This chapter explores identity issues in commercial streaming services, which have grown steadily in the 2010s to become the dominant form of music consumption in the Nordic countries, with about 60% of all Internet users in 2015. The chapter offers an alternative to the dominant trend in music industry studies by focusing not on the industry’s interests but instead on broader cultural issues. The chapter presents case studies of two female Sámi artists and their representations on Spotify, YouTube, MySpace, and artists’ websites, taking various aspects of the services into account, including the interface and the algorithm-based recommendations. Informed by feminist cultural studies, the argument is that the industry continues a history of reinforcing stereotypes of ethnicity, indigeneity, and femininity. Thus, commercial streaming is not only making music available to global audiences, it is also selling images of Otherness within an unequal capitalist global media system.
