Financialization is the neglected force in music industry scholarship

Evidence

The rise of streaming has made platformization another key locus of research, including such topics as the establishment of new rights and payments regimes for musicians that retain the inequalities of previous systems; the platform pressures that prompt music to be optimized in certain ways; the importance of playlists, including their “algorithmic individuation” and “curatorial power”; the hidden power of recommendation systems; and the reinforcement of class divisions in music taste on platforms. Often missing from these structural assessments is the role of financialization. In other words, Madison Avenue and Silicon Valley are well represented, but Wall Street remains comparatively underexplored. — Andrew deWaard, Derivative Media, 179

Categorization

• XREF: This is the thesis gap the reader’s whole project examines — Wall Street fingerprints on artistic form.