Digital Data in Music Export: A Matter of Rationality, Creativity, and Diversity

By providing data about streams and listeners, streaming platforms are causing marked changes in the dynamics within the music industry and between markets. Indeed, streaming data are now a key factor in artists’ international career development. To explore this phenomenon in greater depth, we conducted a series of interviews with music export professionals (labels and distributors) and studied media sources specializing in the music industry and technology. Our observation is that digital data are prompting professionals to engage in new rational approaches while still maintaining a certain sense of creativity. Moreover, because digital data are being integrated into the existing music globalization process, they are leading to new relationships between the Global North and South, through concepts such as “trigger cities.”