Creative Days X AREA[404]

Streaming platforms have restructured how music moves through the world. A small number of corporations now operate as the primary gatekeepers of distribution, accumulating revenue and data while returning fractions of a cent per stream to the artists whose work sustains them. The algorithm decides what gets heard. The platform decides what gets paid. And social media has made promotion an unpaid condition of survival.

Fair P[l]ay is a hands-on workshop examining the political economy of music distribution and the alternatives practitioners are already building.  Participants will trace the tactile history of music as a distributed object, from vinyl to cassette to the cloud, mapping how each format carried a distinct economic relationship between artist and listener, and how streaming collapsed that relationship into data. The workshop surveys tools and models building outside that logic: cooperative platforms, decentralized networks, netlabels, open-source distribution, and the strategic return to physical formats. The second half is propositional. Working in small groups, participants design a distribution model for a fictional persona using ideated and existing alternatives. It is aimed at musicians, creatives, and anyone who works with platform economies and wants tools for thinking differently about distribution, ownership, and audience.

Apply here.