Rampant Abstraction as a Strategy of Singularization: Genre on Spotify

Abstract

If processes of categorization are central to cultural sociology, then current developments as regards genre formation in the realm of music-streaming services call for attention. A double process of computerized genre analysis (producing a potentially infinite array of categories) and increasingly context-specific music recommendation (accommodating a vision of limitless personalization) challenges established, scene- and identity-based ideas about genre, as developed in popular-music studies. Drawing on Reckwitz’s (2020) theory of the society of singularities, this article argues for considering this double process as the intersection of the logics of, respectively, the general and the particular. These logics are mediated by a dynamic sense of abstraction, involved in processes of labelling, enabling levels of generality while manifesting a potential for concretion. The increased scope, acceleration, and dynamicity of such abstraction mark genre formation in digital times. The article makes this argument looking particularly at the case of Spotify – market leader and front runner in the noted developments – as a basis for engaging broader questions about musical genre theory in the context of digitized culture and current conditions of musical life.