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Short abstract:

This paper explores how users engage in producing and circulating playlists in streaming platforms in Mexico, negotaiting their interests, constrains and social contexts with algorithmic systems in everyday life, producing mediated forms of idetity and attachaments to music.

Long abstract:

Platforms for music streaming and other forms of cultural consumption are the current focus of much research from within and outside academia. To enrich the discussion on the power of platformisation, significant attention has been paid to how algorithms shape practices through recommendation systems (Pray, 2018) and defining what content is presented to the listener (Eriksson & Johansson, 2017). On the other hand, an emerging set of investigation is paying attention on the user and their experiences of such platforms (Siles, 2023). This paper follows this second line of thought, it focuses in on the everyday creation of playlists in streaming platforms and how that practice mediates affects, intimacies and social life. The main argument is that forms of identity emerge in the intersection of technology, practices and contexts by a quotidian practice that produce forms of constrained agency in the individual. The paper goes further to add that it is through this process that music becomes a meaningful resource in everyday life, beyond the saturation of content available in the streaming era. The data for this paper was collected in Mexico by designing an ethnographic approach named the Music Life History method, that involved interviews and long sessions of listening music together with each participant. The paper makes contributions to the ongoing discussion about individual agency and technologies in relation to platforms and algorithmic recommendation, while also exploring the characteristics of playlists and the way they are used to engage with music in everyday life.