Analysis of “Evidence for the merits of collecting streaming music”
Original research article can be found here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00779-022-01692-y
Music collecting used to be seen as collections of records or CDs, physical objects that took up space. As a child I remember having a small collection of CDs myself, containing some of my favorite albums. I no longer have a physical collection anymore, as now all my music is kept on streaming platforms. With the rise in streaming music, researchers have chosen to look at the effects on music collecting that streaming has brought. Streaming is so popular more than 500 million people use streaming services for music. This popularity means research can start examining the effects streaming technology has, like is music collecting. Seeing shifts in music collecting is not a strange concept; the industry originally shifted from phonograph records to CDs in the 1980s. Music once again adapted to the shift from CDs to digital in the early 2000s. One of the most notable changes that streaming music has brought is the necessity of collecting music. With any song searchable at any time, there is no need to specify a collection of music. In the research article, Evidence for the merits of collecting streaming music. The researchers surveyed hundreds of participants on questions about their music collection on streaming sites, how streaming has impacted their satisfaction with music and collecting, as well as the impact that has been made on their music collection.
In the experiment, researchers conducted two studies, a qualitative study where a small sample size was used, and a quantitative study with a large sample size. The qualitative study consisted of 10 individuals who answered questions about their collecting habits and listening experiences. On the other hand the quantitative study looked to gather numerical insight into the differences between physical music collecting and streaming. The participants were asked to provide their gender, age, size of streaming collecting compared to their physical collection, and questions about how much music they listen to and how much they enjoy it.
The qualitative study resulted in three significant findings. Firstly, collections were found to be neglected. Participants mentioned they could look up a song any time and therefore didn’t feel the need to constantly upkeep their collection. Participants also said that streaming music has led to less excitement while listening. They said the abundance and easy access to music removed the excitement they used to feel. Participants also felt streaming algorithms pushed mainstream music too much, over more unique music, which led to this result. The last conclusion found was that streaming music has led to a fluid musical identity. In the past participants felt physical collections led to having stricter music taste and identity. With streaming collections, participants described their music identity as more fluid and less committed. Some concerns researchers had with this study was that the small sample size was not reflective enough of music collectors. For example, the finding regarding neglected collections due to the ability to search a song might not represent older music collectors who might have trouble remembering to search music if they neglected their collection.
The quantitative study consisted of 370 participants asked to answer 7 questions about their music habits and their collection. The study found that music collections were either very small or very large, so the sample size was divided to better understand results. Roughly half of participants had small streaming collections of 0–200 songs. The other half had large collections ranging from 215–5000 songs. The median of the smaller group was around 60 songs, compared to the median of the larger group at 600 songs. When asking participants about the number of songs in their physical collection and their streaming collection, there were about 9 songs per record/CD in a collection. When considering that albums average roughly 12 songs, researchers concluded that sizes of collections have shrunk by about 10%. The study also found that younger participants in their 20s to 30s were more likely to have larger streaming music collections while older participants had half as many streaming songs in collections. The image below is the graph which represents the effect of age on streaming collections. When examining gender and music collection size, men had larger streaming collections than women. The research found that participants with larger collections listened to 4 hours more music per week than those with smaller collections. They also noted that participants that the more streaming songs collected, the more they enjoyed their music.
This study was able to conclude that streaming music collections have had positive influences on users, such as participants listening to their favorite music for more than half of their listening time, younger listeners have larger collections on average, and collection size had positive correlations with listening enjoyment and hours. A downside revealed in this research is that collection size has been reduced overall. The researchers call for future research to examine each of these findings closer, as this article aims to examine the differences between physical and digital collections. The researchers felt that because of reduced size of collections, streaming platforms may want to investigate how to encourage listeners to utilize streaming collections more. The researchers speculated that a way a platform could attempt to do this is through shareable achievements on social media for collecting a number of songs. This was a noticeable conclusion because this is the first time in music collecting history that music could be privately heard without needing to collect it.
The changes occurring in music collecting is a result of technology bleeding into various aspects of our lives. As streaming music continues to grow, platforms will likely investigate how to encourage digitalizing collections as well as improve the collecting experience. Researchers should investigate conducting further studies to broaden the scientific knowledge in this field and provide better direction for streaming platforms to improve on.
