Platforming musicians: Copyright capture, recursive commodification, and embedded generative AI in music platforms

This article analyzes how music platforms in China recruit musicians and integrate them into systems of production, promotion, and circulation. It introduces three interrelated concepts to explain how this integration occurs. Copyright capture identifies the moment of recruitment and acquisition during which platforms bring musicians and their copyrighted works into platform infrastructures. Recursive commodification describes the processes through which copyright, visibility, promotion, data, and production become increasingly interconnected, with value generated at one stage becoming an input into the next. Embedded generative AI intensifies these dynamics by bringing technological mediation and music data into creative production. Drawing on interviews with musicians and industry practitioners, walkthrough analyses of platform interfaces, and documentary materials, we show how musicians become simultaneously producers of copyrighted works, generators of data, and consumers of platform services. We argue that musicians must negotiate new relations of dependence as creative production is progressively integrated into systems of evaluation, promotion, AI assistance, and monetization.