Corporate constructions of bio-digital identity: DNA-based playlists and the mandate to “listen to your DNA”

Abstract

This article analyzes the novel partnership between Ancestry DNA and Spotify to create DNA-based playlists and tracks publics’ responses to them. Analysis reveals how the companies construct a sense of self that is biologically determined, technologically mediated, and culturally expressed. Layers of abstraction and curation construct their corporate, techno-utopic view of bio-digital identity performances. Yet, publics perceived these media through a dystopic lens, critiquing invasions of privacy and genetic determinism. Conceptualized as hyper-objects, DNA-based playlists demonstrate collective desires to leverage media and technoscience for conceptualizing and managing identities.

Keywords

AncestryDNA bio-digital identity genetic ancestry testing platforms Spotify

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Abel

(2021) Permanent Markers: Race, Ancestry, and the Body After the Genome. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.

Adrion

Noto

Sedghifar

, et al. (2022) Ethnicity estimate 2022. White paper, AncestryDNA, pp. 1–42.

Ainsa

(1991) Do we need utopia? UNESCO Courier 44(2): 12–16.

AncestryDNA (2023) Listen to your DNA. Available at: https://www.ancestry.com/

Ancestry Staff (2023) Our story: our history. Ancestry, 28 May.

Arcand

(2018) Please don’t give your genetic data to AncestryDNA as part of their Spotify playlist partnership. Spin, 23 September.

Balzer

(2014) Curationism: How Curating Took Over the Art World and Everything Else. Toronto, ON, Canada: Coach House Books.

Bammer

(1991) Partial Visions: Feminism and Utopianism in the 1970s. London: Routledge.

Benjamin

(2019) Race after Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code. Cambridge: Polity.

10.

Blanchard

Outram

Tallbull

, et al. (2019) “We don’t need a swab in our mouth to prove who we are”: identity, resistance, and adaptation of genetic ancestry testing among Native American communities. Current Anthropology 60(5): 637–655.

11.

Bogdan

(2012) Subjectivity and techno-science in Theodor Adorno. Annales Philosophici 5: 7–28.

12.

Botelho

(2014) Reimagining the body in post-singularity techno-utopias. Spaces of Utopia: An Electronic Journal 2(3): 70–83.

13.

Brock

A (2020) Distributed Blackness. New York: New York University Press.

14.

Charmaz

(2014) Constructing Grounded Theory. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

15.

Cheney-Lippold

(2017) We Are Data: Algorithms and the Making of Our Digital Selves. New York: New York University Press.

16.

Christian

(2018). Spotify will make a playlist based on your DNA. Futurism, 25 September.

17.

Cohen

(2023) To monopolise our ears: what Spotify wants. London Review of Books 45(9): 1–12.

18.

Coleman

(2015) Hello Avatar: Rise of the Networked Generation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

19.

Corry

(2018). Spotify is using DNA tests to curate playlists, which is pretty creepy. Noisey, 24 September.

20.

Curran

(2012) Reinterpreting the internet. In: Curran

Fenton

Freedman

(eds) Misunderstanding the Internet. London: Routledge, pp. 3–33.

21.

De Mul

(2015) Database identity: personal and cultural identity in the age of global datafication. In: de Been

Arora

Hildebrandt

(eds) Crossroads in New Media, Identity and Law. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 97–118.

22.

Dhaenens

Burgess

(2019) “Press play for pride”: the cultural logics of LGBTQ-themed playlists on Spotify. New Media & Society 21(6): 1192–1211.

23.

Dinello

(2005) Technophobia! Science Fiction Vision of Posthuman Technology. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

24.

Drott

(2018) Why the next song matters: streaming, recommendation, scarcity. Twentieth-Century Music 15(3): 325–327.

25.

(2018) Registration statement. United States Securities and Exchange Commission, 28 February.

26.

Eriksson

Fleischer

Johansson

, et al. (2019) Spotify Teardown: Inside the Black Box of Streaming Music. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

27.

Etikan

Musa

Alkassim

(2016) Comparison of convenience sampling and purposive sampling. American Journal of Theoretical and Applied Statistics 5(1): 1–4.

28.

Fingas

(2018) Ancestry hopes you’ll share your DNA for a custom Spotify playlist. Engadget, 24 September.

29.

Fiorelli

(2016) What Movies Show: Realism, Perception and Truth in Film. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.

30.

Flensburg

Lomborg

(2023) Datafication research: mapping the field for a future agenda. New Media & Society 25(6): 1451–1469.

31.

