scholarly journals Rising tides? Data capture, platform accumulation, and new monopolies in the digital music economy

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 543-561 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leslie M Meier ◽  
Vincent R Manzerolle
Keyword(s):  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Attention Capture ◽  
Data Capture ◽  
Newspaper Coverage ◽  
Business Strategies ◽  
Digital Music ◽  
Consumer Privacy ◽  
User Data ◽  
Jay Z

This article examines the roles of platform-based distribution and user data in the digital music economy. Drawing on trade press, newspaper coverage, and a consumer privacy complaint, we offer a critical analysis of tech-music partnerships forged between Samsung and Jay-Z (2013), Apple iTunes Store and U2 (2014), Tidal and Kanye West (2016), and Apple Music and Drake (2017). In these cases, information technology (IT) companies supported album releases, and music was used to generate user data and attention: logics of data and attention capture were interwoven. The IT and music industries have adapted their business strategies to what we conceptualize as platform-based capital accumulation or ‘platform accumulation’, and models centred on controlling access and extracting rent have enabled the emergence of new monopolies and IT gatekeepers.

Games and data capture culture: play in the era of accelerated neoliberalism

2021 ◽  
pp. 016344372110455
Author(s):  
Rowan Tulloch ◽  
Craig Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Data Capture ◽  
Digital Culture ◽  
Video Gaming ◽  
Individual Choice ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Cultural Shift ◽  
User Data ◽  
Data History ◽  
Changing Role

The last decade has seen the rise of data capture culture. This culture has been most visible, and widely analysed, within the realm of social media; but it is not unique to that form. This article reconceptualises video games as apparatuses for data capture. We situate games within a broader economic and cultural shift towards a new ‘accelerated’ form of neoliberalism where individual choice and agency are pre-filtered and personalised by algorithms based on user data history. Through a survey of the changing role of data in video gaming, this article critically maps a new paradigm for a reimagined games industry driven by a logic of data capture. Gaming promises a unique opportunity for data capture capitalists to mine and commodify player preferences, behaviours and instinctual responses. Arguing that play is a process of uncovering hidden logics, we offer a framework for resisting the data capture hegemony. This is not simply a discussion of gaming, rather this is an attempt to outline the conditions of possibility for a critique of globalised digital culture in which populations are profiled, processed and punished by hidden algorithms of the market that are optimised to construct and reward accelerated performances of neoliberal subjectivity.

A Critical Analysis of Capitalism, Capital Accumulation and Crisis Theory in David Harvey

2020 ◽  
pp. 097674792095300
Author(s):  
Tanaya Majumder
Keyword(s):  
Business Cycles ◽  
Critical Review ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Capitalist Economy ◽  
Crisis Theory ◽  
Surplus Labour ◽  
The One ◽  
Rate Of Profit ◽  
Marxist Tradition

This article is a critical review of David Harvey’s essentialist theorisation of a capitalist economy and its crisis from a class focused Marxist perspective. The first part examines Harvey’s immense contribution to the understanding of space and spatiality of capitalism within the Marxist tradition. Capital accumulation in his theorisation serves as the impresario of space and spatiality and the harbinger of capitalist crisis in general. Expanding on a class focused approach, the second part provides a critique of Harvey’s methodology and crisis theory in which the law of capital accumulation reigns supreme. Specifically, using an anti-essentialist methodology of overdetermination with class process of surplus labour as the theoretical entry point, as developed by Resnick and Wolff, I argue that no correspondence of the rate of capital accumulation with those of rate of profit and rate of class distribution can be drawn. This unpredictability renders capitalism inherently unstable, prone to business cycles whose cause cannot be reduced to any chosen causal factor such as the one reducible to capital accumulation.

Understanding Capitalism: Crises and Passive Revolutions

2002 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xing Li ◽  
Jacques Hersh
Keyword(s):  
Economic System ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Environmental Concerns ◽  
Modus Operandi ◽  
Economic Level ◽  
Restructuring Strategy ◽  
Production Relations ◽  
Democratic Principles

This article has two objectives: First, it attempts to provide a framework for understanding capitalism's resilient adaptability through analysing the roles of liberal democracy and ecological environmentalism. Both are conceptualised as capitalism's passive revolutions in response to emerging crises – processes of constituting and reconstituting conditions for production and reproduction. Liberal democracy is seen as a political restructuring strategy aimed at producing social control with less coercive measures as well as depolitising social contradictions and economic crises. Ecological environmentalism is argued to be capitalism's ecological restructuring attempt at the economic level in order to rescue an economic system at an impasse and to resolve the contradictions between production relations/forces and the externalities of production. Second, the article aims to conduct a critical analysis of what are considered to be passive revolutions taking place within capitalism in order to uncover their hidden mystifications, contradictions and distortions in the promotion of certain policies, practices, values, cognitions and symbols which are considered to be supportive of the existing capitalist political and economic system. The working assumption is that, due to capitalism's modus operandi which is primarily based on capital accumulation, democratic principles and environmental concerns will eventually have to submit to this inherent imperative.

scholarly journals An ecosystem lens: Putting China’s digital music industry into focus

