Introduction to the discussion by Lo\u00efc Riom<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n An innovative investigation of the inner workings of Spotify that traces the transformation of audio files into streamed experience. <\/em><\/p>\n Spotify provides a streaming service that has been welcomed as disrupting the world of music. Yet such disruption always comes at a price. Spotify Teardown<\/em> contests the tired claim that digital culture thrives on disruption. Borrowing the notion of \u201cteardown\u201d from reverse-engineering processes, in this book a team of five researchers have playfully disassembled Spotify\u2019s product and the way it is commonly understood.<\/p>\n Spotify has been hailed as the solution to illicit downloading, but it began as a partly illicit enterprise that grew out of the Swedish file-sharing community. Spotify was originally praised as an innovative digital platform but increasingly resembles a media company in need of regulation, raising questions about the ways in which such cultural content as songs, books, and films are now typically made available online.<\/p>\n Spotify Teardown <\/em>combines interviews, participant observations, and other analyses of Spotify\u2019s \u201cfront end\u201d with experimental, covert investigations of its \u201cback end.\u201d The authors engaged in a series of interventions, which include establishing a record label for research purposes, intercepting network traffic with packet sniffers, and web-scraping corporate materials. The authors\u2019 innovative digital methods earned them a stern letter from Spotify accusing them of violating its terms of use; the company later threatened their research funding. Thus, the book itself became an intervention into the ethics and legal frameworks of corporate behavior.<\/p>\n \n The Guest Seminar Series is organized collectively by the CSI PhD students. It is open upon registration.<\/p>\n Contact and registration: F\u00e9lix Boil\u00e8ve<\/a> or Cl\u00e9ment Gasull<\/a><\/p>\n Date: Tuesday February 12, 2019, 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm<\/p>\n Venue: Mines ParisTech, 60 bd St Michel, 75006 Paris \u2013 Room St Jacques<\/p>\n Guest seminar programme<\/a><\/p>\n \nPhoto credit: Maria Eriksson, Streaming Heritage <\/a>\u2013 Pelle Snickars, Ume\u00e5 universitet<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/i3.cnrs.fr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/seminaire-su\u00e8de-500x339.jpg\")
<\/a><\/h2>\nThe Guest Seminar Series is organized collectively by the CSI PhD students. It is open upon registration.<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n