 Hello and welcome once again. Let's talk about media and communication. Today we explore the relationship between two concepts, digital platforms and digital infrastructure. We welcome David Esmontage from the University of Litz in the UK, who will tell us about the rise of, how the rise of platformization is having a profound impact on media and in culture. This conversation will draw on research from legal studies, political economy, internet governance. David will surely help us getting all right very briefly in order to understand how platformization is discipling infrastructures and narrowing the range of voices and perspectives that are heard. The case study, online music. So let's jump into it. David, welcome to our episode. Thank you, Rodrigo. It's nice to be here. So the first question for you would be, why is this topic important to conduct research on? I think digital infrastructure or infrastructure in general and platforms, they're concepts for our times. They've been very widely used in recent public debates and in academic research, including media and communication studies. And yet I think there's a great deal of confusion about how those terms are used. And so it's important to get clearer about them, I think. And so when you started this research, what were you hoping to find? So what was the research gap there that you wanted to address? Well, I think myself and my colleagues who I was working with, my three co-authors wanted to get that clarity about how digital platforms and digital infrastructures have operated in the realm of culture. Historically, really. I think we were all very conscious of some transitions in how the internet has been understood from a period of relative hope and optimism to one where the various products associated with the internet are now looked at as very problematic. And in particular, we wanted to look at that in relation to music because that's what we research. And I think there's been a massive transformation in how music comes to us. But not much seems to be understood about the digital platforms that underlie that transformation. So that's what we wanted to understand better. And please do share with us the main reflections that you had when conducting this research. So the main findings, what are they? Well, I think the main argument is that the platformization of music by which we mean the entry of music streaming platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music, into the way we consume and for musicians and people working in the industry, how music is produced, it can be seen historically as a closing down of the possibilities that were once made available by the principles underlying early internet infrastructure or architecture. And by that we really mean that the internet infrastructure that underpins our media and communication world was initially framed by its developers as a kind of common resource available to all regardless of whether it was privately or publicly owned. It's not about privatization, it's about a kind of commons. And I can talk a little bit if you like about the principles underlying that original vision of the internet that made it like that and that we're lost. But ultimately I think we can see the rise of a highly centralized set of technologies of technical protocols that are really about ease of use and the forbidding of the tinkering that characterized a lot of early digital activity. So we're tracing those transitions in the realm of music in a way that I don't think has been told before. Okay, I think it would be probably interesting for us to follow up a little bit on this and to explore what you suggested how over time we lost these commons that you make. Can you talk a little bit about that? Well, the original principles of internet architecture were keeping it as simple as I can for now. A fundamental feature was the end-to-end principle which really tried to protect end users from infrastructure providers putting restrictions on access and use. So it's about not being able to distinguish between different uses or making differential pricing based on how things will be used. And that produces this, well, what the writer Jonathan Zittron calls an ability to produce, it calls it generativity, an ability to produce unanticipated change from lots of different kinds of audiences. And what happens is partly because of a panic about intellectual property or the part of people who own intellectual property, you get a set of legal measures that close down what can happen, mainly happening in the US courts and then be adopted elsewhere. But you also get these technological developments and in particular you get the development of what some people call trusted systems which are kind of black, some people call them black boxed systems, devices that offer convenience and security but that you can't get inside as a user. And the iPhone would be the absolute classic example of that. But at the same time, you get suddenly burgeoning awareness of the value of data. And that's particularly, that particularly follows the massive success of Google. And the massive data of, that's required in that kind of platform model that develops out of Google and these trusted devices requires this massively centralized infrastructure system. And now that's essentially operated by Amazon, Google, and two other companies, Microsoft. And the ownership's important but it's as much the massive centralization of it that we're interested in. And of course, it's a good contextualization of the background of this conversation. Let me take a step back. So you mentioned before, there were a lot still of public debates and a lot of confusion about the relationship between the platforms and infrastructure. And I assume this also concerns public policy wise. So I'm curious to know more how can these findings impact in terms of public policies? So what can you tell us more about that, the real implications in policy