Research Seminar: ‘The Global Spread of Music Streaming: Capitalism and Colonialism, Technology and Culture’

This talk places the international effects of digital platforms on music in the long-term context of the music industry’s relations to capitalism and colonialism

How and in what ways might digital platforms such as Spotify, YouTube, TikTok and Kugou Music be (re)shaping music production, distribution and consumption internationally? Does the global spread of music streaming favour western technologies, business practices and cultural forms at the expense of those associated with the Global South? What might the “platformisation” of music tell us about the relationships between political-economic power and inequality on the one hand, and cultural change on the other? Might music streaming even be a form of “cultural imperialism” “digital colonialism” or “platform imperialism”? This talk, based on the editor’s introduction to a new collection, Music Streaming Around the World (University of California Press, 2025), seeks to address these and other related questions.

 

David Hesmondhalgh is Professor of Media, Music and Culture in the School of Media and Communication at the University of Leeds. He is the author of The Cultural Industries (5th edition due out in late 2025) and Why Music Matters (2013), and co-author of Creative Labour: Media Work in Three Cultural Industries (2010), Culture, Economy and Politics: Cultural Policy Under New Labour (2015), and a book-length report on Music Creators’ Earnings in the Digital Era (2021). From 2021-26, he is Principal Investigator on a five-year research project, funded by a European Research Council Advanced Research Grant, on Music Culture in the Age of Streaming.