The corporate rhetoric of streaming platforms often assumes a tight link between their scale-making ambitions on the one hand and the creative interests of musicians on the other. In practice, most musicians recognise that claims of musical ‘democratisation’ are deeply flawed. The creative ambivalence this produces is an understudied pillar in scholarship on digital music platforms and suggests that these systems can be more creatively constrictive than empowering. Based on ethnographic research among Spotify engineers, record labels and musicians, this article explores how music recommendation systems become inculcated with a corporate rhetoric of ‘scalability’ and considers, following Anna Tsing, how this impacts musical creativity further down the value chain. I argue that the ‘creative ambivalence’ that these technologies produce should be more fully understood as woven into a complex web of social relations and corporate interests than prevailing claims of technological objectivity and ‘democratisation’ suggest.

The origins of syncopation in 20th-century American popular music have been a source of controversy. I offer a new account of this historical process. I distinguish between second-position syncopation, an accent on the second quarter of a half-note or quarter-note unit, and fourth-position syncopation, an accent on the fourth quarter of such a unit. Unlike second-position syncopation, fourth-position syncopation tends to have an anticipatory character. In an earlier study I presented evidence suggesting British roots for second-position syncopation. in contrast, fourth-position syncopation – the focus of the current study – seems to have had no presence in published 19th-century vocal music, British or American. It first appears in notation in ragtime songs and piano music at the very end of the 19th century; it was also used in recordings by African-American singers before it was widely notated.

As a phenomenon of great social relevance between 1900 and 1930, the graphic advertising of the pianola must be considered as one of the first great mass media platforms linked to musical activity and, therefore, the analysis of its discourse offers valuable information about the social construction of the musical world during the first decades of the twentieth century. This article shows the results of an analysis of 200 historical advertisements through which it is possible to trace the origins of some of the current advertising rhetoric and also some of our current ideas about musical activity. In this way, the advertisements studied show some interesting links to the mindset and aesthetic and social conventions of the time but also show us to what degree these discourses are, to a large extent, still valid today.

This paper examines player pianos in Portugal between the 1890s and the 1930s. In a small European country with few production facilities, mechanical music developed in a particular way since a local recording industry was expanding rapidly and radio was not yet disseminated. Despite the local market's reliance on imported goods, the music business concentrated on Portuguese pieces. The mechanisation of the piano and its display as a product that embodied modernity illustrates the transformations that took place in Portugal at the beginning of the 20th century. These were reflected in new forms of entertainment, such as cinemas and nightclubs that incorporated new music genres. At the dawn of the century, the leisure market relied on the popular music theatre, which was dominated by Portuguese, French and Spanish music. In the interwar period, English and American pieces made their way into people's lives, transforming the music business.

Hip-hop is a global culture, where local representation is a core tenet of its ideology. It therefore provides opportunities to observe how a global cultural structure is interpreted, realigned and expressed in local cultural forms. This article combines autoethnography and rap lyric analysis to consider the complex relationship between the local and global in relation to cultural articulation and authenticity. Through a study of the poetics of Scottish hip-hop, a series of patterns and connections appear relating to interpretation, negotiation and hybridisation of local and global culture, presenting a demonstration of how the local, global and individual intersect to ‘devise unique ways of communicating thoughts, emotions and everyday realities’ (Alim 2003, Journal of English Linguistics, March, 31/1, pp. 60–84, p. 62). Furthermore, this article presents a framework for autoethnographic study of hip-hop, signposting bridging points between scholarship and practice.

Recording studios are shrouded in mystery. Some have become sites of pilgrimage; other studios have been converted into heritage museums. These practices are driven by city authorities, commercial heritage institutions or music fans. This interview study gives a voice to an understudied group: record producers and studio owners as the people in charge of popular music creation. Three German rock and metal producers expressed their opinion on the usefulness of studio museums and explained their own heritage practices. Their insights demystify the ‘magical aura’ associated with recording studios, picturing these spaces as places of pressure and anxiety. Hardly convinced of the technologically deterministic ‘magical contamination’ of technical equipment, the producers see little sense in studios as museums. For them, the released record is what counts. To stay in touch with the community and to keep the memory of their work alive, they prefer to use social media.

With the debuts of highly popular artists such as Matsutōya Yumi, Nakajima Miyuki and Takeuchi Mariya, Japanese popular music of the 1970s saw a rise of young female singer-songwriters. Not only were they notably successful commercially but they were also respected as creative artists. This recognition and valuation of female professional creativity was extraordinary from a gender point of view. Furthermore, their position as active social agents defied the social expectations for women in Japan at that time. In this respect, they can be conceptualised as a musical embodiment of the movements pursuing female emancipation in the 1970s. While the musical significance of these female singer-songwriters has been recognised in previous studies, the gender point of view has remained largely unaddressed. By drawing from theories about female musicians and canon formation, this article re-assesses the social significance of Japanese female singer-songwriters of the 1970s.

The ‘1968 years’ (1968–1981) witnessed a resurgence of interest in the late 19th-century singer-songwriter and cabaret performer Aristide Bruant (1851–1925). This article explores the social and cultural origins of this Bruant ‘moment’, arguing that it was linked both to a culture of marginality that emerged during the events of May–June 1968 and to a culture of nostalgia (‘la mode rétro’) first identified in 1973. It focuses on five performers who revived or renewed Bruant's legacy during the 1968 years: Mouloudji, Francesca Solleville, Marc Ogeret, François Béranger and Renaud.