New Perspectives on Music Streaming: Asset Economy in the Music Streaming Business

Hyojung Sun (University of York)

This talk will discuss how streaming music can be understood as an asset economy, where recorded music catalogues generate revenue through rent-like income. It identifies three key features: increased private equity investment, major labels' ownership of back catalogues, and capital investment in rights acquisitions. It will be argued that this system allows major music companies to act as surplus-generating entities, potentially at the expense of risking new talent development.

The Servitization of Musical Labour in the Platform Economy

Robert Prey (University of Oxford)

This talk will argue that musicians represent a limit case of contemporary platform labour and service-based value creation. Drawing on fieldwork from fan platforms such as Weverse and Bubble, it explores how artists are now expected to perform continuous relational labour—maintaining emotional connections with fans, delivering regular updates, and submitting to audience discipline. Unlike traditional service workers, however, musicians’ labour is inseparable from their unique personas, making it difficult to automate or replace. By positioning musicians as both archetype and limit case, this talk asks what musicians can teach us about the wider restructuring of work under computational capitalism.

The lectures will be followed by discussion,
moderated by Emília Barna (Budapest University of Technology and Economics).

29 May 2025 18:00–20:00BME Building Q Room A406 (4th Floor)
Magyar tudósok körútja 2., 1117 Budapest

The event is part of an academic event series held to celebrate 40 years of the Department of Sociology and Communication at BME.