It has been almost a decade since the emergence of music streaming services (MSS) started changing the economic fortunes of the music industry globally. The International Federation for Phonographic Industry (IFPI) reports that since 2015 streaming has consistently dominated the music industry revenue, currently accounting for more than 67% of total global recorded music revenue (IFPI, 2023). In the Global South, this growth has been marked with the recent interest of global giants in the music streaming industry such as Boomplay and Spotify seeking to gain grounds in several Sub-Saharan countries including Ghana. Despite the significant growth and interest in the contemporary music industry, the specific dynamics and framework within which streaming operates in the context of Ghana’s music industry is yet to be explored. This study thus aims to explore and conceptualize the influence of digital entrepreneurs in the streaming business ecosystem in Ghana, utilizing an Actor-Network Theory (ANT) analysis. With the rise of music streaming and the advent of independent music production and distribution, a new category of entrepreneurs known as “digital musicpreneurs” have emerged as key players in reshaping the music industry landscape.Drawing on the ANT framework, this paper adopts a comprehensive approach to analyze the intricate interactions, relationships, and power dynamics between these digital musicpreneurs and various actors within the music industry business ecosystem in Ghana. This study seeks to provide a conceptual understanding of the transformative impact of these entrepreneurs on the ecosystem, taking into account the unique challenges and opportunities faced by the Global South music industry. In its analysis, the following dimensions are considered. First, the study explores the dynamic interactions between digital musicpreneurs and other actors, including musicians, producers, record labels, distributors, and the dominant digital platform in Ghana, Boomplay. Also, this study delves into the role of technology, particularly digital platforms and online tools, in mediating the activities of digital musicpreneurs, with a particular emphasis on how these technologies are utilized and accessed in Ghana. It explores how digital musicpreneurs leverage technology to create and distribute music, engage with audiences, and develop innovative business models, considering the infrastructural and digital divide challenges faced by the Global South. Furthermore, this paper focuses on understanding how digital musicpreneurs contribute to value creation within the music industry ecosystem in Ghana. It explores their innovative approaches to music production, marketing, and monetization, while considering the specific economic constraints, market dynamics, disruptions caused by their entrepreneurial activities and their implications for the Global South music industry. Finally, this paper analyzes the network effects and ecosystem evolution resulting from the influence of digital musicpreneurs and explores how their actions and collaborations shape the industry’s competitive landscape, foster innovation, and drive ecosystem growth. By adopting an ANT analysis with a Global South perspective, this study will generate insights that have implications for various stakeholders in the Ghana music industry, including digital musicpreneurs themselves, musicians, record labels, policymakers, and industry practitioners.

“Streaming Capital” examines the industrial organization of music platforms. The “multisided markets” they convene confer upon music a peculiar economic status. By ensuring that users never pay directly for music, platforms make music appear to users as if it has been decommodified, transformed into a quasi-public good. Yet for agents situated on other sides of streaming’s multisided market (labels, publishers, and the platforms themselves), music remains thoroughly commodified. On the one hand, on streaming platforms music appears to users as simply there, as something free for the taking, much as nature (and water in particular) has long been imagined within classical and neoclassical economics. On the other hand, as a public good that has been privatized, digital music’s givenness on streaming platforms is contingent, being conditional on users having paid the requisite toll to gain access to the enclosure where this music is housed.

“Streaming Music” considers what streaming makes of music. Drawing on theories of musical mediation developed by Georgina Born and others, this chapter examines some of the key ways that platforms mediate music. On streaming services, music is enacted as data, metadata, intellectual property, and much else besides. Taken together, this constellation of mediations conspires to make a change in music’s politico-economic condition appear otherwise, as if it were a change of ontology, imposed by a novel technological system. Stream versus download, object versus event, music as good versus music as service: such commonplace dichotomies, which undergird popular narratives about the development of streaming, deflect attention away from a more significant mutation: platforms’ transformation of digital copies from durable to disposable goods, a transformation that exploits digital reproduction’s enactment of recorded music as a quasi-public good at one level to reinscribe music within the regime of private property at another.

The rise of the streaming music services and the decreasing importance of physical distribution is an inevitable change that the industry has been facing, which is resulting from the so-called internet revolution over the past few years. Through years, the music business has already shifted to online platform with the birth of file sharing. Today, a generation who had grown up digital came to age. Members of this generation have different consumption habits than before, and have different motives toward consumption. The consumer behavior of this group was examined at different stages of the di