Please join us for an evening on the political economy of popular music forms, hosted by the Political Economy Research Centre (PERC) at Goldsmiths, University of London.

This lecture by Paul Rekret examines changes to the experience of popular music given its consumption through mood-based playlists on internet streaming platforms. By displacing the ‘single’ and the album as a form of music distribution the platform represents a new mode of value production for the music industry, one where music sales are secondary to the generation of user data, branding, device and bandwidth sales. The ubiquity of music across time and space that music streaming involves further entails changes to music’s social function and its aesthetic form. In creating a frictionless harmony among sonic elements, genres, cultures and epochs, the playlist generates an imagined unity into which it interpellates the subject of interminable production and consumption.

When: Thursday, 31 October, 6-8pm
Where: Professor Stuart Hall Building (PSH), Room 302, Goldsmiths, University of London

SpeakerPaul Rekret is an Associate Professor of Politics at Richmond, The American International University in London. He is the author of two books, Down With Childhood: Popular Music and the Crisis of Innocence, and Derrida and Foucault: Philosophy, Politics, Polemics. His work in political and cultural theory has been published in Theory, Culture & SocietyConstellations, and Journal of Popular Music Studies. He speaks regularly at international conferences and festivals, including Tate Liverpool (UK), CTM Festival (Germany), Regenerative Feedback (USA/ the Netherlands), and Unsound Festival (Poland). His work on music politics has featured in a range of media including FriezeThe Wire, the GuardianFolha de S.Paolo, BBC Radio 4, NTS Radio, the New Inquirythe QuietusSpex, the London Review of Books blog, and elsewhere. He also hosts Beholder Halfway, a radio essay airing monthly on Resonance.Extra.
Chair: Jeffery R. Webber is a Senior Lecturer in International Political Economy at Goldsmiths, University of London and a member of the Political Economy Research Centre (PERC).