Music as a Technology of Surveillance

“Music as a Technology of Surveillance” centers on the transactions between platforms and an assortment of advertisers, data brokers, and other third parties. Especially among stand-alone services, the need to develop alternative means of extracting value from customers has encouraged aggressive monetization of user attention and data. To attract the business of advertisers and data aggregators, streaming services tout the extensive access mobile music provides to the various social and physical spaces that users traverse. In addition, platforms stress the privileged insight into listeners’ psychic lives that music is said to provide. Not only does music thus facilitate a microtargeting of advertising to freemium users; furthermore, the sharing of user data with various third parties means that the information platforms collect not just about but by means of users’ musical activity may feed algorithmic systems in far-flung sectors of the economy (credit rating, insurance pricing, risk assessment, and so on).