Circulation is a realistic look at the utility of the algorithms now deciding how our songs and stories reach us. Not the hype, not the panic. The mechanics. How does a recommendation system choose what an audience gets to hear? And who does it leave out?

Here's the uncomfortable answer: for dominant, well-resourced culture, the utility is real. These systems surface music, film, and stories. But the ramifications land hardest on emerging or marginal cultures - work without the data trail or institutional backing platforms are built to reward. For them, the songs and stories often don't reach us at all. This isn't a bug. It's the design, trained on a past that already shut those voices out.

The book doesn't stop at diagnosis. It hands the culture industries a set of moves — not tearing down recommendation systems or resurrecting old-school gatekeeping, but something harder: build counterweights into the system itself. Curate for what hasn't proven itself yet. Reward discovery over repetition. Treat what the algorithm already knows as a starting point, not a verdict. Break the addiction to algorithmic affirmation, and circulation stops being a wall for the cultures that need a door.

David Macias is a co-founder and president of Thirty Tigers, a global music distribution service and management company, whose clients include: Lucinda Williams, Smashing Pumpkins, Alanis Morissette and many others. He is also the Grammy-Award winning co-producer of Beautiful Dreamer: The Songs Of Stephen Foster.