Dr. Kim-Marie Spence explores the global experience of the era of streaming.
- Date(s)
- February 25, 2026
- Location
- SARC, Third Floor Teaching Space, 4 Cloreen Park, QUB
- Time
- 13:00 - 14:00
- Price
- Free - no booking required
The music industry in the twenty-first century is the era of streaming and platformisation. However the global experience of this streaming has revealed a variety of structural faultlines. One such in the differential experience of this streaming era along the continuum of Global North and South contexts. Jamaica represents one of the Southern centres of the global music industry, due to its international renown music genres of reggae, dancehall and dub. In this talk, Kim-Marie presents findings from 2025 primary research involving interviews from Jamaican music industry, illustrating their experiences, responses and innovations in this new technological era. This research contributes to emerging (including work by Kim-Marie) work on nuanced, decentred and international understandings of streaming and plaformisation within the global music industry.
Dr. Kim-Marie Spence is Subject Lead and Lecturer for Arts Management and Cultural Policy at Queen’s University Belfast. She is also an adjunct lecturer at the Caribbean School of Media & Communication (CARIMAC) at the University of the West Indies (Jamaica).
Her research generally focuses on popular music industries and policy of the Non-West with a long-term focus on the music industries of K-pop and reggae. Her current research currently focuses on research streaming and platformisation in the music industries of Afrobeats, Reggae and K-pop; and Black Music/ians in Northern Ireland. Her interest in this area began from her policy experience, as a [former] Jamaica Film Commissioner/Head of Creative Industries within the Jamaican government. Kim-Marie is co-author of the book Global Cultural Economy and sits on the boards of international award-winning cultural institutions -the MAC Belfast, a leading Northern Irish contemporary art institution; Kingston Creative, a Jamaican cultural district initiative; and the Journal of Cultural Economy.