Foeman

Lawton

(2022) Who Am I? Identity in the Age of Consumer DNA Testing. San Diego, CA: Cognella.

32.

Frankel

(2016) How Spotify uses data to make content smarter and more social [Event]. Social Media Week, 26 February.

33.

Fuchs

(2013) Political economy and surveillance theory. Critical Sociology 39(5): 671–687.

34.

Garner

Kim

(2018) The privacy risks of direct-to-consumer genetic testing: a case study of 23andMe and ancestry. Washington University Law Review 96: 1219.

35.

Gillespie

(2014) The relevance of algorithms. In: Gillespie

Boczkowski

Foot

(eds) Media Technologies: Essays on Communication, Materiality, and Society. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 167–194.

36.

GQ Australia Staff (2018) Spotify wants your DNA for playlists with a personal touch. GQ Australia, 23 September.

37.

Hall

(1996) Introduction: who needs identity? In: Hall

Du Gay

(eds) Questions of Cultural Identity. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, pp. 1–17.

38.

Hassan

(2018) Spotify and ancestry can use your real DNA to tell your “musical DNA..” Quartz, 22 September.

39.

Hollinger

(2018) Anxiety and utopia in the Anthropocene. Frontiers of Literary Studies in China 12(4): 565–582.

40.

Hunt

Merolla

(2022) Genes and race in the era of genetic ancestry testing: the geneticization of identity and the social deconstruction of whiteness. Sociology Compass 16(8): e13011.

41.

Jameson

(1988 [1992]) Utopianism after the end of utopia. In: Jameson

(ed.) Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Berlin: De Gruyter, pp. 154–180.

42.

Japtok

(2021) Colson whitehead’s the intuitionist, the internet, and techno-utopianism. African American Review 54(4): 301–317.

43.

Jasanoff

(2015) Future imperfect: science, technology, and the imaginations of modernity. In: Jasanoff

Kim

(eds) Dreamscapes of Modernity: Sociotechnical Imaginaries and the Fabrication of Power. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, pp. 1–33.

44.

Jenke

(2018) Spotify are letting you use your DNA to curate tailored playlists. The Music Network, 24 September.

45.

Johnson

(1968) Utopian Literature: A Selection. New York: Random House.

46.

Joy

(2000) Why the future doesn’t need us. Wired, 1 April.

47.

Kang

(2023) On streaming-dating convergence: music-mediated self-presentations on Tinder. New Media & Society 25(8): 2057–2072.

48.

Kiberg

Spilker

(2023) One more turn after the algorithmic turn? Spotify’s colonization of the online audio space. Popular Music & Society 46(2): 151–171.

49.

Kislev

(2020) Six Hegelian theses about technology. Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 24(3): 376–404.

50.

Krimsky

Johnston

(2017). Ancestry DNA Testing and Privacy: A Consumer Guide. Washington, DC: Council for Responsible Genetics.

51.

Lanier

(2013) Who Owns the Future? London: Simon & Schuster.

52.

Lawton

Foeman

(2017) Shifting winds: using ancestry DNA to explore multiracial individuals’ patterns of articulating racial identity. Identity: An International Journal of Theory and Research 17(2): 69–83.

53.

Levitas

(2011) The Concept of Utopia. Oxford: Peter Lang.

54.

Lopez

(2021) Excessively Asian: crying, crazy rich Asians, and the construction of Asian American audiences. Critical Studies in Media Communication 38(2): 141–154.

55.

Maitra

(2020) Artificial intelligence and indigenous perspectives: protecting and empowering intelligent human beings. In: Proceedings of the AAAI/ACM conference on AI, ethics, and society, New York City, NY, February, pp. 320–326.

56.

McClellan

IIIJE

Dorn

(1999) Science and Technology in World History: An Introduction. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

57.

McNeil

Arribas-Ayllon

Haran

, et al. (2016) Conceptualizing imaginaries of science, technology, and society. In: Felt

Fouché

Miller

, et al. (eds) The Handbook of Science and Technology Studies. Cambridge: MIT Press, pp. 435–464.

58.

Meier

Manzerolle

(2019) Rising tides? Data capture, platform accumulation, and new monopolies in the digital music economy. New Media & Society 21(3): 543–561.

59.

Monroe

(2018) Spotify teams with ancestry to make playlists based on your DNA. Pitchfork, 24 September.

60.

Montgomery

(2018) Can Spotify and AncestryDNA really tell you about yourself through a playlist? Vulture, 2 October.

61.

Morozov

(2013) To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism. New York: Public Affairs.

62.

