The social and applied psychology of engagement in music piracy

Abstract

The chapter adopts a broad approach, situating music piracy in a wider context of how and why people listen to and engage with music, given that questions concerning music piracy engagement hinges on understanding why people listen to music in the first place.Technology has changed how we choose and listen to music, and recent music psychology research explores the cultural as well as commercial impact of the digital revolution on contemporary music listening practices. Working from a social psychological perspective, this chapter provides an overview of why individuals choose to engage in music piracy, encompassing a discussion concerning the personality and individual differences of so-called music pirates. Acknowledging the wide-reaching impact of the digital revolution and music piracy on music listening practices, this chapter discusses the impact on the live music sector as well as the emerging omnipresence of streaming services. Discussion follows which unpacks the different functions which particular music formats satisfy, working from recent empirical data; the implications of which pertain to why people choose one format over another, as well as whether they choose to pay for music or not. Lastly, the chapter concludes by proposing directions for future research based on the findings from recent empirical work.

Freedom of choice: Examining music listening as a function of favorite music format.

“…Some of the material presented in this article has been previously disseminated in presentations made at the 2017 Conference of the Australian Music & Psychology Society and the 2016 International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition, as well as a book chapter (Krause & Brown, 2018). Moreover, as noted in the manuscript, this research is part of a wider study concerning everyday music listening practices (Brown & Krause, 2017;Krause & Brown, 2019).…”