The Socioeconomic Implications of Platformization for Creative and Cultural Industries: Value Extraction, Precarity, and Emerging Governance Models

Abstract

Platformization has fundamentally restructured creative and cultural industries by inserting digital intermediaries between creators, audiences, and revenue streams. Platforms such as Spotify, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok now control discovery, distribution, and monetization, reshaping labor relations, value capture, and cultural production logics. This review examines the socioeconomic consequences of these transformations, grounded in platform capitalism theory, cultural economy perspectives, and labor process analysis. Recognition of concentrated platform power has driven transformations from traditional gatekeeper models to algorithmic curation, from stable employment to platform-dependent gig and creator work, and from direct monetization to data extraction and revenue-sharing arrangements. Specific mechanisms—including recommendation algorithms, creator funds, and datafication of audience engagement—illustrate both expanded reach and intensified precarity. Applications in music, audiovisual media, and journalism demonstrate measurable shifts in income distribution, creative autonomy, and industry concentration. Challenges of algorithmic opacity, revenue asymmetry, and weakened collective bargaining persist. Prospects center on regulatory intervention, alternative platform models, and creator-led governance initiatives. The analysis concludes that platformization has not merely supplemented existing structures but has reconfigured the fundamental economics and power relations of cultural production, requiring new frameworks for understanding value, labor, and cultural policy in the platform era.