Digital Music Distribution and the Sociology of Online Streams

Since the turn of the millennium, the distribution of music and popular culture through the internet and various digital platforms has become a central strand of the modern cultural web, binding us together in both local and global communities. Hendrik Storstein Spilker’s book offers a crucial account of these developments, grounded in case studies of popular music in Norway.

Spilker demonstrates that Norway is a remarkable case on the world stage, with 80% of all revenue from music distribution now coming from streaming services. The book traces how different social groups use music through digital platforms, arguing that these patterns are shaped by a complex interplay of cultural, social, technological, and economic changes. Theoretically, Spilker builds on Victor Turner’s concept of liminal phases to understand how the internet has transformed the ground rules for producing, listening to, and relating to music, as well as the rules of the game for the various players in the music field. Drawing on Turner, actor-network theory, and geological perspectives, he develops the concept of foldings to map out the unintended consequences of this interaction.

The folding metaphor highlights the point that the diffusion of technologies seldom (never) follows any linear logic. During appropriation, technologies, practices and relations are bent, twisted, turned around and rearranged. When different social groups are appropriating digital music technologies, new social spaces are created, with reconfigured notions of time, values, space, rights and more. (Spilker, 2018, pp. 5-6)

Inspired by Pinch and Bijker’s concept of “relevant social groups” and Du Gay’s notion of the “circuits of culture,” Spilker applies “foldings” to examine how several social groups form a “cultural community” around music distribution. These groups include technology developers, music industry players, performing artists, political movements and activists, journalists and mass media, lawmakers and legal experts, as well as the relationship between younger and older music users. Spilker launches four hypotheses to guide his analysis.

• The leveling hypothesis, which envisions a scenario where change fundamentally reshapes the conditions and rules for all actors.
• The normalization hypothesis, which suggests only short-lived changes occur before everything returns to the status quo.
• The deadlock hypothesis, which describes a new and intractable conflict line between the various actors.
• The balancing hypothesis, which points to a situation where the interests of most parties are met and a new equilibrium emerges.

After defining these core ideas, the book explores how they play out in specific cases. Chapter two examines how young and adult users interact with digital music services, drawing on both qualitative and quantitative data to chart the shift from downloading and sharing MP3s in the early 2000s to a focus on streaming in the last decade. Spilker uses “foldings” to explain how young listeners transitioned from being illegal pirates to legal streaming subscribers—a counterintuitive outcome that the concept helps unpack. The chapter also tackles piracy as a form of counterculture, finding that while a few informants viewed file sharing as a socialist act, most had a pragmatic rather than ideological relationship to it.

In contrast, chapter four takes up the punk movement as a counterculture wondering whether it has used the internet as a platform for distributing music and for political expression. The book shows that while the Do-It-Yourself ethos of the internet aligns with the anarchist, anti-mass-media ideology of punk, it also reveals tensions and contradictions, especially uncovers a new friction between the hacker movement and punks despite their similar ideologies.

The following section explores how music producers and artists now use cheap online software to mix and develop tracks. Drawing on Latour’s concepts, Spilker describes how new links between actors and music technology build the platform for original forms of music and communities. A further chapter focuses on the economy, showing that the main profits now go to the producers of the technology (e.g. smartphones, laptops, iTunes) through reduced tools for everyone, and blurring the role of songs vs. albums, making individual tracks matter most.

Chapter seven investigates the ideological spectrum of the internet society, from the music industry’s business concerns to pirates’ enthusiasm for total free information. The book also presents a fascinating mixed surprise, demonstrating that the DivX and MP3 formats are syntheses of forces from both ideals. Spilker then goes on to consider, in chapter eight, the many ways media describes these shifts - mainly “Piracy kills music” industry campaigns that then-ironically led to the industry succeeding only by providing the better system of convenient payment streams. The final monograph defends these observations by later general discussion about copyright and tax conflict.

The closing revisits all four hypotheses. Spilker finds the “deadlock” is too weak: coalition-building can make up many shifting agreements and dissolve polarity. Likewise, the normaintegrity of “the society life given continuity gets reset (normalization)”. Analyses giving most credit spill towards “the potential capacity out among margins hits ever-levels?” given fast progress blurring authority flow for artist.

Nevertheless the true depth of supportive relation among case record description is on aligning value he says becomes best measure - the “balancing means” drawing radical yet steady connectors e.g. that having pirate pioneers with labels form the MP3/DivX growth. Still Spilker’s “foldings” quite energisingly points a large story:

The book identifies giant shifts: digital markets linking typical groups in unexpected routes. It captures important and real potential but suffers weakly real “fold” descriptions making their connection effect blur - lack touch from adjacent traditions (network-actant mix). The work probably couldn't imagine closer ties amongst musician track artists side across landscape too frequently matching across music research by overlapping simpler researchers exploring comparable Norway-exclusive transitions since a fast musical conversation across lines might thicken.

Despite those weaknesses, Spilker clarifies innovations amongst promising discoveries: many varied categories proving broad shared tie-binding evidence comes dynamic, waiting creativity more active action models explain unlikely shifts