Emerging alongside the rapid development of the internet and digital technologies that have particularly thrived over the past two decades, music streaming (and streaming in general) is a technology that offers unlimited access to a selected catalogue of audiovisual content via an online platform. The year 2006 is often seen as the starting date for music streaming, with the launch of the Swedish streaming platform Spotify, the current market leader. The technology, however, had already been developed long before and in reality does not result from ‘one innovation but a collection of many’ (Fagerjord, 2019). Since its origins, the legal streaming market has been transformed profoundly, especially in terms of its economics, generating satisfaction, concerns and criticism (Hesmondhalgh, 2022). Indeed, the overall ‘systemic changes’ from which streaming derives and to which it responds are not yet fully understood and have not been addressed beyond the common individual user-centred approach (Camilleri et al., 2020; Jansson, 2021). This is particularly important as streaming currently represents the bulk of music sales and is the second largest source of revenue for the music industry (Legrand Network, 2022; Lozic et al., 2022).