Abstract
In recent years, music consumption has shifted towards streaming applications which offer users access to vast amount of music without needing to download or own it. While streaming technology also allows users to create music collections, maintaining a collection is optional as for the first time in music consuming history users can reliably listen to music outside their collections. To study the impacts of streaming on people’s music consumption, we interviewed ten streaming music application users who are strongly interested in music. Our results indicate that when using streaming applications, our participants tended to neglect collecting songs they liked. They explained this by pointing out that they can always search for those songs again, but the older interviewees confessed that their memory often fails them. Participants also complained that music is currently less exciting for them because the abundance of songs with little cost has cheapened their subjective evaluation of music. Participants experienced no clear boundaries to their streaming music collections, with one of them stating that his musical identity had become more fluid than it was before he started streaming. We discuss the tradeoffs between exploring of new music and exploiting collections and psychology literature that explains why selection to create collections is difficult when the choice of possible musical options is excessive and why neglect of selection can result in reduced listening satisfaction.
Similar content being viewed by others
Availability of data and material
N/A
Code availability
N/A
Change history
28 July 2021
The section headings Personal information management, Music consumption, Music collections before the streaming era and Music collection during the streaming era must be under the Related Work section.
References
Bergman O, Whittaker S (2016) The science of managing our digital stuff. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
Jones W, Teevan J (2007) Personal information management. University of Washington Press, Seattle, WA
Dinneen JD, Julien CA (2020) The ubiquitous digital file: a review of file management research. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology 71(1):E1–E32
Whittaker S, Bellotti V, Gwizdka J (2007) Everything through email. In: Jones W, Teevan J (eds) Personal information management. University of Washington Press, Seattle, pp 167–189
Whittaker S, Matthews T, Cerruti J, Badenes H, Tang J (2011) Am I wasting my time organizing email? A study of email refinding. In: Tan D, Fitzpatrick G, Gutwin C, Begole B, Kellogg WA (eds) Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems. ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp 3449–3458
Czerwinski M, Horvitz E (2002) An investigation of memory for daily computing events. In: HCI, vol 2002, pp 230–245
Cage K, Santos L, Scott C, Vaughn-Cooke M (2014) Personal health record design preferences for minority diabetic patients. In: Proceedings of the human factors and ergonomics society annual meeting, vol 1. SAGE Publications, pp 614–618
Taha J, Sharit J, Czaja SJ (2014) Usability of an electronic personal health record (PHR) among a diverse group of adults. In: Proceedings of the human factors and ergonomics society annual meeting, vol 1. SAGE Publications, pp 619–623
Aula A, Jhaveri N, Kaki M (2005) Information search and re-access strategies of experienced web users. In: Proceedings of the 14th international conference on World Wide Web. ACM, New York, pp 583–592 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1060745.1060831
Teevan J, Alvarado C, Ackerman MS, Karger DR (2004) The perfect search engine is not enough: a study of orienteering behavior in directed search. In: Dykstra-Erickson E, Tscheligi M (eds) SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems. ACM Press, New York, pp 415–422
Whittaker S, Bergman O, Clough P (2010) Easy on that trigger dad: a study of long term family photo retrieval. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing 13(5):17–30
Kirk D, Sellen A, Rother C, Wood K (2006) Understanding photowork. In: SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems. ACM, New York, pp 761–770 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1124772.1124885
Bergman O, Beyth-Marom R, Nachmias R (2008) The user-subjective approach to personal information management systems design: evidence and implementations. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 59(2):235–246
Jones W (2007) Keeping found things found: the study and practice of personal information management. Morgan Kauffman, Seattle
Jones W, Dinneen JD, Capra R, Diekema AR, Pérez-Quiñones M (2017) Personal information management (PIM). In: Clark M, McDonald J (eds) Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science, Fourth edn. Taylor & Francis, New York, NY, pp 3584–3605
Dinneen JD, Julien CA (2019) What’s in people’s digital file collections? Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology 56(1):68–77
Bergman O, Beyth-Marom R, Nachmias R, Gradovitch N, Whittaker S (2008) Improved search engines and navigation preference in personal information management. ACM Transactions on Information Systems 26(4):1–24. https://doi.org/10.1145/1402256.1402259
Jones W, Wenning A, Bruce H (2014) How do people re-find files, emails and web pages? In: Proceedings of the 2014 iConference, pp 552-564
Brinegar J, Capra R (2011) Managing music across multiple devices and computers. In: Proceedings of the 2011 iConference. ACM, pp 489–495
Sesigür O (2020) How to approach collecting music on streaming services. Interactions: Studies in Communication & Culture 11(1):65–74
Bergman O, Whittaker S, Schooler J (2020) Out of sight and out of mind: bookmarks are created but not used. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science 53(2):338-348
Cunningham SJ, Jones M (2004) Jones S Organizing digital music for use: an examination of personal music collections. In, ISMIR
Bentley F, Metcalf C, Harboe G (2006) Personal vs. commercial content: the similarities between consumer use of photos and music. In: Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in computing systems. ACM, New York, pp 667–676
