Music, metrics, and meaning: Australian music industries and streaming services
Creators: name: MORGAN, Benjamin
Publisher: name: RMIT University
Year: 2024
Subjects: classificationCode: 470102
subject: Communication technology and digital media studies
classificationCode: 470107
subject: Media studies

description: This thesis examines how recording artists and professionals understood the impact of music streaming services in the Australian market between 2017 and 2018. During this period, services such as Spotify and Apple Music emerged as the largest generators of recording revenue for copyright holders following years of rapid global growth. This coincided with an increasing popularity of curated playlists and automated recommendation features, as well as persistent media narratives positioning streaming as economically unfair and/or culturally harmful to popular music. Drawing on twenty-nine semi-structured interviews with Australian musicians and music business professionals, this thesis explores how participants in the music industries understood and responded to the new affordances of music streaming interfaces, the usage data and other metrics generated by these services, and the role these services play within the commercial circulation of recordings.

This thesis finds that during these key years of transition to streaming for the Australian recording industry, specific areas of practice became highly interdependent with streaming services. However, there was little evidence of 'producing for the platform.' Participants described their roles in the music industries as artists, producers, and professionals who work together with interdependent firms and agents to circulate music. Streaming services were positioned as information technology or media firms extending prior functions of radio and retail, rather than as co-producers of musical experience commodities, new versions of record labels, or as 'music companies.' This separation between (creative) production and (mundane) distribution by streaming services reflects boundary disputes over art and commerce, as well as territorial concerns over who are the legitimate producers of popular music. The research finds that participants adjusted their distribution strategies to suit the new environment of streaming services; however, optimising musical production specifically for streaming services was considered inauthentic.

My thesis locates these articulations of industry practice within current debates in music industries research, and related fields including digital media studies, popular music studies, media industry studies, sociology, and cultural economics. I show how current debates about music streaming relate to larger concerns about autonomy in cultural production. The thesis reveals specific areas of industry practice where technological change was embraced, and where existing logics of autonomy were defended. By analysing these understandings of technological change during a period of considerable industry volatility, the thesis seeks to recognise, acknowledge, and contribute to improving the conditions under which musicians and professionals in the music industries derive livelihoods from the creation and circulation of music.