Darci Sprengel

The Imperial Politics of Global Music Streaming

My current research investigates the power dynamics at play in the globalization of music streaming platforms, including Spotify, Deezer, YouTube, and Amazon Music, as they expand across the global South. Considering this expansion in relation to longer histories of inequality between global North and South and inequalities within the music industries, the study questions: (1) how streaming platforms represent non-Western musics and musicians as well as inform music production, consumption and distribution in local music economies; (2) how imaginaries of who listeners are—which necessarily engage intersecting formations of race, nationality, class, gender, ethnicity and so on—get solidified into online infrastructures in ways that may perpetuate digital exclusions and inequalities, enacting digital orientalism and/or “algorithmic oppression”; and (3) how homegrown local platforms based in the global South may provide alternative models that decentre the Western listener. Bringing together feminist and critical race approaches to digital media with deep ethnographic research among users and industry professionals in Cairo, Beirut, and Dubai, the project aims to develop strategies for making digital music technologies more ethical and inclusive. This project is funded by the British Academy, the John Fell Fund, and the ERC.