Page 12 - AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report

12What is in that information artefact they share that has gotten their attention and interest? What is the value that they see in it? To what else do they see a connection with?By adding their own viewpoint and disclosing their prejudices, bias and interests, curators provide a much more credible pro le for themselves in sharp contrast with the “designed”, detached and highly-polished communication approach used by most companies, professionals, and by the traditional media expert.Content curators advice is also recognizableand clearly distinguishable from the o cially appointed expert approach because it is either voluntary and unpaid or compensated directly by those who need to be informed rather than from those who want to sell something.Curation Cultural ValueThe key contribution that content curation provides to our own culture is its role as a discovery and sense-making engine for any art, interest or science.Take music for example.If you consider that today just by themselves Spotify and Apple Music o er more than 30 mil- lion songs and that there are many more music distribution services like Rhapsody, SoundCloud or Deezer, you can start to realize how di cult it becomes to nd the music you like, if you do not know who makes it.“Like music supervisors in lm and TV, curators are now industry gatekeepers, approached with reverence. These invisible in uencers can break an artist through a choice playlist placement.”(source: The Observer)With an estimated one fth of all music streams occurring on curated playlists (source: Forbes) music curators are now very valuable assets at Apple Music, Pandora and Spotify as audiencesprefer the value of a human selection over an algorithmic one, while a small army of grassroots music fans does a very similar job on popular platforms like Soundcloud, Blip and 8tracksby curating unique playlists and compilations, without asking for anything in return.By adding their own viewpoint and disclosing their prejudices, bias and interests, curators provide a much more credible pro le for themselves in sharp contrast with the “designed”, detached and highly-polished communication approach.How would you be able to discover andlearn about new songs and bands, in such an exploding ocean of music, if it weren’t for music curators online or club DJs searching and listen- ing to thousands of tracks? How would you learn about the history of many artists if it weren’t for radio DJs who provide you with context, history, anecdotes and event information about your favorite artists?The music curation trend exploded rst inthe 70’s and 80’s with user-created cassette mixtapes, and then evolved in the mid-‘90s,with innovative DJs and music producers, like Jose Padilla, who started to produce successful commercial curated music compilations that brought together well-known artists with un- known, emergent ones under a common theme or style (think of Cafe del Mar or Buddha Bar CD series and their success over the years).Many new record labels have then followed, all specializing in well-de ned musical genres and driven by the idea to curate and bring together the best of a speci c music style.Lots of private radio stations do the same. They curate the music of our time.But consider also the specialty, privately-owned bookstore (CityLights in San Francisco) that focuses on your favorite genre and authors, or the online vinyl record store which helps you ndCONTENT CURATION IN THE DIGITAL AGE. CURATION FOR DIGITAL HERITAGE · ROBIN GOODSmart culture. Analysis of digital trends