Streaming the White Album to death: Music streaming and the disaggregated album experience

Abstract

Music consumption has drastically changed over the last two decades, with the digitalization of music paving the way for music streaming services like the popular and controversial Spotify. In public debate, a new mode of music consumption means that a previously vital format to the music industry, the album, will drastically change or perish altogether. However, the academic world has not yet tried to study the impact of music streaming on the album format. This research wants to shift the academic focus away from economic and legal aspects of Spotify’s impact and picks up where several researchers analyzing the impact of digitalization on music left off. It does so by trying to identify what music digitalization does to the album experience, focusing on the disaggregation of the album format: the reason for some to assume the album format is dying. The disaggregated album experience arises through what this research calls recontextualization affordances: how users are able to interact with the album as a unifying context for songs. The research method used to study the disaggregated album experience is a comparative affordance analysis of the Spotify, LP, and CD formats of the White Album by the Beatles. By studying how different formats of the same album afford the changing of album flow, the creation of new context, and the preservation of album context, it becomes apparent that recontextualization is afforded by all three formats. The Spotify album affords the most intuitive and sophisticated album recontextualization and, therefore, it facilitates the most disaggregated album experience of the three, although never fully because the album context is always preserved through album links. The LP album also affords recontextualization, but more tactile and freeform than its Spotify and CD counterparts, even allowing for a unique musical expression. The CD album affords similar recontextualization to the Spotify album, only more rudimentary and less intuitive. Both physical albums preserve the album context more than the Spotify album through their reliance on physical media. Ultimately, the disaggregated album experience is neither a direct consequence of digitalization nor synonymous with the death of the album since it can be seen as part of every album experience. Rather, the album is a dynamic format, changing in accordance with the mainstream mode of music consumption.