Notes for a genealogy of music streaming platforms

Abstract

This paper will attempt to provide elements for a history of music streaming platforms. The genealogical perspective adopted will make it possible to establish the conditions of possibility under which these platforms emerged and consolidated. Although the object of study can be presented in a single and simple aspect, its procedence refers to a proliferation of heterogeneous events formed at different speeds; it will therefore be necessary to account not only for the historical continuities but also for the irregularities and interruptions that shake and disrupt this continuity. Hence, if from one point of view we can think of a linear and homogeneous temporality that would cover the technologies of sound recording and reproduction from their first manifestations to the present day (from the phonograph to Spotify), from another point of view -which would give itself the task of vertically cutting here and there the presumably uniform historical arc- it would be observed on the one hand that there is no relation of necessity in the passages from one technology to another, and on the other hand, that the technologies are not sufficient to explain these passages. Therefore, the historical approach presented here is based on a series of overlapping intertweavings that, starting in the last quarter of the 19th century, unfold, mutate, displace and generate the conditions of possibility for the emergence of platform music in the 21st century. The traced path will highlight the relationships between technologies, but it will also highlight the relationships between technologies and the disciplines, theories and discourses that support them, as well as the relationships between technologies, the socio-cultural practices associated with them and the music industry, without all of which music streaming platforms would not have been possible.