Ground Level: Streaming and Surveillance w/ Eric Drott

Scholars argue that streaming platforms have turned music into a technology of surveillance. Thanks to music streaming, now more than ever before, music accompanies us as we move across the physical, social and geographical spaces that define our everyday lives. 

Music has been traditionally imagined as a means of self-expression. More often than not, it is used to channel our emotions and deal with our everyday lives. Music becomes a soundtrack to the routine, to the mundane, to the banal, but also of the special and most eventful moments of our lives. 

Today, with the help of our guest, we will start from this idea, but we will problematise it by outlining how streaming platforms use and commercialise the relationship between music and everyday life, collecting and selling behavioural data. 

Concepts discussed: commodity, commodification, decommodification, consumer surveillance, social reproduction, crisis of social reproduction, self-care, protest music, resistance. 

Host: Dr Frank Maracchione, SOAS University of London. 

Guest: Professor Eric Drott, Professor of Theory at the University of Texas in Austin. His research spans several subjects, including contemporary music cultures, streaming music platforms, music and protest, genre theory, digital music, and the political economy of music. His first book, Music and the Elusive Revolution (University of California Press, 2011), examines music and politics in France after May ’68. His second book, Streaming Music, Streaming Capital (Duke University Press, 2024), examines the political economy of music streaming platforms. He is also co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Protest Music with Noriko Manabe. 

References:

Appadurai, A. (Ed.). (1986). The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge University Press.

Baumol, W.J. and W.G. Bowen. (1966). Performing Arts. The Economic Dilemma. A study of Problems common to Theater, Opera, Music and Dance. New York: The Twentieth Century Fund.

Drott, E. A. (2018). Music as a Technology of Surveillance. Journal of the Society for American Music, 12(3), 233–267.

Drott, E. (2019). Music in the Work of Social Reproduction. Cultural Politics, 15(2), 162–183.

Drott, E. (2024). Streaming Music, Streaming Capital. Duke University Press.

United Musicians and Allied Workers. (2026). Justice at Spotify. https://weareumaw.org/justice-at-spotify 

This episode is produced by the SPERI Presents… committee, including Chris Saltmarsh, Josh White, Frank Maracchione, and Andrew Hindmoor. This episode was edited by Frank Maracchione with support from Chris Saltmarsh. Music and audio by Andy_Gambino. Hosted on Acast. See https://acast.com/privacy for more information. 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.