Creative Work(s) in the Age of Platforms: Comparing Popular Music and YouTube Production

• In Event: 1448 - Popular Culture: Fields of Cultural Production

Abstract

Cultural production increasingly takes place within digital infrastructures known as platforms (e.g., Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Google, et al.). How do these privately-owned infrastructures affect creative work and, by extension, the production of culture? I address this question through an ethnographic examination of two fields of cultural production wherein platforms appear increasingly central to distribution and revenues (popular music and YouTube content production). Surprisingly, I find little effect on production processes in music while YouTube production appears entangled with the platform. I extend outward from each ethnographic site to their broader infrastructural context and draw upon insights from cultural sociology and the interdisciplinary study of infrastructure in order to explain why YouTube production appears overdetermined by the platform whereas music continues to resemble prior sociological models. I use my findings to theorize how monopoly ownership of infrastructure in the YouTube case affects the production of culture by embedding formerly distinct webs of distribution, valuation, and remuneration within the platform. I conclude by discussing implications for studies of cultural production and work.

Author

• Michael L. Siciliano, Queen's University