Draft Literature review

December 18, 2020 — 8 Min Read

Literature review draft

Draft Literature Review

Work in progress, will be updated following review from my supervisor

Introduction

Music has evolved over the past decades and has become more accessible than ever thanks to the incredible advancements in technology and the world becoming connected through globalization. The music industry had to adapt to cope with the demands of the generation who grew into that change. Where originally one had to go to a specific store to acquire physical media based on availability, the internet allows legal, illegal (piracy) but above all immediate access to all the music one can wish for. To maintain control over the supply, the music industry has promoted an inexpensive way to access music content via stream instead of encouraging ownership.

The quick technological advancement of personal devices leads to a movement away from physical music storage, such as CDs and vinyl records and an exponential adoption of music streaming services accessible on multiple devices. This change happens in parallel with Millennials joining the workforce and becoming targeted consumers (Wobbrock, 2014). Instead of building upon traditional physical media collections, they turn to the digital tools to curate their music. This literature review will delve into the relationship Millennials have with both physical music collections and music streaming services by discussing the evolution of music consumption in the last decades, how music collections are approached in this context and how Millennials have grown up steeped in technology.

Section name should be a description: I.e Curation and collections

Narrative through curation

The difference between hoarding and collecting is selecting and keeping objects or artefacts that hold a meaning beyond their initial purpose. Wolff and Mulholland (2013) advance that the collectors’ purpose in curating artefacts is to present a certain narrative in the way they interrelate. This narrative, built upon the knowledge and learning of the curator, can be interpreted differently by the external observer or visitor. Curating is meaningfully selecting assets and attributing their worth to an intangible over its intrinsic values (Jung et al. 2011). -- sentences to give interpretation of the literature; we know x, y z; but a,b,c. -- This angle can be explored more

Self-presentation via possession

Collections are observed in terms of how they sustain memories, how they are displayed and how they facilitate exchanges and connections. Odom, Zimmerman and Forlizzi (2011) state that people actively reinvent themselves by selecting which elements of their past to keep and which to let go. Moreover, the way consumers surround themselves with chosen pieces is an expression of the self (Golsteijn, Den Hoven, Frohlich and Sellen, 2012; Kirk and Sellen, 2010). Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton (1981) mention that certain objects can ‘become associated with a particular quality of the self’ to an extent where it is impossible to know if the quality is emphasized or created out of thin air. The authors propose that the meaning, the intangible, supersedes the possessions themselves.

Physical and digital collections

This narrative based on ownership extends beyond the physical realm: Danckwerts and Kenning (2019) mention the prevalence of psychological ownership where the digital assets can be managed. Physical mementos have precedence over digital ones, according to Petrelli and Whittaker (2010), as they allow for an easy access and tangible, visible, flexible in terms of invocating meaning. Previous research articles emphasize that any degradation to physical artefacts does not necessarily impact the reason for keeping it; digital artefacts, if they become faulty or unreadable, lose any purpose or value (Petrelli and Whittaker, 2010; Kirk and Sellen 2010). Pettrelli and Whittaker also state that digital collections can be ignored more easily and turn to accumulation over time, as the bulk of the digital objects are not visible unless sought. Supporting this, Golsteijn et al. (2012) mention digital artefacts can nevertheless be cherished and constitute an extension from their physical counterparts if they have a meaningful use and are part of an active collection, where the collector curates kept media. Separate mini conclusion per section

-- tie it back to the question raised or answered in the research /literature I.e. personal conclusions about what I read People have a deep relationship with their collections --< conclusion

How the music consumption evolved in the last decades

Physical to digital music access

While music is still an important part of our lives, it can be access very differently now compared to a decade or two ago. A study from Molteni and Ordanini (2003) delving into the recording music industry and the evolving consumption patterns in the digital age show the music industry has had to shift away from the physical media and find new strategies on the online and offline management of music catalogues. Vlachos and Vrechopoulos (2004) also point out the contrast between the continuously climbing demand for music products and the decrease in sales of physical music storage, in their article CDs specifically. These articles are over 15 years old but still apply today. Incidentally, as digital purchasing and pirating have also hugely impacted the music industry over the past two decades and beyond, there has been a continued drop in physical music sales (Kumar and Parikh,2013; Sesigür, 2020).

Brown and Sellen (2006) explore in their paper ‘Sharing and Listening to Music’ how sharing music has changed since the early 2000s. While the technology changes, the desire to copy music, share it and socialize over it has not. Brown and Sellen argue that physical media are more suited for collectability than digital media as they can be more readily explore, lent to others and given value beyond its original purpose. Digital music is seen as complimentary to the physical music in terms of convenience of storage and access. Magaudda (2011) mentions that music re-materialization (i.e. return to a physical media, such as a burned CD with mp3s) is also highly involved in the digital consumption cycle. Kumar and Parikh (2013) support that mobile phones becoming more affordable and supporting media have had a huge impact in the music consumption in the Eastern world, while the western side has benefited from online resources as a transition from physical records. The advent of personal devices has today enabled most of the global population to access digital music repositories at will.

