The Curation of Music Discovery: The Presentation of Unfamiliar Classical Music on Radio, Digital Playlists and Concert Programmes

Abstract

The way in which platforms curate and assemble the music they present plays an important role in mediating fields of artistic practice to audiences. The different curatorial logics of platforms help shape the way audiences understand the contours of a field of creative practice and the extent to which they are exposed to novel and unfamiliar sounds. This article draws on a large-scale content analysis of how classical music is represented on each of radio, digital playlists and live concert programming to investigate the degree to which each platform supports audiences to engage with unfamiliar music. Incorporating novel approaches to measuring familiarity, the results demonstrate that concerts provide the most diverse and varied programming, whereas digital playlists assemble the most homogeneous musical landscape for listeners. As audiences increasingly shift to digital platforms, these curatorial patterns have significant implications for artistic practices by limiting opportunities for less established and more esoteric voices.