From selling songs to engineering experiences: Exploring the competitive strategies of music streaming platforms
From selling songs to engineering experiences: Exploring the competitive strategies of music streaming platforms
Economic, cultural, social and political life is being increasingly shaped by digital platforms including social networking sites (Facebook), streaming services (Netflix) and sharing platforms (AirBnB). While social scientists have tracked the rapid emergence of platforms and developed useful conceptualisations about what they are and how they operate, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the nature of platform competition or the experiences of users. To address these gaps, this paper focuses on the illustrative case of recorded music, where platforms, including Spotify and Apple Music, face intense competition due to similarities in price and content. Drawing on 42 semi-structured interviews, 20 app ‘walk-alongs’ with Spotify users and an analysis of 120 documents (industry reports, trade magazines, press releases and news articles), it demonstrates how the basis of competition has shifted from content, price and curation to the engineering of compelling experiences that harness the unique and interconnected affordances of platformisation. The paper nuances our understanding of the dynamic and contingent nature of platforms, the processes of datafication and curation underpinning their interventions in markets and everyday life, the geographies of these virtual distribution and consumption channels, and the ways in which users imagine, value and experience music streaming platforms.
Competition, Consumption, Curation, Digital Platforms, Experiences, Music Streaming
240-257
Hracs, Brian
ab1df99d-bb99-4770-9ea1-b9d654a284dc
Webster, Jack
27e82ffc-521f-409f-a179-bf8da309cd59
11 March 2021
Hracs, Brian
ab1df99d-bb99-4770-9ea1-b9d654a284dc
Webster, Jack
27e82ffc-521f-409f-a179-bf8da309cd59
Hracs, Brian and Webster, Jack
(2021)
From selling songs to engineering experiences: Exploring the competitive strategies of music streaming platforms.
Journal of Cultural Economy, 14 (2), .
(doi:10.1080/17530350.2020.1819374).
Abstract
Economic, cultural, social and political life is being increasingly shaped by digital platforms including social networking sites (Facebook), streaming services (Netflix) and sharing platforms (AirBnB). While social scientists have tracked the rapid emergence of platforms and developed useful conceptualisations about what they are and how they operate, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the nature of platform competition or the experiences of users. To address these gaps, this paper focuses on the illustrative case of recorded music, where platforms, including Spotify and Apple Music, face intense competition due to similarities in price and content. Drawing on 42 semi-structured interviews, 20 app ‘walk-alongs’ with Spotify users and an analysis of 120 documents (industry reports, trade magazines, press releases and news articles), it demonstrates how the basis of competition has shifted from content, price and curation to the engineering of compelling experiences that harness the unique and interconnected affordances of platformisation. The paper nuances our understanding of the dynamic and contingent nature of platforms, the processes of datafication and curation underpinning their interventions in markets and everyday life, the geographies of these virtual distribution and consumption channels, and the ways in which users imagine, value and experience music streaming platforms.
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Hracs & Webster (2020) From selling songs to engineering experiences- exploring the competitive strategies of music streaming platforms
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Hracs and Webster (2021) From selling songs to engineering experiences: exploring the competitive strategies of music streaming platforms
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Accepted/In Press date: 4 August 2020
Published date: 11 March 2021
Additional Information:
Funding Information:
We thank the anonymous reviewers and journal editor, Carolyn Hardin, for helpful comments. An earlier version of the paper was presented at the 7th European Colloquium on Culture, Creativity, and Economy in Stockholm and we are grateful to our discussant Laura Nkula–Wenz. This paper is an outcome of the research project ‘Intermediation, place and value creation: Exploring the processes and spaces of curation’ which is funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond in Sweden (project ID: P14– 0547:1), and Brian J. Hracs would like to thank his fellow investigators Johan Jansson (Uppsala University), Dominic Power (Stockholm University), Jenny Sjöholm (Linköping University), and Anders Waxell (Uppsala University). More broadly, many ideas in the paper were developed through discussions and collaborations with colleagues and we would like to thank Patrick Adler, Charlotte Campbell, Paz Concha, Nicholas Gibbins, Susan Halford, Atle Hauge, Doreen Jakob and Sofie Joosse.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group on behalf of Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences.
Keywords:
Competition, Consumption, Curation, Digital Platforms, Experiences, Music Streaming
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 447422
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/447422
ISSN: 1753-0350
PURE UUID: 1f61ac1f-f5dd-4cfc-ac33-93e8131e6707
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Date deposited: 11 Mar 2021 17:31
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 05:48
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Jack Webster
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