Morton

(2010) Hyperobjects are viscous. In: Ecology without Nature. Available at: https://ecologywithoutnature.blogspot.com/2010/10/hyperobjects-are-viscous.html

63.

Nakamura

(2020) Feeling good about feeling bad: virtuous virtual reality and the automation of racial empathy. Journal of Visual Culture 19(1): 47–64.

64.

Nash

(2015) Genetic Geographies: The Trouble with Ancestry. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

65.

Nelson

(2016) The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation after the Genome. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

66.

Nieborg

Poell

(2018) The platformization of cultural production: theorizing the contingent cultural commodity. New Media & Society 20(11): 4275–4292.

67.

Odell

Lazo

Woodhouse

, et al. (2017) The art of curation at a biological database: principles and application. Current Plant Biology 11: 2–11.

68.

Omi

Winant

(2015) Racial Formation in the United States. London: Routledge.

69.

Panofsky

Donovan

(2019) Genetic ancestry testing among white nationalists: from identity repair to citizen science. Social Studies of Science 49(5): 653–681.

70.

Peters

(2023) Racial-genomic interest convergence and the geneticization of Black families. Journal of Family Communication 23: 294–303.

71.

Petersen

(2018) Digital Health and Technological Promise: A Sociological Inquiry. New York: Routledge.

72.

Pullman

Arbour

(2009) Genetic research and culture: where does the offense lie? In: Young

Brunk

(eds) The Ethics of Cultural Appropriation. New York: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 115–139.

73.

Putman

Cole

(2020) All hail DNA: the constitutive rhetoric of AncestryDNATM advertising. Critical Studies in Media Communication 37(3): 207–220.

74.

Putman

Kvam

(2023) “I’m generally just a White European mutt”: communication strategies for interpreting and sharing DNA-based ancestry test results. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication 16(1): 36–55.

75.

Rabinow

(1996) Artificiality and enlightenment: from sociobiology to biosociality. In Essays on the Anthropology of Reason. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 91–111.

76.

Reese

(2018) I hate my DNA now. Jezebel, 21 September.

77.

Reilly

(2018) 6 Spotify songs to listen to while Silicon Valley steals your DNA. CNET, 26 September.

78.

Romijn

(2023) Negotiating Belgian identity in Wisconsin through ancestry genomics. Science as Culture 32(2): 1–26.

79.

Roth

Ivemark

(2018) Genetic options: The impact of genetic ancestry testing on consumers’ racial and ethnic identities. American Journal of Sociology 124(1): 150–184.

80.

Rothman

(2001) The Book of Life: A Personal and Ethical Guide to Race, Normality, and the Implications of the Human Genome Project. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

81.

Seaver

(2022) Computing Taste: Algorithms and the Makers of Music Recommendation. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.

82.

Segal

(1986) The technological utopians. In: Corn

(ed.) Imagining Tomorrow: History, Technology and the American Future. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 119–136.

83.

Segal

(2017) Practical utopias: America as techno-fix nation. Utopian Studies 28(2): 231–246.

84.

Shaviro

(2011) Hyperbolic futures: Speculative finance and speculative fiction. The Cascadia Subduction Zone 1(2): 3–5.

85.

Smidt

(2018) Spotify and ancestry announced a collaboration and it freaked some people out. Buzzfeed News, 24 September.

86.

Striphas

(2015) Algorithmic culture. European Journal of Cultural Studies 18(4–5): 395–412.

87.

TallBear

(2013) Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

88.

Walajahi

Wilson

Hull

(2019) Constructing identities: the implications of DTC ancestry testing for tribal communities. Genetics in Medicine 21(8): 1744–1750.

89.

Webster

(2023) The promise of personalisation: exploring how music streaming platforms are shaping the performance of class identities and distinction. New Media & Society 25(8): 2140–2162.

90.

Weiss

(2018) Spotify and Ancestry.com want you to listen to music that reflects your DNA—and people are confused. Insider, 25 September.

91.

White

(2004) The great American disaster machine. In: Freese

Harris

(eds) The Holodeck in the Garden. Funks Grove, IL: Dalkey Archive Press, pp. 130–140.

92.

Wilde

(2018) Spotify will now let you generate a playlist based on your AncestryDNA results. Bustle, 20 September.

93.

Winston

(2017) Ancestry.com takes DNA ownership rights from customers and their relatives. ThinkProgress, 17 May.

94.

Zhang

(2018) Your DNA is not your culture. The Atlantic, 25 September.

95.

Zuboff

(2019) The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. New York: Profile Books.