The music streaming metaphor and its underlying tangle of transcodes

This article presents an interrogation of streamification, a concept that addresses the influence of streaming software on cultural artifacts and uses. I argue that the streamification builds on an underlying tangle of transcodes. I base this on empirical findings from a qualitative study of digital online music uses and the technologies that operate beyond the interface of streaming media. I map the typical online path of music files and exemplify the tangle of transcodes with three empirical cases and detail their meaning-making processes: 1) The most informal and tangled, when a listener is stream-ripping from YouTube. 2) The re-appropriation of informal YouTube material by a musician. 3) The more formal transcoding performed by a distributor. By drawing on metaphor theory and software studies, I discuss cultural transcoding and metaphor as central to streamification and discuss how a focus on ease-of-use inevitably hides the tangle of transcodes.