Critical Lis­ten­ing: The Problems with Strea­ming Culture

Following an overview of music journalist Liz Pelly's book "Mood Machine _ The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist," we are looking forward to an engaged discussion between Pelly and label founder/producer/author Johann Scheerer, who recently published two think pieces on the culture of streaming in German weekly Die Zeit. One of his claims is that a shortage of supply, a return to scarcity might be the answer to the current structural problems of the music world. In his estimation these problems like today's massive oversupply of music will lead to longterm effects like a loss of diversity, the devaluation of creative work and the growing dependence on monopolistic platforms. 

Pelly's perspective towards this is rather that moving towards universal access to creating and hearing music is a positive thing, but that the issues are predatory music industry practices and market-level manipulations driven by major labels and streaming companies. Whatever their possible solutions and forecasts may be, one thing our session's speakers can agree upon: there is a structural problem. As Liz Pelly states: "Streaming may have saved the global recorded music business, but it didn't save musicians. For years and years, artists have been speaking up about the challenges of navigating the current digital music and media landscapes: the miniscule payments, opaque discovery algorithms, payola-like practices, having to compete in a marketplace against ghost artists... the list goes on. In 2025, as a conversation continues playing out about the influence of AI on music discovery and creative labor, the conversation grows more urgent for musicians and listeners alike.“