Exploring Streaming Charts as Proxy Signifiers for Cultural Globalisation

Abstract

Traditionally, success of popular music artists is measured with economic metrics, but the dominant streaming platform Spotify measure popularity based on its own streaming metrics. This thesis critically explores these metrics and questions how this datafication transforms what we perceive as popular music. I used a list of fifty popular Dutch artists based on the traditional economic metrics, to explore in what way Spotify’s metrics transform what we understand as popular music today. In this exploration, informed by cultural analytics, I found a yearly pattern in three years of Spotify´s charts that was not visible before. By building on critical data studies, this research then systematically approached Spotify as a data assemblage, which enabled me to map the data’s ontology and its epistemic consequences. In the analysis I found that Spotify´s streaming charts are inconsistent, lack data descriptions and are manipulated by Spotify, making its use problematic.