Music streaming services have become today's most popular way of consuming music. These services give their users access to a comprehensive music library without providing legal ownership of that music. However, recent research suggests that music streaming users still continue to experience feelings of ownership. To advance our understanding, this study investigates the role of psychological ownership in music streaming consumption. In particular, based on the theory of psychological ownership, it is analyzed how service‐ and music‐based psychological ownership emerge. The study further investigates the relationship between these two targets of ownership and whether music‐based psychological ownership is positively related to users' intention to switch from a music streaming service's free version to its paid premium version. Using structural equation modeling, the results indicate that service‐based psychological ownership, stemming from users' investment of self into the service, is positively related to music‐based psychological ownership, which is positively influenced by the sense of control over the music accessed. The results also show that music‐based psychological ownership is strongly related to users' intention to switch from free to premium, which highlights the importance of psychological ownership for providers of music streaming services, particularly those operating a feature‐limited freemium model.

Conversational agents (CA) that interact with users in human language have become increasingly popular over the past years. This study explores antecedents of the user experience with CAs in hedonic digital services, utilizing the example of music streaming services. Moreover, this study investigates whether a positive CA user experience increases users’ sense of psychological ownership towards the service, which in turn is supposed to positively influence users’ intention to use the service’s fee required premium version. Using structural equation modelling, the results indicate that perceived humanness and perceived personalization of the CA positively affect the user experience. The results also show that CAs can greatly benefit from higher humanness and personalization when users trust the hedonic digital service. Furthermore, psychological ownership has been identified as an underlying mechanism through which CA user experience leads to users’ premium usage intention, indicating that CAs might be valuable for hedonic digital services.

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