Do the shuffle: Exploring reasons for music listening through shuffled play

Abstract

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. By using interactive visualizations, descriptive analysis and thematic analysis, this project aims to explore 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. Using a newly developed data collection method, Shuffled Play, 397 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. 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 in previous research. These findings have implications for future work in understanding music, its uses and its functions in peoples' everyday lives.

AI composer bias: Listeners like music less when they think it was composed by an AI.

“…Perhaps some of the aversion around AI-created music is that people have strong emotional responses to music and find music particularly central to their identities and sense of self (Lamont & Loveday, 2020; Lonsdale & North, 2017; Peck & Grealey, 2020). While seemingly obvious, prior research indicates that the primary reason people listen to music is because they enjoy it (Sanfilippo et al, 2020). Furthermore, almost everyone experiences strong emotional responses to music, with only around 3% of the population reporting that they do not experience pleasure from music (for review, see Belfi & Loui, 2020).…”

The effect of visual recognition on listener choices when searching for music in playlists.

“…This also includes more holistic research on how people approach large digital music collections in general intending to maximize their user experience while implicitly minimizing the adverse effects of choice overload (see Scheibehenne et al, 2010, for a review). Here, we assume that many listeners follow a hierarchical, multistep approach including the search for digital playlists matching one's preferences and situational affordances in the first step and selecting relevant titles based on recognition and/or other cues or simply using the shuffle function (Sanfilippo et al, 2020) in the second step.…”

“…Here, we assume that many listeners follow a hierarchical, multistep approach including the search for digital playlists matching one's preferences and situational affordances in the first step and selecting relevant titles based on recognition and/or other cues or simply using the shuffle function (Sanfilippo et al, 2020) in the second step.…”

The effects of music listening on somatic symptoms and stress markers in the everyday life of women with somatic complaints and depression

“…Interestingly, having listened to music for ‘no reason’ was associated with lower sAA output, indicating a downregulation of ANS activity, for both groups. The answer category of ‘no reason’ might include a range of less target-oriented reasons, e.g., to increase pleasure through aesthetic experiences and/or to evoke positive memories or imagination 52 , that might exert particularly positive effects on autonomic arousal. Beyond motivations for music listening, future research should address further processes potentially explaining the effects of music listening on stress levels, for instance, whether a stress-reducing effect is due to cognitive mechanisms (e.g., cognitive reappraisal), induced emotions, or both, and how these processes might differ by mental health condition 53 .…”