What Do Musicians Think of Digital Platforms?

Drawing on focus groups conducted with musicians based in England, we discuss how musicians with backgrounds in different genres evaluate the effects of a range of music-related digital platforms on musicians and music culture. Alongside criticisms, some of them familiar from recent public debate and academic research, we identify a number of more ambivalent and even positive perspectives on the platformisation of music. We analyse the divided responses of our focus group participants under three main headings: attitudes towards music streaming platforms and record labels; attitudes towards social media and short video platforms, in particular, their use as promotional and branding mechanisms; and attitudes towards the abundance of data available to musicians from these various kinds of digital platforms. In our concluding comments, we consider the possible objection that musicians’ ambivalent and sometimes positive appraisals might represent misguided or mistaken perspectives concerning the effects of platformisation.