(Plat)formatted Creativity: Creating Music in the Age of Streaming

Abstract

What impact does music streaming have on the production and aesthetics of popular music? Based on 15 qualitative interviews with Norwegian music creators, this article explores how music production is executed and interpreted under the paradigm of platformization. Following the concept of ‘creativity constraints’ – a concept highlighting the restraining and enabling possibilities inherent in the complex sets of constraints surrounding creative agency – this article proposes an analysis centered around three different views emphasizing the opportunities, the limitations, and the negotiations that are put into play throughout the processes of platformized music production. The article finds that the music creators continuously negotiate between these three different (partly opposing, partly overlapping) views when producing music, of which an exchange between emphasizing the democratizing and creatively liberating potential of platformization, and criticizing the commercializing and creatively standardizing effect platformization (and the attention economy) pose on contemporary music culture, constitutes the analysis discursive point of gravity. In this way, the article highlights various dialectics and contradictions concerning the ways in which popular music production develops under the paradigm of platformization.