Playlisting the periphery: Platform intermediaries and East-Central European music visibility in Spotify’s geography

Result code in IS VaVaI
<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F61989592%3A15210%2F25%3A73632523" target="_blank" >RIV/61989592:15210/25:73632523 - isvavai.cz</a>
Result on the web
<a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14614448251346200" target="_blank" >https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14614448251346200</a>
DOI - Digital Object Identifier
<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/14614448251346200" target="_blank" >10.1177/14614448251346200</a>

Result language
angličtina
Original language name
Playlisting the periphery: Platform intermediaries and East-Central European music visibility in Spotify’s geography
Original language description
This article examines Spotify’s engagement with East-Central European (ECE) music markets, exploring how platformization intersects with peripherality. Using insights from the political economy of global media and platform studies, it situates Spotify within the asymmetrical geographies of platform capitalism, where peripheral regions are more consumption markets than cultural centers. While Spotify emphasizes egalitarian access through playlisting and algorithmic tools, the findings reveal persistent inequalities shaped by “spatial gatekeeping.” Focusing on how regional actors, mediating between artists and the platform, experience these inequalities, the article draws on interviews and “scavenging” ethnography to develop a typology of “platform intermediaries,” including regional playlist editors, digital distributors, major label representatives, and music creators. These intermediaries internalize spatial gatekeeping in their practices and platform imaginaries, which reflect perceived distance from geographic and algorithmic centers and aspirations to transcend peripherality. The article offers a nuanced account of platform geography’s asymmetries as experienced from the periphery.
Czech name
—
Czech description
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Type
J<sub>imp</sub> - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the Web of Science database
CEP classification
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OECD FORD branch
50802 - Media and socio-cultural communication

Project
<a href="/en/project/DH23P03OVV029" target="_blank" >DH23P03OVV029: Opportunities and barriers of cross-border distribution of Czech music production</a><br>
Continuities
P - Projekt vyzkumu a vyvoje financovany z verejnych zdroju (s odkazem do CEP)

Publication year
2025
Confidentiality
S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

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