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If Spotify recommends Taylor Swift to me one more time, I might start believing it knows something about me that I don\u2019t. It\u2019s strange how a platform can make you question your own musical identity, even if you, like me, have never listened to T. Swizzle. Perhaps she and Westside Gunn have more in common than I thought, or perhaps there are assumptions even my own listening choices cannot defy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Genre as Culture on Spotify<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Spotify may be a useful site for finding music and creating playlists, but it is also important for examining how genre and identity are produced today. In looking at how Spotify organizes genre and distributes listening statistics, as discussed in Muchitsch & Werner\u2019s paper, we can understand genre not simply as a descriptive category but as a system of representation that shapes how listeners come to understand themselves. Genre formation has long been recognized as unstable \u2014 \u201cfleeting processes whose boundaries are permeable and fluctuating, yet nevertheless culturally and socially safeguarded\u201d (Brackett, 2016 qtd. in Muchitsch & Werner, 2024, p. 306). Genres constantly shift and divide, giving rise to newer sub-genres like indie pop or bubble grunge. But genre is also representational; it defines a type of music and, by extension, a type of listener.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Metadata and Identity<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Spotify\u2019s use of genre as metadata allows us to better see how they construct identities \u2014 genre becomes an identity category embedded into algorithmic logic, a technical shorthand for grouping users and predicting their future behavior. Besides recommendations, the advent of personalized playlists \u2014 like the well-known (and awful) \u201cJust For You\u201ds \u2014 are examples of how technology actively dictates the media we encounter. The algorithm assumes an identity about the listener and continually supplies content that reinforces that assumption. Although it appears that our listening habits inform the algorithm, the relationship is indeed reciprocal. Technology also shapes our perceptions of our own identities by offering back a curated and often reductive portrait of who we \u201care\u201d as listeners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bollmer and Performativity<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n This feedback loop often goes unnoticed because of the widespread belief that technologies are neutral. Bollmer\u2019s work on representation, identity, and performativity challenges this assumption, reminding us that representational identities\u2014such as those produced in digital platforms\u2014affect our capacity to act and perform within society. Especially as branding culture dominates the media landscape, individuals frequently become the \u201cfaces\u201d of genres, embodying particular aesthetics or attitudes. These stylized identities influence how other listeners understand themselves and how the algorithm categorizes them in return. And, as we know but will not explore fully here, these categorizations are far from unbiased.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For Bollmer, identity is something both enacted and mediated. We cannot fully control how we are represented, nor can we detach ourselves from the biases and conditions that shape how we perform in the world. At the same time, we are constantly surrounded by stimuli that instruct us in the ways we should construct our identities. Playlists and music taste are only slim examples of the performative acts through which we present and negotiate a sense of self. Spotify, by mediating genre, participates in this process, co-producing musical identity through representational systems that determine what counts as meaningful performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What does this mean for users?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Rather than stable categories, genres have become interfaces for identity. Users construct self-image through listening habits, while platforms translate those habits into data profiles that feed back into the listening experience. Mood playlists\u2014\u201cchill,\u201d \u201cin love,\u201d \u201crainy day,\u201d \u201cmain character\u201d\u2014make this even clearer. They frame music not only as sound, but as a tool for managing and performing the self. In this way, Spotify exemplifies how contemporary media systems blur the lines between what we choose and what is chosen for us, shaping identity through the very categories that claim to represent it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Identity as \u201cSelf Work\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Tia DeNora\u2019s idea of music as a \u201ctechnology of the self\u201d deepens this understanding of genre and identity. For DeNora, people use music to regulate emotion, construct moods, and shape situations\u2014music is a tool for self-presentation and self-maintenance. But when platforms pre-organize music into specific categories, they intervene in this process, prescribing what kinds of selves the listener might want to inhabit. What once felt like personal, intuitive self-work becomes filtered through Spotify\u2019s mood-based playlists, quietly guiding the identities we perform and the emotions we deem appropriate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Implications<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The implications of this are subtle but significant; If identity is enacted through musical choice\u2014as Bollmer and DeNora both suggest\u2014then algorithmic curation narrows the range of performative possibilities. The listener performs the self through their music, but the platform anticipates, predicts, and nudges that performance, creating a closed loop where identity is both expressed and engineered. Genre, once a loose cultural concept, becomes a data-driven identity label that platforms use to categorize and influence behavior. And because these systems appear neutral, the shaping of identity through recommendations often feels natural rather than infrastructural.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the end, the relationship between genre, identity, and streaming platforms reveals far more than how music is organized\u2014it shows how contemporary technologies dictate who we are allowed to become. Spotify doesn\u2019t just categorize sound; it categorizes people, returning our listening habits to us as ready-made portraits of taste and selfhood. Between Bollmer\u2019s emphasis on mediated identity and DeNora\u2019s conception of music as self-shaping, it becomes clear that our musical preferences are never solely our own. They emerge from an ongoing negotiation between personal expression and platform governance. And if my \u201crap-only\u201d listening history can still make Spotify insist I\u2019m a Taylor Swift fan, it\u2019s worth asking: are we using these systems to express ourselves, or are they teaching us who we ought to be?<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Bollmer, Grant. Materialist Media Theory<\/em>. Bloomsbury Publishing USA, 2019.\u2014Introduction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n DeNora, Tia. \u201cMusic as a Technology of the Self.\u201d Poetics<\/em>, vol. 27, no. 1, 1999, pp. 31\u201356.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Muchitsch, Veronika, and Ann Werner. \u201cThe Mediation of Genre, Identity, and Difference in Contemporary (Popular) Music Streaming.\u201d Popular Music and Society, <\/em>2024, pp. 302-328.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Written by Allie Demetrick <\/p>\n\n\n\n Photo from Spotify<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If Spotify recommends Taylor Swift to me one more time, I might start believing it knows something about me that I don\u2019t. It\u2019s strange how a platform can make you question your own musical identity, even if you, like me, have never listened to T. Swizzle. Perhaps she and Westside Gunn have more in common … Continue reading Not (Yet?) a Swifty<\/span>