From Listener to Prosumer

<p class="ql-align-justify">Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno proposed the concept of pseudo-individualization to describe the functioning of the cultural industry. Later, Adorno explicitly developed it in the context of popular music. This article reconstructs Adorno’s concept of pseudo-individualization in the context of popular music and the rise of “prosumption culture.” The study uses a conceptual and theoretical framework to analyze platform architectures and digital cultures, highlighting specific instances that substantiate the (re)construction of Adorno’s critique. The article argues that digital platforms, in their promise of unprecedented choice and personal autonomy, have re-established and intensified standardization through algorithmic governance and data-driven infrastructures. The analysis focuses on three parameters: algorithmic governance and personalization, music consumption on digital platforms, and digital prosumption and pseudo-creativity. It articulates how recommendation systems, curated playlists, and “algo-torial power” through behavioral profiling create an <em>illusion </em>of preferred music taste while simultaneously enforcing commercial homogeneity. The study further explores pseudo-creativity, in which user-generated content (UGC) and participatory practices are shaped by “visibility labor” and mimetic behavior. Finally, the article concludes by reconstructing the intensified prevalence of pseudo-individualization in the digital age, showing that prosumers with no intentions reproduce standardized patterns of consumption and production and transform the listener into an affective, unpaid laborer of platform capitalism. Thus, it validates Adorno’s critique of the cultural industry in contemporary conditions of platform capitalism.</p>