Miguel Molina-Solana

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. The aims of this project are to investigate (1) why people download and listen to music, and (2) which aspects of the music listening experience are prioritized by people listening to music on their personal devices. Using a newly developed data collection method, Shuffled Play, 322 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. By using interactive visualizations, quantitative descriptive analysis and thematic analysis, we explore in a novel way 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. 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. These findings have implications for future work in understanding music and its uses and functions in peoples’ everyday lives.

@article{Sanfilippo2020,
  author = {Sanfilippo, Katie~Rose and Spiro, Neta and Molina-Solana, Miguel and Lamont, Alexandra},
  title = {Do the Shuffle: Exploring reasons for music listening through shuffled play},
  journal = {PLOS One},
  year = {2020},
  volume = {15},
  number = {2},
  articleno = {e0228457},
  doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0228457},
  comment = {https://miguems.github.io/dotheshuffle/},
  timestamp = {22}
}