Accounting for Listening

How music streaming has changed what it means to listen

Abstract

Through personalised playlists, music streaming services promise customers they can listen to more of the music they like. However, to benefit, users have to concede the privacy of their music taste to the data algorithms of the service. This situation presents interesting questions as to the effectives of the streaming platform’s ability to enhance the listener’s musical engagement. Therefore, through a small semi-structured empirical study this research explored if streaming services afford a different kind of attention to music. The findings propose that listening on streaming platforms has irrevocably changed the meaning made from music and what it means to listen.