By – Apoorva Lakshmi Kaipa

Abstract

This article argues that music streaming platforms like Spotify reproduce the structural logic of colonialism through three mechanisms: extracting cultural labour at comparatively suppressed rates, imposing algorithmically mediated Western-Centric taste standards on global artists and using intellectual property rights to concentrate ownership of that culture in the top corporations of the Global North. Drawing on the history of music’s political economy and contemporary platform capitalism, the article contends that what platforms call democratisation is, in actuality, a digital enclosure.

Introduction

Sound has always been political. In the colonial era, European powers dismissed the music of the peoples they subjugated as primitive noise, which was seen to be unworthy of preservation and not quite up to the European “standard” of culture. Missionaries replaced indigenous songs with hymns. Colonial broadcasting infrastructure carried the coloniser’s language and rhythms. The message embedded in music policy was always the same: some sounds count while others do not. 

Extraction of Labour, Talent and Pay-Per-Stream Economy

The colonial extraction of resources depended on suppressing the price of labour in the periphery while concentrating profits at the centre. Music streaming replicates this dynamic with precision. Spotify’s pay model pools all subscription revenue globally and distributes it by market share. This creates a structural geographic penalty. An artist in Nigeria or India earning streams in a low subscription rate market receives a fraction of what a US artist earns for the same number of plays. The cultural product is identical, while the compensation for it is not. This is not accidental inefficiency but portrays a larger oppressive business model. 

When Spotify first launched, three major labels: Universal, Sony, Warner, which control over half the global copyrighted music, negotiated equity stakes in the platform alongside per-stream minimums. A leaked 2015 contract revealed that Sony received a $ 25 million advance with no stated obligation to share it with the artists whose work was being licensed. Spotify, in the words of one industry participant, saved music labels but not necessarily artists. The labels had the power to negotiate while artists weren’t even aware of this talk.

In 2019, when the US Copyright Royalty Board ruled to raise the royalty rate paid to songwriters from 11.5% to 15.1%, Spotify appealed the decision. The platform that had built its brand on artist empowerment was fighting to pay those artists less. 

Cultural Imposition

Colonial powers were rarely interested in learning the culture of the people they occupied. They were interested in replacing it. Contemporary music streaming platforms operate through a subtler but structurally analogous mechanism in which the algorithmic curation progressively contributes to the homogenisation of global listening patterns toward formats legible to Western commercial music. 

Spotify’s recommendations system builds ‘taste profiles’; digital fingerprints of listening behaviour create filter bubbles, limiting genuine musical discovery. Studies suggest that algorithm-driven  listening can reduce diversity of consumption. The practical consequence for artists is what critics call the “Spotify Sound”. Music globally has increasingly been created to be optimised to perform within the platform’s algorithmic ecosystem. With shorter songs, front-loaded hooks are used within the first 30 seconds to avoid skip penalties. 

Spotify’s promotional tools like Discovery mode and Marquee compound this. Discovery mode offers artists increased algorithmic visibility in exchange for a deduction of 30% royalties on resulting streams. Marquee is a direct paid placement. Both systems function as a purchased commodity rather than an earned cultural response. Artists and labels with capital can buy prominence, whereas independent artists from the global south who were never near a licensing deal and receive meagre royalties cannot afford to. The platform masks the architecture of exclusion with a rhetoric of democracy.

Copyright as Colonial Instrument

The Berne Convention and its successor, the TRIPS Agreement administered by the WTO, established a global intellectual property architecture designed primarily by and for Western industrial nations with mature creative industries. TRIPS, pushed aggressively by the US and EU, required developing countries to protect foreign copyright as a condition of WTO membership and trade access. The practical consequence is that the Nigerian government must enforce Spotify’s copyright claims over Nigerian-commissioned music on Nigerian soil, even as Nigerian artists are bound to receive $0.0015-$0.005 per stream. For individual artists in the Global South, copyright protection is largely theoretical. Accessing it requires legal resources, industry infrastructure and the bargaining power that most independent artists do not have. Streaming contracts are presented as standard terms of service that routinely include broad licensing grants and moral rights waivers. An artist who lacks legal counsel signs away rights that might, in a more equitable system, protect them. Copyright terms now extend to the life of the creator plus seventy years in most jurisdictions, meaning cultural assets extracted from Global South artists today will remain locked within corporate catalogues for generations.

Conclusion

The East India Company did not think of itself as a colonial enterprise. It thought of itself as a trading innovation that creates a more efficient mechanism for connecting goods with markets. Spotify similarly does not think of itself as a colonial enterprise but as a democratising innovation. A more efficient mechanism for connecting artists with listeners. The self-conception in both cases is genuine and, in both cases, obscures the reality of the people affected. The music streaming industry might not have the intent that the colonial rulers did, but it follows the same corporate legal structure. It concentrates ownership, limits liability and exists in perpetuity. Sound has always been political. The question is whether we listen carefully enough to hear what the algorithm is saying.

About the Author

Apoorva is a second-year student at JGLS majoring in business administration and law. She is an avid reader and artist, actively trying to incorporate creative fields into her everyday work.

Image Source : https://newsroom.spotify.com/2025-05-07/experience-a-new-dimension-of-music-discovery-with-more-controls-and-enhanced-tools/