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Elena Razlogova is an Associate Professor of History at Concordia University. She is the author of The Listener's Voice: Early Radio and the American Public (2011) and co-editor of “Radical Histories in Digital Culture” issue of the Radical History Review (2013). Her chapter on freeform DJs, recommendation algorithms, and the radio station WFMU was published in Radio’s New Wave (2013). She is writing a book on algorithms, copyright, and independent music.

“UnShazammable: Music Outside the Cloud and the Global Copyright Regime”
"I've been told I'm 'un-Shazammable,'" dance party DJ Jonathan Toubin boasted to New York CityPages in 2012. Smartphone app Shazam recognizes songs via its library of licensed music, amassed from partner online music stores and commercial streaming sites. Not everyone licenses their music for the commercial cloud, however.

This paper looks at the choices independent artists—from Montreal, London, Bamako, and Delhi—make to distribute their music. The four scenes are un-Shazammable in different ways. Canadians have access to government grants so those skeptical of commercial streaming can afford to only offer their tracks for pay-what-you-can on Bandcamp or for free on SoundCloud. Many West African artists emerge in music scenes where fans have neither the latest smartphones nor reliable network access. At Mali rural street markets, fans trade songs via Bluetooth on their cellphones.

Shazam have been pursuing two other markets, formed outside of the mainstream. In 2013, Shazam partnered with Indian streaming service Saavn, adding songs in Hindi and regional languages. A year later, Shazam added a catalog of Juno Records, a global dance music store founded in London in 1997, and specializing in vinyl-only releases in addition to downloads. This move makes DJ mixes and Indipop discoverable for inexpert listeners.

But some music from these informal scenes inevitably gets left out. "Intellectual property is a complicated issue with many grey areas," writes sound artist Vicki Bennett about cloud music services. "If there is the opportunity to throw out the grey with the black, this is often done." Ultimately, it is necessary to carve out and defend "grey" spaces on the web outside of the commercial cloud to share and promote independent music.