wise? Well, one thing I probably haven't stressed enough in what I've said so far is that quite substantial part of our paper is based on music. And so this is about the everyday production and consumption of music. So I guess the story of the music industry, the recorded music industry anyway, of the last 25 years or so is one where it was widely considered to be doomed around the turn of the century or just after actually around, by 2005, 2010, the revenues and profits of the recorded music companies were absolutely plummeting. And they were seen as dinosaurs doomed to extinction. But that didn't happen as it turns out. We saw the revival of the people who won the copyrights in those companies. So I think there's a story there for any policy maker interested in understanding technological predictions and transformations that, first of all, predictions can go very awry. Things don't work out. In the way people think they will. And secondly, the systems that we end up with are the product of particular histories, particular developments and the closing down of the multiplicity of making and sharing music that was there in the early internet is, for me, a really interesting version of that story. It involves many, many different factors. There's a complexity, there's a nuance. As I say, it's a mixture of legal and technological changes. And nobody foresaw the way that the world of music would look. They might have seen that there was going to be subscription, which is the basis of a lot of the business of music streaming. But the development of these kind of digital platforms, these closed systems built on the openness of the internet, I don't think anybody foresaw that as arriving in anything like the way it did. Of course. And leaving now the outside academia, the music companies and policymakers. So what is ahead of the researchers now to explore probably helping in these projections of how technology and music technology will make his evolution. So what can we look ahead now in terms of research? Well, I imagine that some of the research agenda on music and more generally on culture is going to be preoccupied by debates about generative artificial intelligence, which of course has some relation to the developments that we're talking about. But that's, although we're beginning to see the beginnings of systems that are labeled artificial intelligence becoming more pervasive. I think we still need to understand much better the world that we've got and how we came to have it. I think there's too much futurology in some publications about media and communication. Too much prediction and not enough grounding in the actual histories. So I hope that future research will involve more careful unpacking of historical developments. And I should say that I think one of the ways I see what we've done is although we're, in some ways, primarily interested in musical experience and the role of music in people's lives, be they musicians or ordinary users as they're increasingly called, people who just enjoy music. That's always been an interest of mine. I think of myself in part as a sociologist of music, but this paper attempted to look deeper really at the systems that shape those experiences in very indirect, complicated ways. And it seemed to me, and I want to emphasize this, that the way terms like infrastructures and platforms were being used was actually adding to confusion in a lot of cases about what they were. Because I think people often use the term infrastructure, for example, as some kind of metaphor for system, rather than using it in at least some way related to its everyday use as those technologies that enable things to happen in society. Some confusion with the concept and the significance behind him. David, can you provide this is, so this touches upon several topics. So I believe there are some additional resources, some materials that you can share with us for our listeners to follow up and explore more about music industry and infrastructure and platforms. So is there anything you would like to share with us? Well, I think I can probably share with you Rodrigo resources that relate to how music is being transformed by streaming and how it's not because in some ways people carry on using music in the way that they have for many years. I'm not sure if there's that many approachable resources when it comes to digital platforms and digital infrastructures. They are technological and they're technical and they're often legal in their implications, but I'll do my best. And if you want to provide them on your website. Exactly, yes. For, well, if scrolling down for those who are listening to this conversation, scrolling down on the let's talk about media and communication website, you'll be able to access these materials. But again, it just emphasizes the relevance of the article that we are discussing today. You have done David, let's wrap this episode up. You have done a bit of this several times in this episode, but I would like to ask you if there is anything you want our audience to remember about this talk, one to sentences. So what would be the punchline of this conversation? That people are often quite dismissive of the hopes that were invested in the early internet, but that there was really something quite radical about the ideas underpinning it. And that what we've seen since roughly the turn of the century has represented a closing down of the radical potential of those early ideas. Straight to the point, David. Thank you very much for this episode. Thank you, Rodrigo. For those who are watching us on YouTube, you can go to our website, let's talk about media and communication. You will be able to watch this episode there, access the article that served as base for this conversation. You can also listen to this episode wherever you get your podcasts. You can subscribe to our newsletter and stay in touch with new episodes. And of course, we are also on Twitter at Kojitatiu LTA.