Bainbridge D, Cunningham SJ, Downie JS (2003) How people describe their music information needs: a grounded theory analysis of music queries. In: ISMIR 2003
Downie JS, Cunningham SJ (2002) Toward a theory of music information retrieval queries: system design implications. In: ISMIR 2002
Kim J-Y, Belkin NJ (2002) Categories of Music description and search terms and phrases used by non-music experts. In: ISMIR, pp 209–214
Lee JH, Downie JS Survey of music information needs, uses, and seeking behaviours: preliminary findings. In: ISMIR, 2004. Citeseer, p 5th
Cunningham SJ, Bainbridge D, McKay D (2007) Finding new music: a diary study of everyday encounter with novel songs. In: ISMIR 2007
Cunningham SJ, Reeves N, Britland M (2003) An ethnographic study of music information seeking: implications for the design of a music digital library. In: 2003 Joint Conference on Digital Libraries, 2003. Proceedings. IEEE, pp 5–17
Vignoli F (2004) Digital music interaction concepts: a user study. In: ISMIR. Citeseer,
North AC, Hargreaves DJ, Hargreaves JJ (2004) Uses of music in everyday life. Music perception 22(1):41–77
Lamont A, Webb R (2010) Short-and long-term musical preferences: what makes a favourite piece of music? Psychology of Music 38(2):222–241
DeNora T (2000) Music in everyday life. Cambridge University Press
Stumpf S, Muscroft S (2011) When users generate music playlists: when words leave off, music begins? In: 2011 IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo. IEEE, pp 1-6
Herbert R (2013) Everyday music listening: absorption, dissociation and trancing. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Barreau DK, Nardi BA (1995) Finding and reminding: file organization from the desktop. SIGCHI Bulletin 27(3):39–43
Bergman O, Elyada O, Dvir N, Vaitzman Y, Ben Ami A (2015) Spotting the latest version of a file with Old'nGray. Interacting with Computers 27(6):630–639. https://doi.org/10.1093/iwc/iwu018
Bergman O, Tucker S, Beyth-Marom R, Cutrell E, Whittaker S (2009) It’s not that important: demoting personal information of low subjective importance using GrayArea. In: CHI 2009 Conference on Human Factors and Computing Systems. ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp 269–278
Bergman O, Komninos A, Liarokapis D, Clarke J (2012) You never call: demoting unused contacts on mobile phones using DMTR. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing 16(6):757–766. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-011-0411-3
Whittaker S, Hirschberg J (2001) The character, value, and management of personal paper archives. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction 8(2):150–170 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/376929.376932
Malone TW (1983) How do people organize their desks? Implications for the design of office information systems. ACM Transactions on Office Information Systems 1(1):99–112
Whittaker S, Sidner C (1996) Email overload: exploring personal information management of email. In: Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems: Common Ground. ACM Press, New York, NY, pp 276–283
Fitchett S, Cockburn A (2015) An empirical characterisation of file retrieval. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 74:1–13
Petrelli D, Whittaker S (2010) Family memories in the home: contrasting physical and digital mementos. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing 14(2):153–169
Datta H, Knox G, Bronnenberg BJ (2018) Changing their tune: how consumers’ adoption of online streaming affects music consumption and discovery. Marketing Science 37(1):5–21
Hagen AN (2015) The playlist experience: personal playlists in music streaming services. Popular Music and Society 38(5):625–645
McCourt T (2005) Collecting music in the digital realm. Popular Music and Society 28(2):249–252
Uski S, Lampinen A (2016) Social norms and self-presentation on social network sites: Profile work in action. New media & society 18(3):447–464
Clarke V, Braun V (2016) Thematic analysis. The Journal of Positive Psychology 12(3):297–298. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2016.1262613
Fox AA (2004) Real country: Music and language in working-class culture. Duke University Press
Hracs BJ, Webster J (2020) From selling songs to engineering experiences: exploring the competitive strategies of music streaming platforms. Journal of Cultural Economy:1–18
Shadbolt N, O'Hara K, De Roure D, Hall W (2019) The theory and practice of social machines. Springer
Pariser E (2011) The filter bubble: what the Internet is hiding from you. Penguin UK,
Bozdag E (2013) Bias in algorithmic filtering and personalization. Ethics and information technology 15(3):209–227
Deary IJ, Corley J, Gow AJ, Harris SE, Houlihan LM, Marioni RE, Penke L, Rafnsson SB, Starr JM (2009) Age-associated cognitive decline. British medical bulletin 92(1):135–152
Salthouse TA (2009) When does age-related cognitive decline begin? Neurobiology of aging 30(4):507–514
Verhaeghen P, Salthouse TA (1997) Meta-analyses of age–cognition relations in adulthood: estimates of linear and nonlinear age effects and structural models. Psychological bulletin 122(3):231–249
Bruce H (2005) Personal anticipated information need. Information Research 10(3)
Shneiderman B, Plaisant C, Cohen M, Jacobs S, Elmqvist N, Diakopoulos N (2016) Designing the user interface: strategies for effective human-computer interaction. Pearson,
Iyengar SS, Lepper MR (2000) When choice is demotivating: can one desire too much of a good thing? Journal of personality and social psychology 79(6):995–1006
Christian B, Griffiths T (2016) Algorithms to live by: the computer science of human decisions. Macmillan,
Gilbert DT, Ebert JE (2002) Decisions and revisions: the affective forecasting of changeable outcomes. Journal of personality and social psychology 82(4):503–514
Acknowledgements
We thank our participants for their time and insights.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors declare no competing interests.
Additional information
Publisher’s note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Bergman, O., Whittaker, S. & Tish, G. Collecting music in the streaming age. Pers Ubiquit Comput 26, 121–129 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-021-01593-6
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-021-01593-6