Writing
Hyperpop: How Streaming Services Create and Control Genre Through Curation
An undergraduate music research project examining how streaming platforms help construct genres and shape cultural taste through curation.
I’m somewhat surprised that this paper has been read, much less that it has been cited in academic work! I like to think my writing has come a long way since university, but I still like the central idea of this piece.
Hyperpop is often described through its exaggerated production, distorted textures, extreme vocal processing, and playful treatment of mainstream pop conventions. In this undergraduate research project, I used the genre as a case study for a broader question: who defines a musical genre when listening is organized by digital platforms?
The project
The paper combines song analysis with genre theory to examine hyperpop’s emergence as both an internet microgenre and a curated category. Rather than treating Spotify and Apple Music as neutral databases, I considered how their playlists, interfaces, recommendation systems, and institutional authority influence the way listeners discover and understand music.
My central argument is that streaming platforms do more than organize genres that already exist. Through curation, naming, and algorithmic visibility, they can help codify a developing scene as a genre and then shape the cultural taste surrounding it. Hyperpop makes that process unusually visible: a loosely connected musical community became increasingly legible through the platform structures used to present it.
Research context
I completed this project at Hamilton College through the Levitt Research Fellows Program under the guidance of Professor Lydia Hamessley. It brought together my interests in musicology, digital culture, genre theory, and the growing influence of algorithms on cultural life.