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 350-371 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diming Tang ◽  
Robert Lyons
Keyword(s):  
Value Chain ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
Music Industry ◽  
Ecosystem Model ◽  
Digital Music ◽  
Digital Service ◽  
Chinese Music ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
User Data ◽  
Music Streaming

The digital disruption of the global music industry hits the value chain for recorded music hard. In China, new digital service providers began to amass large user bases, offering a variety of services based on e-commerce and social messaging applications. In a low-intellectual property environment, these services have become the primary sources of digital music streaming via the Internet and increasingly through mobile telephony. This article reviews the literature on the value chains within the Chinese music industry, compares a classic business ecosystem model with a more recent model, and examines available user data on current Chinese music streaming services. We then suggest an ecosystem framework toward understanding the digital music industry in China and discuss how this framework maps to recent developments in China’s digital music industry.

scholarly journals An Exploratory Discussion of a British Apparel Brand in Relation to New Markets: Developing Actionable Recommendations Based on Network, Relationship, and Collaboration Perspectives

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 1660-1675
Author(s):  
Le Thuy Linh ◽  
Hiroko Oe
Keyword(s):  
Value Chain ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Apparel Industry ◽  
Business Strategies ◽  
Chinese Market ◽  
Chinese Consumers ◽  
Discussion Paper ◽  
New Markets ◽  
Supply Networks ◽  
Network Relationship

Marks and Spencer (M&S) is a leading UK fashion retailer. However, the organisation is struggling to improve its domestic operation and to achieve its international objectives, most notably manifest through its withdrawal from China. Through conducting a critical analysis and an evaluation of the supply networks of M&S, the global apparel industry and the Chinese market, this discussion paper aims to propose a new set of strategies for M&S’s re-entry.  Based on an analytical discussion, the following actionable recommendations are proposed for the company: (1) to seek suitable network partners in China, (2) to build sustainable relationships with relevant partners to build business strategies based on Chinese consumers’ perspectives and behaviour, and (3) to focus on a new value chain to enhance profitability and sustainability in the new market.

Extractivism or specificity of capital accumulation? A critique on the extractivist approach regarding the case of Argentina

2021 ◽  
pp. 030981682110174
Author(s):  
Nicolás Pérez Trento
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Development Model ◽  
Political Transformations ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Latin American Countries

The recent economic and political transformations in many Latin American countries have been increasingly analysed under the (neo-)extractivism approach. Specifically, the debate surrounding the contradictions and limitations of this development model, as well as its consequences, gained traction among scholars. In this article, we intend to put forth a critical analysis of this approach with the goal of giving an account of its explanatory power, focusing on Argentina. In order to do this, we summarize some of the more noteworthy conceptual features of (neo-)extractivism, as well as the main arguments to include Argentina as a case. Then, after presenting some immediate conceptual limitations linked to this theoretical perspective, we introduce an alternative approach in regard to the specific way in which capital accumulation takes place in Argentina, based on the Critique of Political Economy put forward by Marx in Capital, and taking the global unity of capital accumulation as a starting point. This allows us to critically engage, in the last section, with the main claims of extractivism.

scholarly journals The Production and Destruction of Forests through the Lens of Landesque Capital Accumulation

Human Ecology ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lowe Börjeson ◽  
Tola Gemechu Ango
Keyword(s):  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Forest Ecosystems ◽  
Theoretical Point ◽  
Ecological Processes ◽  
Annual Crops ◽  
Southwestern Ethiopia ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
Landscape Legacies

AbstractWe discuss the management of trees and forests through the lens of “landesque capital.” A theoretical point of departure is how landesque capital accumulates through a process that relies on both the ‘work of nature’ and the ‘work of people.’ This approach highlights the importance of undertaking a critical analysis of labor investment and its landscape legacies in relation to ecological processes, social dynamics, and political economy. Empirically we draw on the case of smallholder production of coffee and annual crops in southwestern Ethiopia. We show how both the production (generation and maintenance) and destruction of forests in the study area are largely shaped by processes of landesque capital accumulation and discuss the importance of analyzing how people contribute to produce forests to meet production goals in contrast to the ubiquitous notion of humans as a solely destructive force of change in forest ecosystems.

Shaping Content Strategies with User Analytics and Identities

2015 ◽  
pp. 111-132
Author(s):  
Tricia Syed
Keyword(s):  
Data Capture ◽  
Relational Data ◽  
Core Data ◽  
New Business ◽  
User Data ◽  
Content Strategy ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Data Optimization ◽  
Strategy Marketing

User data has become the foundation of many businesses. The ability to increase the breadth and depth of user data to analyze trends is now the roadmap for information companies – providing direction for new business, content strategy, print to digital shifts and overall retention and engagement. In this chapter, the author will explore user identity and the three key core data buckets – Profile, Activity, and Behavioral – that define how to decipher audience members and their ‘user records.' The chapter will specifically showcase how user identity shapes editorial strategy, marketing messaging and drives revenue. It will look at the impact specific technologies are having on what data can be captured as well as the complexities around data capture in general – standardization, preservation, storage, relational data opportunities and data optimization.

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