The digitalization of the symbolic and the cultural-digital capitalism: The expansion of cultural-digital services in Brazil

Abstract

The cultural-digital capitalism has as its core the process of digitalization of the symbolic. This process harbors four interdependent phenomena: (1) consolidation of streaming technology; (2) the global expansion of the use of mobile digital devices, especially smartphones; (3) digital convergence; (4) the advent and profusion of Web 2.0, the Internet stage in which most of the content is created, distributed, shared and consumed by the users themselves. The interfaces between these four phenomena have allowed the world's largest digital technology corporations (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft) to become major art, culture and entertainment corporations, building new business models – cultural services, especially the provision of subscription services via streaming. Considering the cross-reference of different quantitative data about these phenomena, this paper intends to understand the expansion of cultural-digital services in Brazil in the last ten years.