“Splendid Isolation”: The reproduction of music industry inequalities in Spotify’s recommendation system

In this article, we argue that offline inequalities, such as core–periphery relations of the music industry, are reproduced by streaming platforms. First, offer an overview reproduction inequalities and dynamics in industry. Then illustrate through a small-scale network analysis case study Hungarian metal bands’ connections on Spotify. We show primary determinant given band’s international connectedness Spotify’s algorithmic ecosystem is their label connections. Bands labels have more reciprocal likely to be recommended based actual genre similarity. However, bands signed with local or self-published tend domestic paired other artists recommendation system according country origin.