Recommended Reading - Original Thread

Hi!

Would be keen to get some of your recommendations for books about the streaming landscape, algo’s + AI, philosophy of co-ops. Or anything else you may have read recently that you think is worth mentioning.

Spotify Teardown by Maria Eriksson is on my list.

Thanks

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Hello! I’ve recently read ‘Ways of Hearing’ by Damon Krukowski and ‘Homunculus’ by Joe Sparrow and have just ordered ‘Rockonomics’ by Alan Krueger. On my list are ‘Platform Capitalism’ by Nick Srnicek and ‘Oval’ by Elvia Wilk (which is apparently a heavy and extreme take on art becoming a cog of the corporate world). Online though, really enjoying the following (and not all are directly related to streaming, but a lot talk about audiences, interpretation and creativity):




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Also, just remembered that The Baffler published this piece on the YouTube algorithm too. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Amazing! Going to check these out asap :grin:

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Recently started Spotify Teardown and would highly recommend!

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Not a book or specific to streaming, but in terms of the wider co-op landscape Upstream Podcast is sometimes worth a listen.

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I’ve been ingesting literature through my ears lately. Podcasts, etc.

I want to recommend a recent interview with a writer I have followed for many years, Donna Haraway. It helps me find vocabulary to bring to work in this challenging historical moment. The interview begins at about 11:40.

She is quite famous for A Cyborg Manifesto from 1984.

"… an ironic political myth faithful to feminism, socialism, and
materialism."

Definitely worth reading even now.

Interesting. I found this note from last Fall, Sept 1, 2018.

The recommendation still stands:

On the Resonate community call we were asked to consider what conditions might be like if the present work were to succeed beyond our wildest dreams. I made a comment about having a desire to see the work manifest in a way that was inherently legible as open to artistic practices and traditions of all geographies, genres, social position, and historical experience.

I mentioned a particular classic text, recommended by a friend, that had recently made a paradigmatic impact on my thinking about social inclusion, a book called PEDAGOGY OF THE OPPRESSED by Paulo Freire. A revised 30th Anniversary edition of this text is available.

What I like about it is its simple, broad, very practical and applicable definitions of terms and conditions of things like ‘being human’, the primacy of dialogue as a condition of world-building among human beings, and the dehumanizing and oppressive conditions that result (and have resulted) where dialogue is not present and objectification rules. As world-builders, I suggest these considerations may be pertinent to our work and I found this particular text quite helpful to me in clarifying and evaluating my contribution.

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Great article and it seems like the author is describing a lot of what has been talked about within the community.

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A hypothesis. “The evolution of music and human social capability” Frontiers in Neuroscience. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2014.00292/full

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Introduced to Srećko Horvats work over the weekend. Looking forward to digging further. https://shado-mag.com/opinion/srecko-horvats-poetry-from-the-future-why-a-global-liberation-movement-is-our-only-chance/

This 65dos podcast is very good and looks at a lot of the shifts happening in music from the band’s perspective plus the impact on their creative process.

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Have already signposted this on Twitter (as Resonate are mentioned in the last article), but in case anyone hasn’t seen it, this is really very good:

P. S. There’s also a music research project going on today called Harkive, which looks like it could provide a neat snapshot of people’s daily listening habits. That’s here:

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Platform Capitalism, which already was mentioned, is really good. See also some of Srnicek’s online articles and interviews. For example:

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/bigger-than-the-ussr-a-conversation-with-nick-srnicek-author-of-platform-capitalism/?fbclid=IwAR254j0gzqXZ2MuC0rXx9cEt6KnkGX97vA2w-OMz6oDcljwabMaDQOVl3rI#!

The People’s Platform, by Astra Taylor (good overview of the negative impact of platform capitalism on culture).

Ours to Hack and to Own, edited by Trebor Scholz and Nathan Schreiber (book about platform coops, although not on music).

Anything by Mat Dryhurst and Liz Pelly.

http://www.mathewdryhurst.com/

This dissertation by Jon Davies (which I haven’t read yet, but it looks good):

Also (if I’m allowed to share my own work), I just wrote a very basic overview of culture in the era of platform capitalism:

https://modernismunbound.com/essays/digital-modernism-part-1-platform-capitalism-and-beyond/

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Great interview with the Coop’s Board Secretary

Nick Meyne Nick

, a pillar of strength and insight in this period of the coop’s transition. Nick does a great job of filling in recent history of the Coop and framing the significance of prioritizing ethical frameworks for identity protocols.

Read, comment, enjoy!

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Hi! Hope everyone is doing ok. I’m guessing a few folks will have already seeing, but this dropped in my inbox a couple of days ago and there’s a little bit about co-ops halfway down, plus some thoughts on why not everything is, or should be, scaleable.

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Thanks! I like this piece about now and future values. The mention of co-ops and community alternatives is really nice … co-operation in adversity to build something bigger, beautiful, at scale. Reminded me of the Freedom Quilting Bee. I like the quilt as a metaphor :slight_smile:

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For those who are a bit geeky on what makes a digital platform or community work, and approaches to designing such a platform, here is a link to some ideas from friends of mine at the Platform Design Toolkit team… Simone, Luca and co: https://platformdesigntoolkit.com/platform-design-whitepaper/

There is also a wealth of reference material here: https://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Platform+Cooperative+Development+Kit
from Trebor Scholz at the New School on platform coops
https://platform.coop/about/vision-and-advantages/

…and of course our good friend Nathan Schneider at Boulder, (his book mentioned already) whose Media Enterprise Design lab is a great resource for everyone here, with its keen focus on community and co-operative enterprise in arts and media… take a look at this piece for example https://www.colorado.edu/lab/medlab/2020/04/17/exit-community-distributed-governance
…we will be referring to that topic a lot more in order to improve the transparency and democracy of decision-making in our co-op.

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"Private Sector (For-Profit) Norms – Companies Limited by Shares (CLS)

There is a connection between business ideology and the arrangements in law by which entrepreneurs acquire share capital (ordinary shares). They register as directors, then recruit employees to operationalise their ideas. New capital is issued when more financial capital is needed, but not when more intellectual, human, social or natural capital are needed. In an unadapted CLS, employees and customers are subordinated to the interests of shareholders. They are not invited to be full members or to contribute towards decisions outside their specialist area of expertise [12]. If employees are offered share capital, voting rights are often limited or controlled by trustees who – in many cases – are under no legal obligation to vote in accordance with the wishes of their beneficiaries [13].

The intellectual property created by the workforce is acquired by the Company and controlled by executive managers and directors. In effect, majority shareholders treat intellectual, human, social and natural capital investments by others as if they were additional financial investments by themselves. They continue to acquire rights to all the property created by the interactions between employees, customers and the natural environment. This system of enterprise widens the wealth gap between those who own and govern the enterprise and those who sell their labour to it, or buy goods from it. Even in the richest countries, wealth inequalities grow wider (unless the state intervenes) [14] and the natural environment is degraded [15]. "

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And here, red in tooth and claw, is a projection of more competitive struggle in the commodity music streaming business. From Will Page, chief economist at Spotify:

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