Infinite content and interrupted listening: The impact of smartphones, streaming and music ‘superabundance’ on everyday personal music listening behaviour

Moore, Ellen. 2019. Infinite content and interrupted listening: The impact of smartphones, streaming and music ‘superabundance’ on everyday personal music listening behaviour. Working Paper. Goldsmiths, University of London, London. [Report]

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Abstract or Description

Personal music listening has become an effective emotional management tool to cope with crowded spaces and shared workplaces in cities. The smartphone as listening device combined with streaming service as music library provides a personal music listening experience that is constant, superabundant and as easy as breathing (Fleischer, 2015; Johansson et al, 2018). Using diary interviews combined with a ‘no music day’ intervention, this research project offers insights into everyday music listening behaviours under these new conditions. Data collected with 12 young people in UK cities from June – July 2018 revealed music on smartphones flowing through headphones into everyday life, sometimes interrupted but essential for work and travel. Streaming services made music listening accessible, constant and inexhaustible leading to dissatisfaction with choice, dissociation from the outside world but did not cause a devaluation of music. Engagement in practices such as playlisting, rationing, archiving and concentrated listening provided postdigital strategies and sensibilities to counteract superabundance and lazy listening. Finally, participant responses to the methods engaged in this study show that the self-reflection on music consumption can challenge and change listening behaviours.

Item Type:

Report (Working Paper)

Additional Information:

This paper was first prepared in September 2018 by Ellen Moore as her final dissertation for the Social Research MSc at Goldsmiths University 2016 – 2018.

Keywords:

music listening, music consumption, smartphones, streaming

Departments, Centres and Research Units:

Sociology > Centre for Urban and Community Research (CUCR)

Date:

July 2019

Item ID:

27021

Date Deposited:

26 Sep 2019 09:38

Last Modified:

26 Sep 2019 09:38

URI:

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/27021

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