In Practice II: Curation in the Digital Era

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While this may be an obvious oversimplification, curation is now a digital game. Where once you had to have physical copies of your favourite music in various formats, now a complex amalgamation of 1s and 0s takes up virtual space on your latest technological device,

Downloading a song takes the push of a button, and curating a playlist is as simple as sharing a link or copy/pasting your list onto your preferred device or platform and clicking the 'Send' button.

But what is most intriguing is the development of platforms like YouTube and Spotify. They take the concept of curation to an algorithm-driven level that brings into question its legitimacy as an honest reflection of personal preferences.

In order to unpack that mouthful, we look at how curation works in digital spaces with regards to 4 facets that together form what Morris and Powers call a 'branded music experience' (2015, p.117), These are:

Interface:

• In terms of how digital platforms like Spotify and YouTube curate user experience, these sites use a mixture of easy navigation, visually captivating elements, and relatively unlimited access (with the exception of subscription models) to a large musical database.

• The ready-made nature of curated playlists seems efficient with regard to time, in contrast to the hours it takes to individually curate one's playlist (both digitally and through analogue) - cross-platform sharing bridged that gap even further.

Quality:

• This goes beyond the mere look of the platform and focuses on its functionality. The recommendation algorithms they incorporate, the social interaction they facilitate, if there is a 'human touch' to the playlists, personalisation features, and so on.

• Part of the popularity of digitally curated playlist is the multifunctional way in which it can be played and shared. Being able to see what friends are listening to, sharing your favourite music, following your favourite artists, the likes, comments, and shares. This is what separates the digital space from the analogue one - in that everything can be done at the click of a button - in real-time.

• But it also falters because the same music can reappear in different playlists and be rebranded under different categories, thus the playlists become less about the songs and more about the 'affective cues' that are employed in order to aid the listener's discovery. (Morris and Powers, 2015, p. 117).

Taste:

• A large aspect of digital curation is to gauge the users' taste and preferences. While sites like YouTube and Spotify collect this data based on the music we previously listened to, the artists we follow, the music we like and share, and the channels we like, often, algorithm-generated playlists lack the human touch.

• While being an endless repository of music, these digital playlists can pigeonhole users, directing their tastes to pre-defined genres and moods, and preventing the discovery of alternate music. Other times, these lists are more a reflection of the platforms' promotional attempt rather than the listener's taste.

Control:

• While such sites do allow for personal curation, the auto-generated collections take creative control away from the listener in terms of the songs they would like to include or leave out.

Streaming services offer the illusion of increased control by offering greater access to more music in more places, but the blurring of the local library [...] through the interface belies the lack of control available" - (Morris & Powers, 2015, p. 118)

For someone born at the cusp of the analogue and digital era, my loyalties in terms of curation lie in the grey. While my music files maybe 1s and 0s, the curation process is analogous. The intimacy, the familiarity, the nostalgia, and just the peace that comes from diving headfirst into a bottomless collection and emerging with a cohesive narrative is incomparable.

I may not be the only one...

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References:

Morris, J. W. & Powers, D. (2015). 'Control, curation and musical experience in streaming music services', in Creative industries journal. Vol. 8 (2), 106–122.