Streaming services as a digital answer

Sinclair and Green (2015) mention that streaming as a legal alternative did help bring over downloaders to consume music from the industry. While it is not the focus of the current research, the ethical implications of the streaming services were mentioned in a few papers in terms of remuneration to the members of the music industry (Sinclair and Green, 2015; Nguyen, Dejean and Moreau, 2012). Shukla and Stewart (2017) and Sesigür (2020) propose that, regardless of the digital aspect of the music, there is a consumption practice of materiality, which for music is now the creation of playlists. Music enthusiasts will interact as much as possible with the tools at their disposal to claim ownership over what they consume, even if this translates to the app or the device on which they access. The maintenance of playlists in music streaming services is a substitute to the activity of curation, accumulation and management of the music available from the huge online libraries. Creating playlists is a form of individualized consumption (Nguyen, Dejean and Moreau, 2012; Hagen, 2015). Spotify users in Ireland Because music streaming services offer clear positives – perceived low price, sizable library and personalization features – they attract an incredible number of users. In the context of the proposed research study, due to limited time and resources, the focus is on one music streaming service: Spotify. It is the most popular service globally, according to the Statista website (2020): “In 2019, 35 percent of music streaming subscribers worldwide had a subscription with Spotify, almost double the share who were subscribed to Apple Music. Other services in the list included Amazon, Tencent and Deezer.” According to 2020 publications on both the Business of Apps and the Irish Times websites, there are 286 million monthly active Spotify users worldwide, for which 600 000 paid subscribers are based in Ireland, with twice this number of users estimated to use the free version within the country. The number of paid subscribers is of interest as, according to a localized French study authored by Dang Nguyen, Dejean, and Moreau (2014), free streaming seems to be considered on a similar level to listening to the radio and TV as a discovery tool. The features available in a paid membership must have added value to explore, hence there is an emerging focus on free and paid streaming services (Mäntymäki, and Islam, 2015). Psychological ownership, which is perceived ownership following an interaction, also has a claim on the likelihood of paid streaming service membership (Danckwerts and Kenning, 2019).

Millennials have grown up with technology

Millennials embrace digital change Millennials have grown up in a more technologically privileged environment than the generation preceding it and are referred to as ‘digital natives’ (Serazio, 2015). The access to social media platforms and other emerging technologies has been an integral part of their lives, thus leading to an easy acceptance of technological change (Marston, 2019; Greengard, 2012). Because of this exposure to technology, Millennials can multitask in a nonlinear manner and expect interactivity and inductive experiences in turn, moving away promptly from disappointing or convoluted products (Prensky, 2001; Serazio, 2015; Marston, 2019). Moreover, there is a culture of immediacy in the generational cohort; there is a preference for real-time, on-demand and self-service over traditional resources, thanks to the advent of Internet and smart objects. This attitude is referred to as ‘impatience to succeed’ and entitlement, even in the workforce (Ng, Schweitzer and Lyons, 2010).

Millennials can access incredible repositories of music

While the reach that Millennials have on social media transcends what Baby Boomers would have had before (Brown and Sellen, 2006), as music consumers they are still influenced by self-identification and social networks. As CDs, vinyl records and various digital music resources coexist in their households, Millennials can benefit from recommendations from the previous generations and improve their music experience with peers online (Xu, 2015; Odom, Zimmerman and Forlizzi, 2011). For older generations and Millennials alike, there is a strong bond developed by sharing a common musical preference (Brown and Sellen, 2006). In a comparative research study, Saldana (2016) states that, while their musical choices may support attitudes and values, Millennials would not stand by them as staunchly as would the previous generations. Consequently, thanks to the vast repositories of music at their fingertips, Millennials can shift more easily from one trend to the other (Brown, 2006; Giles, Pietrzykowski and Clark, 2007; Greengard, 2012).

Conclusion

People feel strongly about their collections; most of the previous studies covering curating and collections focus on multi-generational households and are not specific to music and streaming. Curation have been a way for collectors to appropriate the content as they decide what gives it value, what should be keep and what should be discarded. It is an involved process as it requires conscious effort and it culminates into the expression of a narrative or reasoning. The music industry has evolved greatly over the past decades and there has been a steady transition towards digital music consumption. While the usage of music streaming services is actively being researched, there is a limited body of research targeting the Millennials and their perspective on this service. There is also little documentation showing how Millennials value their digital music collections versus their physical counterpart. In the previously listed literature, only Odom and Forlizzi (2011) did more recently observe then-teenagers and their emotional attachment to digital artefacts. Based on the existing literature reviewed, there is thus an opportunity to compare and contrast how Millennials relate to music streaming services versus a physical music collection.