt identifies key imperatives for overcoming capitalism, from democratizing our digital, material, and financial economies to maintaining a robust, political mobilization. Using clear examples, he explores tactical openings through the lens of ‘compeerism’, a newly constructed framework that highlights the latent counter-capitalist possibilities, but also limits, of our emerging technological landscape. This is an accessible contribution to counter-capitalist discourse that is both inspiring and pragmatic for academics and activists alike.
Publisher: Policy Press
ISBN: 1529224543
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 264
Book Description
A Choice Outstanding Academic Title in Economics 2023. In this stimulating analysis, Hannes Gerhardt outlines the potentials and challenges of a technology-enabled, commons-focused transition out of capitalism. The book shows that openness and cooperation are more beneficial in today’s economies and societies than competition and profit-seeking. Driven by this conviction, Gerhardt identifies key imperatives for overcoming capitalism, from democratizing our digital, material, and financial economies to maintaining a robust, political mobilization. Using clear examples, he explores tactical openings through the lens of ‘compeerism’, a newly constructed framework that highlights the latent counter-capitalist possibilities, but also limits, of our emerging technological landscape. This is an accessible contribution to counter-capitalist discourse that is both inspiring and pragmatic for academics and activists alike.
Locked Out
Author: Evan Elkins
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479853461
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 233
Book Description
A rare insight into how industry practices like regional restrictions have shaped global media culture in the digital era “This content is not available in your country.” At some point, most media consumers around the world have run into a message like this. Whether trying to watch a DVD purchased during a vacation abroad, play an imported Japanese video game, or listen to a Spotify library while traveling, we are constantly reminded of geography’s imprint on digital culture. We are locked out. Despite utopian hopes of a borderless digital society, DVDs, video games, and streaming platforms include digital rights management mechanisms that block media access within certain territories. These technologies of “regional lockout” are meant first and foremost to keep the entertainment industries’ global markets distinct. But they also frustrate consumers and place territories on a hierarchy of global media access. Drawing on extensive research of media-industry strategies, consumer and retailer practices, and media regulation, Locked Out explores regional lockout’s consequences for media around the globe. Power and capital are at play when it comes to who can consume what content and who can be a cultural influence. Looking across digital technologies, industries, and national contexts, Locked Out argues that the practice of regional lockout has shaped and reinforced global hierarchies of geography and culture.
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479853461
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 233
Book Description
A rare insight into how industry practices like regional restrictions have shaped global media culture in the digital era “This content is not available in your country.” At some point, most media consumers around the world have run into a message like this. Whether trying to watch a DVD purchased during a vacation abroad, play an imported Japanese video game, or listen to a Spotify library while traveling, we are constantly reminded of geography’s imprint on digital culture. We are locked out. Despite utopian hopes of a borderless digital society, DVDs, video games, and streaming platforms include digital rights management mechanisms that block media access within certain territories. These technologies of “regional lockout” are meant first and foremost to keep the entertainment industries’ global markets distinct. But they also frustrate consumers and place territories on a hierarchy of global media access. Drawing on extensive research of media-industry strategies, consumer and retailer practices, and media regulation, Locked Out explores regional lockout’s consequences for media around the globe. Power and capital are at play when it comes to who can consume what content and who can be a cultural influence. Looking across digital technologies, industries, and national contexts, Locked Out argues that the practice of regional lockout has shaped and reinforced global hierarchies of geography and culture.