City Research Online

Abstract

Adults listen to music for an average of 18 hours a week (with some people reaching more than double that). With rapidly changing technology, music collections have become overwhelmingly digital ushering in changes in listening habits, especially when it comes to listening on personal devices. By using interactive visualizations, descriptive analysis and thematic analysis, this project aims to explore why people download and listen to music and which aspects of the music listening experience are prioritized when people talk about tracks on their device. Using a newly developed data collection method, Shuffled Play, 397 participants answered open-ended and closed research questions through a short online questionnaire after shuffling their music library and playing two pieces as prompts for reflections. The findings of this study highlight that when talking about tracks on their personal devices, people prioritise characterizing them using sound and musical features and associating them with the informational context around them (artist, album, and genre) over their emotional responses to them. The results also highlight that people listen to and download music because they like it-a straightforward but important observation that is sometimes glossed over in previous research. These findings have implications for future work in understanding music, its uses and its functions in peoples' everyday lives.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2020 Sanfilippo et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Publisher Keywords:	Adolescent; Adult; Aged; Auditory Perception; Female; Geography; Habits; Humans; Male; Middle Aged; Motivation; Music; Random Allocation; Surveys and Questionnaires; Young Adult
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology H Social Sciences > HM Sociology H Social Sciences > HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform M Music and Books on Music
Departments:	Bayes Business School > Management
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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